Goal
This task defines a generic notability warning step shown after the user enters a title and selects an article type. The purpose of this step is to stop users from reaching later creation steps when the selected topic/type does not meet community-defined notability rules that can already be evaluated at this stage, and to offer helpful alternatives instead of a dead end.
Conditions
As communities define an outline for a particular type of article, they can include a notability-risk parameter to capture the restrictions applied to articles of this particular type. In order to simplify the logic, we can capture some conditions as tags that can be combined.
The following tags are proposed:
- (default): No restrictions apply to this type of article. The default if no level is specified.
- wikidata: Only topics that exist on Wikidata can be created.
- crosswiki: Only topics that are available in 5 other languages can be created.
- sources: Only topics for which the user provided sources not discouraged by the community can be created.
- junior: Restrictions apply to junior editors only (those without previous experience having published a surviving article).
- draft: Publication allowed only under the draft namespace (where it exists) or the user namespace (as a sub-page of the user page).
Tags can be combined to express more complex conditions. For example, if the outline for biographies is marked as junior-crosswiki, junior editors would be able to create only biographies for topics that exist in 5 other wikis. If the condition is not met, a list of community-defined alternatives will be provided. These can be based on a message, and a list of title and link pairs to direct users elsewhere.
Note that combining wikidata and crosswiki is equivalent to just using crosswiki since the later requires a wikidata item to exist already. For the rest of the tags, their combination change the restrictions making them more or less strict.
When to show
Show this step after title and article type selection, before source collection. As mentioned above, communities can configure article types with one or more notability-risk tags:
- wikidata
- crosswiki
- sources
- junior
- draft
Behavior
- If the selected type has no notability-risk tags, continue with the normal flow.
- If the selected type has tags but the user/topic meets the applicable requirements, continue with the normal flow.
- If the selected type fails a requirement that can be evaluated at this stage, show the notability warning/intercept screen from this task.
- Users who fail a requirement evaluated at this step should not proceed to the add-sources step.
- If the selected type carries the sources tag, source enforcement is handled separately in T418373 / T415484 rather than by this screen.
- For draft, the alternative path should direct creation into the draft namespace, or user namespace where draft is not available.
- Alternatives shown on the screen are community-defined title/link pairs
Design direction
This task provides a reusable v1 pattern rather than final copy for every tag combination.
The screen should include:
- the current title/topic context
- a short warning or explanation message
- a list of alternative actions
Visual implementation notes
- Warning message: regular, text-color / base
- Section label: bold, text-color / subtle
- Alternative titles: regular, progressive link color
- Alternative descriptions: regular, text-color / subtle
- Alternative icons: Codex icons in progressive color, inside a circular container with subtle progressive background
- Use subtle dividers between alternatives
Notes
- Exact copy may vary by wiki, article type, and tag combination.
- Combined tags may need additional logic or tailored messaging later.
- Mandatory source collection is handled separately in T418373.