As part of T137783, this ticket explores the idea of new editors being offered the possibility to request help from reviewers when the edits are identified as problematic.

Goals

• Anticipate rejection. Surfacing potential issues as soon as possible allows editors to correct course. By providing them with tools to move forward before their contribution is reverted, editors are not left clueless after a rejection of their work.
• Setting a positive mindset. Help new contributors understand that reviewers are trying to help. Help reviewers understand that new contributors are looking for help to become better editors.

Scenarios

• Improving a contribution. Henry adds some detail to a page that he heard from the news. Henry finds out the edit may get reverted.. Since it is his first edit, he asks for help to get some guidance. An editor asks Henry to provide a reference and Henry is able to fix his contribution.
• Learning the rules. Henry creates an article about himself since he is quite respected in the architecture field. Since creating a new article seems a big endeavour, he also asks for help to reviewers. Although his content gets reverted, a reviewer provides him with information about conflict of interest and living people biographies.

Explored solutions

The initial edits of a new user are analysed automatically by ORES after the user saves them.
For edits that are identified as likely to be reverted, a warning is shown to the user.

The warning indicates that there are potential issues that may lead to the edit to be reverted and provides several ways forward: allow the user to continue editing to improve the edit (also with a link to help on what makes a good edit), and an option to ask reviewers for help.

When asking for help, users are introduced to the reviewing process and presented with links to some useful tools. they are encouraged to continue improving their edit in any case.

After the initial warning, following ones can be presented on a more compact way, acting as quick actions to request help or continue editing. Once editors became more experienced, we can consider not showing this tool at all.

Next steps

Edits asking for help are highlighted in the review feeds (T137814) to encourage a more constructive review. In the future other measures such as delaying the publication (keeping them as a draft for a while) or review (delaying from being shown on anti-vandalism tools for a while) of those edits can be considered to give editors and reviewers some more room to deal with the editing issues.