On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
I think educating editors should be tried before be try any sort of technical solution, so I'm all for a template. At least, that way people can't claim they didn't know how to include the references we require (which is now clearly said on edit pages by the way as well)
Mgm
I guess if the template is kept to the article namespace only it's not such a bad thing. I wouldn't oppose at least trying it out. But I do think it's a different idea.
In the other thread I propose requiring comments for every edit, but only for users that aren't logged in. Let's test it out on them first, and see how it goes :). One tweak I just thought of now though is we'd probably be better off limiting this to only the article namespace.
(Now, how to handle a top post...do I delete the rest or keep it? ohwell)
Anthony
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 12/9/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Right. It's not perfect. Just better. At least if someone is lazy and doesn't attribute something and then someone else catches them, it can be fixed. If we added a "references" field to the edit page, even if it was optional, the number of attributions would probably increase even more. The field would be unformatted, so someone could of course type "I just knew it" or "copied from some website" or even "poop" for their reference, but it'd be one more thing to look into if someone put their reference as "Wikipedia".
I put forward an idea a while ago which people weren't too keen on, but I think it's time for it to be presented again: when a new article is created, prefill it with text. e.g.
A '''pagetitle''' is ... (say what the article is about, with a bit of introductory detail)
==More detail==
(If there's more to say about it, put in sections with == == on the name of each section)
==See also==
==References==
- (List the sources you used in writing this article)
==External links==
- (List the few most relevant external web pages on the subject (home
pages, etc) that you know of)
While this would just be wikitext, and any experienced Wikipedia regular could of course format an article how they liked, new editors would be presented clearly with what we expect from a new article.
With this in place, I think we could even allow anons to create articles again on en:. They certainly wouldn't just put "so what do you want me to type?"
I'm not sure if Mediawiki has new article prefill as yet, but it can't be that hard. The prefill wikitext could even be a Mediawiki: space message.
(Example of a new article I created today: [[XCB]]. I have something like the above template in my head when I write an article.)
Now, adding a references section would preferably add a column to a database table. Whether or not that would require scheduled downtime, I don't know.
Sounds like much more work than the above. The above would set out that we do expect references and so on. Ultimately, I think guiding new editors in how to do the right thing would work better than trying to force a given article format in the database.
- d.
[cc: to wikitech-l]
Hmm, you're really talking about something completely different from me, though. First of all, this would be for all edits, not just new articles. But secondly, whatever you put in that field wouldn't go into the article at all, it'd go into the article history (next to the comments field or something). Unlike references in the article itself: 1) we'd encourage people to put their reference for *every edit*, not just major references, 2) the edit would be forever tied to the reference, 3) you could include sources which wouldn't go in the references section (from another article, from memory), 4) there'd be no complaints about spamming (I've seen references to web pages removed because they were considered ads), 5) In cases where the source you use is already in the references section, you'd be able to note that you used that source for *this edit* too.
I guess there is an argument that this would be redundant work for those who already put references in the ==References== section, but in my experience that represents a very small portion of edits, whereas the vast majority of edits should mention a source somewhere. Of course the best argument is that this should just go in the comments section, which is why I'm somewhat hesitant about whether or not it's a good idea. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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