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German-Libyan relations

Resolved
 – Tag added. -- Banjeboi 17:09, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

This one seems worth rescuing. If you check here, we find that in 1997, for example, Germany was Libya's second "most important trading partner," which does seem a measure of "notability" of their relations. Anyway, I have begun reworking the history section accordingly. Best, --A NobodyMy talk 16:54, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Suggest you move this helpful comment to that AfD discussion with the source. -- Banjeboi 17:09, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Well, I'd rather we have a discussion here as well that is about "rescuing" an article rather that the couple threads above that just don't seem to be accomplishing anything constructive. The Afd is primarily a discussion over whether or not the article should be kept; here we can discuss how it can be improved. Besides, hopefully the participants of the AfD are keeping an eye on developments with the article under discussion. Anyway, I am still working on this one. Best, --A NobodyMy talk 17:16, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure I see the point. AfD decides if the article is to exist at all so relevant notability would go there. General comments that may address all the articles likely should go to the taskforce - "I found a great source that can be extrapolated to other articles", etc. Nothing personal, I'd just rather be actually rescuing than talking about it. I'm open though. -- Banjeboi 18:06, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I would rather be rescuing too, but at the same time, I'd rather this project's talk page included discussions on articles. Best, --A NobodyMy talk 18:08, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
I hear you but a protracted battle of words or threads also diminishes progress. This will end but with what dignity intact if everyone doesn't pull collective thumbs out? We'll get there even if it's terribly uncomfortable at the moment. The best answer to your critics will always be excellence and maybe a hot date who gropes you publicly. -- Banjeboi 18:24, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Okay then, I'll comment there. Best, --A NobodyMy talk 22:53, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

List of artists who have covered The Beatles

Resolved
 – Tag added. Discussion ongoing at AfD. -- Banjeboi 03:36, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Now regarding this one, ChildofMidnight proposed retooling as List of notable covers of Beatles songs or List of Beatles covers and A Man In Black as List of covers of the Beatles. Anyway, as I said on A Man In Black's page and as I added to the article, there actually are published books that do list covers (even the title of a book includes "Cover Songs" in it), so it is not original research, but is verifiable through reliable secondary sources, and in the case of the specific songs, we even have university-press published sources devoted specifically to comparisons of them. So, should we take up either ChildofMidnight or A Man In Black's proposals as the way forward here, or scratch "list" from the title and instead use sources like those I cite in the above diff to make a more prose based article on covers of the Beatles' songs? If nothing else that one on "Eleanor Rigby" is probably at least worth merging to the article on that particular song. Best, --A NobodyMy talk 17:31, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, again, the article is tagged for rescue and this seems to violate the spirit of keeping discussion in one place. Having a parallel discussion when AfD is for this very thing seems like a bad idea. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject The Beatles would be a more apt place for discussion but ultimately it's the AfD where the fate lies on this one. -- Banjeboi 18:18, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
I added a reference and made some minor clean ups. I put reference to the article AFD on two "significant pages that link to your nomination", per Wikipedia:Guide_to_deletion#Nomination. I really have no interest at all in the subject, and I felt like I was doing a nasty household chore looking for references, but I contributed a little. Ikip (talk) 20:55, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Userfication notice when editors attempt to create a new article

Resolved
 – Change effected. -- Banjeboi 00:17, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
Discussion on background and concepts collapsed for navigation.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Currently when an editor attempts to create a new article, they get this message:

  • Before creating an article, please read Wikipedia:Your first article, or search for an existing article to which you can redirect this title.
  • To experiment, please use the sandbox.
  • When creating an article, provide references to reliable published sources. An article without references will likely be deleted quickly.

Some editors here mentioned a really good idea, to add one sentence which encourages editors to create a userfied article first.

Userfication works like this, instead of making: ham sandwhich band a new editor would make user:ikip/ham sandwhich band.

I was wondering if anyone had suggestions on how this can be worded. And do you support this idea? Ikip (talk) 20:22, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I love the idea; I think it's a great way to channel newbie enthusiasm into a place that won't get either overwritten, or jumped on too fast. Jclemens (talk) 05:37, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I was planning to make a this a proposal at the village pump—indeed, I still am—but I'm still trying to think through some issues. My main concern is that we don't want editors to waste effort building new articles in user space which then get promptly deleted when they are moved to article space. Drafting in user space doesn't help if the new article's subject matter is already covered in an existing article, or if the subject genuinely isn't notable enough. Won't we need some sort of support system (e.g. my outline below) on top of the basic idea? Feedback would be very helpful. - Pointillist (talk) 11:25, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

New article support
In a nutshell: help inexperienced editors to develop new articles with acceptable quality and notability, by (a) creating articles in user space by default, where they can be polished without time pressure, and (b) giving advice and support tailored to avoid the main causes of article failure. Possible elements include:
  • General injunction (with explanation) not to create pages about yourself, your company, your friends or your band, pages that advertise, personal essays etc.
  • Advice on searching to see whether the subject is already covered, and help on creating a redirect if appropriate.
  • Easy access to notability advice for this category of subject matter: navigating the whole of GNG and SNG is a bit overwhelming for an inexperienced editor.
  • Ditto for the basics of reliable sources and how to use them without duplicating copyright material.
  • Hints, like "find your first two references before you start writing", "copy the structure of a similar article" (maybe that could be automated for some popular categories?), etc.
Technical features might include:
  • Easy way(s) for editors to find their draft articles, e.g. "My drafts" tab or link.
  • Drafts in user space being tagged {{NOINDEX}} automatically.
  • Technique for telling new page patrollers and other potentially helpful editors whether to examine user space drafts.
  • Possible need for cleaning up abandoned drafts by inactive user accounts.
As you can see, this is going in the direction of a guided workflow ("wizard")—going beyond normal wikipedia editing. It might work best if it was category-specific, e.g. there'd be one version for films, others for bands, albums, performers, MMORPG clans, etc. Each wizard would contain embedded best practice for structure, subject-specific notability, categories, advice on known reliable/unreliable sources, and a pre-flight checklist before moving the page into article space. Right now, I'm a little lost trying to work out how much of the support system is essential and how much is feature creep. The question is whether the editors we are trying to attract and retain (i.e. reasonably well-educated good faith contributors) actually need this level of support. - Pointillist (talk) 11:25, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
Just a passing comment, it's very-late/very-early for me right now. We've tried to address some of this at WP:YFA. There's also a nascent "create article" script but I can't find it right now. And I just recently posted to VPT and got some good details on how to get a name and create a uspace subpage. I'll check it more tomorrow. Warning though - that's a whole lot of technical details which are difficult enough as they are. Combine that with the newer users' tendency to not read everything, it will always be a problem. People are generally goal-oriented (as opposed to rule-oriented), if your flow doesn't suit them, they will surge over the banks. Franamax (talk) 12:53, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Another passing comment, and supplementary qquestion - as many, many new articles by new users are copyright violations or attack pages, encouraging new users to create articles in userspace would therefore mean there would be more copyvios and attacks in userspace. Would this not create patrol problems? Currently when monitoring recent changes I tend to ignore userspace. pablohablo. 13:06, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I am really glad there is positive feedback about this idea, since 76.5% of articles put up for deletion were created by editors who had 350 contributions or less, this seems like a problem.
I moved the discussion to refactored out. which is the talk page for the text every editor sees above a brand new article. I encourage everyone here to lend support to this proposal. Ikip (talk) 13:56, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
I don't see why the fact that most deletions (or deletion debates) are about articles from relatively new editors is supposed to be a problem. It would be really amazing if most deletions were about articles from experienced editors, since these probably know better the do's and don'ts. I have no problems obviously with trying to help new editors write better articles (and find more suitable subjects), but the repeated suggestion that the fact that most deletions are for articles by newbies is somehow a problem is bizarre. Fram (talk) 20:26, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, really there are three strands here:

  • The notice that encourages contributors to create new articles in user space.
  • The policies for draft articles in user space, e.g. do they get patrolled, are they indexed by search engines, is copyvio a concern, etc?
  • Technology to help get articles right, e.g. breaking WP:YFA into bite-sized chunks like a wizard/checklist.

Ikip is re-starting the first strand on (struck) Where should we discuss the other two? - Pointillist (talk) 14:31, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I would bring up policies for draft articles in user space in WP:VPP, asking where to ask.
The WP:Your First Article question can be asked on the talk page, and also on WP:VPT. Ikip (talk) 20:42, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
Followup: The new article wizard is at (who woulda thunk? :) WP:Article wizard. User:Mr.Z-man created it and from the looks of it, it hasn't been worked on for a long time. The (long) discussion leading up to the creation of WP:YFA can be found here and in the following section. A section at VP (technical) discusses how to create a user sub-page. I certainly would like to see a process where new users had an easy way to create their own subpage rather than crash onto the rock of deletionism. However noindexing, copyvios and content proliferation are all serious concerns. Franamax (talk) 23:22, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. Looks like copyvio in user space might be the first major hurdle. What's the right place to discuss that? - Pointillist (talk) 23:47, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
Glad to see this getting some attention as I had given Pointilist a brilliant idea barnstar when this concept came up in a discussion on another matter.
  1. First let's see if there is some way to have it only pop up for new user accounts and/or accounts with a small number of initial edits, with an option that it can be bypassed in those cases where the account is one belonging to an established editor who has opened a new account.
  2. It should be then obviously written in a very simple manner so as to not confuse newcomers, unlike most of guideline and policy. We all know how confusing it can be for even seasoned editors.
  3. The warnings about copyvio should be repeated politely several times, as well as stressing the importance of decent sources... with a simple explanation that blogs and personal websites are not suitable except in vey specialized cases.
  4. It could include a link to members of welcoming committee or ARS and include a very encouraging note to seek input and advice before sending to mainspace. with our respects and apologies... We're here to help.
  5. And a very pointed warning that sending something to mainspace before it is ready will likely result in deletion...
We're a volunteer organization, and I do not think there will be a lack of editors willing to offer advice. Count me among the names heading that list! Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 00:04, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, I didn't mean to sit on that nice barnstar for ever (!), and I 100% agree that this should be encouraging and very simple to use (that's why I tend towards category-specific wizards). However, I'd like our proposal to be bullet-proof before we send it into battle, and it looks like copyvio is a big issue for some people.
Given that one of the main advantages of userfication is that articles get enough time to discard their early problems, I'd like to avoid policing for copyvio in user space. IMO where a user space page is marked {{NOINDEX}} with some sort of {{Construction}} notice, a reasonable amount of copyright material should be permitted under the usual academic terms "for private research and comment". The contributor would then have time to rework the concepts into non-copyvio form (I don't know whether CorenBot would get involved at this stage). What do you think? Where should this aspect get discussed further? - Pointillist (talk) 00:23, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
It WAS a brilliant idea. And is copyvio in userspace/construction already being patrolled? WIki encourages the use of userpace to work out just such problems. All we need let new editors understand that the waters are deeper than they think and the should not wade in without their floaties. If an established editor messes up... well, he/she should know better. But as there are already processes in place to assist newcomers, all we need do is make it less confusing and more (new)user friendly. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 00:42, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
I refactored out the link to the other page, and removed my proposal on the other page. I don't think we are ready yet to present this to the larger community. Ikip (talk) 01:57, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
(e/c) I would tend to disagree on the "private research" bit for copyvios. For one thing, private can be much more easily done on your own computer, for another because mirror sites won't necessarily respect the noindex tag in the same way search engines do. Mostly because the end result will likely be copyvios sitting forever in uspace and because we just plain have to eliminate copyvio. This was recently discussed at WT:NPP (here) and the best suggestion for copyvio seemed to be immediate blanking of the copyvio part with an appropriate message. The text would still be available in history but not shown in public display. As far as finding copyvios, Coren would be able to confirm whether CSB scans uspace and how it responds. Putting the big black copyvio notice onto uspace pages would probably not be too friendly, but maybe Coren could work out a way to blank the text?
For wider discussion on the issue, I'd suggest WT:C and WT:NPP.
As far as who sees the wizard, one solution I could think of is to have it as a gadget in Preferences. Newly registered users would have it enabled by default and it would stay on until they figured out how to turn things off in their preferences - and by then they've probably gained some clue, right? The MediaWiki software would need to check the pref and instead of going to the URL with "&edit&redlink=1" it would use "&edit&redlink=2", which would invoke the wizard. This is something a dev would have to do of course, perhaps Werdna would be interested. Franamax (talk) 02:09, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Proposed new addition to new articles

Pointillist had a good idea for the userfication noticfication, which I will move here.

1 to 3 is the original, which everyone sees when they create a new article.

4 is the new section:

The biggest priority is to make the new userefication section as short and concise as possible.

The beauty of this new sentence is: [[User:{{REVISIONUSER}}/{{FULLPAGENAME}}]], which allows a user to simply click the link to start a new userfied page. Ikip (talk) 01:54, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Ikip, have you tested this with a blank page? I'm not sure REVISIONUSER will be magical when no revision has yet been made. I switched it over to Special:MyPage for now, 'til you can confirm it works. Franamax (talk) 02:17, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
RE: [[Special:MyPage/{{PAGENAME}}]] good idea, I didn't know that was possible, the only problem with [[Special:MyPage/{{PAGENAME}}]] is it creates an extra step, the editor has to then press "create this page". Ikip (talk) 02:20, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
It works. Try any page, like this one, djaklshgkjshaj then put in {{REVISIONUSER}} It also works for previously deleted articles, like Obama effect. Remember to only click show preview. Ikip (talk) 02:22, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
MyPage could maybe be made to work by adding &edit&redlink=xx&preload=yy. xx would be 1 for now, 2 when the wizard gets going. yy would be for use when userfying an existing article and for new articles would preload a preamble including noindex and the underconstruction template.
Your way of using a magicword is simpler though, if it will work in the editnotice. Franamax (talk) 02:40, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
Wow, wonderful, you are quite a genius. Anyway to tighten and shorten the text even more? Ikip (talk) 14:27, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
Careful... the over-worked and quite dedicated Franamax does not recieve as much praise as he rightly deserves for his tireless efforts to improve wikipedia... else he'd be constantly running out to buy larger sized hats... and that would get expensive... (grin) Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 03:13, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
Heh, MQS you have burst my bubble. I truly took that as a compliment - now I see how it could be interpreted differently. lol. :) Perhaps the fact that I have linked several other places where this has been discussed has caused some resentment? Or someone new showing up casting ideas among the regulars? Dunno. Anyway, topic of longstanding interest to me, I only came back here to consider the best text - but we do need the right technical backing so new editors have a "short path" to what they want to accomplish. Franamax (talk) 15:12, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Moving forward

Redrafts and discussion collapsed for navigation
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Has this proposal died or just stalled? Or has it progressed somewhere without a link to it here?
In any case I'd suggest adjusting the original points to introduce the idea like this:

Mark Hurd (talk) 05:22, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

It is no bad idea to encourage users to work up articles in userspace until they are ready to be pushed out of the nest. However … A lot of articles that are rightfully speedy-deleted are unsourced/negative BLPs or copyright violations. A lot of these are created by new or inexperienced users. Such pages would, I understand, still be eligible for deletion even in userspace, therefore userspace would have to be patrolled more rigorously - many recent changes/new pages patrollers currently ignore, or pay less attention to, userspace. pablohablo. 08:57, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Here are some changes I made, incorporating many of Mark's sections. Ikip (talk) 17:48, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

So is this going somewhere as a proposed change? -- Banjeboi 22:29, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
I like that text, but it's not fair to imply that you can get your new article into shape in user space without saying something about potential libel and copyvio issues. As Franamax said in NPP Cautious approach "some editors may use the technique of copy-pasting in a copyvio to start an article, then progressively rewrite the whole thing into an original presentation." I'd hoped NOINDEX would help, but that didn't fly, so how about adding a fifth bullet something like this (below)? - Pointillist (talk) 23:21, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Bear in mind that anyone with an Internet connection will be able to see your draft version while you polish it, so your unfinished article mustn't make libellous claims or infringe other people's copyright, even if you intend to fix these issues before you move it. For advice on this, see [some compact advice page that might not exist yet].
If this was said concisely perhaps combine the two like:
  • You can also draft a new article here: Special:MyPage/Article Rescue Squadron/Archive 33. You still must avoid libellous claims and infringing on copyright material. You can work on the article with less risk of deletion, ask other editors to help on it, and then move it onto the "live" Wikipedia once it is ready to go.
Does this help? -- Banjeboi 23:47, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
The current template has no such warning for regular pages, so I don't see why this one should. The idea was to make this as short as possible. Each one of the existing lines is short. Ikip (talk) 04:21, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
I'm not bothered either way, if it's not needed just drop the sentence. Can it be launched as a proposal whever it's to happen? -- Banjeboi 10:15, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
Well, that sentence was to address Franamax's concern about copyvio—it isn't essential on day one (I was just thinking it might smooth the path for the proposal). Once the feature is implemented we'll soon see how well it is working: if copyvio/libel in user sandboxes turns out to be a significant problem, then we can adjust the wording. - Pointillist (talk) 11:10, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
I suggest then propsing without the copyvio sentence but mentioning it as a possible addition. Can this go forward now? -- Banjeboi 18:38, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
Proposal text:
Note: Proposal at MediaWiki talk:Newarticletext#Suggestion to add new line. Please comment there. -- Banjeboi 11:11, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Old bot idea

I found this at AfD: Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion/Archive_42#Bot_Idea

"I have had an idea for a bot that would help out a lot on AfD's, esepecially those regarding notability, by providing references and information for new articles. See my ideas etc at User:TheFearow/RefBot".

I don't know what happened to this idea ... Ikip (talk) 05:52, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

It was probably abandoned for {{find}}. -- Banjeboi 22:45, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
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