Community Wishlist Survey 2023/New contributors

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Community Wishlist Survey 2023
New contributors
3 proposals, 153 contributors, 209 support votes
The survey has closed. Thanks for your participation :)



Add notice to Visual Editor that unsourced edits may be reverted

Edit proposal/discussion
  • Problem: There is no notice in the Visual Editor that unsourced edits will be reverted. Users who use the Visual Editor are likely to then publish edits that are then reverted because they were unaware that adding a source was required.
    Such a notice is already present in the Wikitext editor ("Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable through citations to reliable sources.")
  • Proposed solution: A notice in the "Publish changes" dialogue of the Visual Editor that states that unsourced edits will be reverted.
  • Who would benefit: New contributors and patrollers
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets: phab:T300942
  • Proposer: Lectrician1 (talk) 06:30, 25 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Discussion

  • @Lectrician1: Thank you for adding this proposal! This seems technically straightforward and clear to me.
I suppose the only question is if other community members agree that this text will help new editors. As with all new editor onboarding, it's a balance between providing enough direction and keeping guidance concise enough to ensure it's clear and not overwhelming for newcomers.
This wish sounds somewhat related to an Editing team project called Edit Check T265163. One idea the Editing team is exploring is around surfacing guidance within Visual Editor when an editor is adding text that likely needs a citation. This in-the-moment direction might be more likely to be read by new editors and prompt a change in behavior. I don't believe this wish conflicts with that work; perhaps both ideas are worth considering?
Thanks for adding this wish and thinking about onboarding new editors! --KStoller-WMF (talk) 19:15, 25 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • The wikitext editor shows that message along next to the save button. The equivalent place in VE is the save dialog, where the copyright notice is more verbose and less informative. That would be trivial to improve, either in the software or as an on-wiki interface message override. --Tgr (talk) 07:11, 30 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • I also think VE should add notice that unsourced content may be removed because in the source editor, we already have a notice. However it is hard to think of a place to display the message. Thingofme (talk) 14:58, 6 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • w:en:MediaWiki:Editpage-head-copy-warn says that content must be verifiable, but it does not say that not including citations will result in being reverted (as opposed to, e.g., someone collaboratively finding and adding a source, or someone tagging the material as needing a citation [assuming that it actually does need one]). It would be important for any such statement to be accurate, which could be very difficult to generalize across the varying practices of all the Wikipedias. This statement about verifiability does not seem to appear at the other Wikipedias, and it does not apply to most of the non-Wikipedias. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:20, 14 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Voting

New users should see the deletion log when visiting a deleted page on English Wikipedia

Edit proposal/discussion
  • Problem: On English Wikipedia, where we use ArticleCreationWorkflow, new users looking for a topic that has been deleted are not alerted to that fact. The issue is that the extension relocates the user to the new article landing page, so MediaWiki does not show the deletion log as usual because the user is actually viewing a different page.
  • Proposed solution: Change ArticleCreationWorkflow to show the deletion log.
  • Who would benefit: Users would know that a page had previously existed and why it was deleted. This could also save the need for admin cleanup after duplicates are created.
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets:
  • Proposer: Fayenatic london (talk) 11:23, 2 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Discussion

  • (moved from "More comments"): They could already trace an XfD discussion if they clicked on the red link and then on "What links here", but they are unlikely to know this method. (As an additional potential source of confusion, they may get the en:Wikipedia:New user landing page which currently shows at the bottom "This page was last edited on 6 May 2021", and may think that date refers to the topic they were looking for – but that page has no bearing on whether the page they were looking for previously existed.) Fayenatic london (talk) 11:23, 2 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • @Fayenatic london: So to be clear, we're only talking about wikis where Extension:ArticleCreationWorkflow is deployed (i.e. have a "landing page")? Because all users, logged in and out, are shown the deletion log in MediaWiki. For example, try loading testwiki:Test123 while logged out. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 21:07, 3 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    • Thank you for that info. I expect you are correct, but I don't know. Assuming you are right, then presumably it is that workflow extension which would need to be amended? IMHO it would be desirable to display the deletion log entry, if any, for the page that the editor was trying to visit. – Fayenatic London 22:13, 3 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
      Yep! I think that's all there is to it, and hopefully an easy-ish fix. The deletion log wasn't even removed, rather ArticleCreationWorkflow is honoring the community request to redirect to en:Wikipedia:New user landing page, so the default MediaWiki behaviour is bypassed because you're not actually viewing the page that was previously deleted.
      Do you mind if I edit your proposal accordingly? MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 22:25, 3 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
      @Fayenatic london Forgot to ping. See above. Thanks, MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 22:26, 3 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
      I don't mind at all, please go ahead. – Fayenatic London 22:28, 3 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
      Okay done, with some slight copy editing that I hope is okay. If it looks good to you, Fayenatic london, I will approve this proposal and mark it for translation. Note also I moved some of the text from the proposal to the discussion section, since it describes detail that I don't think is important to voters. This is merely to save translator's time. Let me know if that is a problem or if the proposal looks good to go. Thanks! MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 22:42, 3 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
      Excellent, thank you. – Fayenatic London 23:17, 3 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
      Done! I also moved it to the "New contributors" category since that's actually the only users effected. (Auto-)confirmed users can create articles directly in the mainspace, and hence are shown the deletion log as usual. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 23:36, 3 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
      The deletion log should be shown for pages that have been deleted (may be in the top of the page) as another iteration of the workflow, as the log is shown on top of the landing page and shown on the wiki. Another way is to tranclude the page into the empty article. Thingofme (talk) 15:03, 6 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • See phab:T204234.--GZWDer (talk) 23:27, 8 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Oppose Oppose, because pages deleted via RfD should generally not be created. New users should be no exception. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs) 23:21, 10 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    • @SHB2000: Yes, but they should know it was deleted and needs to be informed about this. --Wargo (talk) 23:03, 13 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
      • Oops, misread the title. Have struck out my !vote. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs) 08:04, 14 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
        • As the vote is invalid, I have moved this to the Discussion section instead. We only count support votes anyway, I'm just being nitpicky :) Hope that's alright. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 19:22, 24 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Voting

Reference requirement for new article creation

Edit proposal/discussion
  • Problem: Most new users fail to create articles with higher probability of success because they don't understand how they can reference the information that is added to said article.
  • Proposed solution: That the system does not allow them to publish or move to the main space any article without at least one reference and that they always have a link that takes them to see a video about references, how to search for it and how to add it to the article in question.
  • Who would benefit: New users
  • More comments: This is a proposal for new users to learn more easily and thus have more success. Most enter once and leave because things get complicated for them. Certainly Wikipedia has all the teaching material, but they need it more in plain sight. I also think that every article should come from a registered user.
  • Phabricator tickets: phab:T329942
  • Proposer: Mega809 (talk) 13:03, 25 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Discussion

  • Thanks, Mega809 for adding this proposal! This wish is actually very similar to some ideas I've been discussing with some English Wikipedia community members.
I updated the title from "References" to "Reference requirement for new article creation" to be slightly more descriptive, but please feel free to make further changes.
Some questions that might be worth discussion: Does this wish require a policy change? Could it be built in a configurable way so that each wiki still has control over requirements? Does this requirement impact all users or just new users? --KStoller-WMF (talk) 20:00, 25 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Mega809 - I'll accept this proposal on Friday, so if you want to make any changes to the proposal based on discussion feedback please do so before then. Thanks! KStoller-WMF (talk) 23:35, 31 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • There are some isues:
    • Some articles will have references when there is certain infobox and connection to Wikidata. But before creating thic cannot be connectect and there are no references.
    • In dismabiguation pages sually are no references. This can be solved with accepting some templates instead of references.
    • CAPTCHA. When I edit anonymously and want to add reference, I must write some annoying captcha.

JAn Dudík (talk) 14:01, 26 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  • This can be achieved by a edit filter in enwiki to check whether the newly created page has a reference or not, however moving from draft is harder to check. Thingofme (talk) 12:45, 29 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • When trying to publish without a reference, a popup alert could appear with a video already explaining how to add the reference. Elilopes (talk) 14:31, 14 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • For me, reference requirement for new articles seems like a nobrainer. However, different projects may have different guidelines and different requirements. This is where edit filters can help, by preventing whatever behavior is found annoying or againts the rules. Anyway, I think this overlaps with the mw:Edit check (phab:T265163) initiative, so we can definitely expect some improvements in this field. --Matěj Suchánek (talk) 10:27, 19 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • This section of the wishlist is for newcomers, but it doesn't address a newcomers' problem. It addresses experienced editors' problem. Unfortunately, experienced editors forget too easily that to become an experienced editor, one has to be a newcomer first. This change will make it even harder to be a newcomer than it is now. Don't forget the "anyone can edit" principle, please. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 12:03, 22 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Voting

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