[Foundation-l] Re: [Wikinews-l] the features...

Wed Jul 6 10:10:48 UTC 2005

On 7/6/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Two comments. 
> The first is about the recent crisis on wikinews.
> The second is a comment about the new features.

I agree with what Erik and Dan have already written on this.

When worrying about new features not being discussed, you might want
to look at the number of new features in MediaWiki 1.5. Those were
generally not discussed, but people welcome them as *optional*
improvements to their wikis. There is nothing in the new "create an
article" box that forces any user to use it. You can still go to
http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=My_new_article&action=edit
and write on a blank page, but for newcomers who want to do things
properly, having the option to use
<http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?action=edit&preload=Template%3ANew_page&title=My+new+article>
instead is likely to be very helpful.

> However, Wikipedia just as well might propose pre-filled articles, with
> pre-formatted titles, subtitles, see alsos, external links, categories and
> international links. And IT DOES NOT. Why is it felt necessary on wikinews
> when it is not felt necessary on other projects ? 

Why doesn't Wikipedia use it? Perhaps because the feature has only
just been introduced and no one knows about it, not necessarily
because it's a bad idea. And, I have proposed it be used for leaving
test messages on user talk pages
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29#User_talk_inputbox>).
 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=edit&preload=Template%3ATest&editintro=Template%3ATest+intro&create=Create+article&title=User_talk%3ATestingggg>
gives you helpful links to other templates, and lets you edit the
{{test}} message, whereas previously you had to use {{subst:test}},
save the page, then edit it, or copy and paste the template from
somewhere else, or use the default message which doesn't apply to
every user in the same way.

Not all projects have the same need for the level of standardisation
that Wikinews has, but for those that do, this seems an invaluable
option. Nothing about this feature prevents anyone creating articles
in the traditional way.

Angela.