User:Enterprisey/Signpost draft - On smaller ways to contribute
 Article display preview: | This is a draft of a potential Signpost article, and should not be interpreted as a finished piece. Its content is subject to review by the editorial team and ultimately by JPxG, the editor in chief. Please do not link to this draft as it is unfinished and the URL will change upon publication. If you would like to contribute and are familiar with the requirements of a Signpost article, feel free to be bold in making improvements!
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On smaller ways to contribute
I think of a reader trying to become an editor like this: if you have a brick in your hand and you see an unfinished brick house, you know what to do. For lots of popular topics, though, it's more like you have a brick in your hand and you see a glass skyscraper. You feel like you don't really have anything to add.
Editing is a big jump up from reading. To edit is to assert that your text belongs in an article that perhaps thousands of people read every day. That's a bold statement if you're not used to it.
I wish we had smaller jumps than that. People have lots to say, but it's hard work to render it suitable for an article. Here are some things people might want to say that won't work as edits:
- I found this source and it might be helpful
- This (highlighting a sentence, or a few words, or a section) doesn't seem right
- The article should say more about this topic
- This article is confusing, or too technical
- I wrote a sentence. Maybe it could go here?
Yes, that's what talk pages are for, but they're really hard to find and it's not obvious that you can write the things I listed there. If we solve this by giving readers a nice interface to say the things I listed, we could make them start new talk page sections.
You: "If we do that, enjoy your flood of manure onto talk pages."
Yes, AFT flopped. It had a different focus, though. I think requiring structured input is the way out. If you give the Internet a free-form text area, you get what you deserve. I mean, even if all we give is a interface just like the Visual Editor "cite" tool (restrict it to RSP sources, if you want), that would be an improvement.
This page is a draft for the next issue of the Signpost. Below is some helpful code that will help you write and format a Signpost draft. If it's blank, you can fill out a template by copy-pasting this in and pressing 'publish changes': {{subst:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Story-preload}}
Images and Galleries
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To put an image in your article, use the following template (link):  I understand the primacy of pure feeling in creative art. This will create the file on the right. Keep the 300px in most cases. If writing a 'full width' article, change
Placing (link) will instead create an inline image like below  The significant thing is feeling, as such, quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth.
To create a gallery, use the following Each line inside the tags should be formatted like
If you want it centered, remove t |
.jpg)
Quotes
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To insert a framed quote like the one on the right, use this template (link): If writing a 'full width' article, change
To insert a pull quote like
use this template (link):
To insert a long inline quote like
use this template (link): |
Side frames
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Side frames help put content in sidebar vignettes. For instance, this one (link): gives the frame on the right. This is useful when you want to insert non-standard images, quotes, graphs, and the like.
A caption
For example, to insert the {{Graph:Chart}} generated by in a frame, simple put the graph code in to get the framed Graph:Chart on the right. If writing a 'full width' article, change |
Two-column vs full width styles
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If you keep the 'normal' preloaded draft and work from there, you will be using the two-column style. This is perfectly fine in most cases and you don't need to do anything. However, every time you have a However, you can also fine-tune which style is used at which point in an article. To switch from two-column → full width style midway in an article, insert where you want the switch to happen. To switch from full width → two-column style midway in an article, insert where you want the switch to happen. |
Links and such
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By the way, the template that you're reading right now is {{Editnotices/Group/Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue}} (edit). A list of the preload templates for Signpost articles can be found here. |
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