MediaWiki talk:Newarticletext/Archive 2

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Added deletion links

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)

I've fixed the deletion log link to use {{FULLPAGENAMEE}} 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)
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)

I changed the links for the four namespaces that get listed on MfD to also use {{FULLPAGENAME}}. This means that if there is a MfD subpage discussion, it should get linked to. --bainer (talk) 09:19, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Strong cut and paste warning

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)

Helping people out

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)

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)

Syntax error?

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)

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)

I think I've now fixed it. {{NAMESPACE}} returns "Category talk" rather than "Category_talk", which is why the old format wasn't working. It seems to now work for category talk and should work for all other talk namespaces, but let me toy around with it a bit and see if I got 'em all. AmiDaniel (talk) 01:45, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

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)

This page is too verbose

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. Wikipedia 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)

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)
How do you know? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:12, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)

The message did have an aggressive and unsavory tone. I've modified it to focus on the one sentence that matters - that WP is not an advertising service - and to explain what may happen to promo material. It is still a bit too long, but now less likely to keep well-meaning readers from becoming contributors and sharing their knowledge. +sj + 15:45, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Request change

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)

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)

BEANS

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)

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)
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)

More tweaks required

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)

I have to agree with you here. The latter sentence is more clearer. --Siva1979Talk to me 20:25, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Do you need another copyright warning?

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)

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)
Hmmm. The bot possibility sounds interesting. I will have to look into it. Thanks! -- Where 23:31, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)

Slight change for Talk page text

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)

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)

"Please make a GOOD new article"

I mentioned this in discussion on wikien-l - we have lots of new articles. What we need to do is encourage good new articles. e.g. "Even if it's just a stub, make it useful to a reader, with a clear description and a good reference or two."

However, the text is already long enough for a complete newbie's eye to skim off it. So, per the wisdom of m:instruction creep, I don't want to add anything new without removing something else or at least severely tightening the present text. Assume we can't make people read it, so we have to make it as readable as possible. Any suggestions? - David Gerard 22:44, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree that there should be more emphasis on creating a "good" article in here. I would suggest that the paragraph about deleted pages could be spun off into a link somewhere, and the paragraph about advertising could be shrunk. Don't have the time right now to take a stab at it though. JYolkowski // talk 02:24, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
Well there's been talk of requiring (or at least suggesting) a screen to try to get people to categorize, format and create incoming links to new articles, if those areas are not addressed when the article is submitted. This was pretty much shot down... though there seems to be support for at least automatically adding tags so the creators might see what they need to do the improve their articles. See Wikipedia:Enforce inclusion of categories, I personally think that's the best easy to impliment bandaid for the perpetual flood of poor new articles... at least if people categorized/linked to them, it would be easier for dedicated editors to find them.
But in general, getting new users to create good new articles is going to take more than a few lines added to the instructions, though. We really need a revamped article creation process that gives people more than a blank box to work with. --W.marsh 02:53, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for creation has always given editors more than a blank box. It employs a preload template, Template:AFC preload, that automatically inserts a "Sources" section in any new submission. One idea to think about is altering the "Start the N article" link on MediaWiki:Noarticletext to employ a pre-load template, Template:Noarticletext preload, that automatically inserts a "References" section. Uncle G 17:16, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Notability

In Wikipedia, a lot of articles end up on AfD for not asserting notability. Most new users are completely unaware that Wikipedia even has notability requirements. Adding text to this template about notability requirements seems like it would be useful. What do others think? Lyrl Talk C 01:24, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

There is a statement (when creating articles) that "Articles that do not cite reliable published sources are likely to be deleted." We could make it stronger to say "will" be deleted, though there was some opposition to this, or clarify "reliable published sources" somehow, but in general this serves a similar purpose and is more understandable to the average reader. —Centrx→talk • 04:25, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
I think notability is a seperate concept from reliable sources. Lots of things can be proved true from reliable sources but are nominated for AfD due to lack of notability. Most of these articles were created by new users; I believe a notice would discourage some of these users from creating non-notable articles, and would also prepare editors writing new articles on topics that are notable. (I think it's unnecessarily distressing for new users to go through what can be harsh treatment at AfD when it turns out their article really was notable, they just didn't realize they needed to assert that.) I'm thinking something along the lines of Topics of Wikipedia article are required to be notable. Please explain in the article how this topic is notable. See Wikipedia:Notability for more help and information. Lyrl Talk C 04:56, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
It is probably not clear to the reader what is meant by "notable" or how they could satisfy those requirements. They think some very "notable" things happen at school, but that does not qualify for a universal meaning of notability, and an article needs reliable sources. Citing sources, however, is perfectly clear (even if they may not fully understand "reliable published"). Also, the vast majority if not all non-notable topics have no reliable sources; if an editor stops to think about reliable sources, that will indeed cut out most of the crap that would otherwise be cut out by someone who properly understands "notable". —Centrx→talk • 22:53, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
All student organizations at a university are listed in university documents, which are certainly reliable. That does not make all student organizations notable. Even small-time bands will have their own website, and publicity material to verify that they exist. That does not make them notable. The existence of buildings can be easily verified through reliable sources, but that does not make every building notable. I disagree that focusing on reliable sources would automatically prevent articles on non-notable topics.
As far as being clear to the reader, what about different wording: Wikipedia has requirements for notability explained at Wikipedia:Notability. Please check that your article meets one of the criteria listed there. Lyrl Talk C 00:40, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Band websites are not published sources, and the "existence" of something is not enough to make an article. Focusing on reliable sources will not automatically prevent articles on non-notable topics, but it will prevent many of them, and the purpose is not to prevent articles that will eventually be deleted, but to prevent articles that are complete crap and are likely to be deleted immediately. Also, see this mailing list thread. There was opposition to even having "Articles without reliable sources will be deleted". This is a message that a person sees before the article is even created, and notability is somewhat more contentious than reliable sources. Many non-notable articles are not deleted except through WP:AFD. Before putting a note here about non-notable articles being deleted, get it through WP:CSD first. Also, a person should not be required to read a whole guideline before creating an article, and they probably won't anyway. "Notability" is not clear enough a term to put here, and linking to the guideline on it is not sufficient clarification. —Centrx→talk • 13:11, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Neither of my wording proposals said anything about deletion, so I'm not sure where the connection is being drawn to that previous discussion. Thank you to Centrx for the suggestion of taking this discussion to WP:CSD, but I'm not wanting to directly threaten any editor with deletion of their article, so I'm not sure that's an appropriate forum. Any other suggestions would be welcome.

A person should not be required to read WP:NPOV, WP:INTRO, WP:T, and WP:YFA in their entirety before posting an article, and probably few of them do. Yet those links are all in this template. Presumably the consensus is that these links help some number of editors, and prevent some amount of unencyclopedic writing. I believe working in a link to WP:N would be just as helpful as the link to WP:NPOV and the bold warning about reliable sources. I'm not attached to any wording, I'd just like to see a link to it. Lyrl Talk C 00:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

If they don't think the article is going to be deleted, they don't care. Someone who wants to add a page about themselves, their favorite band, or their company does not care about Wikipedia guidelines. The reason to say it will be deleted is to point out that it is pointless to create it in the first place. Otherwise, they are happy to have their article on Wikipedia without any regard for Wikipedia guidelines. —Centrx→talk • 01:13, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
It's not the links that are a problem, it's that the link would be necessary to explain the point. "neutral" and "verifiable" are words that can stand by themselves. The reader understands them without reading the links. The intro and the tutorial are quite obvious navigational; the reader knows exactly what a tutorial would be, and can decide whether they want to go through it or not. "Notability" is not a self-explanatory word for the purposes of Wikipedia; in fact it is commonly defined in terms of sources, but an average person thinks all manner of things might be "notable"—that is why they are writing the article in the first place—but are not notable for Wikipedia. —Centrx→talk • 01:18, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
The average person creating a new article on Wikipedia is unaware the Wikipedia has notability standards. Certainly many would continue to create non-notable articles regardless. But I believe some people really would stop and think twice if they read that not all topics are considered suitable for Wikipedia. I also believe some editors would add sources showing notability if they realized such claims were required, thus possibly avoiding an unwarranted AfD.
I also do not see how such a statement would hurt Wikipedia. If there's a possible benefit and no harm, why not? Lyrl Talk C 01:00, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Aside from anything else, I think it would be removed rather quickly. A few people oppose notability even after AfD, let alone before article creation. Anyway, the purpose could be served by forming a message from "A topic is notable if it has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works from sources that are reliable and independent of the subject itself and each other." Using a message formed from that would be clearer to the editor without requiring him to read or even click on a link without using a word that would possibly mislead him. Also, keep in mind that the longer the message is, the fewer people will read it, and sourcing is more important than notability for helping to evaluate a newly created article. Someone may create an article about something that makes it look notable, but it may just be exaggerated nonsense; without sources, it is more difficult to check, while sources are still an indication of notability. —Centrx→talk • 13:43, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia discourages articles on non-notable topics. A topic is notable if it has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works. I realize the independence and reliability clauses are important, but they add a lot of length to the sentence, and reliable sources are already addressed with the bolded sentence at the bottom. Maybe this would get the main point across and still be short enough a significant number of people would read it? Lyrl Talk C 22:17, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Or, ''Wikipedia discourages articles on non-notable topics. A topic is notable if it has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works that are independent of the subject to make clear that works authored by the subject don't count for establishing notability. Lyrl Talk C 14:36, 14 January 2007 (UTC)


Newcomers are often unaware of our policies. Can we please add the full text of all of our guidelines and policies to this little box? — Omegatron 19:56, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Why is the idea of adding a link to WP:N ridiculous, while the existence of a link to WP:NPOV and text about reliable sources (without even a link to WP:RS!) is acceptable? Lyrl Talk C 00:20, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Deletion of unsourced articles

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)

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)
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)
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)

You may be thinking of Wikipedia:Reliable sources, but as I recall there ended up being only one user who opposed it

Hah. Where did you get that idea? — Omegatron 03:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)

After speaking with a new user on IRC who was hesitant about editing, partly because of seeing this text and not wanting to break any rules, I think a re-wording might be in order anyway. Something like "Please cite your sources. Articles not supported by reliable published sources may be deleted." or "...are subject to deletion." —Centrx→talk • 06:22, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't see the point of this deletion warning. Is it going to turn bad writers into good ones? Not likely. It is, however, likely to deter those who might otherwise become good contributors, the kind of people who are scared by rules in big bold text. Instead of threatening people with deletion, why not try to give positive advice on how to write good Wikipedia articles? Incidentally, this is what the rest of the page tries to do, and that advice may simply need to be highlighted more.--Eloquence* 16:02, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Commons link for non-existent image pages?

{{editprotected}} 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?.":

{{#switch:{{NAMESPACE}}|Image=* This image may exist on [[:commons:|Wikimedia Commons]] but not on Wikipedia. [[:commons:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|See the description of this image on Commons]].|}}

Flyingtoaster1337 15:17, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

P.S. IMO, "If {{#switch:{{NAMESPACE}}|Image=an image|a page}} was recently created here," should probably read, "If {{#switch:{{NAMESPACE}}|Image=an image was recently uploaded|a page was recently created}} here," since we upload images, not create them on Wikipedia. Flyingtoaster1337 15:24, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Done and done. Proto::► 18:45, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
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)
Thanks for thinking of a better wording. I wasn't sure how to phrase it either. :) Flyingtoaster1337 23:24, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

need direct access to the IP info toolbox

Okay, is this the page that displays at redlinked IP talk pages, such as User talk:69.153.37.62? If so, it should include the IP info toolbox from MediaWiki:Anontalkpagetext. It's currently a pain to get at that information for an IP that hasn't had any messages posted to them yet. — coelacan talk — 21:08, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I note that the last time this page was edited was 18 days ago, so I'm adding the editprotected template. — coelacan talk — 22:02, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

I'm not sure I understand your request, so let me clarify: you're asking for the WHOIS, IP information links currently at MediaWiki:Anontalkpagetext to be displayed here if it's an uncreated IP user talk page? If so, I agree that that could be useful; however, I'm not sure how to add that in without adding it to all talk pages. As far as I know, there's no check for if the page is for that of a user talk page or IP user talk page, and I don't think adding those links to all user talk pages would be appropriate. Do you know if there's a way to check for that and add that in? Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 16:09, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Hi Flcelloguy. You did understand my request correctly. I see your point; there's nothing I can see in the source here that parses whether or not this is an IP's page. "#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|User talk|" only checks the namespace, which is the same. Somehow, though, the system knows to display MediaWiki:Anontalkpagetext only at the bottom of anon talk pages. However that's done, it could also be applied to put it at the bottom of "Editing anon talk pages". This may be happening one step below the MediaWiki namespace, though, in which case I expect it's out of the reach of admins. If you don't know how to do it then I'm lost too. Who would we ask for help? — coelacan talk — 19:46, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
It doesn't always work (there are false positives on inputs like "127.0" and "258.300.434.142"), but I've created a moderately accurate way to detect an IP: see this permlink of the Sandbox and User:ais523/Sandbox at the moment. --ais523 10:22, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
And in reply to Coelacan; you could put in a request for a new 'Newanontalkpagetext' or something like that message at mediazilla:, the MediaWiki bug and feature request tracker. --ais523 10:24, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Glad to see that I understood the request properly. Ais523, do you think that that is a proper workaround for now, or would you recommend just filing a bugzilla feature request? If you feel that this should be added in now, please let me know which part of the code should be added and where - I'm afraid of messing up the template and placing incorrect code in the wrong spot. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 23:10, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
I'd suggest putting it on the bug tracker in the long-term, but a workaround wouldn't be unreasonable in the mean time. The code that should be added (right at the bottom) should be:
{{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|User talk|{{#ifeq:{{#expr:{{PAGENAME}}}}|{{PAGENAME}}||{{#ifeq:{{#expr:{{PAGENAME}}}}|{{#expr:{{PAGENAME}}+deliberatesyntaxerror}}||{{MediaWiki:Anontalkpagetext}}}}}}|}}
This isn't a perfect solution, though, and to avoid false-positives in future it would be best if there was a new MediaWiki page added. (By the way, if this doesn't work it's most probably due to the MediaWiki-space ParserFunction bug; I'm not sure if that will affect this or not. If it does, copy the code above into a protected template and transclude it on the bottom of the message. This code has been tested in the preview mode of an anon's talk page. --ais523 18:09, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Note: I removed this from Category:Wikipedia protected edit requests as it seems the request has either been granted, or is in discussion. —Doug Bell talk 07:15, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
I've readded it now; there was no code before (so the editprotected was premature) but now that there's code and some agreement on the concept of making this addition, I feel that readding {{editprotected}} is appropriate. --ais523 18:09, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

Excellent, ais523, it appears to be working right. I've incorporated it at the end, just before the "/div", in this demo, and tested that by transcluding and previewing it on IP and non-IP users. It worked as expected. I don't see any reason to anticipate false positives, but if there are, the problem will be very small, because usernames are blocked if they resemble IPs anyway, and if this does show up on any registered user talk pages, it will go away as soon as a message is posted to that user. — coelacan talk — 00:54, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Y I made the requested change and added the code to the template. My tests on empty user talk pages from Special:Recentchanges indicate that it works very well. Thanks for this improvement! Sandstein 06:28, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Glad to see it working, and thanks for the coding! Flcelloguy (A note?) 20:41, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Proper XHTML

Hi, this change that added </br> was invalid XHTML and broke all scripts/programs that try to parse any article-less page as XML. I've fixed it (it should be <br />). —Quarl (talk) 2007-02-26 01:52Z

Bold

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)

link to deletion log

{{editprotected}}

This page used to have a link to the deletion log; please restore. 64.126.24.11 17:27, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

N 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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)

Starting a user talk page

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)

I tried to implement something like this just now but failed. --ais523 15:32, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
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)
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)
I fixed the implementation for you: the problem was that {{ns:User talk}} in fact produces "User_talk" with an underscore, whereas {{NAMESPACE}} on a user talk page produces "User talk" with a space. The workaround is to use {{NAMESPACEE}} (note the extra "E") instead (or just to use "User talk" without the {{ns:}} parser function). I think the behavior of {{ns:}} 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 {{ns:User talk}} is changed. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:34, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Syntax help request

I have a locally-installed mediawiki, and I copied part the Newarticle coding, primarily because I wanted the Search link:

<div class="plainlinks" id="newarticletext" style="margin-bottom: 5px; border: 1px solid #cccccc; padding: 7px; font-size: 95%;">You've followed a link to a page that doesn't exist yet. Please [[{{ns:Special}}:Search/{{PAGENAME}}|search for ''{{PAGENAME}}'' in {{SITENAME}}]] before creating the article, to check for alternative titles or spellings. To create the page, start typing in the box below.</div>

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 {{PAGENAMEE}} instead of {{PAGENAME}}. 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)

the page should already know this and not ask the user

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)

The link you cite refers to Talk Pages, not Article Pages.Laura1822 18:47, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Edit request

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)

This might be instruction creep, so I am hesitant. —Centrx→talk • 18:57, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Besides, how then would we apply Geogre's Law? —Cryptic 19:28, 3 November 2007 (UTC)