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Add talk page entry point to edit pencil
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Description

This task derives from the usability test analysis for talk pages in October 2022.


Background
The team conducted a second round of user testing to see how our interventions improved talk pages. Something that was clear was the lack of interventions to enhance talk page discoverability resulted in users having a difficult time finding the talk page. Many users tried accessing the talk page via edit pencils. We had an interest in adding an entry point to talk pages via the edit pencils and now have enough information to move forward with this change.

Open Question
Does adding Discuss Edits to the edit pencil increase visits to talk pages?
Should we add Discuss Edits to all edit pencils or just the top one?
Will adding an extra click to edit an article have a significant negative impact on the quantity of edits to an article?
Is the decrease in edits due to users becoming frustrated and abandoning wanting to edit due to the extra step or because they've seen an edit they were planning to make was already being discussed on a talk page?

Hypothesis
The more people become aware about talk pages, the higher their edit quality which may mean a reduction in quantity of edits of an article. A factor in increases in the quality of edits will be visits and participation in talk pages, although not all visits will result in an edit.

Example- In the case of the Wikipedia Article "the murder of Ahmaud Arbery" one would see the debate around the naming of the article. If someone came across the article and felt the title was incorrect, we would not want them to just change it, rather visit the talk page first to see the discussion taking place about the naming of it. When the discussion was open, community precedent would want the person to weigh in on the talk page instead of changing the article. When the discussion is closed, someone would likely be dissuaded from commenting on the subject of the title after reading the thought that went into the naming convention.

The Task

  • Show lowfi mockup of adding "Discuss Edits" and "Edit Article" to section pencils with consideration for the addition to the first section where it should have three drop downs to include edit introduction -@scblr
  • Ensure a baseline is captured for article talk page views before implementation and detail A/B Test - @SNowick_WMF
  • Build and Instrument new entry point and AB test - Assigned Engineer

QA Testing Instructions
Check feature in RTL language where system is RTL

Design

Screenshot_20221020-101426.png (2×1 px, 481 KB)
Screenshot_20221020-101418.png (2×1 px, 480 KB)

AB Test Details

Event Timeline

scblr renamed this task from Add talk page entry point to edit pencils to Add talk page entry point to edit pencil.Oct 20 2022, 8:18 AM
scblr updated the task description. (Show Details)
JTannerWMF subscribed.

@SNowick_WMF and I will update this task with experimentation details before putting it into Ready for Dev