MDN: Patching the new writer experience

Our “new contributor” experience has become somewhat uninviting lately. While we had good reason to make the changes that have resulted in that situation, I wonder if perhaps we have allowed ourselves to go too far in the direction of protecting against unwanted/inappropriate material at the expense of the experience of our new contributors and the openness we should strive for daily.

While we obviously need proper solutions for these things (possibly in the form of a newcomer contributions are hidden until approved sort of system, or other work), but given that we don’t have infinite resources, I am left with some questions for how to deal with this in the meantime:

  • Should we throw the switch and let new users create pages again?
  • Can we find a way to reduce the likelihood of the spam filter trapping new contributors?
  • Can we come up with a way to make it easier for new contributors’ work to still get posted even if they hit the spam filter? Right now, they have to copy and paste it elsewhere, then send it to an admin to post for them, or wait for their account to be marked “safe” in the spam filter.

Of course, we have changes to the editing experience that would help as well, and I continue to gradually work on some updates to the Kuma editor configuration that will, when complete, help quite a bit. I hope to check in a first set of modest improvements soon.

But in the meantime, can anyone think of ways we can improve the situation? I worry about people being driven off in disgust after running into a wall.

Sheppy

Hey Sheppy, we have a user story in the current sprint to only mark things as spam, but still let contributions through. That should address issue 2 and 3. I think we can then also experiment with letting contributors create new pages again, but honestly, I’m unclear whether that is what we actually want. Following the admin list, it seemed to me like there was quite a bit of value in having people explain what new pages they want to create and then getting feedback from Chris or others.

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Hm. I thought we had all already agreed that the ultimate goal was re-opening for contributors to be able to create pages without needing an admin to do it for them, with some improved controls in place for moderation of the new content on the back end (that is, after the pages are written).

Sheppy

That was the initial idea, and we can start experimenting with that, once we have editing without blocking in place and working well, which should go in soon. What I meant was that in the mean time, we’ve had time to get some experience with this model, and there are some advantages with that too, increased communication being one. I can’t say whether that outweighs the downsides, but it’s worth considering.

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As a new contributor, I find it understandable that measures need to be put in place which is why I am personally patient to earn my privileges to create a new page, I understand that some would not use that power responsibly.

Would it be possible to allow new users to create a new page through traditional means but not have it formally published until it is approved by an admin?

I believe it might be more efficient for everyone involved as the user can set up the text, formatting etc and the admin only has to approve it. Just a suggestion incase I can help out.

You are right — it would be nice to have submissions that we would then have to approve before publication.

We are currently considering moving to such a system, although the discussions are at an early stage. A GitHub pull request model, for example, would suit this purpose well.

Hopefully we can share more on this soon.

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