[Foundation-l] Article Landing Pages - functional prototype to test and comment on

[Oliver Keyes]

Hey guys

So, as you know, we have issues with how new pages are treated on
Wikipedia. A lot of the pages created by new editors simply aren't very
good; this is bad for the new editors, because their pages get deleted, and
bad for the new page patrollers who then have to wade through a tide of
junk. It’s also contributing to page patrollers being overworked.
 Recently, Engineering has been working on two projects that we hope will
hopefully improve the situation: Page Triage,[1] which is aimed at making
patrolling easier, and the Landing System:[2] a better way for new editors
to create articles. With these project we hope to both reduce the burden on
patrollers by making it easier to patrol, and by ensuring the articles that
are created are of higher quality.

The first of the two Engineering is working on, partly because it lends
itself to being broken out into smaller pieces of work, is the Landing
System. Currently, when a registered newbie clicks on a redlink, they get
automatically taken to an edit page where they can create the article, but
without any context as to what is actually happening.  With the proposed
system,  instead of seeing a blank edit window devoid of context, they'll
see a new page that gives them various options.[3] They can create an
article there, go through the article wizard, or go back to wherever they
were before if they didn't mean to end up at that URL. If a new editor
tries to create the article, they'll be informed that they need a
familiarity with policy, an absence of a COI and several references
(amongst other things) before the tool recommends they create it.[4] If
they don't have those things, they'll be directed to the Article Creation
Wizard.

This is an experiment. Our hypothesis is that this could help increase the
quality of new articles and reduce patrollers’ workload, while making the
process more welcoming at the same time.

What our devs would really love is if people could provide feedback on what
they've put together so far. There is an early prototype at
http://ee-prototype.wmflabs.org/ <http://ee-prototype.wmflabs.org/;> , and
I’d encourage everyone to test it out. The tool is currently targeted at
logged in users since an account is required for creating a pge, so you
have to be logged in to see it.  I’ve created a test account (username
“editor”, password “mailing list”) for people to work with. Then just go to
something like
http://ee-prototype.wmflabs.org/wiki/Special:ArticleCreationLanding/test,
and take a look at what you’re presented with.

We know that the prototype server is fairly slow (sorry about that!) and
the prototype could be a bit buggy, but if you have suggestions as to how
we should improve the tool itself, you can send them to me at
okeyes at wikimedia.org, or to
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Article_Creation_Workflow/Landing_System,
where the devs are watching closely :).

Thanks!

-- 
Oliver Keyes
Community Liaison, Product Development
Wikimedia Foundation


[1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/New_Page_Triage
[2] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_Creation_Workflow/Landing_System