[Foundation-l] Show community consensus for Wikilove

Theo10011 de10011 at gmail.com
Sun Oct 30 13:42:52 UTC 2011


On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 3:52 PM, Oliver Keyes <scire.facias at gmail.com>wrote:

> You seem to be missing my point - that the WL tool serves an ulterior
> function of allowing users who do not understand markup to communicate and
> request help in a way they can understand. I *am* saying that most of those
> with few or no edits will have problems understanding markup, which is why
> it's important, even without WL's core purpose, that the tool remain
> available to new editors.
>
> On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 9:55 AM, Fae <fae at wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:
>
> > On 30 October 2011 08:06, Oliver Keyes <scire.facias at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Surely making it only available to those users who understand markup
> > > completely undermines one of the great unintended consequences - that
> > it's
> > > really useful for posting talkpage messages?
> >
> > I did not equate "users with 10 edits" with those that understand
> > markup, these are different things. My use of the word "template" is
> > generic, in that Wikilove provides standard templates for user talk
> > pages, this does not imply anything about the ability of users to
> > understand wiki markup or html.
> >
> > Apologies if my language was not plain enough to avoid
> > misinterpretation in unexpected ways.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Fae
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
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Those are two separate things. One, the delivery mechanism for Wikilove, a
pop-up window on top of the userpage to select and click on a pretty
picture and add a message. Second, the actual content, the
barn-star/kitty/food template.

I disagree with Ironholds that it would be easier for a new users to
navigate the hundreds of pages of commonly used templates and then find the
right one to use and then use it correctly after customizing it, as opposed
to you know, leaving a message in plain English. Last I checked,
"pseudo-HTML markups" weren't a necessity for posting on a talk page.

It prob. takes someone at least a good 50-100 edits before they even know
what a template is, then using and customizing the right one might take
longer.

The delivery mechanism on the other hand is what I think is very useful for
new users. There is an enormous amount of benefit if that could be
customized for new users pre-loaded with some generic help templates they
can actually use to edit, rather than spam love.

Theo


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