As part of Article Guidance (T396029) we plan to help junior editors when they try to create an article. For the initial intervention (T414409), the main focus was on the steps that take place before the user creates the contents on Visual Editor. This ticket is focused on exploring how to support users while they are editing, and the proposed solution will be evaluated in a research study (T414812).

Problem statement and audience

Junior editors try to create a new articles on mobile, and often get their contents deleted by the community because the initial version they create does not meet the community quality standards. Example scenario: A junior editor reading the article about oasis finds that "Kitowok", a particular oasis the user knows is listed as a red link. Taps on it to create a new article and gets a blank page with no further support about which contents could be added to make a good-enough first version.

From the different situations leading to deletion, this exploration is focused on the problem of low-quality but valid articles (which could survive if they were of better quality). Rationale:

• Entry point observations (T414535#11620008) suggest that it may be common on mobile to create articles through red links (which usually reflect topics in demand by the community), and deletion rates are still high.
• The Article Guidance workflow (before reaching Visual Editor) is already intended as a filter: sending users away when they try to create an article that is not valid or has a high risk for notability issues (e.g., requiring biographies to exist in other wikis to allow their creation, which makes it hard to create an article about yourself)
• Precedents like Content Translation have shown how reusing existing content created by the community, lowers the barrier for creation and results in articles that are more likely to survive the review process.

This exploration is focused on assisting junior editors while they start creating their article inside the mobile Visual Editor. The exploration revisits some of the ideas that were identified as promising in the initial research study with the additional goal of providing an integrated experience in the Visual Editor ecosystem. So that the insertion of new contents with Article Guidance and their review with EditCheck work in harmony.

Ideas explored

We identified several opportunities to provide better guidance while creating contents in Visual Editor. Some of these were explored earlier, and the initial research study showed they were promising. The specific ideas were:

• Common paragraphs. Insert community-defined common paragraphs for users to fill the blanks and setting the expectation for the need of references (and illustrating how they are used).
• References from other projects. Support for exploring and reusing references from Wikidata and other Wikimedia projects which may contain relevant informationon the subject of the article.
• Verified facts from Wikidata. Quickly adding verified facts (data with references) from Wikidata.
• Common Sections. Add community-defined common sections for the type of article right at hand. Without the need to find good examples of articles of the same type or documentation from the relevant Wikiproject.

One of the challenges we want to explore in this task is how the proposed guidance can be supported in a way that is consistent with the existing products in this space such as EditCheck. The design exploration will consider scenarios where the user experiences both features. For example, inserting some contents with Article Guidance and getting suggestions to improve them from EditCheck.

Proposed solution

Discovery

Add action. An action ("+") in the rail (always at the same line where the cursor is) invites users to add quality contents.

Use of the side rail. The side rail is used as the space where opportunities to improve the content are surfaced. This space is currently used by EditCheck to show opportunities to improve existing contents, and the proposal expands its meaning to include also opportunities to add new contents too.

Placeholder for initial discovery. A placeholder message ("Start writing or tap the +") introduces the possibility to insert content when the page is empty. This is presented as optional, allowing users to freely type their contents if they prefer.

Bottom panel with options. Selecting the "+' action leads to a bottom panel with different options to reuse relevant content for the particular subject and/or type of article: outlines with common sections and paragraphs, verified facts, and references.

Outline

The outline provides an overview of possible aspects to cover for the article that are often relevant for that type of article. This allows users to understand what the community generally expects for the articles of this type to cover, without having to chase similar articles to infer this structure. The contents available for each type of article are customizable by the community.

Common sections. A list of section titles with a description of their purpose is used to suggest useful general aspects to cover in the article. Sections can be used to suggest the section title or also as a container for common paragraphs.

Common paragraphs. Smaller units of content to illustrate specific knowledge pieces that may be useful to cover. This helps users to learn what to cover and how to capture it in the expected way. Selecting a common paragraphs results in new content being added to the article. Contents added are based on regular text that users can edit normally (not a template block that limits the ways to adjust it). The content for the paragraph can act as an example or instructions, and editors are expected to edit those further. To facilitate the process of completing information, optionally, placeholders can be included.

Text placeholders. Placeholders represent a gap in the paragraph for the user to fill. The gap includes a description that helps to convey what is expected to be filled. When using a placeholder, the text filled becomes regular text (not a template that makes it hard to edit).

Citation placeholders. A particular type of placeholder is the "add citation" one. This helps to convey that a citation is expected at a certain place. This illustrates the purpose of citations: the system asks for the data and where it comes from. It also complements the EditCheck work by making it less surprising to encounter future warnings about missing references (since users know in advance that those were expected).

Verified facts

A list of data from Wikidata helps users to have information about the article subject at hand that would be harder to find otherwise for the less experienced users and reduces efforts to copy information over (which is especially tedious on mobile). In addition, the data added comes with references, which helps the content to be of a higher quality and helps to illustrate the role of references.

References discovery

A list of Eikimedia projects that contain references associated to the article subject. This helps users discover references that may be relevant to write the article. The "References" view of the panel is connected to the standard dialog to insert references, which will be evolved:

• Discover. A new tab including references from other Wikimedia projects that users can read and insert into the article.
• Re-use. This tab will be expanded to include the references that the user provided upfront as part of the earlier steps of the Article Guidance process.

EditCheck interaction

The proposed system is intended to be compatible and align with the use of EditCheck. After creating a paragraph, a check can surface issues about the tone, lack of references or any other aspects to review. This applies to both, contents inserted with Article Guidance, as well as, contents written by the user.

When a paragraph has issues, Edit Check takes precedence in the use of the side rail. That is, when a paragraph has an issue, only the EditCheck icon will show next to it. Even when the input cursor is there, the "=" icon will not show. In this way we avoid crowding the space and encourage fixing contents before adding new ones. Users can still get the option to add contents on a new line or for paragraphs without issues.

A custom EditCheck can be defined to encourage the completion of placeholders.