[Foundation-l] Board Resolution: Openness

[Risker]

On 10 April 2011 16:05, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 13:54, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > * "how do I delete an article?" and its counterpart: "why was my
> > article deleted?"
> > * "how do I merge/split an article?"
> > * "hey, can I reference a blogpost in this article?"
> >
> > There are formatting questions that aren't so easy to figure out either:
> > * "how do I put a footnote in an article?"
> > * "how do I find and insert an infobox?"
>
> In fact a lot of those issues are spelled out very clearly. See
> [[WP:BLOGS]] for whether you can reference a blogpost. See
> [[WP:INCITE]] for a quick way to add a footnote. See
> [[Category:Infobox templates]] for how to add an infobox.
>


See now, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Look at that lovely
alphabet soup.  I bet nobody can explain why the shortcut to the page on how
to add references sounds like something involving rioting in the streets.

And how would a new user even have the funniest idea about categories, let
alone templates?

Actually, there's a huge bugaboo - all the templates that are used all over
the place. Most users aren't able to write them, and we get back to the
WSIWYG issues of unclear information on the editing screen when they're
used.  Between templates and wikitables, there are big parts of the project
that turn into absolute mysteries when the user clicks "Edit".

Incidentally, part of the [[WP:INCITE]] page is incorrect: List defined
references don't look like that in the editing screen.



>
> The deletion process does look daunting, but actually if you just
> clunk through the instructions,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:AfD#How_to_list_pages_for_deletion
> it's pretty easy, and I say that as someone with a template phobia.
>

Keeping in mind that I too am an experienced editor, it still took me nearly
5 minutes plus several open tabs to file an AfD the other day. I keep being
told "just install Huggle/Twinkle/Friendly/some other script" but because I
work on a wide range of browsers, these cause problems for me.  Having said
that, the main issue was time and number of steps, not legibility or
physical difficulty.



>
> We work on a complex website that caters to lots of different needs
> and skill levels, so there's a limit to how simple these processes can
> be made.
>
>
Agreed, but the things that we expect even a beginning editor to do should
be as simple and easily found as possible.  Citing references, in
particular, is buried in bits and pieces all over the place. A newbie who
manages to find [[WP:INCITE]] and follows its instructions is still just as
likely to be trouted because they didn't use the "right" style of references
for the article ("Sorry, Wikiproject:XXX requires that only Harvard style
references be used in articles under our aegis. Please resubmit your edit,
properly formatted.")  We can do better.

Risker/Anne