Talk:Growth/Article creation for new editors

Generally, the older admins and New Page Reviewers on enWiki have a wealth of institutional knowledge of the processes involved and how the envelope of the stream of new articles has evolved in recent years.

The trends and requirements are well known to the enWiki editors and admins who are concerned with patrolling new pages, and who have decades of first hand experience.

This empirical evidence needs to be tapped into, and the proposals for inexpensive solutions should be closely examined by the Growth team. Wire frames exist, and basically all the Foundation need to do is provide the .js. There is no need to delay the development by further embarking on costly, further research.

@Kudpung Thanks for the feedback! I am not suggesting an extensive research project at this stage; rather, I propose conducting initial research to provide guidance for our work. Here is what I have been contemplating:

1. Engaging new page reviewers and experienced editors to gather initial feedback on this project. As you mentioned, this group possesses a wealth of institutional knowledge. (This is already underway; we have initiated informal discussions on six different wikis to gather feedback.)

2. Acquiring additional data to aid our decision-making process. You previously mentioned some of the data questions you have. I want to ensure we have the necessary instrumentation in place to determine the success of this project.

3. Conducting a few open-ended conversations with newcomers regarding article creation. These qualitative interviews with new editors who have recently contributed their first article will not be time-consuming, just brief, informal chats.

4. Testing design prototypes with newcomers. This practice is common for all major features released by the Growth team, as newer editors don't readily provide feedback.

The Growth team's engineers have a few other projects to work on prior to prioritizing this project (assuming the communities endorse proceeding with this idea). Hence, we have ample time to collect community feedback and data before commencing any engineering work.

Does this approach appear sound to you, or do you have any concerns about the extent of the proposed research?

@KStoller-WMF

1. I think I and other experienced editors who work in this area have already provided the feedback you need - or are still in the process of contributing to your discussions. While other wikis have a similar requirement, in contrast to enWiki, their workload may be small enough to contain these issues more easily. They may therefore not see the need for any urgency although they would almost certainly benefit from the implementation of any new solutions.
2. I felt the data questions are important. I don't know how to obtain them but it should not pose a technical challenge. They would certainly help to focus on the the most relevant aspects of the processing of new pages and onboarding of problematic new users, and concentrate the scope of the design work..
3. I'm not sure this would help. The situation with enWiki is so vast that any brief, informal chats would never be a large enough sample size.
4. Newer editors do in fact provide feedback, but only of the negative kind. Currently nothing is done to inform them up front of what is acceptable for new articles, They have a typical misconception of what an encyclopedia is within the concept of Wikipedia and they are often aggressive towards patrollers when told their articles are either unsuitable, or require much more work. Approaching these people for feedback will only reinforce what we already know.

In all, I have a concern that much of the proposed research may not be necessary. As I mentioned, the empirical experience is already available. History has shown in major developments such as Page Curation, and the need to restrict who can create new articles (ACTRIAL) that the community was always right. Research that was undertaken at the Foundation's insistence proved it so. This is what I mean about tapping into those resources without duplicating the effort.

I am however very pleased at the progress that these dialogue have made so far, and it heralds a new era in Community-Foundation collaboration on major issues affecting the core principles in encyclopedia building.

Thanks, @Kudpung! I fully agree that seeking guidance and feedback from experienced users is crucial in this particular domain. It is encouraging to see the interest generated by this project idea, with a diverse range of opinions including support, questions, and constructive criticism.

While we highly value the insights of experienced editors who specialize in this field, it is equally important to incorporate the perspectives of new editors. We can seamlessly integrate this approach into the agile development process without incurring significant costs or impeding progress. Gathering feedback from newcomers during the design stage proves to be more cost-effective than waiting until the feature is launched and discovering that certain steps or instructions do not resonate well with them.

I am however very pleased at the progress that these dialogue have made so far, and it heralds a new era in Community-Foundation collaboration on major issues affecting the core principles in encyclopedia building.

That's so nice to hear! I look forward to continuing these dialogues and being open and collaborative throughout Growth's product development process. I truly believe that together, through collaboration, we will reach more informed and superior conclusions. Thanks for being willing to offer your time and feedback to help guide this project!

We are having a conversation with several of the NPP members and other English Wikimedians about this project here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Growth_Team_features#Article_creation_hypothesis

Please feel free to join in! Do you have any thoughts on the first step we should make towards addressing the underlying needs of new editors while ensuring it also helps lighten the AfC or NPP workload?

@KStoller-WMF New editors have many different underlying needs - reiterating here of course that we are seeking solutions to help those who are determined to create an article as their first edit(s). This is why it would be helpful to obtain the kind of stats I listed, to which could possibly be added the kinds of new articles that get deleted most. I do realise however, that such stats might pose a technical challenge.

Probably the need most often encountered would be "I've created an article on Wikipedia!" which might reflect the motivation of the more younger users, while many users want to write a seriously missing article or biography but who understandably do not have the patience to wade through over 300 policies and guidelines when brusquely told to go off and do so. Then there are users who after several years of editing persistently create articles in good faith but which do not follow even the minimum guidelines for inclusion; they remain incommunicado and immune to all messages and offers of help. I came across a classic example only today.

As a first step therefore, possibly asking the more prolific New Page Reviewers to state their experience with new editor types and single out some examples. It would help to focus the design of new on-boarding systems which should nevertheless be simple but explicit and help good faith users from wasting their time and that of the reviewers at NPP and AfC.

I have never come across such new editors to whom the mastery of Wiki markup presents a challenge, but statistically, it might also be a worthwhile exercise to establish the ratio of new articles created by new users using Visual Editor to those edited in normal markup.

In https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Growth_Team_features#Article_creation_hypothesisexcellent ideas are are being thrashed out by some of the highly experienced reviewers, and many salient points have been highlighted, so I don't want to join the discussion there by just repeating all the good elements of the discussion.

I think Trisek (Benoît) will soon be in a position to consolidate those ideas before the page becomes an overspill into many tangential suggestions that would make a decision more complex. Areas to focus on are the registration page (and what happens immediately afterwards), and a truly interactive Article Wizard that encourages users to comply with guidelines and continue, while discouraging those who can't (or won't) and bringing their creation to a rapid close.@Trizek (WMF)

The Growth team, and Growth team Ambassadors, are starting to collect community feedback about this project idea. We will collect feedback in English, French, Spanish, Czech, Bengali, and Arabic, and then summarize community feedback on this project page. I imagine most of the conversations will happen on Wikipedia talk pages, but wanted to also create thread here as well:

The Growth team is exploring a project idea that aims to improve the experience of new editors by providing them with better guidance and structure in the article creation process.   The hope being that by providing new editors with more structure around article creation, it will lead to newcomers creating fewer low-quality articles that create work for patrollers who check recent edits and mentors who review newcomers’ drafts.

In 2022, about 28% of newly registered users who completed the Welcome Survey indicated that they opened an account specifically to create a new article [1]. These newcomers don't yet understand core Wikipedia principles and guidelines around notability, verifiability, conflict of interest, neutral point of view, etc. These newcomers need additional guidance or they end up frustrated and disappointed when their articles get deleted. Because they aren't receiving the proactive guidance they need, they end up creating additional work for content moderators who need to provide reactive guidance which is rarely well-received or well-understood.

While the specifics of the project, and the Growth team’s annual planning priorities, are still under consideration, we anticipate exploring ideas related to  Article creation improvements for new editors.  One possibility is a community configurable "Article wizard" or helper, which could also fulfill the 2023 Community Wishlist survey  Reference requirement for new article creation proposal (ranked #26 out of 182 proposals).

We're committed to shaping the overall plan based on community feedback and needs, while adhering to the following requirements:

• The feature will be Community configurable, enabling each community to customize it to meet their unique needs.
• The feature will provide guidance and guardrails to help newcomers create higher-quality articles and improve their overall experience.
• The feature will be designed to reduce the downstream workload for content moderators (patrollers, admins, watchlisters, etc.).

So, we would love to hear from you:

1. Do you think this project will help new page patrollers on Wikipedia?  
2. Do you have any suggestions for improving this idea?
3. Is there anything about this idea that you find concerning, or you want to ensure we avoid?

Or do you want the Growth team to consider a totally different idea?  Keep in mind that the Moderator Tools team and two other teams are also working on the shared  “improve the experience of editors with extended rights” key result, so there will be other teams approaching this key result from a less new-editor centric perspective.

For this project we need to obtain:

• Average number of daily new articles (not redirects) at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:NewPagesFeed ]
• Average daily number that are passed by auto patrollers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Autopatrolled)
• Average daily number that are passed by NPPers
• Average daily number that are passed but tagged for improvement/issues. (See: Page Curation > Add tags > All tags)
• Average daily number that are listed for the AfD, CSD, PROD deletion systems (together will do) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy
• Average daily number that are moved to draft

Sample period would need to be at least over the last 6 months to make any sense.

I'm also interested in this data, especially if we can get each metric as split by "user tenure bucket".

I'll look into this and see what info I can gather before our next meeting.

Many low standard articles with potential but not ready for mainspace get moved to draft. They do not all get submitted to AfC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation) for review. It might also be interesting to know, over a sample period:

*How many drafts are submitted to AfC

*How many drafts are declined by AfC

*How many drafts are rejected by AfC

*How many drafts were deleted G13 (no improvements after 6 months)

@Kudpung sorry for the delay on this, I wasn't sure how to grab any of this data, so I had to check in with a WMF data scientist. Unfortunately, they let me know that most of these questions are currently either impossible to answer, or would require a lot of imperfect data crunching to attempt to gather approximations. When PageTriage was created, it didn't include the same level of instrumentation that we now include for any new WMF built feature.

The good news is that the Moderator Tools team hopes to improve PageTriage instrumentation when they work on the extension later this year:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Page_Curation/2023_Moderator_Tools_project

The current project includes the language:

• Instrumenting data collection to better understand user workflows and how these change in response to improvements

So hopefully these are the kinds of questions we can start answering eventually.

Overall, this looks good!

If it helps to have a user story for patrollers and others in similar roles, I'd offer something like this: As an experienced editor who interacts with newcomers during the article creation process, I want to have tools that allow me to quickly identify submissions appropriate for the encyclopedia so that they can be approved and refined. For submissions that require additional work before they will be suitable for Wikipedia, I want tools to help me quickly assist newcomers in completing this work. Lastly, for submissions that will not be suitable for Wikipedia, I want tools to help me quickly discard them so that I can focus my efforts elsewhere.

Under the goals section, a small quibble with this line: Minimize bad articles created, to reduce content moderation burden. Bad articles being created isn't the only aspect of the current system that results in more of a moderation burden. Bad drafts increase it, too, even if they never get beyond AfC. And good (in the sense of "on a notable/suitable topic") articles/drafts increase it when they're flawed in ways that increase the time it takes to review them (such as having excess references).

@Sdkb thanks for the feedback, I made two modifications based on your feedback:

Added the patroller user story, with some revised language and an added requirement. Let me know what you think!

And I changed the wording of that goal to:

• Minimize the number of low quality articles and drafts created, to reduce content moderation burden

Actually saying "low quality" is also probably not quite right. Should I instead say "Minimize the number of articles and drafts created that are not notable or otherwise not suitable for Wikipedia..."?

That looks good! And yes, I'd change to "not notable or otherwise not suitable" — low quality articles present a maintenance burden because they need so much fixing up, but if they're notable/suitable we still ultimately want them because something is better than nothing.

Updated. Thanks for the feedback!