David Gerard wrote:
I've occasionally over the years suggested on
wikien-l that we prefill
article pages with an article template, e.g.
---O<---cut here---O<---
First sentence explaining your '''article topic''' with the topic
in bold.
Second sentence introducing it more. Explain to the reader why this is
important enough to need an article.
== Subheading ==
Some text explaining the subheading. Add more subheadings and text as needed.
== References ==
What sources back up the information you've written above? Please list
them here. Be able to back up everything you've written.
== External links ==
List here the one or two very best web links possible in the world on
this topic.
---O<---cut here---O<---
Unfortunately, the idea's never gotten any traction, and discussion
has rapidly gone all bikeshed [1] on the precise content of the
hypothetical template and how this is horribly restrictive of
established editors and the Man's keeping them down, etc.
A pity, as I think new en:wp contributors seeing the above when they
start an article would lead to a lot less articles being shot on
sight.
[1]
http://bikeshed.org/ You may want to check out the page the English Wiktionary
has for failed
searches: <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Noexactmatch>. If you
do a search for something like "xxxxx" that has no article
(
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=xxxxx&go=Go) and
click on "Basic" (or whichever) you can see the preloaded article it
gives you, e.g.
<http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?action=edit&preload=Template%3Anew_en_basic&editintro=Template%3Anew_en_noun_intro&title=xxxxx&create=Basic>.
This is especially important on Wiktionary where the format is more
important and inflexible than Wikipedia, and it's also more esoteric. I
think English Wiktionary is not the only Wiktionary to do something like
this.
Dominic