All these issues can be resolved on wiki. But you've to talk to the enwiki community first to even see whether they agree those perceived problems exist.
If they do, the landing page can be revamped. That's easily doable via templates or js. The extensions main purpose is to intercept and redirect without defining what that landing page contains. It does that job perfectly, and I don't think hardcoding is a good idea here.

My question is why to redirect the page instead of showing a message? And why we need a specific extension? The landing page can be easily transcluded into any MediaWiki messages.

Related 2021 discussion on enwiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)&oldid=1021932151#New_user_landing_page_should_link_to_search_results

In T204234#6028763, @Ammarpad wrote:

All these issues can be resolved on wiki. But you've to talk to the enwiki community first to even see whether they agree those perceived problems exist.
If they do, the landing page can be revamped. That's easily doable via templates or js. The extensions main purpose is to intercept and redirect without defining what that landing page contains. It does that job perfectly, and I don't think hardcoding is a good idea here.

Adding the search results to this page such as are on all of the other "followed a redlink" pages was the recent ask -- as T8883 was refused and T63007 hasn't been done for 7 years is your "easily doable via js" suggesting running a "If on page X" in something like common.js?

In T204234#6028970, @Bugreporter wrote:

My question is why to redirect the page instead of showing a message?

My guess is that it was just easier to do. Changing the editing interface to not actually display an editing interface is tricky.

We've managed to do that in DiscussionTools, but it took several tries to get it right. You can see an example at https://test.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Page325&action=edit&redlink=1. Our solution could probably be adapted to ArticleCreationWorkflow easily enough now. Relevant code: https://codesearch.wmcloud.org/search/?q=shouldDisplayEmptyState

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2023/New_contributors/New_users_should_see_the_deletion_log_when_visiting_a_deleted_page_on_English_Wikipedia

Change 904865 had a related patch set uploaded (by Bartosz Dziewoński; author: Bartosz Dziewoński):

[mediawiki/extensions/ArticleCreationWorkflow@master] Transclude the landing page instead of redirecting

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/904865

I posted about the change at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Proposed_change_to_the_behavior_of_Wikipedia:New_user_landing_page. English Wikipedia is the only project using the extension (except test wikis).

Note I have renamed this task to fit what is going on. It will only be enwiki's matter to redesign new user landing page to fix #1 to #5. (to fix #6 article wizards may be redesigned as single page application, which is also matter of enwiki).

There are other possible improvements of ArticleCreationWorkflow (in low priority) which I will split to dedicated task.

No one on English Wikipedia has anything to say about this, so I think we can go ahead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_204#Proposed_change_to_the_behavior_of_Wikipedia%3ANew_user_landing_page

Change 904865 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/ArticleCreationWorkflow@master] Transclude the landing page instead of redirecting

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/904865

@matmarex Should the Wikipedia:New_user_landing_page be transcluded when trying to create a page which has previously been deleted?

For example, https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?title=Xmmxcmvxc&action=edit

If I try to create a new article with VisualEditor (I have done this by going to https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?title=Uitruirueirueoiw&veaction=edit) it does not transclude the Wikipedia:New_user_landing_page page. Instead, it opens VE (although you cannot edit).

This is in contrast to production, which redirects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uiruwrioweuriweruio?veaction=edit.

We also don't intercept action=submit, for example https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/jsfkljsdlf?action=submit just says You do not have permission to create new pages.

We do intercept currently on production.

In T204234#8846704, @dom_walden wrote:

@matmarex Should the Wikipedia:New_user_landing_page be transcluded when trying to create a page which has previously been deleted?

For example, https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?title=Xmmxcmvxc&action=edit

Yes. This works as expected for me:

Make sure you're testing with a non-autoconfirmed account.

In T204234#8846849, @dom_walden wrote:

If I try to create a new article with VisualEditor (I have done this by going to https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?title=Uitruirueirueoiw&veaction=edit) it does not transclude the Wikipedia:New_user_landing_page page. Instead, it opens VE (although you cannot edit).

This is in contrast to production, which redirects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uiruwrioweuriweruio?veaction=edit.

Thanks, that's an interesting edge case I didn't consider. However, it looks like this only happens if you manually navigate to &veaction=edit or &veaction=editsource, which can already be used to force the editor to open on pages where it's not normally available (e.g. protected pages, or pages in the wrong namespaces). When you just follow a red link, or navigate to &action=edit, you correctly get the landing page, and the editor does not open (even if you select "Always give me the visual editor if possible" in preferences). This seems acceptable to me.

In T204234#8847459, @dom_walden wrote:

We also don't intercept action=submit, for example https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/jsfkljsdlf?action=submit just says You do not have permission to create new pages.

We do intercept currently on production.

This is intentional, so that when a user starts an edit and then loses the ability to create the page while previewing (e.g. their autoconfirmed status is revoked by an abuse filter), they will be able to retrieve the wikitext of their edit, instead of losing it because the editor is replaced by the landing page. (Editing tools like VE also do not take over action=submit for similar reasons.)

In T204234#8847945, @matmarex wrote:

In T204234#8846704, @dom_walden wrote:

@matmarex Should the Wikipedia:New_user_landing_page be transcluded when trying to create a page which has previously been deleted?

For example, https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?title=Xmmxcmvxc&action=edit

Yes. This works as expected for me:

It works for me now as well. Not sure what was happening before. Perhaps caching?

EDIT: Indeed, I deleted https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Sandbox and initially my non-confirmed user saw what I was seeing in T204234#8846704. However, after a couple of minutes and a few refreshes I saw the New_user_landing_page.

I think I am done testing this.

You can see examples on beta of the new user landing page being transcluded (you may need to create a new account first):

• https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?title=blahblah&action=edit
• https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?title=Xmmxcmvxc&action=edit (with a deletion log)
• https://en.m.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Jkslfjsdklfjskldfs?action=edit (mobile)
• https://en.m.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?title=Xmmxcmvxc&action=edit (mobile with deletion log)

Example shows use of {{PAGENAME}} in new user landing page.

We changed the hooks on which ArticleCreationWorkflow is fired, so I tested some of the extensions and features which also use the old[1] and new[2] hooks in case there was any interference. Found the issue in T204234#8846849.

I also wanted to work out when/where the new and old hooks were being fired[3] in case there were circumstances where the new user landing page was not being transcluded when it could be. Found the issue in T204234#8847459.

Test environment: https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org

Ref:

1. Old hooks:
   • https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:CustomEditor_extensions
   • https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:ShowMissingArticle_extensions
2. New hooks:
   • https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:GetActionName_extensions
   • https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:BeforeDisplayNoArticleText_extensions
3. Where hooks are fired (probably not exhaustive):
   • onCustomEditor: https://codesearch.wmcloud.org/search/?q=EditAction&files=&excludeFiles=&repos=
   • onGetActionName: https://codesearch.wmcloud.org/search/?q=getActionName&files=&excludeFiles=&repos= and https://codesearch.wmcloud.org/search/?q=getAction%5C%28%5C%29&files=&excludeFiles=&repos=
   • onShowMissingArticle and onBeforeDisplayNoArticleText: https://codesearch.wmcloud.org/search/?q=showMissingArticle%5C%28%5C%29&files=&excludeFiles=&repos=

Screenshot from production for reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=This_page_does_not_exist&action=edit&redlink=1