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