Tell the merge request story better

Problem to solve

We know the main page for merge requests (https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/merge_requests/) does a poor job of guiding the user through getting the most out of GitLab's merge requests feature. So far, we've done a decent job of hacking off the extra material that was stuffed into this page and the Getting Started page. (https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/merge_requests/getting_started.html) We need to identify what story we want to tell, and start chipping away at it one subheading at a time.

(In Amy's opinion, the Getting Started page happened because the index page was a mess. Fixing the index page should, in theory, eliminate the need for the Getting Started page.)

Further details

Describe a through line for a new project. What are the decisions and big tasks that a project admin should consider when configuring and using merge requests for their new project?

Proposal

What tasks should we have on this landing page, and in what order?

1. Background about merge request (overview)
2. creating merge request (from issue) - pre code writing
3. Checking our branch and working on code (local/vs code/web ide)
4. asking for a review of your merge request (set reviewers ask for attention)
5. reviewing merge request (batch comments, suggested changes, attention)
6. Approving a merge request
7. merging merge request (squash commit, merge commit, commit templates)
8. sometimes changes need to come out (revert from MR)

Somewhere in there should be something about maybe "finding MRs" that talks about dashboards and filters. Probably also need something about forks and security projects and confidential MRs (maybe that's separate... an entire docs page about how to contribute to a security project or something)

Who can address the issue

@phikai, me, @annabeldunstone, @mnichols1, @pedroms, likely others I'm forgetting

Other links/references

• Related to gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com#12642 (closed)