Comments on: Fix this broken workflow, and help thousands of Wikipedians

By: rjh

rjh — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 09:07:19 +0000

The creation of an article should be something like interactive. For example it should be used some templates for articles. For example for buildings, places airplanes, … because each of this portales have such templates. So there sould be a question would you like crate an article -> yes. Which kind of article (from what area) …

By: Tazerdadog

Tazerdadog — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 03:26:34 +0000

I don’t know, as a new editor, I was able to quickly figure out how to edit, create an article, etc. My first article was a BLP (before I knew there were higher standards for those, and it’s still aroubd months later. This might be a solution in search of a problem. Or I might be full of it. Who knows…

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 03:02:39 +0000

Yes, the article creation interface could be a little more user friendly. I know how to use it as I’ve been editing articles since the early 2000′s. New readers these days are used to a more graphical web, similar to an interface on a tablet or smartphone. The Wiki software is more “geek” oriented than “newbie” oriented; it makes sense if you’ve been around computers a long time, otherwise it isn’t very intuitive. The learning curve is rather steep. Anything to simplify the process is a good thing. (Although I would still like to have access to the older systems, any new system would seem like it’s been “dumbed down” to me).

By: Steven Walling

Steven Walling — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 17:21:58 +0000

@Snaevar: if you’re familiar with it, this is Article Creation Workflow. We simply summarized it in the post so that developers would get an idea of the kind of problem we’re working on.

@TMg: that workflow may make sense for users who already understand old school wiki culture, but it makes zero sense to people who are new. When you look at comments from new editors, such as in the Feedback Dashboard on English Wikipedia, one of the most common issues is not knowing how to begin an article.

By: Snaevar

Snaevar — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 02:37:28 +0000

Is´nt Article Creation Workflow going to tackle this problem ?

By: TMg

TMg — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 21:09:26 +0000

But that’s not how articles in a wiki system should be created. The idea is: You go to an other article where your topic is mentioned. You add a link to [[your topic]] to this article. You will get a red link. Click it and start writing. What’s wrong with this approach? Wikipedia is a lot more than a webspace provider for random pages. Pages must be connected.

By: Subfader

Subfader — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 06:59:04 +0000

Add a new [[Special:Newpage]]
* input for the title to create a new page
* radio buttons to select the namespace.
* Login message with a link incl. the returnto paramter

Add a link to the sidebar.

No need to transport the search keywords as new title. Let them type the title again. They will have to type much more text on teh new artciel anyway…