New user help gadget

What if there was a more obvious, intuitive, and interactive tool for new editors to request assistance and find information? One suggestion that has been kicked around in many places is a help button or other sort of easy, automated tool that is available to editors when they join Wikipedia.

Keep in mind that these are just ideas. They try to stick to the draft style guide in things such as color and accessibility, but keep in mind these are just mockups of avenues we could go down, not finished plans.

Rationale
Wikipedia is having serious problems retaining new editors. The major contributing factor to this is the first experience newbies have with editing and creating articles. Good faith editors who have a negative experience by having their efforts to help swiftly removed are very unlikely to stick around. Since no one is yet born knowing how to edit MediaWiki markup and knowing all of Wikipedias rules, we need to try and encourage newbies to stick around long enough to learn.

One way to combat this retention problem is more quickly and clearly presenting new editors with vital information relevant to their editing experience and to present them with an easy way to request help. While actions such as templated Talk page warnings or welcome messages are standard practice, for whatever reason they are clearly doing little to provide the kind of immediate assistance newcomers need.

Even if they receive a highly useful message, few new editors understand the various complexities of mainspace pages, talk pages, user pages, user talk pages, project pages, project talk pages and... well, you get the picture. Currently there is a cornucopia of pages documenting every aspect of Wikipedia, but finding them generally requires that editors make an effort to hunt them down and read these often long pages. For forums such as user talk pages, help desks and so on, newbies must not only find them, but generally must know some basic things about MediaWiki discussion pages. Which, needless to say, most people have no clue how to do when they first arrive.

In conclusion: there is a serious disconnect between the time and effort it takes to find help or an answer if you're unfamiliar with Wikipedia, and how quickly your edit can be reverted or your article deleted. We need to close that gap.

Implementation
Currently the thought is that the fastest and easiest way to implement this (based on current developer resources) would be as a gadget ala WikiLove, which is the main source of inspiration here.

The gadget would be need to turned on for new editors by default, but would not be turned on for all editors across the board (thus sparing experienced editors from annoyance) and could be disabled in preferences like any other gadget. Implementing as a userscript would not work, since only experienced editors know how to use such scripts.

The main blocker to currently implementing this is that we need the ability to turn gadgets on by default, which is currently not possible. (See this bug for more.)

A "help button"
Often in casual discussions people bring up such an idea with one specific use case in mind, but a generalized phrase or symbol for help is preferable if we want this to cover some of the most common situations. A "help I've been reverted!" or "help my article was deleted" gadget would not cover all the bases and would annoy or confuse all the editors who didn't currently have that problem.

So if we're designing a general purpose help button for newbies, the first question is: What is the optimal placement?

The lefthand sidebar is the place where the current Help link and other such content lives, under the Interaction dropdown menu. Putting something there, even a large red button, is likely to be missed by many amongst the rest of the clutter, so let's cross that off the list of possibles. It's also generally not a standard practice for userscripts or gadgets to put new content in the sidebar, so it would clash with other gadgets and scripts that users may run into.

As the top tabs are the generally accepted location for gadgets, a focus on that area is preferable. There are generally three options in this area, which are marked in the following screenshot and which are discussed in order...




 * 1) The first is the lefthand area dominated by the Read and Discussion buttons. For left-to-right languages anyway, the advantage here is pretty clear. The disadvantage is that fewer Vector gadgets muck with that tab area, probably for a good reason I'm not mentioning.
 * 2) The second is the top level area dominated by the usual set of links for logged in users. The gadget would only present itself to registered users when logged in, so this is a possibility. Like the lefthand sidebar though, this area already has quite a few links, so the potential for clutter is distinct. Also, for new users, the two most noticeable links in this area are the pair of redlinks for their talk page and user page. We already know many new users don't see or ignore these; if they ignore red-colored links up at the top, they aren't likely to have a much easier time seeing another one for help.
 * 3) The third area is the addition of a new word or symbol-based tab alongside the watchlisting star and dropdown menu. This is how WikiLove does it, and is pretty common for gadgets.

A second key question after placement is: should we use words or symbols to communicate that help is available?

One of the nice things on WikiLove is its emphasis on the symbol as the invitation to use the gadget. Hearts aren't a totally universal symbol for love, but there's as close as we're going to get, and symbols have the advantage of not needing localization. On other hand, the rest of the action items are generally words, so fitting in with that might be good.

Left-hand placement
Left aligned placement, with a link in a prospective wording, and in both normal and warm color link style.





Right-hand placement
Right aligned placement with both normal and warm link style.





Right-hand placement, symbols
The following are a variety of ideas for symbols and styles that could be implemented if a simple link is not preferred.









Right-hand placement with alternative interaction methods
With a dropdown with options, before preceding to the full dialog.



Modal dialog
However the button or link style works, what occurs after a click is a modal dialog presenting the user very simplified options for requesting help, particularly in order to address the key editor retention problem of resistance to contributions, as well to give them fast access to finding mentors such as the WikiGuides.

Proposed content for this dialog would be comprised of...


 * Did you need help?
 * Choose one of the following options or remove this permanently editing your preferences
 * Ask about why your edit was undone
 * Ask about a problem with an article
 * Find a mentor: WikiGuides are available to answer questions
 * Find help about a different problem

Other questions and possibilities
Some ideas from WikiLove:


 * How might email notifications be factored in?
 * If this could become an extension, what about site configuration?
 * How might usage data be stored for statistical purposes?
 * If data is stored, then how can we present that data? WikiLove suggests a Special page...