Help talk:Starting a new page

Input box
Moved from WQ:VP:

There has been some feeling lately that it is not trivial to create a new article. I have used a new mediawiki feature in order to prototype a better way. Please have a look at User:MosheZadka/inputbox. I have created many of the recent articles I contributed with this feature, and I find it nice. I would like to publicize it. Note that there are many features there I do not use: for example, once Firefly (TV series)/Format becomes more official, we could probably extract part of it to add it to the "instructions" argument, so people will get the benefit of the format automatically. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 05:41, 23 July 2005 (UTC)


 * There has been little response, and recent evidence suggests people are still struggling with it. I am going to move the input box to Help:Starting a new page, adding one for themes, literary works and films in one week, pending the outcome of a vote ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 16:26, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Vote
Should I add the above mentioned experiment to the help page?


 * Vote closes: 13 Aug 2005, 16:30 (UTC)
 * Vote closed: 3 support, no dissent -- I am going to do this. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 08:16, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Support users have a hard time creating articles. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 16:26, 29 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Support on three prior conditions:
 * A proper "Starting a new page" article is put into place first, based on Wikipedia's article (or other appropriate MediaWiki prototype). "Input box" cannot take the place of a general introduction, as Wikiquote is the first wiki experience for some users. The input box should have its own section, listed in the TOC but placed below the general information, so as not to encourage people to ignore general wiki info.
 * The input-box templates are moved into "Wikiquote:Templates/*" space and are provided links from Templates in the appropriate places, so that monitors of that policy page are made aware of this development more directly. (This also requires creating a "TV shows" heading in WQ:Templates, which does not currently exist, but is [incorrectly] assumed to be the same as "Films".)
 * An announcement and description of this upcoming handy shortcut is made on village pump. The current line doesn't suggest to anyone why they would want to look at it, which is quite problematic, given our low reader interest on VP already.
 * There is much more to this than just ease of article creation, although that clearly is important. We must not make it too easy for new users to completely bypass all learning of wiki processes in the rush to create articles. We could be making the formatting issue easier at the cost of mass violation of other policies that no one feels a need to read. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 17:46, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment: All of Jeff's conditions above sound eminently reasonable to me. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 19:49, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment: In order to make sure there is wide consensus, I have extended the vote by an extra week, and added notices in several places as suggested by Jeff. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 19:49, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Neutral: I don't know that the proposed form is all that helpful to people, and may do marginally more harm than good if novice editors tend to leave the boilerplate around. (I continue in my opposition to Template:Lynx as a general matter.)  But if it helps editors to use a standard format and overall improves the quality of "people" pages in particular then it's probably a wash to a marginal benefit.  (I can't comment on the proposed "tv show" template as I have no interest in that direction.  It's not clear to me whether the vote is about the general mechanism, or the specific templates, or both.)
 * Support: I tried it out for creating a new film page and I thought that using the shortcut worked very nicely. I'm sure that it would make things much easier for new users. Good job! UDScott 16:00, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Some thoughts about organization of text
The first section should explain the wikiquote naming convention &mdash; after all, thinking up a name is the first part of creating a page. If we have a link, a couple of short sentences and a link should be good enough.

The second section should sound something like: New pages can be created by following a link to a nonexistent page (also called a "red link" because of how it looks by default) or by editing the last part of the URL of another page in the same project. It is useful to search if anyone created a page, perhaps named differently. If the search turns up something, you might want to create a redirect article (link to a small section about redirection articles). Otherwise, feel free to start an article. Note that wikiquote articles must have quotes, there is no use for encyclopedic information here.

Wikiquote has different types of pages for different types of purposes


 * Page of quotes by, and about, a person. (followed by an input box) For more information about formatting such a page, see ...
 * Page of quotes from a movie. (followed by an input box) For more information about formatting such a page, see ...
 * Page of quotes from a TV show. (followed by an input box) For more information about formatting such a page, see ...
 * Page of quotes from a book. (followed by an input box) For more information about formatting such a page, see ...

Note: though comic books are books, there format, by convention, is more similar to that of telvision shows.

There doesn't have to be links for the templates here (after all, the templates will be on the targer page), but it would be useful to contain links to manuals of styles.

This should be considered as an addendum to the vote above: this is more or less the organization we're voting on, I just wanted to sketch it. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 14:07, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

I suggest we work on a prototype on Help:Starting a new page/draft (which can then be moved to the main page). ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 15:30, 11 August 2005 (UTC)


 * MosheZadka, I see that, as usual, you've done well in putting your money where your mouth is. I don't think we really needed a separate draft page, since the "official" page is essentially empty. In the past, when we lack any policy where one should be, it's not unusual to create the draft in place. (Usually we go with separate draft pages when we already have official policy that we are contemplating changing.) I still want to review some stuff from w:Help:Starting a new page for import, to make sure ours can be used for initial wiki experiences. I plan to tackle that several hours from now. Once we get that together, I think we might stretch a point to treat the existing H:SANP article as "No meaningful content or history" and speedy-delete it, then move the draft into place. Thanks again for moving things forward! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 22:47, 11 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, the reason I wanted to work on a draft version is because I was loath to confuse some newbie who would stumble on a mid-edit jumble of semi-approved stuff...And I agree with the idea of speedy deletion and moving. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 23:21, 11 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I still haven't gotten to melding in WP and Meta stuff for H:SANP, but I don't want to hold up progress because of my pokiness. What MosheZadka has provided is extremely useful. I'm going to concentrate on merely tweaking the good stuff and worry about dotting Is and crossing Ts later. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 18:22, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Major expansion of naming section
I started out just to tweak the existing text of the Naming an article section, but wound up adding substantial text based on problems that have come up in just the few months I've been a sysop. I've added links to explanatory articles and examples to help illustrate the occasionally confusing issues that arise. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:00, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Infobox design
I found its original on Japanese Wiktionary. How about this --

--Aphaia 00:26, 20 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Very attractive! It would easily catch the eye on an otherwise colorless page of necessary instructions. It would require a bit more space than the current setup, but I suspect that, once this method becomes well-known, that'll be the most frequently used of the page anyway. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:13, 20 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I've took Aphaia's idea and ran with it. I added a two-column of forms, since one of my design ideas for the original compact table was that users should not scroll to see all their options (otherwise they might choose a thoroughly suboptimal option). I also added back specific button text, it allowed me to use synonyms to better catch the eye (movie/film, literary work/book). I also like the pastel colouring as a bit of an eye candy. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 03:55, 20 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I've added the text. It is nice that it is to the side, so no scrolling is ever needed to jump to the right section and start an article. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 04:05, 20 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Looks great. I say, go with it. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 07:55, 20 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Done ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 11:26, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Using input box
The following text entry fields allow you to type the title of an article and jump immediately to an edit page. As an additional advantage, the page will be pre-filled with an appropriate template, which might save you work and will help you to comply with standard Wikiquote look and feel.

Choose the template that most suits your needs. Be sure to replace all the generated sample text with specific text for your article, and delete any optional text that you don't use.

Creating an Article
How do you create an article? And which one should I choose for something from a manga? --anon

I have a question in a similar vein - what category would a game go in? Aerothorn 01:48, 19 March 2006 (UTC)


 * This article describes several ways to create an article. It's not clear from the first question if anon is just confused, or has a specific question about a specific method, so I would ask them to read (or re-read) the article and be more specific if they still have a question. The other two are quite understandable, as we don't yet have a specific template or input box for our "electronic games" super-category. I would recommend two ways to start a game article:
 * Edit an existing game article, copy its contents into a text editor to use as a guideline (and then cancel the edit of the original article), change the material in the text editor to reflect the new game, and paste the results into the edit page for the new article. (The edit page can be brought up by any of the four means described in the article.)
 * Pick another type of article (e.g., Films) and use its input box to start an edit page for your new game article, then delete anything that isn't relevant to the game. There is nothing special about starting an article with any input box, except for the template it provides in the edit window. You can create a "people" article from the "theme" input box; what matters is the content of the article that you create.
 * The general category to use is Electronic games, which you use by placing the text:
 * at the bottom of the article. I hope this helps a bit. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:37, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
 * at the bottom of the article. I hope this helps a bit. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:37, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

How to setup a redirect
Hello, how to setup a redirect to another page. It would be good if the procedure to do so was added to the page. N6n 07:33, 4 September 2010 (UTC)