Research:Guided article and section creation
This page documents a research project in progress.
Information may be incomplete and change as the project progresses.
Please contact the project lead before formally citing or reusing results from this page.
How do we better enable editors to make high impact contributions in ways congruent with current moderation practices?
Background & context
editCreating a new article or section is one of the most impactful contributions an editor can make to Wikipedia. It directly supports knowledge equity by addressing content and access gaps, while offering contributors a tangible sense of accomplishment. However, the responsibility tied to such contributions is equally high, especially within a moderation ecosystem that safeguards content quality.
Despite this potential, article and section creation presents significant barriers—particularly for newcomers. For example, on English Wikipedia, approximately 5,000–6,000 draft articles are deleted each month.[1] First-time editors whose articles are deleted show a post-deletion retention rate of just 0.6%, compared to 4.4% for those whose contributions survive.[2]
To improve the article and section creation process, namely through a guided and supported process, we need to understand the activities, pain points, and rewarding moments of creating new articles and sections. And, given ongoing design explorations, there is a need to do early concept testing and get early formative feedback on these product ideas. Given that new article and section creation lies at an important intersection of editors and reviewers, we need to learn from a range of individuals to avoid blindspots in implications that designs may have for those impacted by workflows (e.g., the moderation and administration burdens and opportunities that may be introduced with new contribution workflows).
Research goal
editThis research will support product and design decisions for new tools and workflows by evaluating early-stage design concepts and incorporating the perspectives of editors, moderators, and readers. To understand the workflows, obstacles, and successes of editors engaged in new article or section creation. The study will also factor in the experiences and perspectives of administrators and readers.
Research questions
editThe following research questions are organized around the different types of individuals involved in the new article and section creation process. The focus for this project is on editors and reviewers.
Editors (new and experienced)
edit- What motivates contributors to begin creating new articles and sections?
- What tools or resources are currently used—and where do they fall short? (e.g. wiki guides including article for creation process, your first article, article wizard, new user article flowchart)
- What characterizes successful vs. unsuccessful article/section creation attempts?
- What are the key pain points throughout the creation process?
- When and why do contributors abandon the process? Conversely, why do they continue?
- How do the needs and behaviors of newcomers differ from experienced editors?
- At which moments do newcomers require the most guidance?
Reviewers
edit- What are the most common problematic types (and characteristics) of new article and section contributions that reviewers observe?[3]
- What aspects of current moderation efforts are most burdensome, and why?
- What signals or patterns do reviewers rely on to assess quality of new articles and sections?
- What types of guidance would reviewers like to be able to provide for those creating new articles and sections?
- How do reviewers wish to influence article quality at scale? What product interventions may be helpful for aiding influence?
- How are topics prioritized, and what formal and informal processes exist for reviewers to shape focus on topics and topic areas?
Readers
edit- How aware are readers that articles and sections are volunteer human editors-generated and editable? What assumptions do they have about how content is created?
- To what degree are readers interested in providing feedback to editors? What types of feedback are they interested in providing, and how? (e.g., feedback signaling success/value, feedback to highlight content gaps, etc.) Why are/aren’t they interested in providing feedback on content?
- How does engaging in feedback processes affect readers’ understanding of content creation processes and/or their identification with a ‘Wikipedia community’, however they define that?
Concept testing guiding questions (all groups)
edit- How do participants interpret and engage with the guided article and section creation concepts?
- What aspects of the proposed designs are intuitive or confusing, and why?
- What expectations do users have for each step or feature in the guided creation flow?
- What usability or accessibility barriers emerge during interaction with the designs?
- How do participants perceive the value and purpose of the guided experience compared to current workflows?
- What improvements or alternatives do participants suggest, especially when prompted with participatory design activities?
Approach
editMethodology
editConcept testing will serve as the central approach for evaluating early-stage designs of the guided article and section creation experience. We will gather feedback on how participants interpret and respond to design conceptions, capturing user understanding, expectations, usability barriers, and perceived value. Sessions will use moderated think-aloud protocols combined with structured probing to uncover reactions and misunderstandings in real time.
As part of these sessions, we will secondarily include some basic probing questions about current/past experiences with article and section creation, reserving a small portion of time for task observation of current section and article creation processes and workflows that participants currently use, noting important value, pain, and opportunity points in these current workflows.
Low-fidelity design artifacts will be required for the anticipated participant segments including: contributing editor, content moderator, and reader. Basic interactive concepts will be critical for the contributing editor segment. We will leverage these same artifacts for use with the admin/moderator segment. Currently, any design artifacts will be considered a nice-to-have for the reader segment, for which we will pursue a different route when creating the discussion guide.
To complement concept testing, participatory design techniques will be integrated to elicit user-led ideas and improvements. This may be especially relevant for the content moderator segment given there’s been some amount of thinking about improvements in this space. These methods will allow participants to co-create interface elements or workflows, which is particularly relevant in this context of complex and community-governed ecosystems. Activities (i.e., co-design prompts) will encourage users to express needs through sketching, arranging interface components, or imagining workflows.
Wiki/language selection
editDifferent language versions of Wikipedia (wikis) all have different norms, practices, and policies around creation of new content, including varying practices for how new content such as new articles and sections are reviewed. As such, we will use a comparative approach in order to arrive at some basic understandings of how wiki size may interact with concepts that are tested as part of this project. We will recruit participants from both a large wiki as well as a more medium-sized wiki. We rely on the metric of number of content pages, or articles, given that this project involves innovations in a more guided experience for article creation.
References
edit- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SDZeroBot/G13_Watch; https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:SDZeroBot/G13_Watch&action=history
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-04-04/Editor_retention; We're in need of a more recent, updated figure for this in order to evaluate whether this has meaningfully changed.
- ↑ More specifically ‘new pages patrol/Reviewers’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:New_pages_patrol/Reviewers) including administrators; see also https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q98064718.