Matt Brown wrote: Yes! A large number of Wikipedia editors are not making quality articles, today. Remedial help is needed. Sydney Poore Go Bengals!

Well, just to get the ball rolling, I created a possible version at [[Wikipedia:New article template]] (or should it have been on meta?). We're you thinking of something along those lines? Sam -- Asbestos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Asbestos On 12/20/05, Nathaniel Sheetz <spangineer(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Actually, while I don't think that it needs to go as far as having a wizard, I'd be for a bit of New article Edit Box re-structuring: How about a box that asks for the articles category (with a link beside it taking you to a pop-up category navigation) and a check-box for stubs? We could also have a series of boxes for See Also's, External Links and References. Maybe if the user doesn't put in a references, their given a pop-up box letting them know that they really ought to use them. Of course, this would be rather more work for the developers than simply adding some text to the edit box. Thoughts? Sam -- Asbestos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Asbestos On 12/20/05, Steve Bennett <stevage(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Speaking as a semi-experienced editor, I wouldn't mind the odd template. Typing is boring. Let the machine do it. Incidentally, there was a proposal somewhere to change the nomenclature from "references" and "external links" to "sources" and "further reading". I've seen this implemented once or twice and it seems to work a lot better, and remove all the confusion over when to use URLs, swaps academic naming conventions ("references") for more understood "sources", etc. If a template is being created, it's probably a good opportunity to think about making a decision on that, and implementing it there. Steve

MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote: Ditto Mgm. I'm not worried about the 800k articles we'd have to change - we got through categorising fine, didn't we? What I'm concerned about is that, as he said, external links != further reading. Maybe we could change "further reading" to "other resources"? John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])

MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote: Some articles have this too. It's all good :-) - d.

G'day David, <snip /> [[Lang Hancock]], which I bring up whenever I need to refer to a good article I've written (since, alas, it's the only really good one I can claim!), has References, External links, Further reading, and See also. I listed all my sources as footnotes in "References", and now there's far too many footnotes; especially when I cite some sources more than once. I've been considering renaming "References" to "Footnotes" and using it only for extraordinary claims, and moving everything else to a sources section ("References"). Then there'll be Footnotes, References, See also, Further reading, and External links. Thank goodness it's not a stub as well! Knowing Hancock, there'd be a *lot* of stub categories the man could fit under. -- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.14.3/209 - Release Date: 21/12/2005

Yeah, personally I think it doesn't even need to be changed. Teach people the difference. Don't change Wikipedia to help the ignorant.

We already have a lot of articles and a lot of them are substandard. I think spending time fixing, updating and generally improving articles is better spent than creating new ones (especially ones that end up on AFD or spark huge rows). But hey, everyone is entitled an opinion. As long as you are one of those that seek out gaps in our coverage that no one disputes needs to be covered. I can think of a few, then creation is a good cause. Mgm