It's certainly technically possible. The problem I can see is that newbies will be turned off by the rigid structure of it (really, if they're going to make a three-sentence stub, do you think they'll bother to cite their sources, even if we request it?). I'd much rather teach newbies bit-by-bit, rather than give them a bunch of information that will annoy them.
A specific problem as well, to requesting categories, is that they'll add nonexistant categories, and, possibly even worse, click the red links and create the categories, thus creating more work for new page patrollers.
Generally I'm unsure on the idea, though I think it's a decent proposal and could have positive results as well.
On 4/10/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all, This has probably been debated millions of times before, but could someone tell me the basic results of the debate, even if that's the case?
Proposition: When you create a blank page, instead of having an empty page, have a basic template like:
<!-- Lead, including '''article name''' in triple quotes. -->
<!-- Sources - please include at least one verifiable source under a ==Sources== heading -->
<!-- Stub template. If the article is less than two complete paragraphs, please insert {{stub}} or something more specific (see the stub page [[can't remember it]]) -->
<!-- Categories: Every article should belong to at least one non-stub category. Add these like [[Category:Wikipedia articles]] -->
Etc. If nothing else, it would help us avoid forgetting some of these basic things, and would help newbies not get bitten, create peace on earth, free beer, etc...
I assume this is technically possible. So what's the social reason for not doing it?
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-- Sincerely, Ral315 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ral315