On 1 Dec 2009, at 15:18, Brian McNeil wrote:
There are a few special pieces of Javascript active on enWN which try to detect incoming Wikipedians and caution them about editing on Wikinews, i.e. articles are a "snapshot", not to be encyclopedic, &c.
IIRC the flow is as such:
- User reads Wikipedia article, sees link to Wikinews article
- User clicks link, reads Wikinews article
- User selects to edit Wikinews article, a custom WP-specific edit intro is displayed.
Any intermediate steps between 2 and 3 will see the "Referrer:" lost and the custom edit intro not displayed.
Oh, and as some will recall, {{Howdy} }[1] has a "quick guide" for Wikipedians; I'd really love Jimmy and Mike Peel's input on this.
Is it a reasonable assumption to assume that all newly created accounts and anonymous editors will be familiar with Wikipedia but not Wikinews? If so, could something like that "Used to contributing to Wikipedia? See here." link on the howdy template be displayed automatically on the edit intro? Possibly with a "hide" button for those that don't want to see it. Javascript tracking shouldn't be necessary...
BTW, some of the landing pages could really do with a rewrite. e.g. "We put our pants on one leg at a time, just like you, but our jeans are cut faster and have some specializations that you might not know about." http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:For_Wikipedians I think that manages to be sexist and language-ist (colloquialism) simultaneously, aside from being more broadly insulting... ;-)
Mike