[Foundation-l] Ideas for newbie recruitment

Tue Nov 1 23:39:01 UTC 2011

Agree with David.

We ask for sources everywhere, every place of Wikipedia have ''Cite your Sources''. How could a newbie know how to quote a reference in: <Ref>{{cite web |url= |title= |author= |date= |work= |publisher= |accessdate= }}</ref> ?

And then a newbie get out of the 70% who doesn't saves (funny, it's 70% of waiver and we still have infinite vandalism...) and finally, finally, saves, some pseudo-user (a bot disguised as a user, reverting vandalisms and sending automatic messages 24/7) reverts the newbie cause he doesn't put a source, the newbie gives up. At his second day he have new messages saying ''You didn't put the source. Put a source or I'll revert you againd and again.'' -so, he: ''How could I do that?'' - and the user: easy: ''<Ref>{{cite web |url= |title= |author= |date= |work= |publisher= |accessdate= }}</ref>''

True story.

Something have to change about the sources. I learned put sources after one week trying to learn and not miss the code.

If the sources are so important to Wikipedia, this has to be easier to newbies. 

_____________________
MateusNobre
Wikimedia Brasil - MetalBrasil on Wikimedia projects
(+55) 85 88393509
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> Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2011 04:14:28 +0200
> From: cimonavaro at gmail.com
> To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Ideas for newbie recruitment
> 
> On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 3:06 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 31 October 2011 13:01, Oliver Keyes <okeyes at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> >
> >> I imagine for the other 14.6 percent the
> >> process goes something along the lines of "oh, it says I can make the
> >> changes myself, lets do thaWAUGH, WHAT IN CTHULU'S NAME DOES ALL THIS TEXT
> >> MEAN"
> >
> >
> > I've been editing nearly 8 years and I get that reaction ... here's to
> > usable WYSIWYG!
> >
> >
> 
> 
> Purely aside from the clutter effect of all those tags, particularly
> the references syntax is remarkably opaque. I would imagine a huge
> part of non-stickyness of edits and the
> subsequent demoralisation, stems from the steep learing curve for
> citing sources, Personally I have added a few refences, and each time
> had to pore with considerabe expense of time
> over the relevant help and policy pages. It really is hard to remember
> how the syntax works.
> Would it be overwhelmingly hard to program a pop-up dialogue which
> would first ask which type of source the editor is citing from, which
> would lead to a form with labeled textboxes for the
> various elements of a reference citation with an asterisk beside the
> elements considered vital. My guess is that quite a few of the
> elements of such are already in the code.
> 
> 
> -- 
> --
> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
> 
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