[Foundation-l] Handholding for new articles (Was: Re: 80% of our projects are failing)

Fri Dec 5 15:47:50 UTC 2008

2008/12/5 George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com>:

> I think these are valid concerns about my idea.
> I would respond with "But you can always create pages the existing way" 8-)
> But some new users won't want that much framework either.  I don't
> know how many different methods/paths we can set up for different
> levels and expectations of users (and being aware of things like
> screen real estate, etc).

I've occasionally over the years suggested on wikien-l that we prefill
article pages with an article template, e.g.

---O<---cut here---O<---
First sentence explaining your '''article topic''' with the topic in bold.

Second sentence introducing it more. Explain to the reader why this is
important enough to need an article.

== Subheading ==

Some text explaining the subheading. Add more subheadings and text as needed.

== References ==

What sources back up the information you've written above? Please list
them here. Be able to back up everything you've written.

== External links ==

List here the one or two very best web links possible in the world on
this topic.
---O<---cut here---O<---

Unfortunately, the idea's never gotten any traction, and discussion
has rapidly gone all bikeshed [1] on the precise content of the
hypothetical template and how this is horribly restrictive of
established editors and the Man's keeping them down, etc.

A pity, as I think new en:wp contributors seeing the above when they
start an article would lead to a lot less articles being shot on
sight.

[1] http://bikeshed.org/

- d.