Selena DeckelmannRecent research on how new editors become experienced editors, and what they understand about editing Wikipedia today https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Journey_transitions
The product managers here have been thinking about "non-editing participation" as an important exploration area for Wikipedia.
Of course, editing comes in many forms. Most laypeople think of this as new article creation. But editors of Wikipedia have a number of roles that have become special permissions in some cases.
There are also a number of grammar and style specialties that certain people and groups have taken on as bot tasks, or things that can enjoyably be done as groups.
We're starting to consider the ways that we can encourage people to "become an editor" without necessarily needing to figure out all the rules to do so. Tools like Suggested Edits are one of the ways, where we've started to define types for different editing contributions.
Non-editing participation would take this a step further, and identify ways to support without actually creating or changing the content of articles directly. Examples of this kind of participation could be things like flagging content that needs editing help, noting particularly helpful or well-written portions of articles.
Jan Ainali@selenadeckelmann Flagging without editing? A new parallel system?
@ainali what do you think about hatnotes?
@selenadeckelmann They can be useful if they are warning about a severe issue. If it is minor, a category might be enough.
@ainali the knowledge it takes to use a category to flag a minor issue and a hatnote for a major one is a significant barrier to entry for most people who come across any kind of issue and would otherwise be willing to flag it. I don’t know what the UX or most helpful place to invite this kind of contribution might be, only naming a few possibilities.
@selenadeckelmann of course. But a new editor does not need to know that this is what is needed when they start. They can just "flag" something with an issue and the UX could guide them through it, doing the necessary editing and explaining what is happening. The tricky part though is that the system needs to allow for the languages wanting different ways of tracking different types of issues.
@selenadeckelmann but I guess my original question was, if the flagging should be done this way somehow or if you are imagining a new infrastructure for doing the flagging that wouldn't even create an edit under the hood?
@ainali I’m not designing the feature just describing possibilities so I really don’t know. Something in the research that’s important is that most readers just don’t understand our language for participation. Saying “non-editing” is both to signal it will be different than now for existing editors and readers.