Lately, after an edit, I am seeing a pop-up window asking what I want to do next: edit the article further or spell check. While I understand that this might encourage some individuals to contribute more heavily, I am concerned that the prompt might seem to push wikiHow interests. I think that there is high potential for the prompt to have a negative effect on contributors and dampen the editing enthusiasm that the community strives to cultivate. To be asked the same question after each of my edits is, to me, counter-productive and quite annoying. In the first place, when I publish an edit, I have typically fixed all that I intend to fix and would have no idea if further edits were indicated unless I had the article or diff visible, but the text is covered by the pop-up. Also, I have no interest in spell checking at this time. Perhaps a personal preference could be provided which would allow contributors to opt out of being persistently confronted by this annoyance. Alternatively, a larger selection of related activities/similar edits could be presented or a rotating series of pop-ups could be implemented.
Anna
2
Hey hey @Alabaster
, This popup is just part of a short term test to see whether it’s helpful to new folks finding their feet- not a permanent fixture. And this is good feedback! I can see how it would be annoying in some instances, and discouraging if you want to keep working on that one aricle. It’s intended only to fire the once to people making their first edit (in that browser, at least) and then not show up again, but it sounds like it’s not behaving properly for you. Makes sense it would have hit you once, since you’re editing from a new computer, but I don’t know why multiple times. That’s not deliberate, so I’ll have a look into that. Are you editing in incognito mode or anything along those lines?
I agree with Alabaster that it can be quite annoying!Usually I’d have done all the editing I wanted to on that page before clicking publish and I have no interest in suddenly doing spellcheck. I see the intention but aren’t quite sure if this is the best way to do it. The bubble that sometimes appears in the bottom right corner saying ‘Become an author’ (or something along those lines) is good: catches your attention but not at all off-putting. Perhaps you could change that to give more options? Hope this helps!
Anna
4
That’s a great idea, @TammySin
! I’ll add that to the brainstorm. I did a little testing around the pop-up and couldn’t reproduce it showing up more than once, unless I cleared my cookies or used a browser you haven’t edited on before. Have you done that lately? The test is stopped now, so you shouldn’t see it again - but if it was showing up at the wrong times, I’m curious to get the bottom of why it’s popped up for you more!
@Anna
- When I was accessing multiple articles from the emergency services spreadsheet, they were opening in a new tab, so I would publish, “x” out the pop-up, then return to the tab with the spreadsheet and open another article. Doing this, I got three pop-ups in a row when I published. I have been on two newer devices and am not sure if caches are set to clear automatically, but I do know that I have gotten the pop-up at least five times.
Anna
6
Ah gotya Ron, okay - well, rest assured that the test is over for now! If it were ever implemented more permanently, I reckon it’d be with a more nuanced approach that made sure it was only seen once, and only to the new. I appreciate your feedback on this - thanks for letting me know about your experiences with it.