Article Creation Guidance (Community Wishlist/FA5)
Supporting evidence
Article creation is clearly a source of confusion for newcomers, but also a pain point for experienced editors who review new pages. Many different ideas have been suggested by community members via the Community Wishlist and other avenues:
- New user article flowchart – Kudpung
- New landing page proposal – Novem Linguae, Kudpung, BusterD
- Create a special page for starting a new article – Tgr
- Vision for a better Article Wizard – Sdkb
- Add a "create a page" interface to MediaWiki core – MZMcBride
- Reference requirement for new article creation – #26 2023 Wishlist proposal from Mega809
- In Spam blacklist, allow sysops to enable blacklisting only on some namespaces – #56 2023 Wishlist proposal from DSan9
- Sources only Articles for Creation draft – Gryllida
- English Wikipedia discussions about refining the "Your first article" Help page
Data
- Across all Wikipedias from November 1, 2021 to October 31, 2022, about 4.26% of new articles created are published by accounts that are less than 30 days old.
- About 28% of newly registered users who complete the Welcome Survey indicate that they have created an account specifically to create a new article.
- In 2022, across all languages and devices, 12% of all mainspace articles created were ultimately deleted. [1]
- That percentage is higher when you narrow by new editors (as defined by accounts that are less than a week old). In 2022, across all languages and devices:
- These metrics vary considerably per wiki, where different article creation flows and norms exist. On English Wikipedia for example, article creation is restricted to user accounts that are at least 4 days old and have made at least 10 edits, while Content translation on English Wikipedia is restricted to extended confirmed users. In 2022, on only English Wikipedia, across all devices:
- 37% of mainspace articles created by newcomers were deleted. [4]
Focus
This invites exploration of solutions that could help new editors navigate the complexities of article creation, receive proactive feedback, and avoid common pitfalls that lead to reverts or negative experiences. This area would emphasize making article creation and navigation of policies easier for newcomers, providing clearer instructions, more accessible help, and faster feedback on the content they create.
- Created: 18:57, 15 October 2024
- Last updated: 02:04, 8 October 2025
This focus area currently has 16 supporters. Voting for this focus area is open until it is completed.