When pages are creation protected, there should be a check in the system when using the article creator to create the article. Even though they still cannot create the page as the article creator uses the MediaWiki /api.php, it would still be useful to add a couple of lines of code to check whether the page is protected. It could look something like this:
Note: the above is just a mockup created using the F12 developer tools.
Or this message could be “Please login or create an account to start this article” for semi-creation-protected pages.
That way, for topics that are viable but tend to be created as a joke or as vandalism, we do not drive away good-faith editors with confusing error messages. We could also encourage users to draft their article on their computer first and then send the draft to publish@wikihow.com
. I am leaving it here for a rainy day.
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