On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 11:27:19 +0000, David Gerard
<fun(a)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
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