MediaWiki talk:Newarticletext/Archive 2

message: I added a couple links from another Mediawiki template to help bewildered people who find that an article that was previously present has disappeared. These links search the deletion log for the article and visit its AfD page, if it exists. I think this will help people whose pages are deleted to understand why so they can take appropriate action and refrain from recreating them. This is important for infrequent visitors or anonymous users without watchlists who may never even see the AfD warning. Deco 03:25, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've fixed the deletion log link to use  so that it works outside the main namespace too.  I made the same change to the AfD link too, effectively making it show a redlink outside the main namespace, although it really should be included in a namespace-specific section as discussed above.  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:56, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. Unfortunately linking to the deletion votes for any page is impossible with how our deletion pages are structured, but I think anyone who writes non-article pages probably doesn't need this warning so much anyway. I made some additional changes in language after Dbenbenn's merge to deal with the situation where the page is deleted a long time after it's created. Deco 20:07, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Added deletion links 

message: We still see a lot of people cutting and pasting content into new articles. I think it's usually an innocent mistake, but it leaves us with not only a legal issue but a messy unformatted article that's often quite long, POV, and otherwise needs massive cleanup (that rarely happens quickly if at all). So I think it would help if this message indicated that copy and pastes should almost always be avoided. I don't think this is really instruction creep, since this exact instruction already exists and is very important. Thoughts? --W.marsh 01:33, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Strong cut and paste warning 

message: This page, in my opinion, needs major changes to help newcomers out. Right now we're giving people a blank box and telling them good luck, it's no wonder that over 50% of new articles get deleted. Do we really expect people to fish through a bunch of murky guidelines and help pages to figure out what to do? That just isn't realistic. 
In my experience, once you tell people that pages should be categorized and formatted, they are happy to do it, and do a good job of it even if they're new, since they're familiar with the subject. But there isn't always someone adding the appropriate tags to new articles... so often they just go neglected.
Anyway, other wikis with far less traffic and new articles than WP have Newarticletext messages that genuinely help new users avoid the common pitfalls of new articles... why shouldn't we? --W.marsh 21:08, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think anyone in question is going to see warnings unless they're at the top of the page. It really helps if you actually deal with the new articles being created at about 200/hour every day... Wikipedia shouldn't be a city dump. --W.marsh 21:20, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Helping people out 

message: When I tried to create a new category talk page, I found out that the first line said something like: "Wikipedia does not have an article yet". This should probably be fixed. BTW, I'm not an admin so someone else should take care of this. --Eleassar my talk 22:11, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: All of the various types of talk pages (category talk, portal talk, user talk, talk) should say "Wikipedia does not have a talk page" where "talk pages" links to Help:Talk page. That would seem to be the correct behaviour. Can you confirm that this wording appears? --bainer (talk) 01:28, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Okay, seems to be good. Let me know if there are any other namespaces where it does not display correctly. AmiDaniel (talk) 01:50, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Syntax error?

message: When one try to edit a new page, one can't almost see the edit box because of half of more screenful of instruction creep. Particulary, I find the language
:All articles written about yourself, your friends, your company, their business partners or products, or as part of a marketing or promotional campaign, may be deleted without further notice in accordance with our deletion policies. For more information, see Wikipedia:Spam.
:The Wikimedia Foundation reserves the right to pursue legal avenues against persistent abusers.  is not an advertising service.
highly agressive and unnecessary. I suggest that paragraph be radically trimmed to one or two sentences, and reduce the amount of bold. That note the way it is, is highly distracting, and it is not as if the more you rant the more people will listen. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:53, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The number of new 'resume' articles has decreased measurably since the implementation of the message other types of promotional materials are somewhat harder to measure. --Gmaxwell 17:24, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  How do you know? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:12, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Use Special:Newpages and count them. It's faster if you focus on pages created by redlinked people. I'd post numbers but I'd rather encourage people to look for themselves rather than take my mind for it. You can jump back as far as recent changes goes (a bit over a month). The amount of pure crud that is created is eye opening. --Gmaxwell 21:05, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I tend to agree with Oleg.  This fills the entire page and then some on my browser.  I think that people adding more speediable articles is a small price to pay for coming across as friendly to new users.  JYolkowski // talk 00:48, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So you'll be taking care of all of them and will be accountable when things are missed? :)  If not then you're not really in a position to speak for everyone else.  You can hide the text using local CSS, if you'd like help then let me know. --Gmaxwell 03:32, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  This page is too verbose 

message: I think in the last paragraph, the link to Wikipedia:Deletion policy should span "deletion policies", and not just "deletion". -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 18:09, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for implementing the suggestion. One more suggestion. Wouldn't it be better if in the last paragraph, we link to WP:NOT from the bold text? -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 17:54, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request change 

message: I don't know about the statistics of article creation, but adding a "don't advertise on Wikipedia!" clause seems to me likely to increase advertising in the medium term.  WP:BEANS and all thatn.  +sj + 15:47, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: WP beans only applies if the subject wouldn't have thought of it in the first place. If you're already at the new article page, thats probably not the case... although with your weaked and confusing new text (can we not have articles on companies at all?) perhaps I could see where it might cause problems. --Gmaxwell 15:51, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have to agree with Sj here. This could be counter-productive by having such a strong tone in the above-mentioned clause. --Siva1979Talk to me 20:28, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  BEANS 

message: Since this template is displayed even for sub-pages under a namespace, I think that the word "page" should be appended to the sentence as follows. Instead of:
:Wikipedia does not have a portal with this exact name.
The page should say:
:Wikipedia does not have a portal page with this exact name.
Similar changes are needed for other namespaces to make things clearer. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 20:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have to agree with you here. The latter sentence is more clearer. --Siva1979Talk to me 20:25, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  More tweaks required 

message: Cut-and-paste copyvios still are submitted to Wikipedia at a rapid rate. Although there is a warning about doing this below the edit box, I doubt all new users read it. Perhaps we should also have a copyright warning here? -- Where 21:46, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I tried this a while ago and it was shot down, people think prominent warnings are pointless (despite the fact that nearly all other Wikis have them). What we really need is a bot to actually do the Google test for copyvios, but that's never materialized. --W.marsh 22:19, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmmm. The bot possibility sounds interesting. I will have to look into it. Thanks! -- Where 23:31, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Will there be any major problems if this bot was to be used? For example, there could also be a possibility of errors occuring here as well if the bot contains a bug. --Siva1979Talk to me 20:56, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I do not think so, since the bot will only be editing one page in either userspace or Wikipedia-space. For more details, you can take a look at the discussion of the bot here. -- Where 21:23, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Do you need another copyright warning? 

message: A lot of people are getting confused by the Talk page new article text. New users have nothing on their talk pages so when they click the link to go there they see this message. However many people are used to just "having" a "message centre" whether it's empty or not, so lots of them are thinking that they don't have a message centre at all, i.e. they can't receive talk messages, because this page reads "There is no Talk page."
So I suggest clarifying this. --Alfakim-- talk 17:38, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Tis done.  (I also updated Mediawiki:Noarticletext, which comes up when going to a URL of a redlinked page. Let me know if you like it. JesseW, the juggling janitor 19:40, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Slight change for Talk page text 

message: I've just reverted the recent re-addition of the statement that unreferenced material would be deleted. Wikipedia:Speedy deletion criterion for unsourced articles hasn't passed and last I checked looked unlikely to pass, so a categorical statement like this is just wrong. Furthermore, the link to Wikipedia:Citing sources was IMO made inappropriately prominent when used here; this is just a guideline and as currently written a somewhat controversial one. Bryan Derksen 00:47, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Do note that articles without any reliable sources are deleted, sooner or later. The message there is to deter people from creating unverifiable articles (if they have the sources, they can mention them). It is not in reference to WP:CSD and we do not need to befuddle and dilute the message by referring to every possible subcase of articles that will or will not be deleted and when. The purpose is: if someone is creating a new article, there should be a source and it should be mentioned. —Centrx→talk • 01:32, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Also, Wikiepdia:Citing sources is not controversial. It is essentially a how-to on citing sources. You may be thinking of Wikipedia:Reliable sources, but as I recall there ended up being only one user who opposed it; anyway, Wikipedia:Reliable sources was not mentioned in the text, and anyway Wikipedia:Verifiability is official policy. —Centrx→talk • 01:36, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, there's another option that happens quite frequently too; articles without any reliable sources can have reliable sources added to them. So it's inaccurate to say unsourced articles will be deleted because sometimes they get improved instead. Bryan Derksen 08:38, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Hah.  Where did you get that idea?  — Omegatron 03:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This poll has one user voting to "demote to essay"; that is, only one user appears to think it is no good in any respect. Everyone else states it is fine as-is, or that it needs to be revised or even that its standing should be strengthened. Anyway, this is a side matter. The text here did not refer to Wikipedia:Reliable sources, it stated "reliable published sources" generically, which there is broad consensus about, and which is in Wikipedia:Verifiability. Wikipedia:Citing sources is basically a how-to guide on citation schemes. —Centrx→talk • 03:29, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia:Verifiability is basic policy and relatively uncontroversial so I wouldn't have such a problem with a link to that here, provided it was worded generically. The important part is not being so anal about detailed guidelines and procedures. It's hardly the end of the world if an article starts its life being less than perfect, improvements will be made over time. Bryan Derksen 08:38, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not about guidelines and procedures, it's about the thousands of articles created each day with no sources whatsoever. Many of them are complete junk or completely non-notable and with whatever improvements could never be made into encyclopedia articles. The remainder might or might not be viable candidates for articles, but with no sources whatsoever it is difficult to make that determination or to improve them. The person creating an article for which there are no reliable sources in existence should be discouraged from creating it; the person creating an article that merely does not cite any sources should be encouraged to cite his sources. —Centrx→talk • 09:00, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If an article that is complete junk or completely non-notable is created, then delete it because it is complete junk or completely non-notable. Is that not sufficient reason to delete an article? Using a lack of listed sources as a criterion is a poor approximation, it's quite easy to create a non-junk article about a notable thing and leave out external sources. Bryan Derksen 00:04, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This is about the message to users that are creating articles, not the procedure through which articles are deleted. —Centrx→talk • 01:07, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Deletion of unsourced articles

message: 
Sometimes an image talk page looks like it's orphaned because the image page itself doesn't exist, but when you strip off the "action=edit" part of the URL something from the Commons gets loaded. Should we add a link to the corresponding image name on Commons for non-existent image pages? This way it's more convenient to check whether the image exists on Commons. My suggestion is to add the following at the end after "check the deletion log and see Why was my page deleted?.":
Flyingtoaster1337 15:17, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Done and done. Proto::► 18:45, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I did change the wording of the second part of the first change to "Look for an image of this name on Commons", as it makes more sense (there's not necessarily going to be an image of that name on Commons). Proto::► 18:48, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for thinking of a better wording. I wasn't sure how to phrase it either. :) Flyingtoaster1337 23:24, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Commons link for non-existent image pages? 

message: I've bolded the link to the deletion log. A little thing, but it may avoid a lot of confusion with new editors. When someone's page got deleted, it's not the most obvious link to check, but it should be. Femto 15:39, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bold 

message: This page used to have a link to the deletion log; please restore. 64.126.24.11 17:27, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not done. The deletion log is now visible on the same screen as this message, so the link is redundant. Do you know of any cases where it doesn't come up? --ais523 17:30, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Doesn't appear to be working for anons, or else there's something else screwy about Sexual Recovery Anonymous, which I deleted the other day. 64.126.24.11 17:37, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See a page like <http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_nonexistent_page_name_just_for_testing> (I'm choosing a different wiki so I'm not logged in and can see the same results as you); the deletion log's at the bottom of the page. If you then click on the 'article' redlink to go into edit mode (although anons can't do that on enwiki except in talk namespaces), the deletion log's still there, above the edit box. Is something different here on en.wikipedia? --ais523 17:44, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, for some reason it's not showing anything from the ==Deletion log== header on down to me. http://i17.tinypic.com/62ej4fo.png is an screenshot. 64.126.24.11 17:53, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

text: If it helps track down the problem, none of Ilmari Karonen's edits show the deletion log to me; the last one I can see it in is the April 14th revision. 64.126.24.11 17:56, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

text: And the deletion log here shows up for you? To put the link back, this edit at MediaWiki:Noarticletext should be undone as well. –Pomte 18:09, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, when I view the deletion log directly I can see the data fine, it just appears to not be showing the log transclusion(?) for anons, and it's like five clicks now for me to get to it through Special Pages.. 64.126.24.11 18:17, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I just logged out to verify that it doesn't show up. Somehow this works differently than test.wikipedia.org, and while a fix is being looked into, the link should be restored. –Pomte 18:21, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Per Prodego, the problem is that anons actually see MediaWiki:Nocreatetext which wasn't included in this software change. 64.126.24.11 18:36, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  link to deletion log 

message: The other day I created (made the first contribution to) User talk:DieterZimmer, and noticed that I was told "No messages have been posted for this user yet. Before creating this page, please verify that User:DieterZimmer exists." (Or very close. Of course I haven't got the color or the underline quite right.)
The user existed (he had made a contribution), but the page on User:DieterZimmer didn't. So in a sense, no, I would have been unable to verify the existence [of the user page]. 
Experience told me that the non-existence of the user page was an irrelevance I should freely ignore (and indeed the normal state of affairs for a new user). But a would-be first-commenter (welcomer) much newer than myself might take it seriously. 
How about "No messages have been posted for this user yet. Before creating this page, please verify that DieterZimmer (contributions) is the user you have in mind"? Although I suspect that even this isn't necessary. -- Hoary 06:16, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I tried to implement something like this just now but failed. --ais523 15:32, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, and this message gets me every time. I look at MediaWiki:Newarticletext and think 'zOMG someone deleted Newarticletext!'. It's only the tab bar, title, and lack of the edit box that give it away... --ais523 15:33, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In fact, I don't think there's currently any way to actually get this message for MediaWiki pages; if you go to [ MediaWiki:ThereReallyIsNoSuchPage], all you get is a page with no content.  (Curiously enough, you do get the deletion log for the page, though.  I think this happens for all MediaWiki pages with no edits, including ones that do have (default) content such as MediaWiki:Last.  It's arguably a bug, though it could be considered a useful, if accidental, feature.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:43, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

text: I fixed the implementation for you: the problem was that  in fact produces "User_talk" with an underscore, whereas  on a user talk page produces "User talk" with a space.  The workaround is to use  (note the extra "E") instead (or just to use "User talk" without the  parser function).  I think the behavior of  is in fact probably wrong and should be fixed, but I want to check with some other devs first to make sure there isn't some obscure but important reason for it.  In the mean time, I coded the check to try both, so that it will continue to work even if the output of  is changed.  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:34, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Starting a user talk page

message: I have a locally-installed mediawiki, and I copied part the Newarticle coding, primarily because I wanted the Search link:
You've followed a link to a page that doesn't exist yet.  Please search for  in  before creating the article, to check for alternative titles or spellings.
To create the page, start typing in the box below.
Unfortunately I am having a problem when searching for articles with a space in the title:  the space is substituted with an underscore.  It's as if it's using  instead of .  When I follow a link to a non-existant page, if I look at the URL that the code is generating, it has an underscore, even though what's displayed has a space, not an underscore.  For example, if I follow John Adams, on the "Editing John Adams" page, I see: "Please search for John Adams…".   But when I move my mouse over the link, I see that the URL ends with "/Special:Search/John_Adams" and indeed when I click on it, on the Search results page I get "You searched for John_Adams" and "John_Adams" is filled in the search box.  What is the correct coding to get it to search for "John Adams?" 
I suspect I am missing a setting in LocalSettings.php or perhaps a needed extension.  I have searched here, at meta, and at mediawiki.org, but haven't found anything that seemed to be relevant.  Can anyone tell me what's missing, or tell me where to look?  Many, many thanks.  Laura1822 16:19, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Syntax help request 

message: The page asks the user to check somethings that to the user, it would seem that the page should already know about.
Please see http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11278 Jidanni 09:59, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The link you cite refers to Talk Pages, not Article Pages.Laura1822 18:47, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  the page should already know this and not ask the user 

message: This template is heavily coded and I don't want to break it.
Could someone clueful please edit it to add an appropriate note that article titles are usually case sensitive? Thanks. FT2 (Talk | email) 16:00, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This might be instruction creep, so I am hesitant. —Centrx→talk • 18:57, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Besides, how then would we apply Geogre's Law? —Cryptic 19:28, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit request