Wikipedia talk:Article wizard/Archive 2

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{{

I don't think this is a template. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:36, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Done. Martin is right this isn't a template, I've added {{pp-protected|small=yes}} instead. Rambo's Revenge (talk) 19:46, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

That's right. My mistake. But the main thing is we fixed it. Thank you. Debresser (talk) 21:06, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

This article has widened the scope of

This refers to

Wikipedia:Article wizard 2.0/Wizard-Biographical notability, 4th bullet point. Rd232 ^talk

17:45, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Well it was adapted from the

WP:AFC wizard, which says the same thing ([1]). It might be that the wizard wasn't revised to keep up with changes in WP:ATH, or something. So update to match, I guess. Rd232 ^talk

17:48, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

 Done. Like that. Rd232 ^talk 20:04, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Template:New unreviewed article has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. RL0919 (talk) 21:53, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:46, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I like the Wizard 1.0 layout better (Wikipedia:Article wizard). It's SIMPLER, and KISS is an important principle if we are designing a wizard for n00bies and otherwise challenged folks. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 03:57, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I am unable to create an article. This never happend to me before. I'm going crazy. It seems, that it is saved however, as it appears, when clicking on "show changes". Really strangee. Do you know what's going on? <article text misplaced here so removed>—Preceding unsigned comment added by Saippuakauppias (talk • contribs)

Hi Saippuakauppias. There's seems to be a very recent sitewide problem (it's not just you). Just give it a bit of time. By the way, future posts like this are better placed at either the

helpme}} on your talk page and post a question below it and someone will stop by. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk

) 03:51, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

<!--- Categories --->
[[Category:Articles created via the Article Wizard]]

<!-- Add categories below and read note afterward
[[Category:Articles created via the Article Wizard]]

Articles in user space do not go in the encyclopedia categories and are presently commented out.
When the article is published in name space (that is as a regular page) uncomment the categories.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_namespace for an explanation.
-->

Also, the Article Wizard should use the correct number of dashes in the code comments. Many users will be learning wiki-syntax from its generated source and there's no reason to give them potential confusion about the number of dashes needed in comments. Jason Quinn (talk) 19:09, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

{{

Great idea, but not done, because it doesn't work inside the {{

help desk, maybe). If not, it may be worth redesigning the page to accommodate the link outside the button, as having users come straight back would certainly be helpful. Rd232 ^talk

10:07, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

It should work: {{Article wizard/button2|[{{fullurl:Special:Userlogin|type=signup&returnto={{urlencode:{{FULLPAGENAME}}}}}} Register as a new user] <small>(no personal info required)<br />then come back here. See [[Wikipedia:Why create an account?]]</small>}}

Register as a new user (no personal info required)
then come back here. See Wikipedia:Why create an account?

--Liangent (talk) 09:58, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Huh. That looks like what I did when I tried to add your code initially... except it works. I must've made a mistake somehow. Anyway, sorted now. Rd232 ^talk 10:31, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

{{

Aren't three shortcuts enough? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:30, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Not when the most obvious one isn't listed... – ukexpat (talk) 22:15, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

WP:WIZ2.0 doesn't seem very helpful (given that we have WP:WIZ2), so I replaced that. Rd232 ^talk 22:24, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I was unaware of this nice looking tool. What would it take to copy it to Wikinews and adapt to news writing? The general stages it goes through pretty much match up with Wikinews' checking process, I'm happy to work on redoing site-specific texts for those, so it's just a case of "what changes from CSS/Javascript/Mediawiki namespace do I need to copy?" --Brian McNeil /^talk 17:28, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

The current text needs tweaking:

• "Unfortunately you need an account to create new articles yourself. You have two options:"

The word "unfortunately" is unnecessary. Please remove it and stick to a simple style without that controversial editorial opinion. --

 Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:45, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

As this template was blatantly "stolen" from WikiProject Articles for creation I have merged them and moved ours across to retain the history. To give due credit, most aspects of the design come from Shinmawa's efforts in 2006, although I like the few changes that you made to it. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:31, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

OK. I was going to suggest (but didn't get round to it) that there may be changes to the content, originally adapted from the AFC wizard, which might be usefully adopted back into the AFC wizard. Rd232 ^talk 11:39, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I am actually going to look at merging the two different wizards because they basically serve the same purpose. The only difference is that the place where the articles are created needs to be in project talk space (because anons can't create articles in mainspace) so we could perhaps add that as an option to the

ready for submission page. — Martin (MSGJ · talk

) 11:46, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I was wondering why this page is protected, as it seems to go against standard practice. You could put those links in a {{notice}} at the top and then allow discussion on that page. You might even get suggestions on how to improve the wizard coming in. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:38, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

It's semi-protected; it just seemed a good idea, to ensure users go to pages that are actually widely watched (help pages), and to separate user feedback (

Wikipedia:Article wizard 2.0/Userfeedback) from experienced editor feedback. We could try it that way, but I predict people will use it as a general "er, what do I do now". That might be useful feedback too I suppose... Rd232 ^talk

11:43, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Only one way to find out! Unprotected — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:05, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Neither of these talk pages are receiving much traffic lately, so I think it might make sense to merge them and keep all discussion in one place. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:08, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

I think "New article name is" should be reformatted to something like "INSERT YOUR NEW ARTICLE NAME HERE", because I see some articles created with the wizard, whose opening sentences say something like "New article name is John Doe..." Some newbies may not understand they have to replace "New article name" with the actual name of their article. Intelligentsium 20:03, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I see this quite often, and I agree with the above suggestion. DES ^(talk) 17:32, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I propose that the

• Wikipedia:Article wizard 2.0/Wizard-Ready for submission/sandbox

Are the three options too wide to fit on people's monitors or does that look okay? Any comments would be welcome. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:25, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I've reformatted the page and think it looks better now. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:43, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

If there are no comments I will probably implement this in a day or two. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:04, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not entirely convinced; the advantage of reduced maintenance is clear (assuming that AFC then points to it); but I fear it complicates things a little for the user. It's not just adding an extra choice at the final stage; it's adding a choice which is of a fundamentally different category of logic: the existing two are "are you ready?" The additional one is "do you have an account?" Anyway, these pages aren't muchly watched - I suggest a

WP:VPR posting. Rd232 ^talk

12:32, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't suppose there's any clean way to direct users based on detecting whether they're logged in or not? Rd232 ^talk 12:33, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I understand what you're saying, but it is not really fundamentally different because AfC accepts registered users as well (we get quite a lot of them actually) and so it is really just another choice of where to put the submission. (Of course unregistered users can only choose that option ...) Can you think of a clearer way of achieving this aim? The problem with asking the question at the start is that there is no way, as far as I can tell, of "remembering" their answer at the end of the wizard and so you'd have two separate wizards like we do currently. I doubt there is a way to detect this automatically, but I know the right person to ask about that. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:08, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I wonder if you could use help:magic words to hack an equivalent of HTML's GET? If every "next-step" link within the wizard checked whether the URL included #unregistered, and then if it was in the current URL, sent the user to a "next-step" link including it too. Rd232 ^talk 18:24, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

MSGJ asked me to come here and comment since I coded up the function to show some text only if a user is an admin or an accountcreator.

In javascript we can detect exactly what kind a user is: IP-user, normal user, autoconfirmed user, accountcreator, admin, etc. We can use this to do all kinds of things, for instance we can selectively insert, hide, or unhide things. I use this in the editnotice system to show some links only to admins and accountcreators.

There are some limitations to this: Browsers that doesn't have javascript enabled will only see the default text. And unfortunately more users and browsers than you might think runs without javascript. So things should be built in such a way that they are still usable even if our detection fails due to lack of javascript.

And browsers that don't understand CSS (mostly text based browsers and some really old browsers) show all the hidden items on the page. These browsers are rare, so we don't need to cater that much to them, just see to that things don't get terribly broken for them.

So for the Article wizard the best approach seems to be to have the default to show both alternatives, then use javascript to hide the item that is not relevant to the current user. Note that users without javascript see both alternatives, so they need to make sense for such users. This also means that both alternatives should be short, since some users will see everything.

Technically what I can supply is this:

I can make MediaWiki:Common.js load a special CSS page for each kind of user. Then in those CSS pages I can put code for classes like "user-hide" and "IP-hide". Then if you mark an item with "IP-hide" it will be hidden when an IP-user views the page. Like this:

<div class="IP-hide">
This text will not be seen by IP-users.
</div>

I'll make those classes work for <div>, <span> and <table> tags. That should cover most usage cases.

That's the opposite to what I do in the editnotice system, there instead per default the items are hidden, and then I just unhide them for admins and accountcreators. Like this:

<div class="sysop-show accountcreator-show" style="display: none;">
This text only shows for admins and accountcreators.
</div>

By the way, isn't it so that only autoconfirmed users can create articles? Thus we need to select on autoconfirmed or not. Not on IP-user vs. logged in user. Right?

Note that those classes can then be used on any page anywhere in Wikipedia. Adding this ability to Wikipedia is controversial. We used to have it long ago but those classes got heavily abused, so there will probably be some resistance to add this again. See Wikipedia:HiddenStructure and the current discussion MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Hidden items.

--David Göthberg (talk) 19:27, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, if that's acceptable technology in general, it sounds like a good enough solution here. How good depends of course on the proportion of users without Javascript; "low" I think we can agree, but how low? And what do you think about my "HTML GET" equivalent idea? Is it feasible? Rd232 ^talk 19:43, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately there are quite a lot of users who visit and edit Wikipedia with javascript disabled. The reason is that many schools, companies and libraries etc. have javascript disabled for security reasons. (Many of the ways to hack web browsers need javascript.)

I wrote my message above at the same time as you wrote yours about the HTML GET idea (I got an editconflict when saving), so I didn't look into it then. But looking at it now:

As far as I know we can't use template code to detect what anchor was used when calling a page. Anchors are a client side thing, the server never sees the anchor. So we can't use anchors to "remember what the user answered on the first page".

But your basic idea is good, we can make it work. Like this:

We can send the user to different pages depending on which options he did choose. But we can put the actual page content on one page that is transcluded into the different pages. Then you can add code that checks what page the user is on when creating the links to the next page in each step. Like this:

If on the "Start" page the user clicks "Logged in", then we send him to the page "Step 2/logged in". While if he clicks "Not logged in" we send him to "Step 2/not logged in". The entire content of page "Step 2/logged in" is this: "{{Step 2/shared}}". And the content of "Step 2/not logged in" also is just "{{Step 2/shared}}". So the actual page content is in the /shared page. And that page will make links to "Step 3/logged in" or "Step 3/not logged in" depending on what the current subpage name is. (It simply adds "/{{SUBPAGENAME}}" to the links it has to the next step.) Reusing the subpage name like that for the next step makes it easy to add more paths in the future. Or even make the paths split into more branches further down the steps, so we can actually remember more than one option!

And in the /shared pages we can of course use parserFunctions to check the subpage name if we want to display some things on the pages differently.

We can do many variations of this...

--David Göthberg (talk) 21:25, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

This is an excellent idea. But if we are going to do this then it would make sense to ask this question on the previous page, so we only have to remember the answer for one step and not for six steps, which could get quite complicated! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:50, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

That would mean changing this page:

Wikipedia:Article_wizard_2.0/Wizard-Content. I think that can work, and be made not too confusing, even if we introduce a "by the way, you can register and come back here if you want" note. (If we didn't do that, it might cause frustration when AFC visitors see the other options and want them.) Rd232 ^talk

00:26, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

But that page is about the article's content ... which is completely different to whether the user is logged in or not. Perhaps that would be more confusing than putting a third option on the final page. I think, on reflection, that if DG can implement the javascript detection, then that might be the easiest solution.

• If the user is logged in, we show them only the "go live" and "userspace" options.
• If the user is not logged in, we show them only the "AFC" option.
• And if they don't have java enabled, then they will see all three options. (No big problem I think.)

— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:52, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Well I imagined it as part of the Next Step bit at the bottom. But, even using Javascript on the Content page in the same way as you suggest, maybe it's just simpler on the final page. Rd232 ^talk 14:14, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I've asked DG to implement the javascript detection when he has the time. Then we can move forward with that method. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:03, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Well the anchor's part of the URL, so I thought we could parse it that way. But if it were feasible it would surely be more complex than your approach. Rd232 ^talk 00:25, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

An AFC Editor Opinion: (I will notify afc's on the irc channel in minute) Is there anyway to detect the number of edits a user has? Then we can forward new editors to afc. Although it creates more work for us, it saves peoples time on speedying. -- /

Notify Me

\ 22:09, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I seriously doubt that would be possible. Anyway I think it is wrong to say that new editors should use AfC. The article wizard is wholly designed for new editors. New registered users can create in article space or their userspace. The purpose of AfC was to accept article submissions from unregistered users. (It's just that we have never turned away registered users before.) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:43, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Very true there, didn't mean to diminish new users or talk against the article wizard. But your orginal preposal sounds good. -- /

Notify Me

\ 00:08, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Implemented

As this discussion has dried up and we still do not have the capability of selectively showing content to different users, I am proposing to implement my initial suggestion (Wikipedia:Article wizard 2.0/Wizard-Ready for submission/sandbox) on a trial basis to see how it works. If there is any negative feedback we can revert and discuss, but I feel having one more link on that page will not significantly add to its complexity. If we gain the the selective content display in the future this can certainly be added at a later stage. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:04, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I have now edited the front page of the wizard to reflect the fact that unregistered users can also create articles through the wizard. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:46, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

The thought crossed my mind before, and it came up in feedback recently - can we include some "sample article" links for people to look at? Ideally these would be good, shortish new articles perhaps from a year or two ago, so we can link to "how it began" as well as "how it is now", for different types of article (biography, company, etc). Thoughts? Rd232 ^talk 11:05, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like a reasonable idea. Do you mean linking to old versions of articles so that people can see how they've progressed? Where do you propose to put these links? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:17, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I do mean that, and I wasn't entirely sure. Perhaps on the "Notability" pages because they're broken down into categories (eg

Wikipedia:Article wizard 2.0/Wizard-Content, the last step before drafting. Conceivably the examples (or more examples) could be listed on a separate page, perhaps even with a brief summary of the example (i.e. why chosen; what to look for qua example); with the page linked from the Wizard. Rd232 ^talk

17:19, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Article wizard 2.0 was a success IMO, but the environment it is build on has its limitations. I'm thinking that an Article wizard 3.0 should be a tool hosted in Toolserver. Sole Soul (talk) 16:41, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

What are the limitations? What would be the advantages of your proposed method? How could it even work having an off-site article wizard? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:01, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

On the toolserver, you can use a full range of PHP and other stuff (I don't know the details). On Wikipedia, you've got to work within MediaWiki, which is severely limiting. For instance, a fully flexible version could take some data from the user entered in an HTML form, and convert that into wikitext to be saved into the new Wikipedia page. Showing the user the relationship between the fields and the resulting wikitext would help them go up the learning curve more quickly. Ultimately, it could also lead to a full-featured editor that hides the wikitext from the user, much like HTML editors hide the text (but allow you to see it if you need to). The main downside, I think, would be the additional load on the toolserver if the tool becomes widely used. But in the long term, this is the sort of direction we should be going in, to make WP editing much more user-friendly. Rd232 ^talk 10:54, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Given that wizard 1.0 is defunct, I think it would be more sensible for

Agreed. And I think we could move the entire wizard to Wikipedia:Article wizard. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:25, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually, yes, moving the whole thing over to

WP:WIZARD points) sounds like a better idea; I'd endorse that. Anyone else? Gonzonoir (talk

) 15:25, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

If there are no objections, I'm planning to move it over shortly. It will require a lot of care however, because preload templates have a habit of breaking unless all incoming links are updated. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:49, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

This has now been done. Hopefully without any side effects ... — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:33, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Looks good from here - thanks very much. Gonzonoir (talk) 22:32, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I've changed the one page which was transcluding this page and don't see any need for other pages to transclude it. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:43, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for what you did, but please be a little more responsive next time. All kinds of pages are transcluded (I saw a transclusion of

WP:BIO e.g. today). Better be safe. Debresser (talk

) 18:55, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

For the sake of simplicity, I moved Wikipedia:Article wizard/Wizard-New edit instructions to Template:Article wizard/editintro. I propose to move the others as well but I'm not sure what names would be best. How about something like:

• Wikipedia:Article wizard/Wizard-New edit instructions A -> Template:Article wizard/editintro/regular
• Wikipedia:Article wizard/Wizard-New edit instructions B -> Template:Article wizard/editintro/exists
• Wikipedia:Article wizard/Wizard-New edit instructions userdraft -> Template:Article wizard/editintro/userspace
• Wikipedia:Article wizard/Wizard-New edit instructions C -> Template:Article wizard/editintro/userspace/regular
• Wikipedia:Article wizard/Wizard-New edit instructions D -> Template:Article wizard/editintro/userspace/wrong namespace

— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:41, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

fine by me - enhances clarity. Wikipedia talk:Article wizard/Documentation will need updating. Rd232 ^talk 18:48, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

he also liked farting in front of his wife

Sticky prods have started. Here's a summary:

"Wikipedia now requires

proposed deletion

, these articles must contain a source before the tag can be removed. If the article remains unsourced after 10 days (in contrast to 7 days for a regular proposed deletion), the articles can be deleted. After adding the deletion tag to an article, the user must notify the creator or main contributor.

"If the article is deleted, it may be undeleted when an editor is prepared to add a source. The undeletion can be requested either through the deleting administrator or at Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion."

User:SlimVirgin, erasing my comments from your own talk page is one thing. Don't remove my comments from other talk pages. Maurreen (talk) 20:52, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

The above is still in the process of gathering consensus. You shouldn't be adding it anywhere else as though it's an established policy. SlimVirgin ^{talk contribs} 21:18, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

I just stumbled onto this wizard myself today and it seems as though I may have inadvertently been duplicating some efforts. I have been attempting to create a

In fact this was mentioned previously as a possibility for the future - providing skeletons for different types of article. Military biography is a bit specialised as a starting point - we should have company, biography, band, that kind of thing to choose from first, and then military biography would be one of the subtypes of biography. How to do this efficiently and non-confusingly is a slight headache, but I think I have it. At the bottom of Step 5, we tweak it to include, below a "looks good" header, to provide links with the names of the different article skeletons. Each link goes to a different Step 6 page, but the difference isn't visible to the end user - it's just feeding a different preload and editintro into the creation options via a template. Proliferating pages is a pain, but using a template to include the current Step 6 and feed different parameters to that template (i.e. {{

WP:VPT, as this page doesn't have that much traffic. Rd232 ^talk

19:18, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply. Your absolutely right, a military biography is a bit complicated and in a better world I would say that we should setup a form that contains multiple input boxes, but since the wikisoftware doesn't support that (yet) no use dwelling on it. It looks like there is already a category for Biography on the wizard so that parts been done. I think I have a reasonable start towards the military biography piece but admittedly mine has a lot of work to be done (I only started on it yesterday). I believe that most biographies can be classified into 1 of about 5 basic groups (military, politician/royalty, performing arts (Actors, authors, musicians, mimes and the like), business & education and other. There are a huge amount of military biographies and since I already have a start on that it seems reasonable to continue developing that one and once we get a little further along then we can work on others, IMO. I will start transitioning mine into the template established by the Article Wizard. --

talk

) 20:07, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

There aren't any templates of the type we're talking about. I presume you mean Wikipedia:Article wizard/Biographical notability - but this is just for explaining biographical notability, it doesn't provide anything else, in terms of skeletion/preload or editnotice/editintro specific to bio articles. All the notability pages lead to the same page at Step 4. Also I'm not sure what transitioning you mean - your editnotice/preload can be plugged straight into the template structure I described above. Rd232 ^talk 20:30, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks again, I must have misunderstood how that biographical notibility link worked, my fault there. In regards to transitioning I was referring to changing the structure I have to something more inline with this article wizard template. Unless you think it would be less confusing to have a seperate template specifically for Military history biographies, which also makes sense to me. Also, since it appears you at least glanced at the template I created, do you have any comments or suggestions for improving it? --

talk

) 20:49, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I think the best thing is if you start a conversation at a Village Pump (

WP:VPT) about this upgrade to the wizard (i.e. introducing custom preload templates for different subjects) and try and get more input and help that way. I'm going to be fairly absent for a while, but this is well worth pursuing. cheers, Rd232 ^talk

23:04, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Missing info here I think

I was looking at the info explained on the

talk

) 17:29, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

It's possibly too specific. It may be considered to fall under the first (general) bullet point. Rd232 ^talk 23:06, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Preloaded article

Concerning the preloaded article from Template:Article wizard/skeleton, I just noticed a misunderstanding of a new editor with the lead stub: Instead of replacing the "New article name is ", they turned it into "New article name is Eckhard Stratmann-Mertens" and placed the actual lead below that. :)
Not sure if additional information would be beneficial or confusing though, just making note of it.
Cheers, Amalthea 14:30, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

The injunction to replace that text is the first item in the DO list in the editnotice. If people don't read it, they don't read it... Rd232 ^talk 06:17, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Can the article wizard be made smart enough to replace this text with the article name entered by the user? Many many people dont read it and I think this is a bigger issue that you are giving it credit for here. The number of articles containing New article name is I come across while new page patrolling is staggering. The New Article Wizard is helping new users create better articles but building the wizard around a preloaded skeleton article is still an issue. The New Article Wizard was created because new users dont read instructions and the wizard while helpful, hasn't come even close to solving that.--RadioFan (talk) 12:39, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Do discussion on this issue in a week so I'm going to be

WP:BOLD. Template has been updated with some more guidance for new users. Example.com link has been put in HTML comments with more description of how external links work. "New article name" name has been updated with directions to replace that text. Hopefully this will cut down on the users who dont touch these sections and just start writing.--RadioFan (talk

) 00:04, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

There may be an advantage in replacing "New article name" with {{subst:PAGENAME}} so that the name of the page will be substituted when it is saved. However to do this without actually substiting the name of the template when you save that takes a little bit of ingenuity! The following should work: — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:47, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

'''{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>PAGENAME}}''' is

On the downside, this is more code to confuse newbies with; I'd rather keep code to the minimum necessary. I don't think forgetting to replace "new article name" is a big problem; apart from anything else it's a diagnostic, suggesting the whole article needs checking more carefully than usual. Anyway, what I've been thinking is if there isn't some way to have a Javascript version of the Wizard. At the moment it would need to be loaded from Common.js, for every page, which is maybe too weighty. Maybe we could ask for the software to be changed to have optional per-page Javascript files? Each would need to be fully protected of course, and I imagine they would need approval on an individual basis like

WP:BRFA for bots. Any thoughts about this sort of direction for an eventual Wizard v3? (One downside: rather higher level of expertise needed to construct/maintain it, though if well-designed the non-code bits should remain easy to tweak.) Rd232 ^talk

08:59, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

As long as there are few pages using it, a simple switch on the full page name in Common.js which in turn imports the page's js would be lightweight, and could be done without developer action. Amalthea 09:22, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Very cool. Now all we need is some really clever Javascript developer type who could kickstart that approach in a simple way, eg to address the concerns in the section below, and create a basis for future development in that direction. I wonder where we could find someone like that? :) Rd232 ^talk 16:26, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposed template changes

The changes made recently to the template were revered by an editor who objected to them. I'd like others to take a look at them and provide some feedback. --RadioFan (talk) 11:44, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, there was too much bloat in there. I do agree with Rd232 that we need to keep this simple, and minimal is good. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:52, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

It's so simple that it is apparently either confusing new editors or not providing sufficient guidance. While I'd love it to be simple and minimal as well, it's not working. --RadioFan (talk) 13:16, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

"Enter your new article name here"

Can this system be altered so that it won't accept new userspace drafts or articles which are named "Enter your new article name here"? A quick look through the contributions of new editors will show dozens of pages named in this way. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:48, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, this is a common error. But to my knowledge there is no way to prevent new userspace drafts named that, because each page is unique.

create-protected. Perhaps we can make this even clearer... but perhaps it's not really that big a deal - naming can always be fixed at the point it's moved to mainspace, when it actually matters. I suppose we can change MediaWiki:Newarticletext, which provides the short editnotice message above a text box when an article is being created, and test for "/Enter your new article name here" as the {{SUBPAGENAME}} magic word. Rd232 ^talk

06:16, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

New users ignoring instructions is a big deal. It's creating a lot of work for editors. This wizard is nice, its solved some problems but its created some new ones.--RadioFan (talk) 23:49, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

If anyone understands the syntax of MediaWiki:Titleblacklist it would probably be possible to prevent the creation of any page which contains the words "Enter your new article name here". — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:52, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes possible - but far too off-putting to new editors struggling to get to grips with things. I really don't think it's that big a deal to have userspace drafts named in this way. The problem is necessarily fixed when moving drafts to mainspace because Enter your new article name here is create-protected. Rd232 ^talk 09:04, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

While encouraging new editors to contribute is a cornerstone of Wikipedia's existence, there's got to be a balance. Any active new page patroller can attest, while there are fewer 1 sentence articles being created, this problem has shifted to "New Article Name Here" followed by no references and a single external link to example.com. I'd argue that the net result is that the article wizard is having a negative net effect in the end. I still see more problematic articles created with the wizard than those that come out fully formed. The lengths the wizard goes to in reminding new editors that references are necessary isn't working either. In the end, this isn't really a wizard, it's a gatekeeper with lots of reminders that most users ignore. What is needed is a true wizard which queries its users for the basic information for a new article:

1. article name
2. at least 1 sentence intro
3. at least 1 reference
4. zero or more external links

That information could then be intelligently loaded into a template and presented to the user for further editing. This may require mediawiki, I'm no expert here but I dont think we should be adverse to looking into this solution.--RadioFan (talk) 11:41, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

The Javascript-enhanced Wizard of my dreams (v3 I guess) could do that. It's the future! But it's also a higher level of technical expertise than the status quo - many fewer people can handle it. (Though possibly with the basic structure set up appropriately, tweaking may be easier.)Rd232 ^talk 16:29, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Footnotes

Does the wizard use {{

Footnotes}}? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk

16:33, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Nope. The preloaded text can be seen at {{Article wizard/skeleton}}. Amalthea 17:19, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

... although I am confused where the text found in this revision came from. Still different than {{

Footnotes}} though. Amalthea

17:26, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

And it uses the old markup for columns from before {{Reflist}} was developed. This one is odd as well, as it uses {{Reflist}}<references/>. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:23, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Anyone good with parser functions/Wikimarkup

It is my understanding that this template is only for use with articles for creation, and not for user subpages (because, in itself, AFC is meant for those without an account, right?). I've seen this template used far too many times in the User: namespace, which unnecessarily populates the Category:Articles for Creation. I've seen some templates that, when used in the wrong namespace, they 1) don't categorize the page, and 2) display an alternate text, like, "notice: this template should not be used in the X-namespace. Please use Y-template instead." Can this template be modified to do that? Thanks. —Duncan^{What I Do} / _{What I Say} 06:28, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Replied to your comment over at

WT:WPAFC. — Martin (MSGJ · talk

) 08:02, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Simplify the "userspace draft" and "go live" sections

I propose the simplification of those sections, specifically the removal of the {{reflist}} template and external links section from the preload and reducing the length of the instructions. They should be as simple as Template:AfC editintro. Do we agree? PleaseStand ^(talk) 13:17, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm a supporter of simplicity, and the edit intro does seem very long on these. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:43, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure I could be more opposed. Lack of sourcing (and proper sourcing) is the number one problem of the encyclopedia. Sourcing is the linchpin of all of our inclusion policies and guidelines. If someone gave me the task, for whatever reason, of whittling down the entire article wizard to one paragraph and the pre-load to two lines, the only thing that would be left would be a paragraph on sourcing, how to cite, and the pre-load would be the reference header with reflist below. I don't see any instructions that are bloat and removing reflist would be the worst possible thing we could do.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:59, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Sourcing is vital, but you must admit that using {{reflist}} and inline citations is quite complicated to do. Although all editors should be encouraged to use them, it is unrealistic to try to force new editors to use them and they are not compulsory for new articles. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:56, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

At the same time that I acknowledge that some users find it complicated, I actually think basic footnotes (listing a source in some manner inside of ref tags) is not complicated at all. When we add to the mix citation templates, shortened citations, list-defined references, multiple citation use and numerous other choices, recommendations, instructions..., it does become actually complicated. In that regard, I do think that we should change the pre-load to present placing that most basic inline citation in a connect-the-dots way, and I'm thinking about how to do that right now, though my time is very limited at the moment (but I am not a drive-by person). Telling people to just "See [[Wikipedia:Footnotes]]...", as the pre-load does now, is not the way. Putting that aside, even if it is complicated—some things are too important to not require people to face a small hurdle, even if so. It's true that inline citations are not compulsory for all material, though they are compulsory if the material in an article is "likely to be challenged" and for "all quotations" (

WP:V), which goes doubly so for BLPs. But that's not really the point. Having an article start with inline citations has so many benefits to us and to the user creating the article and not having it done has so many disadvantages, that to not set this up to meet that end is cutting off our nose to spite our face. I don't think it's unrealistic at all and the proof is that numerous articles have been created with this wizard, with inline citations, and there has been no great hue and cry from creators that it's beyond their ken.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk

) 03:59, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

After spending an hour cleaning up a new restaurant article created with the "Article Wizard", I have a low opinion of it. The big block of references has to be cleaned up by somebody, which is considerable work. References go inline, and the Article Wizard needs to put them there. That's what screens of dialog boxes are for. --John Nagle (talk) 07:43, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Uchi is quite unrepresentative in having a ton of references both inline and as a list (cf eg Category:Unreviewed new articles from August 2010). Of course, if you know someone who could move the Wizard forward to V3 (using Javascript, like WP:Twinkle does), then the possibilities become much greater. Rd232 ^talk 09:03, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

What I object to is "automatic work generators" - programs which create work for humans. The "Article Wizard" may be in that category. What's the point of generating that big, useless list of out-of-line references? --John Nagle (talk) 17:24, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

What makes you think that is done automatically? Have you tried using the Wizard yourself? It isn't. Rd232 ^talk 12:37, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

So that would be clarifying the third point under the "DO" section. It is not clear from both the text and pictures the purpose of <ref> and </ref>. I would suggest wording such as: "Wikipedia identifies its sources of information ('references') in footnotes. To create a footnote, surround it in ref tags, that is <ref>Footnote text</ref>, or more specifically <ref>Specific citation style</ref> and place it after the information being cited. Alternatively, [information about the toolbar button.]" PleaseStand ^(talk) 16:50, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Then again it is not that problematic for an article to have bracketed numbers instead: I have used regex + a user script to quickly clean one article up, and the process could be easily further automated and improved. Most articles created by newcomers will require some cleanup anyways. PleaseStand ^(talk) 16:53, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

"New article name" often appears in article

I noticed on New Page Patrol that a large number of articles created using the Article wizard start with:
New article name is <whatever the name of the article is>
, for example:
New article name is Example
Is there a way to let the user know that they should replace "New article name" with the name of the article? Bk314159 (talk) 12:44, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

They should be able to modify the template to replace that with magic word PAGENAME when the article is created. --

talk

) 12:58, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

See section above, "preloaded article". I felt (a) it would confuse newbies (even) more, seeing such code; and (b) it's diagnostic of a new article needing more attention in terms of review, if the creator makes such a mistake. Rd232 ^talk 08:58, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Submitting the new article

How is this done? When I have gone through all the stages of the "wizard" and click on the button labled "Submit new article for review at AfC" I just come back to the beginning again. Where and how do I submit the text? 83.250.32.20 (talk) 10:23, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

When you click the button, you should get a new page with a box to enter your text, and instructions above it. Try it in a different browser perhaps. Rd232 ^talk 10:31, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

We delete articles for bad layout

Really? Rich Farmbrough, 03:49, 24 December 2010 (UTC).

Yes, sometimes that happens, though it shouldn't. I think there's a warning somewhere to people to be careful, maybe that's what prompted this post. Rd232 ^talk 12:53, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

That sounds harsh. I'd rather not see that mentioned here, since we should not. –SJ+ 04:41, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Add note about not permitting non-free content in userspace?

I've added a note at Help:Userspace draft but perhaps one should be added here too. Any thoughts? --trevj (talk) 12:58, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Handling potentially COI material

I've added a few notes about people writing about a topic close to them. This is for some people their first impulse to edit Wikipedia, and we can channel that to good ends, eventually making a Wikipedian out of them, rather than asking them to go away. We currently cover only a small percentage of all notable organizations and people, by our own standards of notability, and I see us deleting lots of articles about notable topics for lack of good sources. So we don't need to be /too/ confident in our eventualism.

We don't want people writing the text of articles about themselves or their projects, but we do want them to contribute reliable sources and references for others to use. –SJ+ 05:08, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Feedback from Bulwersator (7 March 2011)

There is "Enter your article name below. Be sure to leave the "WT:Articles for creation/" intact." without any "WT:Articles for creation/": [2] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bulwersator (talk • contribs)

Thanks for letting us know. This was removed a while ago but the other part was forgotten. I have now removed it. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:50, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Make option "go live" invisible to IP editors?

Hey, I just went through the article wizard after I logged out and noticed I still get to option to "go live" on the final page. This makes no sense as IPs can't create pages directly. This either needs a warning, or even better, be disabled all together for IP editors. Yoenit (talk) 14:37, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

User:Gary King was working on the technical stuff which would make this option viable. I agree this would be the best approach if it is possible. I'll poke him, see if he has made any progress ... — Martin (MSGJ · talk

) 15:18, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Word trimming

I find the number of words on these wizard pages gradually increases over time as people think of things which should be mentioned. The effect is an overly complicated and messy wizard rather than a simple and streamlined wizard. I've removed quite a bit of text from the last page of the wizard, because it is not really necessary and was not even relevant in all cases. The What happens next stuff was only relevant to the AFC and go live options, and may mislead users into thinking that their userspace draft would be reviewed. And the 'If your article is deleted stuff only applies to the go live option. I've also lowered the protection to allow other editors to collaborate on this. (I don't like making big changes to protected pages without fully discussing them first.) However this page often gets accidental edits, so I would appreciate it if other editors could add it to their watchlists and revert test edits, etc. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:04, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Conflict of interest

I would remove the Thank you for using the Article Wizard! header from

Wikipedia:Article wizard/Conflict of interest

. It's not informative, and doesn't mesh with the headers on the other pages.

Also, I want to suggest another option at

Wikipedia:Article wizard/Conflict of interest, something like "I want to write the article anyway, bearing in mind that it might be deleted". Since it's not actually forbidden to edit with a conflict of interest, we shouldn't exclude such editors from the wizard process. Although rare, I have seen COI editors create neutral and well written articles that benefit Wikipedia. The wizard process should be inclusive, and I think we should "give them chance", since otherwise they are likely to write the article anyway without the wizard, and without any guidance. COI pages created with the wizard could also be tagged or categorized as such automatically, so they can be more easily vetted or deleted after creation. Feezo (Talk)

00:26, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Automatic delivery of

Template:Afc decline

The following three posts are reposted from here:

As part of my

Template:Afc decline so that it is delivered to the AFC submission page creator. Thanks. -- Uzma Gamal (talk

) 22:42, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but I think it's all part of the AFC script I installed: importScript('User:Mr.Z-man/closeAFD.js');. Bejinhan talks 10:13, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Martin (

Template:AFC submission/submit, the template adds the name of the template poster to the |u= parameter. See, for example, these posts In the future, I will change the u parameter to be the username of the author rather than my username after I post the template. -- Uzma Gamal (talk

) 13:27, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Preloaded Inform the Author link - problem

I'm not sure if its working as intended, but the link provided when you reject a submission, "Inform author" does not seem to be preloading the talk page of the submitter with the declined template properly configured. It creates a message that says: "...Your article has been reviewed and declined; it is now located at

Wikipedia:Articles for creation/..." wouldn't it make more sense if the link created included the actual article located there, rather then just the link back to the AFC starting point? Or am I not doing something right? Monty₈₄₅

22:48, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

As I think you have now discovered you have to enter the name of the article as a parameter of the template, because there is no way to enter this automatically. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:55, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

add a link to

Wikipedia:Referencing for beginners

in the decline- verifiability message

Hi, I have seen several comments on AFCs which were declined on V, pointing people to this page. Can't we just include it in the standard message when you decline a page? I would have boldly added it, but I have no idea where to find the sub-subpage this text is on. Yoenit (talk) 07:30, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

The "declined" banner is held at

Template:Afc decline. — Martin (MSGJ · talk

) 08:57, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Nah, that is not what I meant. I meant the "source" comment on

this page. There is no reason to include that line when you decline a page based on some other reason, but source problems it will be useful. Yoenit (talk

) 09:06, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

How about adding some wizardry to the Article Wizard???

The technical aspects of article creation are difficult and getting more so. The article wizard is only a weak helper to creating an article - it seems mainly there to tell you to make sure you have sources. It in fact does not use wizardry in any way to help you format or code an article, and this is what is really needed. Using cites is no problem, but formatting them in the most desirable way according to style guiedes is a pain. The instructions on creating a new article are lengthy and unclear, there are oddly located wiki guidelines and advice sources - its a mess. It is very discouraging for the new editor to get started on an article. A few suggestions:

1. add wizadry to the Article Wizard by making it able to find on the internet and perfectly format cites. Obviously these citations would have to be available online, but actually you could also enhance it to automatically find and format cites that are not online but mentioned online - like most books. In other words, create an Article Wizard tool bar page. One button (tool) would be called QUICKCITE and when a new article writer wants to insert a cite, s/he would hit te QUICKCITE button, answer a few questions about the cite so it could be found online by the Wizard tool, and =voila!....nicely formatted cite created. admittedly this is mainly for a basic initial article and there are potential problems, but automating the cite-creation process with a tool would make article writing FUN again.
2. Use similar buttons on a new article tool bar/page for all basic formatting - headers, paragraphs, illustrations/photos, tables, etc....MANY of this functionality already exists on Wikipedia somewhere, but no one knows how to find them on a day 1 first article submission to Wikipedia.
3. Allow volunteer Wikipedians to be advocates for the new article, if desired by the new contributor. One of the VERY WORST aspects of new article creation that IMO repels editors and causes them to leave so quickly so often is the necessity of dealing with the constant, very often relentless reverts, talk page requests/arguments/disputes and generally abusive/disruptive (in the mind of a new editor) interaction required anytime an article is created, especially if the article is remotely subject to differing POVs. Result = very often the worst editor 'wins' simply because s/he is most likely to be most aggressive and with the most time on their hands

Suggested solution: let those who enjoy arguing or merely want to attract quality contibutors, volunteer to handle the ongoing management of the article after it is written, including most especially defending the article from vandalism, dealing with talk pages, etc... Wikipedia is of course a revolutionary concept, thanks for the opportunity to in a small way be a part of it. Leidseplein (talk) 01:38, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Having used the latest version, I have a couple of my own suggestions for improved functionality:

1. Introduce a variety of article skeletons aimed at specific topics. For example, a biographical article skeleton would come with the section headers "Life", "Notable achievements", "Legacy", "Writings", etc. The intent would be to offer suggestions for developing the article beyond a brief, initial stub.
2. A search mechanism for categories. (This was one feature I had thought might exist when I looked at the screenshot.) This might be useful as a stand-alone tool.
3. Another mechanism would be a search tool to find useful templates, & would be useful as a stand-alone tool. Frankly, anything that would help a user find a specific template from the hundreds of sometimes poorly categorized ones would be a big help to both new & experienced users. (Since I don't work with more than a very few templates on a regular basis, finding one that I know exists but haven't seen or used in more than a week can take an hour or more to find.)

Tools for researching articles shouldn't be a priority for developers. There are professionals available to Wikipedians for little -- if any -- cost who can do a far better job of providing customized help in this area: librarians. -- llywrch (talk) 19:23, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Any suggestions for making this happen? On skeletons, maybe some wikiprojects could be approached? Like everything, it ultimately needs someone to roll up their sleeves... Rd232 ^talk 00:05, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I've been kicking around the idea that we should provide ways to help editors to write more complete articles. One idea I had before this was for WikiProjects to create detailed check lists of what articles should contain, or a template containing all of the needed subtopics; only one WikiProject has created anything like this -- WikiProject Language (example). With something similar to what WP Language has, we can objectively define the difference between stubs, starts & better classes of articles; in the case of WP Language, one could use their template & define an article lacking sufficient content for 5 or less of the first 8 sections is a stub; if the article has sufficient content for all 8 of these sections -- & sources -- it is at least "C" class.

Anyway, to directly answer Rd232's question, I've been wanting to write up a draft for biographical articles, as well as for other topics like structures, & for population centers (towns, villages, etc.) I haven't done anything with this idea because I don't know where to post any draft I created so they can be seen, used, & improved upon. -- llywrch (talk) 17:56, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Scouting/Article incubator is rather rudimentary, but I have been considering a adapting the Article Wizard to help create different types of articles. Perhaps it would be better to add WikiProjects to the main wizard? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:35, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

I went ahead & hammered out an example skeleton illustrating some of what I envisioned. See Template:Article wizard/bioskeleton. Some of what is there will need to be moved to Template:Editnotices/page/Template:Article wizard/bioskeleton. Please comment & improve. -- llywrch (talk) 17:01, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

To be honest, that's the sort of thing I had in mind, but now I look at it I'm not sure how useful it is. It might be that providing selected examples from different topics to use as a model would be easier to grasp. I'm thinking particularly of how

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment works - see the final column of examples there. So we could provide a couple of bio examples, chosen to reflect the usual range of how articles look starting off - some very simple, barely meeting criteria to be kept, others much more involved. Now there's no reason we couldn't do both, but there's also the practical issue of how to present different topic options within the Wizard without bloating it, if Javascript isn't used. A list of examples can easily be farmed out to a separate page people can be encouraged to look at. Rd232 ^talk

19:46, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

"live chat"

How the heck is the "live chat" link top right added? I wanted to amend it by adding "help via" to make the purpose clearer. It could potentially also be more prominent. Rd232 ^talk 23:08, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

It's in Template:Article wizard. - David Biddulph (talk) 23:38, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Many thanks. Aside from the inconvenience (I couldn't do what I wanted), it really annoyed me that I couldn't figure it out! :) Rd232 ^talk 00:23, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Sandbox

OK, my thoughts on this after playing around a bit with it. The "Wikipedia:Article wizard/Not quite yet" part I think should also have the button to sandbox an article in user space like the "Wikipedia:Article wizard/Ready for submission" does. —

 ? 

18:00, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

good idea.  Done Rd232 ^talk 19:33, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposal at

WikiProject Articles for Creation

Hello, there is currently a dicussion at

article wizard should be removed, relocated, or replaced. The discussion is located here. Thank you, Alpha Quadrant ^talk

23:05, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm a reviewer and I want to review

So how do I do it, just remove the tags? S_peakF_ree

(talk)

21:57, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Well that's good (although being a reviewer is completely irrelevant to this process!). You could either

• tackle some articles in Category:Unreviewed new articles (see instructions at top of that page);
• or you could join
  CAT:AFC. (Read the instructions
  .

Good luck — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:28, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

list of countries with lionsclubs

Lions wikepedia quotes Lionism spread over 206 countries but recently announced Independent country "South Sudan" is 196th in the world. Kindly clarify and list the countries with Lions movement.

Thank you for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a

New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). Robert Skyhawk ^{(T C}

) 03:41, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Confusion over getting userspace drafts into mainspace

There seems to be a conflict around Wikipedia on how to get userspace drafts into mainspace.

When using the Article Wizard to create a userspace draft, the draft is topped with {{

AFC submission/submit}}, which makes the user wait for a review. (WP:RM's hatnote also directs users to Category:Requests to move a userspace draft, which is applied by the deprecated template {{move draft

}}. That may be a problem, too.)

That seems like a lot of levels of indirection just to get the page moved into mainspace. It also seems like an odd conflation of the AFC and the Article Wizard processes. Is there anyway we can streamline this for new users?

-- Powers ^T 23:49, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

DEFAULTSORT

I've come across a number of biographical articles created by the wizard that don't sort correctly (by last name) within their category because they don't specify DEFAULTSORT (e.g. [[DEFAULTSORT:Smith, John]] for John Smith). Could this be added to the wizard? Colonies Chris (talk) 10:00, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

The article wizard is designed for new users who are unlikely to have any idea about DEFAULTSORT. So it might not be a good idea to complicate the wizard. It's not exactly an urgent issue anyway; they can happily be left without a DEFAULTSORT until someone knowledgable comes along. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:44, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I realise new users wouldn't know about DEFAULTSORT, but that's my point - the wizard could handle it for them. It could ask the user if this is a biographical article and if so, automatically generate a DEFAULTSORT with a sort key derived by the same algorithm that AWB uses. Colonies Chris (talk) 19:52, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Deprecated template parameters in article created by wizard

I have two questions regarding the operation of the Article Wizard. These arise from my fixes here; I have traced this article back to this userspace draft, which apparently was created by use of the Article Wizard.

1. What mechanism does the Article Wizard use to generate the {{cite web}} templates? Specifically, does it offer the |dateformat= parameter. This parameter has been deprecated since 24 December 2009, and unrecognised since 10 February 2009. The article's creator was consistently misusing it to hold a date; at the time that this parameter was still recognised, it only had three valid values - |dateformat=dmy |dateformat=mdy |dateformat=ymd.
2. Does the Wizard offer advice on date formats? The user had consistently entered dates in the MM-DD-YYYY form prohibited by
   WP:DATESNO
   .

--Redrose64 (talk) 20:25, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

For your request of an answer: I don't know. It can either be added manually (so there should somewhere an old documentation) or the Reftoolbar is doing crap. It can also be an old documentation somewhere in the Wizard. mabdul 16:05, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Propose merge of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation and this page

easy and all described here. mabdul 01:15, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Messages when article already exists

The messages in

Template:Afc decline are not useful when an article already exists - are separate templates needed for this? Peter E. James (talk

) 20:43, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Removal of "Wikipedia:Article wizard/" from displayed title for subpages

Is there consensus for the removal of "Wikipedia:Article wizard/" from displayed title for subpages, such as this change? The editor said in his edit summary "Looks better", but in my view it is confusing not to see where we are, and I would have expected discussion before making such a change. Any thoughts from other editors? - David Biddulph (talk) 10:10, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

It's no good posting here: nobody cares. Just look at how few threads here generate a response - I've been waiting weeks for any response to my post. Further proof: that Emily Griffith rubbish is still up after six weeks.

Anyway. Such modification of the title is forbidden by

WP:DISPLAYTITLE. --Redrose64 (talk

) 17:14, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

It is possible, just set

<span style='Display:None;'>Wikipedia:Article wizard/</span>

within the {{

^{Say hi!}

03:27, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

We know it's possible - just follow the first link of the first paragraph above. The point is, should this practice be allowed? --Redrose64 (talk) 14:38, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Although I think this is not a bad move, we should tweak the title within the Wizard even more! Something like a Article Wizard: headline. mabdul 16:07, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Category for Schools

What category out of all on Wikipedia:Article wizard/Subject should I consider a school? I am not sure whether a school would be considered "a company, organisation or foundation" or "something else." Any advice? 174.98.30.117 (talk) 00:03, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Some observations

• The generic decline ("NN") should not link to the CSD criteria - I feel this is too confusing for new editors (even experienced editors) and I think it shuts them down. We should instead link to a less scary page like
  WP:GNG
  .
• We should allow a decline reason for articles which are just absolute formatting trainwrecks such as copy-and-paste text-wall nightmares (such as interwiki) which might not technically fall into any other decline criteria, but would require a lot of effort to cleanup and wikify. It's not really helping the encyclopedia or anyone else if more effort has to go into cleaning up a submissions than effort it took to create in the first place.
• Similarly, we don't really have a decline reason for machine-translated articles which I've been coming across lately. We should have a decline reason for these I think. These don't always fall into other criteria and can be hard to check if you can't read the original language.
• We should add to the "v" decline reason and add something like "or sources that cannot be verified". For instance, sources which might not be in English are going to be difficult to verify on the English encyclopedia.

Just some thoughts for now.    Thorncrag  00:10, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

All these are good ideas. The reasons can be updated by editing

Template:AFC submission/comments. — Martin (MSGJ · talk

) 11:44, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I have removed all references to

WP:CSD#A7. From what I gather, the relevant part ("does not indicate why its subject is important or significant") is already covered by the messages, and the rest don't really concern AfC. wctaiwan (talk

) 13:03, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

There's also the issue of submissions where more than one issue applies (for instance, the same page may be self-promotional and non-notable). Certainly it would be preferable not to have this ugly template appear more than once on a page - perhaps multiple issues from the same evaluation of a page should be collapsed into one list, and old templates from previous review attempts should be downsized (using a different template) to be just one-line comments ("a previous version of this article lacked references") once the issues have been fixed. 66.102.83.61 (talk) 00:08, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Cleanup template

There is a perpetual backlog at articles for creation. I went to try to review some articles, and I found this template to be intimidating. At /Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Reviewing_instructions the instructions say that the template should look "something like: {{AFC submission|D|reason|ts=20120117172850|u=Example|ns=5}}. Please do not remove or edit the ts, u, or ns parameters"

I was intimidated by this and I think many other able editors are also. This was a barrier to my participating in AFC, and thinking back I have come to AFC before and not reviewed articles just because I did not want to take the time to learn this template. Is there a way that the template could remove the ts, u, and ns parameters so that users do not have to see them, since users are not supposed to touch them? If this is absolutely not possible, then I think I would like to include stronger bold language in all instructions saying that there is no reason for anyone to question what these parameters are supposed to mean. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:56, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

The new box

I've changed the wording slightly from 'The reviewer left the following comment about improving your draft' to: 'The reviewer left the following comment about this draft'. Dislike the word 'your' as it encourages

talk to me

17:40, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Some of these are lost causes, either as

WP:COI typically isn't going to go away on a rewrite attempt by the original corporate author. 66.102.83.61 (talk

) 00:22, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Some changes

In the spirit of

WP:BRD, I would like people to review the changes

I have made earlier and revert them if needed be. Here's a summary and some rationales for what I did:

• Changed all mentions of "third-party" to "independent" and added wikilinks to WP:Independent sources

I think that "independent" is a better description of our requirement, and from experience many new contributors do not understand what we mean by "independent sources".

• For nn, bio and film, changed "Please ... cite
  independent
  ."

I think that the relation between sources and verifiability isn't immediately clear to new contributors. Linking to

WP:Referencing for beginners

makes it easier for them to try adding sources on their own.

• Replaced the message for v with "This article is not adequately supported by
  Referencing for beginners
  ."

To me, the old message may be misunderstood to suggest that sources connected to the subject cannot be used at all. Furthermore, a more prominent link to

WP:CITE

.

Thanks. wctaiwan (talk) 12:34, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Creating a new article in mainspace

The option to create a new article directly in mainspace has disappeared, with no explanation! The option allowed experienced editors to copy-paste from their sandbox or write the article directly (a 'new article for review' box would automatically be added). Any good reason why this has disappeared? I've got myself into knots moving a sandbox article directly to mainspace (using the MOVE button), but it has retained the edit history of everything else I've created in my sandbox, argh! Do admins no longer trust experienced editors to use the new article wizard responsibly?? Sionk (talk) 13:33, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:AFC#propose_removal_of_the_third_Wizrad_option_to_create_directly_a_page, there was the short but consent to remove the third option. (the edit summary linked sadly to the wrong section). Oh and by the way: don't do copy 'n paste moves, although it might be OK for page where you were the only contributor. mabdul

13:46, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Obviously I was one of the experienced editors who was still using the wizard. After all, there is a bypass option for 'experienced users'. I've never found any instructions about how to create an article without using the wizard!

As for copy'n'paste, I've only used that for 'my' articles in my sandbox where, like you say, I am the only contributor. In future I presume I should create a new sandbox for each new article and use the MOVE button to make it 'live'. Sionk (talk) 13:58, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

To create an article without using the wizard:

1. Find an existing page where your (as yet uncreated) new article can sensibly be linked from
2. Create a link in that page to your intended new article, and save it. Your new link will appear in red.
3. Click on that red link. You should get a box containing the text "Before creating an article, please read
   Wikipedia:Your first article
   ." plus the normal edit box.
4. Type in your new article, preview, amend where necessary, and save
5. Go back to the page mentioned in item 1, refresh your browser: your new link should now appear in blue
6. Click that blue link to make sure that your new article is correctly reached

--Redrose64 (talk) 14:57, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

How do I actually create a new article? I don't see a button for that. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Herbalist2012 (talk • contribs) 23:20, 3 January 2012

The Wikipedia:Article_wizard has plenty of buttons to guide you through the process, if you like buttons. It is actually quite good because it makes sure you've thought of all the possible pitfalls. The final page allows you two choices, either to create your article in a 'sandbox' (if you need a bit of time) or write the article straightway for review at AfC. Sionk (talk) 22:45, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I did see that there is a place at the end to submit an article for review. I'm guessing that is the same as AfC? But what I thought existed was that we could just create an article ourselves, instead of having it submitted first for some review process? So in other words we are not allowed to make our own article go live, just send it to others who get to decide to make it live or not? Am I understanding this correct? If this is true why not allow all our edits to have to be approved first? What ever happened to empowering regular editors? I guess some are more equal than others here on Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Herbalist2012 (talk • contribs) 01:55, 4 January 2012

Checking your contribution (and having only 10 contributions - 2 here) I would say that you are simply not experienced enough (not signing your comments, not knowing what is the autoconfirmed status, you should really go through The article wizard. To be precise, we are all equal - more or less (of course) - but you have to learn that we have have/had to protect the encyclopedia for vandals and new articles can only be created by editors who has the autoconfirmed right, or going through (even as unloggedin user/IP user) in the AFC/wizard process and getting at least a real review of (mostly) experienced users. mabdul 01:19, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

I have to add that the reviewers on the review board are acting like little Napoleons. I submitted the following article through the Article Creation Wizard process.

Business Week and other 3rd party citations. You decide. The mere fact that wikipedians are left to work through loopholes to avoid being obstructed by short-sighted individuals with axes to grind who know nothing of the industry in which the article submissions are written on is ridiculous! --XB70Valyrie (talk

) 21:22, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Templates

Can I create a template (i.e.

Template:Engrish), regarding poorly translated articles? 68.173.113.106 (talk

) 01:00, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

You are probably looking for the "Create something else" section of the

copyedit}} nor {{not English}} would be appropriate in this situation? PleaseStand (talk

) 23:14, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

The same anon user later raised a thread at Wikipedia:Requested templates#Template:Engrish which is probably a better place. Suggest we close this as  Not done. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:22, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Recreate this instruction image in png (from jpg), fix redirects

On Wikipedia:Article_wizard/Instruction_image, the Image:Article Wizard 2.0 graphic4.jpg file should really be a png instead of jpg, because it contains text.

The image is also used at protected pages A and D that are in turn used by &editintro=Wikipedia:Article_wizard/Wizard-New_edit_instructions_userdraft that is appended to all URLs pointing to new page creation in own userspace from redlinks. Example: ... start your new article at Special:Mypage/Redlink ...

Once the png version is created, we'll need to use

Template:Edit protected

to have it changed on all relevant templates.

Also, looking into the Article wizard further; this whole system is currently a mess with redirects from

Wikipedia:Article Wizard/*. All templates using 2.0 should be updated to use the versionless pages instead. •ː• 3ICE •ː•

01:17, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

I am working on the image. PleaseStand (talk) 04:35, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Working on recreating a similar image in markup. Rough draft at User:Gadget850/h. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:35, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I have added the image I created at right. PleaseStand (talk) 21:35, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Quick question

In what situations would an editor get

Wikipedia:Article wizard 2.0/Wizard-New edit instructions B), or it's in userspace as intended and you get Wikipedia:Article wizard/Wizard-New edit instructions D. Am I just missing something obvious? I tried mucking around with the page titles and urls to get it to produce option C, to no avail. Thanks, Steven Walling (WMF) • talk

Older versions of Ready for submission, Not quite yet, and Help:Userspace draft required the user to enter, for example, Special:Mypage/sandbox instead of just sandbox, as the inputbox extension did not originally accept a prefix option (T8640). Since that was implemented, Rd232 made a change to the userspace draft help page (and similar changes to AfC) to make use of it. So now no user should see page C. PleaseStand (talk) 01:43, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Ah, okay, so I wasn't completely crazy. ;) Would it work to just remove it then? Thanks the quick reply, Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:52, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Even the rest (A-D) can't be accessed since we removed the direct option to create a mainspace article and we also removed the userspacedraft. All these pages can be safely deleted. mabdul 23:18, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

We can remove the instructions which are related to the main space article since this is (as far as I know) not longer in use and can be safely deleted:

• Wikipedia:Article wizard/Wizard-New edit instructions
• Wikipedia:Article wizard/Wizard-New edit instructions A
• Wikipedia:Article wizard/Wizard-New edit instructions B

as described at Wikipedia_talk:Article_wizard/Documentation. mabdul 23:22, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

mmmh, interesting: Template:Editnotices/Page/Enter your new article name here looks very similar... mabdul 23:28, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, no big deal, but feel free to ping my volunteer admin talk if you want anything taken care of. Cheers, Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 23:13, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Remove requested templates link

Hi, I think the link to Wikipedia:Requested templates should be removed. Editors using the wizard are likely too new to need or understand a template in this point of their editing careers. As you can see from the recent reverts on the requested templates page, new users are attempting to add their article content there, not understanding what the page is for. The word "template" has various meanings outside of Wikipedia, so as a non-intuitive place for new users to go, can we remove it? — Bility (talk) 18:59, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Really I think that we a) should popular more this page and b) that this addition is at the right place. We can talk about improving WP:RT's editnotice and/or the intro of the page. At the moment we have only one "wrong" request since I created the editnotice (ok, and this edit was posted multiple times). Regards, mabdul 20:58, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Cool. I still don't anticipate brand new editors needing a new template right away, but hopefully the editnotice will cut down on the misplaced edits. Cheers, — Bility (talk) 21:57, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Mhh, the edit notice seems to do a really good job - no useless edit since 4 days. FYI: experienced users don't need to use/create an account. Follow a few days at

WP:TFD and you will notice one IP who is regular commenting on these discussions. We even have a tracking category (not longer active) for an IP user who was submitting new articles using the wizard - so I still believe that there is a need to populating that "RT" page since even I only found this page by accident. mabdul

16:17, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, I've given it a few weeks and we're still seeing tons of non-requests at Requested templates. The edit notice is not a deterrent, as we are dealing with brand new people who don't yet understand how wikis work and what they're doing. A user's first few edits aren't going to be requesting a template, so once again I am asking that the link to Wikipedia:Requested templates be removed. It's not just an annoyance to the watches of that page who must do the reverting, it is also confusing to new editors who are adding article content only to have it removed. — Bility (talk) 15:48, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

And I still don't see the problem: yes we have many more "requests" and most of these edits get reverted, but that aren't really that many. mabdul 11:11, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, silly idea. I removed the button again. I still don't understand why so many simply clicking something without reading the manual mabdul 12:50, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Good question. I think our definition of a template is probably unguessable to someone unfamiliar with wikis. Going by the normal English definition of the word, I would expect a template to be a standardized article layout I can begin editing immediately. I imagine they were confused by where the link took them, and rightly so. Thanks for removing it. — Bility (talk) 16:28, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

down-ballot races

What is a down ballot race. I have been all over the cloud and there are no explanations to just what a down-ballot race is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.85.47.64 (talk) 00:28, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

You should use our

reference desk - this page is for discussing the wizard. mabdul

09:33, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Wizard users with a potential conflict of interest

The Article Wizard currently prohibits editors from writing articles about themselves.

WP:COI does not actually prohibit users from writing about themselves, I wonder if the Article Wizard should. After all, this is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Thoughts? Note that this has been suggested once before. NTox · talk

07:41, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't matter. Most accounts def. have a problem of the following list:

• are
  WP:SPAs
  ,
• violating
  WP:UPOL
  ,
• have clearly a COI issue,
• trying to use Wikipedia to advertise

likely that I have missed some other points, so, the ones who

ignore all rules are mostly getting the best results... mabdul

14:02, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Requested articles

WP:WIZ links to Wikipedia:Requested articles, which is largely stagnant. I think it is probably worth removing that link, since requests filed at WP:RA are not likely to be fulfilled for years, if ever. — This, that, and the other (talk)

00:55, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

No objection; I have made the change. I'm still open to being proven wrong, though. — This, that, and the other (talk) 00:39, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

It's problematic that

WP:RA overlaps the to-do lists for the individual WikiProjects, which typically also have somewhere to request a topic. One title could easily fall into two or three different "wanted" lists (for instance, an Ontario museum article could be requested on WikiProject Canada, WikiProject Museums, GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) and WP:RA ... plus an individual city's WikiProject if available). Sadly, some of the WikiProject pages are just as stagnant or worse. I'd tried both the "Travel and tourism" and the "Hotels" wikiprojects to ask why the only page we have for honeymoon suite is about not the motel/hotel room type but some 1980's rock band in Niagara Falls, Ontario but couldn't raise anyone... 66.102.83.61 (talk

) 22:47, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion to add the Wizard to the sidebar

I submitted a suggestion at

talk

) 13:05, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Tabs at the top of this article go nowhere

Presently I need to go to the Categories: Wikipedia article wizard link at the bottom to get to the next section of the process, "Subject". I do not see any obvious way that "the next will become available." Was this intended this way? If not, then I suggest that someone insert links to the other sections.

I cannot find the "Notability" section at all. Anita5192 (talk) 20:08, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Content categories for user pages

I've just changed Template:Article wizard/userpageskeleton, per

WP:USERNOCAT and Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BattyBot 9 (prompted by this edit in my user space). Does that seem OK, or do we need to do something else for userspace drafts? Thanks. -- Trevj (talk

) 11:02, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Looks good to me - thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 16:22, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

On second thought, you may want to look at the discussion at

Wikipedia talk:Bots/Requests for approval#BattyBot 9. GoingBatty (talk

) 00:39, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

"diminish your value"

On the redirects page in the sentence with "...reflects poorly on you or diminish your value to the project," "diminishes your value" or just "your value" would read better. 98.154.180.102 (talk) 04:55, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

 Done I changed it to "diminishes your value".

Talk

04:10, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

article wizard for wikimedia installation

i apologize if it's not the right place to ask my question but i couldnt find a better place. can i have the "article wizard" plugin installed on my personal wikimedia installation? or is there similar plugins that can do the trick? thanks and apologies again — Preceding unsigned comment added by Moxybeirut (talk • contribs) 21:35, 26 November 2012 (UTC)