[Foundation-l] Handholding for new articles (Was: Re: 80% of our projects are failing)

[Dominic]

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