Article Creation Workflow/Design

'''This document is a work in progress. Comments are appreciated but this is not a final draft.'''



This document describes the behavior of a modified workflow for page creation for Wikipedia. This document is a work in progress. Feedback is welcome on the talk page.

This project is envisioned with multiple phases. By necessity of resourcing, the first phase will focus primarily on messaging rather than software-enforceable solutions. See the bottom of this document for future phase thinking.

Rationale

 * Page creation in Wikipedia suffers from a very low signal-to-noise ratio. New Page Patrollers report feeling overwhelmed and overworked, having to delete far too many pages due to the low quality of the new pages themselves (often poorly sourced, not-notable, spam, or copyright violations).
 * Users who wish to create new pages are usually confused. The process of creating a new page is poorly understood, poorly explained, and more often than not is user-hostile.
 * Lack of understanding of Wikipedia guidelines contributes to new editors being bitten as their articles are deleted.
 * The average time it takes an article to be speedily deleted is just two minutes.
 * This is not enough time for new users to make edits to correct a page.
 * There is no "safe harbor" except to create a draft in the User space.
 * Most new users are not even aware that the User namespace even exists, and are thus unable to create userspace drafts.
 * Unregistered users are often extremely confused and "put off" by the fact that they are not allowed to create pages. There is currently no message that tells them to how to create a page by registering.

Hypotheses

 * A more user-friendly system for page creation, including more usable messaging, will promote a higher signal-to-noise ratio within page creation, and reduce the workload of New Page Patrollers.
 * A more positive experience for first time page creators will engender better long-term survivability among new editors, promoting retention by reducing negative experiences

Existing Flows
Today, registered users create articles in one of the following ways:
 * 1) Search: They search for an article that doesn't exist.  From the search results page, they are presented with a redlink to create the page.  From this redlink, the user goes directly to the edit page without any introduction to Wikipedia guidelines for new articles.
 * 2) Redlink: They follow a redlink, which leads them directly to the edit page where they can create the article.  Again, they have no introduction to the Wikipedia guidelines for new articles.
 * 3) Direct url:  They enter the url to a page that does exist.  In this case, the user is presented with a screen that provides a minimal level of direction.

In two out of the three cases, users directly enter the article creation page (i.e., edit page) without any introduction to Wikipedia guidelines. Given this flow, it is not surprising that well-intentioned newbies have their articles deleted. The existing flow does not properly educate these new users.

Proposed Flows
In the proposed flow, there are the following modifications:
 * 1) Landing page:  Instead of taking the user directly to the create/edit page, the user is taken to a landing page where they are clearly told what is going on (i.e., they are trying to locate a page that does not yet exist).  They are then given a set of options to create the page, along with bubbles that help them choose which option to take.
 * 2) Educational content:  If a user decides to create the page themselves, they are presented with a page that informs them of the most important guidelines when creating an article.  The new user may proceed only after viewing this content (this page will be dismissable).

By clarifying the flow and introducing educational content, well-intentioned editors will presumeably be better informed once they create the page. There additional steps will hopefully raise the signal-to-noise ratio of account creation.

As mentioned previously, the flow describe above only represents the first step in improving the overall account creation process. Additional features are listed below.

Analytics
The following is a list of data we would like to track, subject to our privacy policy.

Workflow evaluation:
 * Number of sessions per day that enter the new workflow (i.e., hit landing page) through:
 * Redlinks
 * Search
 * Direct entry through url
 * Web-analysis of workflow (fallout):
 * Number of sessions-views of the landing page per day
 * Number of users who click on Create
 * Number of users who click on AFC
 * Number of users who click on Wizard
 * Number of users who leave page
 * Per day, the number of the following generated through this workflow:
 * Number of new articles created directly
 * Number of these articles that are not deleted after [x time]
 * Number of new articles created through the Article Creation Wizard
 * Number of these articles that are not deleted after [x time]
 * Number of AFC requests

Additional analysis:
 * Effect of article deletion on retention rate