If we're going to preload an "article skeleton" for new articles, what else are we going to include? Sections? See also and External links? Sample images? Templates? Categories? Infoboxes?
On 1/23/07, Mets501 wrote:
It already is included in the text above the edit box, but it's not enough. New users don't know how to add references, and therefore just ignore the whole thing.
Sounds like a problem with the referencing system...
On Jan 24, 2007, at 11:58 AM, Omegatron wrote:
If we're going to preload an "article skeleton" for new articles, what else are we going to include? Sections? See also and External links? Sample images? Templates? Categories? Infoboxes?
On 1/23/07, Mets501 wrote:
It already is included in the text above the edit box, but it's not enough. New users don't know how to add references, and therefore just ignore the whole thing.
Sounds like a problem with the referencing system...
There are two problems here.
1) The referencing system is non-intuitive, and a first-time editor can't use it. I still don't know how the fuck to use it, and have always found it to have a terrible interface from a reader's standpoint as well. And for good measure, I just read [[WP:CITE]], which is a godawful instruction manual.
2) A casual editor who comes upon a mistake or a redlink is going to fix it from their personal knowledge, not references. This is a larger problem I've observed before - our demand for references fundamentally runs counter to the idea of "you can edit this page right now" in practice. We have to get realistic about references before we can get serious about them.
-Phil
On 1/24/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
- A casual editor who comes upon a mistake or a redlink is going to
fix it from their personal knowledge, not references.
This was, in fact, the original intended process for writing articles, no? With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow? That's the whole concept behind the wiki/open source thing that the project is based on. References were an afterthought, as indicated by our horrible kludgy support for them.
The whole concept behind Be Bold is to add information that you know, and not worry about referencing it; references will be added when needed. References are obviously a great thing, and should be added whenever possible, but should content really be removed just because it's not referenced?
At the very least, we shouldn't expect newcomers to figure out citation templates and Cite.php. Just figure out a way to encourage first-time editors to include some type of reference, in whatever form they can manage.
Omegatron wrote:
On 1/24/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
- A casual editor who comes upon a mistake or a redlink is going to
fix it from their personal knowledge, not references.
This was, in fact, the original intended process for writing articles, no? With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow? That's the whole concept behind the wiki/open source thing that the project is based on. References were an afterthought, as indicated by our horrible kludgy support for them.
The whole concept behind Be Bold is to add information that you know, and not worry about referencing it; references will be added when needed. References are obviously a great thing, and should be added whenever possible, but should content really be removed just because it's not referenced?
At the very least, we shouldn't expect newcomers to figure out citation templates and Cite.php. Just figure out a way to encourage first-time editors to include some type of reference, in whatever form they can manage.
I'm heartened to hear that someone remembers what it's all about. The need for immediate references came about because of the Seigenthaler incident, which quite rightly forced us to pay attention in potentially libellous situations.
Naturally it bred a whole crop of overreactors who really don't understand how an article grows.
Ec
This was, in fact, the original intended process for writing articles, no? With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow? That's the whole concept behind the wiki/open source thing that the project is based on. References were an afterthought, as indicated by our horrible kludgy support for them.
Absolutely - that *was* the whole idea. Unfortunately, that idea didn't lead to an encyclopedia people trusted, so now, in order to be credible, we have to reference everything. It's unfortunate, but unavoidable, I think.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
This was, in fact, the original intended process for writing articles, no? With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow? That's the whole concept behind the wiki/open source thing that the project is based on. References were an afterthought, as indicated by our horrible kludgy support for them.
Absolutely - that *was* the whole idea. Unfortunately, that idea didn't lead to an encyclopedia people trusted, so now, in order to be credible, we have to reference everything. It's unfortunate, but unavoidable, I think.
I still believe in that original idea, and as far asd I'm concerned it still is the whole idea. I feel secure enough that I don't obsess over whether we are trusted. I do not participate in that monomania where absolutely everything needs to be referenced. I don't feel besieged by vandals and spammers, though they do need to be confronted. I don't feel overwhelmed by a multitude of articles about garage bands and other trivia. Wikipedia is not paper, and with a little less attention from their detractors the stubby articles about them will eventually be as difficult to find as the bands themselves. They don't use up a lot of server memory. The need that you see is perfectly avoidable.
Ec
On Jan 24, 2007, at 6:37 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
This was, in fact, the original intended process for writing articles, no? With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow? That's the whole concept behind the wiki/open source thing that the project is based on. References were an afterthought, as indicated by our horrible kludgy support for them.
Absolutely - that *was* the whole idea. Unfortunately, that idea didn't lead to an encyclopedia people trusted, so now, in order to be credible, we have to reference everything. It's unfortunate, but unavoidable, I think.
I doubt it. Now we're an encyclopedia that's becoming increasingly difficult to edit and that nobody trusts.
-Phil
On 1/24/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Absolutely - that *was* the whole idea. Unfortunately, that idea didn't lead to an encyclopedia people trusted, so now, in order to be credible, we have to reference everything. It's unfortunate, but unavoidable, I think.
Actually, I think most of the criticism leveled at Wikipedia isn't because it's not trustworthy. The criticism is because it *pretends* to be.
Do you read the site as if it were a completely authoritative, flawless source of information? Of course you don't. We Wikipedians are always on the lookout for vandalism, bias, and falsehood. But to the outside world, the project is presented as an "encyclopedia", which most think of as an authoritative source of reliable information. Then they look up something that's dear to them and find an error, and get all bent out of shape and badmouth us.
Instead of changing all the rules every week and restricting what people can do and restricting what people can say and restricting what you can enter without references and adding policies and guidelines and Reliable Sources and stable version and on and on to try to make the project 99.9999999%reliable, why don't we just make it very clear to newcomers how the site works? That most of the content is reliable and trustworthy, but keep your eyes peeled for errors? In fact, if you find one, you can fix it yourself! But most newcomers don't even realize how the site works until ''after'' they've found an error and then tried to figure out who's responsible for this horrible mess of a website oh my god it's an outrage.
That's why I was trying to get the tagline changed to say "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit", or "the community-written free encyclopedia" or some such. We even got Jimbo's attention for a few minutes ("something which is neither too long nor too boring nor too timid, but which helps the reader understand that Wikipedia is a work in progress"). But, alas...
Phil Sandifer wrote:
- A casual editor who comes upon a mistake or a redlink is going to
fix it from their personal knowledge, not references. This is a larger problem I've observed before - our demand for references fundamentally runs counter to the idea of "you can edit this page right now" in practice. We have to get realistic about references before we can get serious about them.
Well put!!!
Ec
On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
- The referencing system is non-intuitive, and a first-time editor
can't use it. I still don't know how the fuck to use it, and have always found it to have a terrible interface from a reader's standpoint as well. And for good measure, I just read [[WP:CITE]], which is a godawful instruction manual.
This is mainly caused by our unwillingness to totally and utterly abandon every superseded citation/reference system.
All you need to know is:
-- Here is my fact.<ref>Here is my source<ref>
==References== <references /> --
Really. Just memorise that.
- A casual editor who comes upon a mistake or a redlink is going to
fix it from their personal knowledge, not references. This is a larger problem I've observed before - our demand for references fundamentally runs counter to the idea of "you can edit this page right now" in practice. We have to get realistic about references before we can get serious about them.
Yay. Someone agrees that we have to get realistic.
Steve
On 1/26/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Here is my fact.<ref>Here is my source<ref>
That obviously should have been:
Here is my fact.<ref>Here is my source</ref>
Steve
I think this preloading template would turn new users off more than AfD. I've never had an article I created put up for AfD, even my first new article ever, which I posted without any references, and which was one of my earliest edits.
Making it clear to newcomers how the site works would be a good start. There are many things that I'll probably never figure out, like how to get to a WikiProject page, how to find the citations templates, how to find the vandalism templates (the first time I posted one without having to look at it up two editors jumped me for assuming the guy was a vandal, so I up up patrolling vandalism), how to insert a date into a reference, the code for references (today I tried {{references /}}, {{references/}, {{/ references}}, and {references /} before giving up), and which policies I should, as a newcomer, follow, and which ones will get me bitten or ridiculed. It's too convoluted looking things up on Wikipedia, and most of it is designed (it being the resources you need to know about to follow policies) for the computer savvy and heavy net user.
Making it easier for newcomers would be better than loading a new template that only applies to newcomers.
Oh, and I still can't figure out how to start a new article, so newcomers who do that are either starting new articles that return no search items from Wikipedia, which have a high chance of AfD, or they're not so new, I suspect.
KP