User:MusikAnimal (WMF)/NPP analysis/ACTRIAL design

Update from Community Tech
Hi everyone: Kaldari, MusikAnimal and I have been talking this week about the possible technical mechanisms for how ACTRIAL could be implemented. I'm going to give a few options, and talk about pros and cons for each; then we can all discuss it and figure things out.

One mechanism that we want to avoid is using the edit filter/abuse filter to prevent non-AC editors from saving their article. Going to the trouble of writing a new page and then not being able to save it is a terrible experience, so we'd like to keep that off the table.

Here are the other options, in order of how much development time it would take to set up:


 * 1. Use the Titleblacklist and a custom permission error to display a message to the editor. When a non-AC user tries to create a new page, they would see a "Permission error" with a friendly message directing them the Article Wizard (or other options) instead of the editing interface. You can see what this would look like (without the friendly message) by logging out and going to this page. Pros : Very easy to set up. Cons : There's a Visual Editor bug that we'd need the Contributors team to fix, T138715. Also, showing "Permission error" at the top of the page is not super encouraging.


 * 2. Redirect non-AC users to Article Wizard automatically from the edit page for a nonexistent article. Pros : Medium development time -- probably a week of development, three weeks for security review and deployment -- approximately four weeks total. You don't see "permission error". Cons : Takes people straight to the Article Wizard, without giving other options.


 * 3. Take the existing work that was done on Extension:ArticleCreationWorkflow, reduce the scope, and deploy a simplified version of it. This would direct non-AC users to a special landing page that presents them with options -- Article Wizard, sandbox, edit something else, etc. Pros : Can offer more options and special messaging. Cons : Longer dev time -- about three weeks of development, three weeks for security review and deployment -- approximately six weeks total.

One question that occurs to us about the messaging: do we explain "4 days, 10 edits", or find a less specific explanation, like "your account isn't old enough to create a new article" or "it doesn't look like you've done enough editing to create an article yet"?

We're getting closer to funding approval for the data analyst contractor, and the contractor that we plan to hire is very interested in working on this problem. He's a longtime Wikipedia contributor who's done a lot of Wikipedia-related research in the past. We're hoping this won't take more than a couple weeks, and we'll update you as soon as we know anything. DannyH (WMF) (talk) 23:01, 7 July 2017 (UTC)