Anonymous editor acquisition/Signup invites v3

This document describes proposed workflows for inviting anonymous editors to sign up for an account or log in to one they already have.

The problem
Currently, there are very few explicit invitations made to anonymous editors to sign up for an account. On many Wikipedias, there is a small static warning visible on the editing screen (in VisualEditor and wikitext) which directs you to log in or sign up. It also typically informs the user about exposing their IP as an anonymous editor, and in English it links to a page documenting the benefits of signing up.

This one notice makes up a significant number of registrations on the largest Wikipedias (between 9-15%). However, with a more actionable notice that allows the user to easily log in or sign up without leaving the page, we think we can improve this conversion rate.

Previous A/B tests we have tried prompted the user to sign up either before or after editing. While these were successful at enticing some new registrations, the most successful version (asking pre-edit) also has so far caused a decrease in anonymous editor productivity overall. We think that asking a user to signup on the edit page itself may alleviate this issue, since dismissing any call-to-action would place the user immediately back in the editing workflow without requiring an extra step.

A: “Sign in and save”
In this version, the user is sent as normal to the editing screen after they click “edit” when unregistered. Instead of the typical options for Save, Preview, etc. there are three primary options: Sign in and save, save as IP, and cancel.



B: “Log in to edit”
In this version, the user is sent as normal to the editing screen after they click “edit” when unregistered. Immediately after, they are presented with an invitation to either log in, sign up, or dismiss (to continue editing as an IP).



C: “Log in or register on the edit form directly”
Add a 'username' and 'password' input boxes:


 * below the edit box (when editing source)
 * below the edit summary box (when editing with visual editor)

These boxes would be optional. Clicking a 'register' link would open a second password box to confirm.

The website would register and then save the edit in one go. (In contrast to the options above, no extra dialogs would be involved.)

Implementation
TBD

Notes: allowing the user to log in or sign up in place, rather than sending them to the full separate form, may require both JavaScript and for the user to be on an HTTPS connection.

Research hypotheses and data analysis
TBD