Wikipedia:Invitation to edit

The number of new editors is declining, while the number of readers is growing. To encourage more readers to edit, and to improve the quality of new editors' first efforts, it is proposed to insert an invitation to edit at the top of each unprotected article with a link to a brief, easy tutorial. Something like this medical article tutorial:

A series of trials is proposed, to discover whether an explicit statement that the reader can edit the article will increase the number of new editors, and whether attaching a simple intro' tutorial makes that easier. The invitation was on 19 low-vandalism, low-quality, popular medical articles from Jan 20th 2011 until Feb 20th 2011, and the statistics are now being collected and analyzed. Further small trials on high-vandalism articles and articles already attracting a high number of newbies are proposed and, depending on those results, a larger trial on 500 medical articles over three months is proposed.

This is a study, a series of trials. This is not a template roll-out. If you see the template going viral, please mention it at the proposal talk page.

Discussion of this proposal commenced at Village pump (proposals), and continues at the proposal's talk page.