Article guidance - MediaWiki

Article guidance, developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, is an experimental feature designed to help less experienced editors create well-structured, policy-compliant Wikipedia articles. It determines the editor's intent based on the article title and type, then provides tailored, community-adjustable guidance throughout the creation process. This includes upfront source validation, notability risk assessment, and content outlines for initial contents. By minimizing low-quality submissions, the feature aims to increase the survival rate of new pages created by editors, and reduce the workload for patrollers and administrators. In addition, the feature has been designed to work across platforms with a specific focus on lowering the barrier to contribute on mobile, where creating an article is particularly challenging.

The feature is available in this test environment. This initial version is in English and intended for experienced contributors in our pilot wikis to test, review sample outlines, and provide feedback. This page includes a step-by-step guide on using the feature and providing your input. A video below demonstrates how the feature works.

It is not yet available on any live Wikipedia. It will be launched on the pilot Wikipedias as an a/b test experiment after testing and refinement, based on outline reviews and feedback from experienced contributors. Pilot Wikipedias can then localize and adapt it as needed.

Article guidance defines a workflow to assist contributors from the initial stages through writing the article in Visual Editor, using the provided outlines.

Step 1– Title entry and topic matching

Once a contributor accesses the feature to start a new article, it prompts them to type an article title. The system queries possible topic matches and provides a list of primary topics and close alternatives from Wikidata for the contributor to confirm their subject. It then moves the contributor quickly to the next phase. This workflow simplifies choosing the right topic and eliminates duplication.

Step 2 – Article Type Selection

When a contributor cannot confirm a topic match from the article title in step 1, they see a list of article types to choose from. Selecting a type moves them to the notability check. A successful topic match from the previous step skips this workflow. If none of the listed types applies, a graceful exit lets the contributor continue without guided help or suggest a new type for community consideration.

Step 3 (Reference Checks)

After confirming the article title and type, contributors are prompted to provide sources by pasting one or more URLs. Each URL is automatically checked against community-defined lists of recommended and discouraged sources, with real-time feedback showing if a source is approved or not recommended. If flagged, guidance tips are given to help contributors understand what qualifies as a reliable source. Adding sources at this stage is optional by default, but may be required depending on the article type. Contributors can also add sources later while writing.

Step 4 (Notability Risk Assessment)

The Notability Risk Assessment step checks if a proposed article meets community-defined notability standards based on its title, type, and sources. If the topic does not meet criteria like:

• presence on Wikidata
• availability in other language wikis,
• source requirements

The workflow stops the user from proceeding. Contributors are then offered helpful alternatives such as:

• working on a related article
• learning about notability guidelines
• proposing a Wikidata item.

This step guides contributors toward meaningful contributions early, saving time and improving article quality.

Step 5. Initial contents from the outline as starting point

At this stage, the contributor views a guidance screen with community-provided advice and reminders relevant to the selected article type. By clicking the “Start writing” button, the contributor accesses the Visual Editor, which includes community-defined structure for the chosen article type. This support is designed to reduce blank-page anxiety and help contributors begin writing confidently by following prompts and guides.

Step 6. Post-publishing invite

After a contributor publishes their work, they are invited to expand or review it. For example, they may be invited to add sections from the original outline that were not included. They may also be asked to complete additional micro-tasks, such as adding an image to their article.

The Article guidance feature will be evaluated through an A/B test targeting junior editors creating articles on mobile. The experiment will measure whether guided article creation improves the 30-day survival rate of these articles. Key metrics and entry points are being finalized. The test will launch after pilot wiki communities have tested the workflow in English, provided feedback, and refinements have been implemented. Pilot wikis will also need to adapt and translate article outlines into their languages before experimentation. The experiment will be configured in Test Kitchen, with ongoing monitoring in Superset. If the experiment does not improve survival rates and increases abandonment across all pilot wikis, work on guided article creation will be halted and the approach will be reassessed.

The intention is to help new editors easily understand and apply the existing practices and policies, and navigate the task of starting a new article with ease. It is also meant to reduce the workload for administrators, enabling them to safeguard article quality more effectively. This initiative is inspired by community needs captured in the wishlist, discussions and feedback with some communities on the Article creation for new editors idea.

• Creating a new article is motivating, but challenging.
  Successfully creating a high-quality, approved article is a tangible accomplishment for an editor and a motivating factor for continued contributions. However, this responsibility and accomplishment comes with challenges and pain points.
• Specific rejection reasons for new editors’ contributions
  New editors, especially, often face the daunting task of:
  • navigating complex editing policies
  • understanding the criteria that moderators and the Wikipedia community expect for good quality content.
• Most of the time, they don't succeed; their articles are deleted as they don't meet the standard quality, because:
  • They lack sources
  • Their sources are not verifiable
  • Are not written neutrally
  • Don't follow the required structure
• Impact of AI-generated low quality content
  With the advancement in AI, some contributors resort to shortcuts to write articles that don’t meet our community’s standards.
• Time patrollers spend reviewing inadequate submissions
  Patrollers spend time reviewing and deliberating on low-quality submissions, which creates a heavy backlog of work for them.
• Reverted contributions can demotivate editors and exhaust patrollers.

The above problems have also been highlighted in a community wishlist and extensively discussed between the Growth team and English Wikipedia community, and are reflected in the feedback from various communities.

Based on community feedback and a subsequent research study, we identified potential features for further exploration and testing with communities.

• Help editors find, understand and apply references, which are key elements for successful content creation.
• Identify article types to provide tailored support to new editors.
• Establish community-defined outlines. Collaborate with communities and/or use exemplary articles to establish outlines for different article types.
• Enable quick reuse of content outlines. Suggest basic article components, such as sections, paragraphs, quick facts, infoboxes, etc.
• Highlight key policies. Provide relevant guidance within the editing workflow for each article type.
• Prioritize usability for mobile editing while also supporting desktop users.
• Learning by doing approach that supports users to compose the draft of a well-referenced article.

These ideas reflect existing community practices, where communities have defined structures and guidelines for specific types of articles. There are examples from volunteers (User sandbox+), WikiProjects (such as WikiProject Medicine or WikiProject Primates), and affiliates (such as Wikimedia Brasil's work on MBabel or Wiki Education Foundation’s subject-specific handouts). However, current content creation tools do not facilitate their discovery or application. We want to expand the capabilities of existing editing tools to support these practices.

For this exploration and early experimental phase, we are seeking community awareness and involvement to help answer some questions, test the feature developments, and provide feedback. We are approaching this work from an experimental perspective, ensuring exploration is controlled, and analyzed.

The intervention will capture the user intent, and take advantage of identifying the type of article they try to create in order to provide some initial community-created guidance. More detail in the proposal document and the main ticket in Phabrcator. Additional guidance will be considered for future interventions.

For this initial intervention, scenarios from newcomers, experienced contributors, as well as reviewers were considered. For Newcomers, the scenarios are:

• Creating invalid articles...
• creating low-quality but valid articles...
• Expanding existing articles...

Which can be in:

• Large-sized Wikipedias
• Medium-sized Wikipedias
• Small-sized Wikipedias
• Other wikis such as Wikivoyage.

The focus will be to introduce the article creation to junior editors on mobile in any language and reduce patroller burdens by reducing how many weak articles they need to delete.

Wikipedias with many valid pending articles to create, but also with reviewer challenges were considered. 6 Wikipedias were selected and additional wikis are collaborating with us based on their interest in the project. More contributors from other Wikipedias are open to participate in this work.

• Article deletion rates compared (with guidance vs. without guidance)
• Abandon rate decrease
• Editor retention increase.
• Article creation increase.
• Percentage of content meeting standard quality criteria increase.

Our key consideration is intended to solve some issues of the content creation process for some users on a few key types of article.

Through collaboration with pilot wikis and interested contributors, we gained insights into the following key questions

• Which are some key types of articles junior editors would benefit the most from some guidance? E.g. Biographies, animals, movies...
• For each of those:
  • Which are their recommended and discouraged sources? E.g. National Geographic is recommended, and Youtube is discouraged.
  • Is there a high risk of lack of notability? Where to direct them? E.g. For biographies, direct to draft space when not covered by 5+ other languages.
  • Any initial advice youʼll share with editors trying to create this type of articles? E.g. Make sure the animal is in the list from…
  • Any initial content that may help editors get started better than a blank page? E.g. This example paragraph, animal infobox, and two section titles.

Based on community feedback, we are developing a feature in a test wiki that provides guidance for editors throughout the editing workflow. This includes an outline to assist with content creation for various article types. Participating communities will be invited to:

• Try the feature in a test environment
• Provide feedback
• Review and improve the sample outlines.

A step by step guide to assist communities in trying the feature is provided in this page.

The designs below are the early illustrations. They served as a guide to define a more detailed version of the workflow for the experiment.

• An illustration of starting an article not documented on Wikipedia. For instance, the Siberian tiger.
• 
  An example of a new article that can be created
• 
  Deciding to create the article

Once the editor provides a title for the new article. Wikidata items match the title and surface the identified topic. When there is no Wikidata item for the exact topic, the editor selects a type of article by searching or browsing it.

• An illustration of providing a title of an article and what happens next with the title.
• 
  Typing the title of the new article that has a Wikidata item
• 
  What happens when the title has no Wikidata item

With the title sorted, the next step is to ask editors to provide sources early in the process to convey their relevance and run some basic checks based on the number of sources and the Wikipedia community's recommended and discouraged lists of sources.

• An illustration of how provided sources and references are added and checked.
• 
  Asking the user for their sources
• 
  Suggesting additional checks to the user to help validate their decision and help them learn about what makes a good source

For cases where the community identifies a high risk of lack of notability, users can be provided with alternatives defined by the community. This is one of the stages where community-defined messages and initial contents are provided as initial guidance, which can include considerations and useful examples to follow.

• An illustration of notability check and the initial guidance from communities' before the editing starts.
• 
  Providing alternatives when there is notability issues with sources
• 
  Community's initial guidance with writing the article

The rest of the content creation will take place in Visual Editor as usual. Future exploration may consider how to better assist users while they edit.

As we explore this space, we need collaboration with communities to:

• Exchange ideas about the approaches to consider, avoid, try, and measure to evaluate the impact of the project.
• Identify types of articles where guidance could be useful.
• Collaborate to create an initial set of outlines for the selected types of articles.
• Try the use of outlines for article and section creation in their wikis.

Please, share your thoughts in the talk page to help improve the initial ideas and sign up on this page .