Flow/Old Use Cases

Personas

A user persona is a representation of the goals and behavior of a hypothesized group of users. In most cases, personas are synthesized from data collected from interviews with users. They are captured in 1–2 page descriptions that include behavior patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and environment, with a few fictional personal details to make the persona a realistic character. For each product, more than one persona is usually created, but one persona should always be the primary focus for the design. (From Persona (user experience) on English Wikipedia)

New user (0-1 edit)

Akshay has just signed up for an account on Wikipedia. Clicks on redlink to his talk page and doesn't understand what it's for His first edit is reverted, so he clicks the new messages banner and sees a diff – doesn't understand what happened Follows link to talk page of user who warned him – sees a huge, complex talk page, doesn't know how to add a new message Uses Wikilove to send talk page message

Intermediate user (10-50 edits)

Janine has started an article that was nominated for deletion. Gets multiple warnings (speedy deletion, proposed deletion, non-free media warning), doesn't know where/how to respond Asks for help on page patroller's talk page – doesn't know how to find his talk page again and doesn't see new comments from him Asks to have her deleted article emailed to her, includes her email address thinking this is a personal message Doesn't indent or sign talk page edits – gets yelled at

Experienced user (1,000+ edits)

Luiz is an administrator and has a number of different conversations on his talk page. Gets distracted by the new messages banner going off all the time while he's editing Has to figure out how/where new comments fit in discussions Has a hard time keeping track of all the conversations he's having on other people's talk pages Annoyed by new users not understanding how to use the talk page and not signing their edits, having to clean up after them

User talk namespace activity breakdown

User talk page activity on English Wikipedia tends to fall into two basic buckets:

1. New users generally receive template warnings, to which they very rarely reply.
2. Experienced users generally receive free-form messages about content creation/editing, to which they reply again and again, creating long discussion threads.

The following is a high-level list of all the possible kinds of edits that can happen on user talk pages on English Wikipedia. Please feel free to add use cases that were missed!

The [new users], [experienced users] tags represent messages that users are likely to receive.

Usually template

• Welcome [new users]
• Warning [new users]
• Notice
  • Deletion notice [new users]
  • Dispute resolution (ANI, ArbCom) notice [new users], [experienced users]
  • RfC notice [experienced users]
  • DAB notice [new users], [experienced users]
  • Wikiproject drives [new users], [experienced users]
  • Meetup/edit-a-thon notice [experienced users]
  • Page Curation [new users]
• Newsletter
  • Teahouse [new users]
  • WikiProject [new users], [experienced users]
  • Signpost [experienced users]
  • Suggested articles to edit [experienced users]
• WikiLove
  • From the WikiLove extension [new users]
  • Custom (e.g., holiday greeting cards, successful FA/RfA greetings, trouts, barnstars) [experienced users]
• Block
• Talkback [new users], [experienced users]
• Help request [new users]
• Unblock request [new users], [experienced users]

Usually free-form

• Requests for...
  • Peer review [experienced users]
  • DYK help/review [experienced users]
  • GA help/review [experienced users]
  • FA help/review [experienced users]
  • Other help with article/editing (formatting, references, content questions) [new users], [experienced users]
  • !vote participation (on AfD, RfC, etc.) [experienced users]
  • Admin help (page protection, deletion, blocks/bans) [experienced users]
• Behavior/policy discussion [experienced users]
• Thanks/praise [new users], [experienced users]
• Socializing [experienced users]
• Userright grants [experienced users]