As part of the work on Article Guidance (T396029), the proposed workflow (T414409) allows users to identify the Wikidata item that represents what the article will be about. Ideally, the user will be able to proceed with the creation of the article. However, there are some cases where the user intent may clash with the existing contents of the wiki.
This ticket is focused on supporting the situation where the topic selected (represented by a Wikidata item) is already present on the current Wikipedia (regardless of the article title). In this case, we want to inform the user that the topic already exists, and provide options to contribute to it (show the option to edit it, suggest sections to add...).
For example, the user starting the Article Guidance workflow starts an article for "orange", selects the Wikidata item Q39338 and the system tells the user that the topic is already covered by the article "Orange_(colour)" on English Wikipedia (despite the title differences).
For the case where the title is already taken by a different article, see T421196.
Design approach
User scenario: A junior editor searches for a topic (for example, "orange"), selects a Wikidata item (Q39338), and the system detects that the topic is already covered by a local article ("Orange_(colour)"). The editor needs to understand what happened and decide what to do next.
UX flow
- user picks a topic
- system checks whether that topic already exists on wiki
- if it does, creation stops and we show a separate "Article already exists" view
- otherwise the normal creation flow continues
Design decisions
- Step header: "Article already exists"
- Codex hint: use the standard step container/header pattern with back navigation enabled
- Existing local article shown as a linked card that opens the article
- Codex hint: use CdxCard
- Expected content: article title, short description, and image when available
- Expected behavior: whole card opens the existing article
- Description: Positive one-liner acknowledging the article exists and inviting contribution
- Codex hint: plain supporting body text below the card, not a CdxMessage
- Primary action: "Improve article" → opens the editor
- Codex hint: use CdxButton with weight="primary" and action="progressive"
- Back arrow: returns to topic selection