Topic on Talk:Growth/Personalized first day/Newcomer homepage

This looks like a very promising concept to me. I use my watchlist as my Wikipedia "homepage" but I would love if I could have something better, the second or third version of this, one day. I would suggest the mainpage is not a great place - we know many readers visit the mainpage directly and so changing that when they become an editor does not seem helpful. However, perhaps, a banner could be placed on the main directing them to this page - which I think makes most sense as a Special page. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:16, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, @Barkeep49. The potential for this homepage idea to develop into something useful for experienced editors is something that also occurred to us. What are the sorts of things that you would want on a homepage geared toward experienced editors?

And yes, you are touching on an important point -- once we have a homepage up, how will we drive newcomers toward it? A banner on Main Page is on our list, along with: a link in the help panel, links from engagement emails, a bot posting a message on the user's talk page, and a link or redirect from when a user confirms their email address.

Just to underline what I was trying to say, the main driving point here was I think this shouldn't go on the Main Page - but do think this is worthwhile.

In terms of how it could be used by the experienced editor, it would be nice to see a way for Projects to be able to push content onto it to further that kind of work, a way for discussions to be highlighted, tie-ins to noticeboard/templates that require high skill levels based on the interests/permissions of the particular editor, while still having things like source this uncited fact, copy edit this article, or whatever it maybe that would work for newcomers. Barkeep49 ([./https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Barkeep49&action=edit&redlink=1 talk]) 00:20, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

I agree that the Main Page isn't a good place to add editor-specific information, if only because at some point you're going to have to allow the editor to see what was removed or pushed down, and it's not exactly obvious how to decide that, or to explain what has been done, or why.

Thanks, @Barkeep49 and @John Broughton. Yes, we agree that changing Main Page would be a larger conversation and a more difficult challenge to tackle. Right now, we're gravitating toward the idea of "Add it as an additional tab on the User page". And we would redirect newcomers there when they click on their own username (the homepage would prompt users to go to their User page and create it.) What do you think of this tactic?

@Barkeep49 -- thanks for the thoughts on what an experienced editor would want to see in some kind of homepage. It sounds like the theme of what you're saying is that it's sort of like an expanded watchlist. You want to see in one place all the things that need your attention, whether they are edits to articles you're watching, tasks needing doing from a WikiProject you care about, or changes to important discussions.

I definitely think an additional tab is good. Your flow could be fine - would be curious what would happen in testing.

As to the homepage for the experienced editor, I don't know that describing it as an expanded watchlist is quite right. A good homepage, for me, would have some combination of the familiar - here are the things I like to do all grouped together so I can get to them easily - but also a sense of discovery of something that might interest me and I hadn't even known it was there. Barkeep49 (talk) 02:36, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, @Barkeep49 -- I think that's a good way to put it. Some of the familiar and some of the new.