On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 11:27:19 +0000, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Deathphoenix wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
When the page for creating a new article comes up, would it be useful to include an article skeleton? Something like the following: Is this a useful idea? Do new article patrollers think it will help?
That sounds like a great idea. Since the "well-meaning awful" often comes from people who might not know where to look for such templates, maybe it would be a good idea to provide a link in the "Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name" template, to the edit page, or maybe provide a button that inserts that template (similar to the buttons that help you insert bolded text, italicised text, signatures, and so on).
If they don't know how to format an article, they wouldn't know what a button meant, though ...
The only downside I can see is the possibility for function creep, and idiots using this inappropriately as a hammer to use on others.
- d.
Indeed. For a start, many new articles are stubs, and for stubs, I prefer the following format, rather than sections on a short article:
:''See also:'' [[Article a]], [[Article b]]
:''External links:'' [[site a]], [[site b]]
For an example of this format, check many of the towns listed on [[List of towns in the Republic of Ireland]] (the talk page to-do list lists the stub ones specifically).
Also, I would consider it optimistic at best to expect references for the more humdrum stub articles. I'm not discouraging the practice of encouraging references - but for stubs - which mostly just relate basic information, contributors shouldn't be beaten with the "provide references" mantra.
Even beyond stubs, to shorter/average size articles, this may be the case.
Zoney