Agree with David.
We ask for sources everywhere, every place of Wikipedia have ''Cite your Sources''. How could a newbie know how to quote a reference in: <Ref>{{cite web |url= |title= |author= |date= |work= |publisher= |accessdate= }}</ref> ?
And then a newbie get out of the 70% who doesn't saves (funny, it's 70% of waiver and we still have infinite vandalism...) and finally, finally, saves, some pseudo-user (a bot disguised as a user, reverting vandalisms and sending automatic messages 24/7) reverts the newbie cause he doesn't put a source, the newbie gives up. At his second day he have new messages saying ''You didn't put the source. Put a source or I'll revert you againd and again.'' -so, he: ''How could I do that?'' - and the user: easy: ''<Ref>{{cite web |url= |title= |author= |date= |work= |publisher= |accessdate= }}</ref>''
True story.
Something have to change about the sources. I learned put sources after one week trying to learn and not miss the code.
If the sources are so important to Wikipedia, this has to be easier to newbies.
_____________________ MateusNobre Wikimedia Brasil - MetalBrasil on Wikimedia projects (+55) 85 88393509 30440865
Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2011 04:14:28 +0200 From: cimonavaro@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Ideas for newbie recruitment
On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 3:06 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 31 October 2011 13:01, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
I imagine for the other 14.6 percent the process goes something along the lines of "oh, it says I can make the changes myself, lets do thaWAUGH, WHAT IN CTHULU'S NAME DOES ALL THIS TEXT MEAN"
I've been editing nearly 8 years and I get that reaction ... here's to usable WYSIWYG!
Purely aside from the clutter effect of all those tags, particularly the references syntax is remarkably opaque. I would imagine a huge part of non-stickyness of edits and the subsequent demoralisation, stems from the steep learing curve for citing sources, Personally I have added a few refences, and each time had to pore with considerabe expense of time over the relevant help and policy pages. It really is hard to remember how the syntax works. Would it be overwhelmingly hard to program a pop-up dialogue which would first ask which type of source the editor is citing from, which would lead to a form with labeled textboxes for the various elements of a reference citation with an asterisk beside the elements considered vital. My guess is that quite a few of the elements of such are already in the code.
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
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