We need new editors because there are huge backlogs in many areas. We also need them to focus sometimes on those edits we need fixed
I think users retention could be increased by Excitement ,Community, Available Support, Clear procedures, Safe Spaces, and Visibility of achievements .
I have split the areas into sections to avoid wall of text and to allow people to comment on eacg
COMMUNITY - I think the core to retention is community,
After a New Editor publishes their first edit, have a congratulations screen that gives them a choice of active communities to join based on their edit or via a wizard, and also automatically assign them to say "Novermber 2021" and ask them to post about their interests. A month should be small enough at 5 % active to make a community.
- Assign mentors, and automate a monthly group talk topic
- Criticism messages (Reverts and speedy deletions) are also sent to November 2021 (Have you any advice/support/help to fix for... ) with the critics name as a link, so peers can learn. and Mentors can say whether it is fair and discourage edit wars..
- Unpleasant interactions destroy communities. Most is unreported Experienced editors with high edits have support communities, so are forgiven because they are busy. We need junior editors as they mostly create content, while many experienced editors however use automated tools to fix minor issues Workaholics also reduce output because of hogging glory or resistance to change ; with wikipedia they can reduce active editors.
- I suggest that talk topics have option to escalate, or create an FAQ , or mark for archive and that the talk tab have a number of open tasks and change colour based on the number of editors escalating. Editors showing number of escalations caused and thanks world be cool as a rollover There also has to be a better way of getting hellp for people rather than tagging WP:NOTTHERAPY.
New editors are supposed to be treated nicely, but finding out whether they are new is a multi-step process. A tag next to their name would nice.
- You allowed to make your first page after a few weeks/edits. You will fail :-)
- There is a new page wizard , but it isn't major category specific (so precise notability criteria can't be checked or whether enough allowed sources are used. A classic example is IMDB is disallowed as a reference: IMDB important categories are maintained by the industry using IMDBPro, it is used on Box Office Mojo which is allowed, and it is used by reporters, Ideally there would be automation to check and give a percentage complete - but the automation is all on the NPR side.
- This is very low friction for tNPR, but as a genuine new editor it took me about 4ish hours to create my first article,
- NPR can mark an article for deletion and assign a big yellow tag of New Editor failure in 1 minute. If it goes to AfD it takes about 5 to 10 minutes of NPR editors discussion time to delete a page. | The AfD discussions are legalistic and cold and the New Genuine Editor often rage quits. AfD need to be like this because of scammers and notability issues, but some of the notability requirements are rusted. If enough people are searching for an article that fails our criteria we should consider changing.
Nudges are small community within large, available support, peer support, Mentor support, group learning,protections organisational renewal through strong peer links in Junior Editors, and clear procedures..
HELP - They get peer support above, but also get told who there mentor(s) are with a template with a nice image and a summary of who their mentior from a template on the mentor page. As soon as they get autoconfirmed, they get a message from their mentor saying contact them to discuss if they are thinking about creating a new article.
PROCEDURES and TAGS - They are frankly overwhelming. On your first day you come across them in 3 ways.
PROCEDURE - ARTICLE - At the top of Article are on scary anonymous judgmental un-collapsed uninformative tags, maintenance tags are in the body, and stubs are at the bottom (although hidden for new I think) Mostly they should be on Talk rather than Articles (but people don't check Talk, and tools don’t update it.
· Reader View- Complicated Tags with very old dates reduce trust, even if the issue is minor. The real estate also emphasises that editing is more important than content, criticism is more important than creation.
· New Editor- First day and they are going to edit. They go to a page covered with tags. They are overwhelmed with the procedures, and they decide to do their first edit to fix the tag.
- The New Editor reads they should try and get consensus, so they add a Talk topic. No one ever responds as no one is watching the articles (and they don't know the article is unwatched), and no one looks at the talk tab, The New Editor expect a quick response, and they stop when they don't get one. They decide to wait till they get a response.
- The New Editor can’t find the issue, so they feel shame. The reason they can't find it is another Editor has fixed the issue, and not updated the tag or looked at Talk. They get worried about their ability. They quit.
- Full of excitement they decide to edit and be brave. Their edit is re-verted. The Editor reverting does not know the person is a new editor, adds WP:Shortcodes, is unpleasant, leave a cryptic comment, or complain they should have looked at Talk or even Talk Archive. The New Editor rage quits.
PROCEDURE TALK
- Template header is BIG, has many warnings relevant to the article, or experienced editors (be nice and don't bite newbies), but only one action. It's not clear what to do and the links to large, complex procedures. New Editor quits as there seems to be lots of rules.
- \Project headers -are Freudian in their size, are Pseudo-Article categories or projects recruitment ads, are relevant only to projects, and not editors. Projects don't monitor open topics in their projects, and there is no indication you should ask them for help. Experienced editors ignore them, but it still increases friction as they have to page down.
- The Sanctions tag is just scary, un-collapsed, not differentiated in colour or position, links to procedures that even more complex and scarier, appears as a Notice as well, and is mostly relevant to the Article. With all the warnings, Wikipedia just got scary. New Editor Quits
PROCEDURE - TALK POST
- a New Editor creates a topic, but it's as the bottom. They assume (often correctly) that no one will ever look at it. Even if an Article is highly viewed, about 20 % of topics never get checked and it is archived. When a New Editor as soon as 10 days , their topic is archived, but they think it has been deleted. Their first day as an editor was wasted. The New Editor quit.
- Someone does look at it. The replying editor does not know it is a New Editor,. The new-Editor receives a reply full of short codes WP:NPOV or WP:NOTTHERAPY . These procedures have a low readability .Tooltips showing the Nutshell might help. But Nutshell is a workaround on procedure readability, and the main procedures have lots of things that it is all about consensus. Unfortunately consensus can sometimes means that more experienced Editors can override the New Editor, based on precedents that are not recorded. The New Editor quit.
Suggested Changes
- Normalisation of screens - Article Tab has only Article information, Task Tab only has task information, Page information has page.
- Tags should be on talk, but as posts with the Editor who added them.
- Tasks can be marked as important and Escalation needed/conflict. This should change the colour of the the topic heading if more than open person clicks it
- The Talk tab should show the number of non-archived tasks, half of it should change colour for conflict and the other for importance
- Make tags appear on Talk. They can still show as a single line of codes on Article, but controlled by Talk not editable.,
- Change article publish to show as list of open tasks. Editors can select one or more tasks, and choose to update with their publishing comments or mark the topic for archive It would also stop New Editors from not knowing about tasks TA
- We have a ranking system for pages already, so if we used that and maintained NPR/Twinkle created comments/tags on Talk it might work better.
- There is no incentive to mark Talk Topics for archive. New Editors would find the process of using HTML at front and back confusing, The measure of success on Wiki is edits. Measures should be in place for editors on thanks given or received, RfD, Tasks taken part in an archived, Number of mentor posts. This should be an info tab that all editors can see
- Number of watchers should be visible to all non anonymous editors, The rationale was that vandals would attack unwatched screens. But they attack watched screens
Nudges
Nudges are lower friction, minimisation of keystrokes, clear instructions, remove focus from # of edits as status, normalisation of screen purpose, warning colours, Visibility of open work, feedback loop on cohesive behaviour, Reduce perceived issues, Visibility of inexperience,
