[WikiEN-l] Preformatted blank articles? (was Experiment on new pages and GFDL)

Fri Dec 9 19:21:51 UTC 2005

On 12/9/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> > Right.  It's not perfect.  Just better.  At least if someone is lazy
> > and doesn't attribute something and then someone else catches them, it
> > can be fixed.
> > If we added a "references" field to the edit page, even if it was
> > optional, the number of attributions would probably increase even
> > more.  The field would be unformatted, so someone could of course type
> > "I just knew it" or "copied from some website" or even "poop" for
> > their reference, but it'd be one more thing to look into if someone
> > put their reference as "Wikipedia".
>
>
> I put forward an idea a while ago which people weren't too keen on, but
> I think it's time for it to be presented again: when a new article is
> created, prefill it with text. e.g.
>
>
>
> A '''pagetitle''' is ... (say what the article is about, with a bit of
> introductory detail)
>
> ==More detail==
>
> (If there's more to say about it, put in sections with == == on the name
> of each section)
>
> ==See also==
>
> ==References==
> * (List the sources you used in writing this article)
> *
> *
>
> ==External links==
> * (List the few most relevant external web pages on the subject (home
> pages, etc) that you know of)
>
>
>
> While this would just be wikitext, and any experienced Wikipedia regular
> could of course format an article how they liked, new editors would be
> presented clearly with what we expect from a new article.
>
> With this in place, I think we could even allow anons to create articles
> again on en:. They certainly wouldn't just put "so what do you want me
> to type?"
>
> I'm not sure if Mediawiki has new article prefill as yet, but it can't
> be that hard. The prefill wikitext could even be a Mediawiki: space message.
>
> (Example of a new article I created today: [[XCB]]. I have something
> like the above template in my head when I write an article.)
>
>
> > Now, adding a references section would preferably add a column to a
> > database table.  Whether or not that would require scheduled downtime,
> > I don't know.
>
>
> Sounds like much more work than the above. The above would set out that
> we do expect references and so on. Ultimately, I think guiding new
> editors in how to do the right thing would work better than trying to
> force a given article format in the database.
>
>
> - d.
>
> [cc: to wikitech-l]

Hmm, you're really talking about something completely different from
me, though.  First of all, this would be for all edits, not just new
articles.  But secondly, whatever you put in that field wouldn't go
into the article at all, it'd go into the article history (next to the
comments field or something).  Unlike references in the article
itself: 1) we'd encourage people to put their reference for *every
edit*, not just major references, 2) the edit would be forever tied to
the reference, 3) you could include sources which wouldn't go in the
references section (from another article, from memory), 4) there'd be
no complaints about spamming (I've seen references to web pages
removed because they were considered ads), 5) In cases where the
source you use is already in the references section, you'd be able to
note that you used that source for *this edit* too.

I guess there is an argument that this would be redundant work for
those who already put references in the ==References== section, but in
my experience that represents a very small portion of edits, whereas
the vast majority of edits should mention a source somewhere.  Of
course the best argument is that this should just go in the comments
section, which is why I'm somewhat hesitant about whether or not it's
a good idea.