Account Creation Improvement Project/Testing content/Account creation form/Lennart's proposal

NOTE: This proposal is not done yet.

Step 1

Screenshot

Development

This page can be compared to en:MediaWiki:Fancycaptcha-createaccount and en:MediaWiki:Loginend.

For development of progress bar, see this page.

Rationale

Same as Frank's proposal. It doesn't make sense to create another just to create another.

Title: Just "Create an account" – additional "Log in" is confusing. Brandon mentioned some time ago how beneficial it could be to detach the login from the account creation.
Progress bar: people need to know at which step of the account creation process they are.
"Be a part of Wikipedia": This is based on our surveys. People wanting to be a part of Wikipedia was among the reasons that the survey participants mentioned most often.
Removed clutter: This one should be obvious ;-)
Picture in the box on the right:
- We learned from the last fundraiser how powerful photos of actual people can be. Donors responded much better to the 2010/11 fundraiser than to earlier approaches without Jimmy's picture.
- People often mention that Wikipedia feels cold / that they don't know who's behind Wikipedia. By integrating pictures of actual community members, people will hopefully get hooked and more interested to get to the next step (maybe there's some other person hiding on the next page).
- We can test which picture works best…
- … and it will be interesting to see if we can get more women to start editing if we have a higher ratio of female community members in this box.
Text in the box on the right: We should highlight how easy it is to edit and that you can do it as well. We can test which text works best…

Step 2

1. Enter your data

2. Tell us about yourself

3. Be a part of Wikipedia

Tell us about yourself

Start creating your user page now.

This is how a user page can look. It's not a part of the encyclopedic content of Wikipedia, but it's a good way to present yourself to other editors.

You can create your user page later by clicking the red link with your user name at the top of the page.

Search for an article to edit.

Development

This page can be compared to en:MediaWiki:Welcomecreation.

The templates that are used to create the user page can be found here. The text that tells the user what to do can be found here.

The button should probably look better, and the overall design should be nicer.

For progress bar, see above.

Rationale

By making it very easy for the new user to start a user page, we believe based on test we have done previously, that we can make them edit Wikipedia
We want the new user to make his or her first edit as soon as possible, to make them understand that it's not such a big deal
We want to learn more about the new user, since that will make it easier for Wikipedians to understand whether this is someone who is going to be productive or a troll.
We should give the new user to come back to this at some later stage and start editing or browsing directly.

Step 3

	1. Enter your data	2. Tell us about yourself	3. Be a part of Wikipedia
Be a part of Wikipedia

{{New user bar}}

This is me:

I am interested in these topics:

I know a lot about:

I work as/study to be a...:

I know how Wikipedia works / I don't know how Wikipedia works.

I want to:

Develoment

Sertion has started working on a form here. A short test can be found here.

For progress bar, see above.

Rationale

We should keep this questionaire as short as possible, to make sure as many as possible answer it
We should include questions that are interesting for the new users' life on Wikipedia, such as bias, knowledge background and experience with Wikipedia
The relatively simple code is an attempt to make sure that as many as people answer it.
This template can be categorized, to make it easier to find those new users who may need assistance.

Notes

This would be a template like we tried in a previous test on English Wikipedia, namely this template with this page as the introduction
It would be very good if we could make these answers as text fields that are variables, which could then be loaded into the real user page - complete with the tabs below.
The important thing here is to make it easy for the new user to see that there are others who care about Wikipedia, that there are people to connect with, and that the new user is never alone.
Something about one's bias, perhaps?

Template:New user bar

Development

We can tinker a little bit with the design, but the main thing to focus on is what tabs to have and to create those tabs. Please help out here.

Rationale

This tab bar can serve as a reminder on the user page on the things we want to educate them about, without taking up the whole page.
By adding this as a template instead of full text, we make it almost invisible for the new user.

Notes

These tabs should contain several ways to enter the community, not to give them a lot of policies to read. So a few examples could be:

this is how you join a WikiProject
this is who you contact
"I want to do this. How do I do that?"
Adopt-a-user
own sub-page sandbox

Step 4

User:Minnesotaengineer

This is me: I'm a forty-year engineer from Minnesota.

I am interested in these topics: Physics, engines

I know a lot about: 1900th century engines

I work as/study to be a...: teacher at a university

I know how Wikipedia works / I don't know how Wikipedia works. I have read a little about it.

I want to: help out making the articles about physics better.

Category:Wikipedia New users

Rationale

This page will both be standardized and individual. Any new users who haven't filled out their user page should be asked to fill it out, by a kind request on their talk page.