Update: 10-April
Notes from the conversation @iamjessklein and I had this morning...

• Before doing any testing beyond what's described in T247485, we're going to catalog different approaches other pages/wikis are taking to make it easier for people to start new discussions
• Once we've cataloged these interventions, we will decide whether it is necessary to test them to see how effective they are at resolving the issues that surfaced in our previous initial control tests: T243251 & T247485

The above is reflected in question I've added to the "Open questions" section of this task's description: "What – if any – user testing should we conduct to better understand how effective these workflows and affordances are at making the process for starting new conversations easier and more intuitive?"

In standup it was determined @iamjessklein needs a comprehensive list of of affordances. @Whatamidoing-WMF is going to add some screenshots of examples to meet this requirement.

This is at the bottom of some pages at nlwiki:

Additionally, @ppelberg will add to the list of affordances to pattern match and investigate with the mockups. However, Jess should continue to move forward with the mock ups.

This is on the last section heading of talk pages at dewiki, Meta-Wiki, and some other wikis. This is probably the most common "extra" approach on the wikis.

French Wikipedia has a small link in the lower right corner:

Unlike some of the others, there's no translation for this.

This is at the top of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse

I want to share that some important pages on frwiki use a preloaded template to start a new discussion thread.

For exemple, the page to formulate a request to the administrators has a button Formuler une nouvelle requête. The preloaded template is used by bots to archive the discussions.

Some editors, such as this one at cswiki, have put buttons at the top of their user talk pages, which leads to ?action=edit&section=new

This page uses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Usercomment at the top, near the default "New section" tab.

I've posted a request for more example to the New discussion project page and I will mention this "ask" in our next Talk pages project/Updates that will get posted early next week, maybe sooner: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:Vknaivoxgqnnq425

In T249784#6052748, @Lofhi wrote:

I want to share that some important pages on frwiki use a preloaded template to start a new discussion thread.

For exemple, the page to formulate a request to the administrators has a button Formuler une nouvelle requête. The preloaded template is used by bots to archive the discussions.

I'm glad you raised this issue, @Lofhi. Here is a task for us to explore how the improvements we are proposing to the new discussion workflow will relate to preloaded templates: T250768.

Next step: 21-April

• @ppelberg to update task description; once done, assign to @iamjessklein to begin work

In T249784#6076014, @ppelberg wrote:

Next step: 21-April

• @ppelberg to update task description; once done, assign to @iamjessklein to begin work

I've updated the task description to include all of the interventions that have surfaced in our research. These interventions can be found in the "Interventions to explore" section.