On Jan 24, 2007, at 11:58 AM, Omegatron wrote:
If we're going to preload an "article
skeleton" for new articles,
what else
are we going to include? Sections? See also and External links?
Sample
images? Templates? Categories? Infoboxes?
On 1/23/07, Mets501 wrote:
It already is included in the text above the edit box, but it's not
enough.
New users don't know how to add references, and therefore just
ignore the
whole thing.
Sounds like a problem with the referencing system...
There are two problems here.
1) The referencing system is non-intuitive, and a first-time editor
can't use it. I still don't know how the fuck to use it, and have
always found it to have a terrible interface from a reader's
standpoint as well. And for good measure, I just read [[WP:CITE]],
which is a godawful instruction manual.
2) A casual editor who comes upon a mistake or a redlink is going to
fix it from their personal knowledge, not references. This is a
larger problem I've observed before - our demand for references
fundamentally runs counter to the idea of "you can edit this page
right now" in practice. We have to get realistic about references
before we can get serious about them.
-Phil