Talk:Contributors/Account Creation Experiments

Consider asking for gender for languages for which it is relevant

As experiments on account creation are currently underway, could you consider adding a gender selector, at least for languages that lack a neutral form and therefore are forced to default to the masculine?

Related wish: meta:Community Wishlist/W504;
Related task: phab:T32442. Escargot bleu (talk) 23:43, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

I am concerned that it might make the process of account creation more complicated, while some community members have also shared the same concerns in the ticket and m:Talk:Community_Wishlist/W504. It appears to be against the goal of this experiment make account creation clearer, easier, and more discoverable. SCP-2000 (talk) 01:53, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

@Escargot bleu I’m also hesitant about adding additional fields to the account creation form. As the form becomes longer, the risk of drop off increases. That said, after registration there may be opportunities to help people personalize their experience.

For example, could the Welcome Survey ( enwiki example ) be an appropriate place to include an optional question like this? The survey is not required, but approximately half of new account holders complete it. This could provide a lightweight way to select that preference without introducing additional friction during sign up. Or perhaps the Newcomer Homepage could include a way to set this preference in an easier way on wikis where it makes sense?

Thanks for the feedback! (And sorry for the very delayed response!) - KStoller-WMF (talk) 01:06, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I think including it in the welcome survey would be fine. Escargot bleu (talk) 05:44, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

Related discussion: Testing simpler New Account creation

Related discussion on Meta: Testing_simpler_New_Account_creation. - KStoller-WMF (talk) 17:52, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

Account Creation Experiments, phase 2

@Sohom Datta @Barkeep49 Following my message from the bold donate button at the WP:VPI, I'd really like to hear more about your thoughts on the account creation process.

At the moment, the first phase focuses on mobile account creation, where the Growth team puts forward the account creation icon. We worked on mobile as this is where most new users struggle at creating an account. So far, the early results are promising.

As we explore a second phase, we look for new ideas to test. If we work on the interactions between the Donate, Create Account and Log in buttons, which possible solutions should we explore? We need to balance the need to sustain our movement while getting more people onboard.

Have you identified other parts of the account creation process that could get more attention?

Thank you! Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 10:22, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

A slightly out-of-the-box idea, but would it be possible to bold the "Create Account" button only after the first edit? Since these users are much more likely to edit again in the future, this could bring a perspective of "hey, I see you edited, why not create an account to have a smoother editing experience". The change in bolding might catch their eye in a way that permanent bolding wouldn't necessarily do.

The counterpoint is that creating an account can also be helpful for readers (e.g. to customize their reading experience), but the average reader is much less likely to want an account than the average editor. Chaotic Enby (talk) 04:14, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

ping @Barkeep49 since the pings by Trizek did not go out Sohom (talk) 04:59, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF) Few thoughts on the existing stuff first:

• "V1 Test - Redesign mobile web account creation form following Codex guidelines" - v21feels a lot more corporate to me, as a new user coming in, seeing the logo and the CTA of "Wikipedia is made by people like you" feels warmer than a instant plunge into "tell me your name". I also don't like the fact that the username policy is deprioritized since it sets the user up for a bumpier journey down the funnel (potentially being blocked wrt to the username policy and leaving). I think the more important point to me would be to remove the statistics from the bottom of the page, since I do not see them adding much to the page
• "V2 Test - UX Improvements & Username Summary" - I do like this one a lot, with the caveat of "if this is implemented the text in the popup needs to be community configurable"
• "2. Improve logged-out warning message" I again really like this direction and would in fact wonder if y'all could/would be interested in testing if y'all can remove the "Log in" button from the edit interstitial entirely? (It would reduce the cognitive load on a new user from picking between three options to two options).

Now more broadly,

• It seems like there is a chance of lot of folks might also end up in the Login page somehow as well, maybe it might make sense to put in a prominent "Create an account if you do not have one" CTA at the top of that page?
• This was something I really want y'all to do/look at: A lot of the time when I start to edit on mobile, I am hit with a block notice that tells me that I cannot edit since there was previous disruption wrt to the network. Now, there are two kinds of blocks, one being a hardblock, where any account on the same network will inherit the same block and soft blocks, where a account will not inherit the same block. I wonder if there is a way to signal to me (as a new editor on mobile hit with a soft block) that I can create a account and still make the edit I want to make
• The Special:MobileOptions could do with a call out to use an account to customize the interface even more?

Coming back to the actual point you raised (lol), my personal take (which differs from @Chaotic Enby's take) is that we should overhaul the top bar to only contain two links, create account and donate, with create an account being bolded and the donate icon having a heart symbol next to it. I think that has a good balance between showing that we want folks to register accounts while also making the donate icon fairly prominent. I don't think it makes sense to have a login button there (since more experienced editors can click "Create account" -> "login") or even if it is there, it should be heavily deprioritized since it is primarily for returning users (part of me wonders if we can set a log out cookie to replace create account with log in once the user logs out from their current session to get the best of both worlds) Sohom (talk) 05:27, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Deprioritizing "Login" makes sense, although I don't think it should be removed altogether, as it can be confusing e.g. for editors logging in on another platform, who might not realize that they can use the same account, and might accidentally commit sockpuppetry, thinking that this is the intended way. Chaotic Enby (talk) 05:30, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback!

@Chaotic Enby's comments:

Phase 1 experiments introduces a revised dialogue when a logged-out editor saves an edit. It looks like your suggestion of putting forward the create account button after making a edit relates to this. We considered encouraging users to create an account right after making an edit, and we switched to a reminder at the publication stage, with a reminder that they are logged-out. It is a redesign of the existing form, which looks a bit scary. Please note that we put forward the login and account creation options, instead of the "continue while logged-out". This is under test, the first results showing that users who were shown the updated message were 27% more likely to create a permanent account compared to the control group. These changes will be applied to the desktop experience. Would it still make sense to bold the account creation button as we exposed this option in what I think is a more visible location?

As a piece of information, 19.47% of users create an account to read Wikipedia. So having more of them creating an account is something we plan to explore more. Plus, they sometimes don't know that they can edit! Sure, there is this edit button, but some of them don't think it is for them while they could be of great help.

@Sohom Datta's comments:

• the new account creation form we test removes the "Wikipedia is made by people like you" as we can assume that the user already knows that they want to create an account. In any case, we are testing the new option compared to the older one, which will show which leads to more accounts being created.
• UX Improvements & Username Summary - which part should be community configurable? The links would be. Regarding the text, we know that communities could have a tendency of putting a lot forward, aiming to help newcomers choosing a good username. What do you think?
• On the logged-out warning message, removing the log-in button would prevent users who already have an account to log-in. For many reasons, some users end up being logged-out: their session expired, they use different devices, they log-out after editing... Chaotic Enby shares that some users create an account as they don't know that they can use the same one on a different device or session, I observed it too. I believe that wikipediholic users, always logged in, don't need this link, but they (we!) are a tiny minority. I think we should keep this log-in invite for all other users. What do you think?
• On the broader part:
  • I thought about this question over lunch: what makes someone arriving to the login page? Clicking on a clear call to action, i.e. any "log in" button, is the more likely. Then what? Clicking on a link with a wrong label? Accessing the page from the URL, directly? I checked and the special page isn't references on the main search engines (on my side). It seems that the chances to access this page by accident are really thin, don't you think?
  • Good idea to think about suggesting to IP/temp editors to signup so that they would pass the block; I'll report it to the team. We need to make sure this would be more broadly accepted though.
  • Good idea regarding Special:MobileOptions! --> T425672

For you both — what I take from your comments regarding the interaction between login and donate buttons is that we should explore this. ;)

Thank you again, Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:04, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

It seems that the chances to access this page by accident are really thin, don't you think? This might be a me being me thing, but I've seen a lot of websites that have a "log in" as their only CTA, with their log in screen directing folks to account creation if their username was not found. As a result, I will often click on "Log in" expecting to find a "Sign up" prompt. (part of me wonders if it might make sense for WMF to go down the route of "lets combine Login and Create an account" as well?) Even under our current setup, a particular example where I think folks might click on "Log-in" to create a account, is through the three line hamburger side-menu which only contains a call-to-action to log in and no prompt to sign up. Sohom (talk) 18:51, 7 May 2026 (UTC)