This is a good idea to increase new contributors awareness the wiki is modifiable.

But in the same time, we would be teaching people the edit link doesn't modify the current page but instead lead to a sandbox. I'm not sure this is a good idea.

I also feel this would cause confusion. perhaps a link from the "view source" page to a sandbox though

Yeah, that would seem hella confusing to get sent to some other page.

Also, do people really spend time on the main page? I'd think most readers are coming in at articles...

(In reply to comment #3)

Yeah, that would seem hella confusing to get sent to some other page.

Indeed, maybe the link can send them instead to a page dedicated to welcoming newcomers ? Kind of like the UploadWizard has a basic tutorial picture.

Also, do people really spend time on the main page? I'd think most readers are
coming in at articles...

Hard to say without click tracking, but the enwiki Main_Page definitely has a lot of traffic. According to http://stats.grok.se/en/top it received 15Millions views so far in September.

(In reply to comment #4)

(In reply to comment #3)

Yeah, that would seem hella confusing to get sent to some other page.

Indeed, maybe the link can send them instead to a page dedicated to welcoming
newcomers ? Kind of like the UploadWizard has a basic tutorial picture.

I bet the "users" could probably already do that by putting parser funcs in various mediawiki ns messages.

(In reply to comment #0)

When people land on the wiki main page, they are usually being shown a "view
source" which would mean to them that they can not edit the wiki. A possible
feature would be to replace the text by "edit" and send the user to a
sandboxing page. This way, they will know they can edit the wiki :-]

Many times I click on view source to learn wikitext, I would be really disappointed and confused on being directed to Sandbox. Its enough to have a label saying 'You can't edit this page' and a tutorial would be nice too.

What about simply changing "View source" by "Edit protected"? Not only for the Main page, but for all cases where "View source" would be shown.

"View source" doesn't tell much to average people. "Edit protected" contains two familiar words: the characteristic "Edit" and the term "protected" that everybody understands. Being this label a link, it invites more to click and see what is going on. Protected and semi-protected pages have quite clear informative banners already e.g.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=edit

Or

Edit [lock icon]

as an optional substitute of "View source" in all cases (not only the homepage)? For most users this message is clearer than "View source". It also makes a permanent position for an "Edit" option, that users will see sometimes with a lock icon added, only when they don't have permissions to edit.

The lock icon would add a visual cue that is already used to identify protected pages, and would avoid any changes in the current workflow or strings. No redirect to sandbox, no new translations needed.

Just wondering, do we have any (SVG based) lock icon being used in the MediaWiki UI? Otherwise see e.g. http://thenounproject.com/term/lock/30188/ or the many alternatives in the public domain.

Lets close this bug entirely. I have filled it back in 2012 following a talk by someone at a Wikimedia conference.

What do you mean by "filled it"? The bug as described certainly still exists.

Hi Mako! There were many opinions and ideas shared in this report. Any thoughts to make this discussion productive, and maybe make this request implementable?

Benjamin proposed the idea originally :-) Maybe Editor Engagement can be pointed at this idea and figure out a feature that could be A/B tested to figure out whether that converts readers to actual editors?