User story & summary:

As a logged out editor or a newcomer who has just created an account, I want my first steps on Wikipedia to be clear and helpful so that I have a positive experience and successfully complete my first edit.

Discovery:

• Historical context: Review previous Phabricator tasks (e.g., T136076), talk page discussions, and consult with community members or WMF staff involved in the original feature’s development.
• Current Usage:
  • What is the technical name for this dialog? (Is this the visualEditor.welcome dialog?)
  • On which wikis is this dialog currently in use?
  • On which platforms does it appear? (Desktop only?)
  • What is the current trigger logic? (Does it only display the first time an account clicks Edit/Edit Source? Do autocreated accounts also see this dialog?)

Background:

• Most new account holders are unfamiliar with the term "visual editor," making the current popup copy confusing.

English Wikipedia Newcomer Data:
Newcomers here are defined as a user that has not yet published an edit on the wiki.

• A significant percentage of newcomers abandon the editor before making any changes—nearly 50% drop-off.
• While more newcomers begin in wikitext mode (as it is the default), a slightly higher proportion successfully publish edits using VisualEditor compared to overall users.

The data highlights the challenges newcomers face with wikitext:

• 83.8% of newcomers load the wikitext editor, but then just 9.7% end up publishing an edit with wikitext.
• 16.2% of newcomers load VE, and then 7.9% publish an edit.
• Nearly half of wikitext edits are reverted, compared to a much lower revert rate for VisualEditor edits.

Hypothesis:

If the Welcome to Wikipedia – Start Editing dialog is improved, more newcomers will select VisualEditor and successfully complete their first edit (i.e., constructive activation will increase).

Design:

[[ |Figma designs]]

Acceptance Criteria:

• Document "discovery" learnings in this task
• Explore different ways to potentially improve the "Start editing" popup & share designs in this task