Wikipedia talk:Article wizard/Archive 7

Requested move 18 August 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved to the proposed title at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 03:14, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

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Wikipedia:Article wizard → Wikipedia:Article Wizard – The capitalized, title-case version is the one used on the page currently. I don't have a policy-based reason specifically for why this title is better, but to me, it just "looks right". 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 02:33, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

• This is kind of a specific topic like Main Page but Wikipedia:Village pump, Wikipedia:Help desk and the likes of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion aren't capitalized, perhaps wider discussion is needed. Crouch, Swale (talk) 07:23, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

2nd this motion. OCD brothers unite! VlSCOUNT (talk) 19:56, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. Wikipedia went from title case to sentence case many years ago; we have better things to do. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:02, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
• Weak oppose. We usually use MOS:TITLECASE for everything here at Wikipedia. In general, best to follow PAGs unless there's a compelling reason. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:28, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose – No reason to deviate from the standard our MOS applies to articles, which is also observed in practice for most pages in the project namespace. Graham (talk) 02:48, 23 August 2022 (UTC)
•  Oppose per MOS. — Qwerfjkltalk 10:21, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Requested change to Wikipedia:Article wizard/Referencing (2)

I hate to make a second request in as many days, but I'd like to change the current text of More detail on how to cite different types of materials can be found at our introduction to referencing guide to More details on how to cite different types of materials can be found at our introduction to referencing guide. This sounds better to my ear and I think it's more grammatically proper. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 21:06, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

 Done * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:19, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Option to directly create a live article

Prior to October 14, 2017, the final page of the Article Wizard showed two options to autoconfirmed users: One option was to create a draft for submission to AfC, and the other option was to create a live article. This is what the final page looked like for autoconfirmed users.

In the redesigned Article Wizard that went live on October 14 2017, the option to create a live article was removed. I can't find any comments about the removal of this option in the relevant talk page discussion or the Village Pump RfC. Drewmutt or anyone else, do you remember why the option was removed? Or was it omitted unintentionally? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 02:10, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

I know that a lot of functionality was lost when we switched over to the current wizard, and I think some editors in retrospect view adopting it as a mistake. The User:Sdkb/sandbox/Vision for a better Article Wizard currently being used as a model for the edit check project includes consideration of an option for autoconfirmed, non-COI editors to launch a page directly to mainspace. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:33, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

some editors in retrospect view adopting it as a mistake Primefac (talk) 17:38, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

The switch was before my time, so I don't have direct views on it. I've just heard grumblings about lost functionality from some. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:08, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

JavaScript Article Wizard

I want to suggest making the article wizard use some level of JavaScript. The reason is that it can allow for stuff like checking to see if other (draft) articles exist with search and requesting the creation of a redirect if such a topic does exist.

It would also be helpful for Wikipedia:New user landing page because when a new user gets redirected there the original page name is specified there as well. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 23:01, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Coordination#Article creation hypothesis

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Coordination#Article creation hypothesis. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:27, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

I know this is mentioned above, but giving this its own sections so it does not get buried. The WMF Growth Team is considering overhauling the article wizard, which may be of interest to watchers of this talk page. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:27, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Sigh. This thread was also started at WT:AFC - how much decentralised discussion is there going to be about this? Primefac (talk) 09:30, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Edit request 30 June 2023

Description of suggested change:

Diff:

−

ORIGINAL_TEXT

+

CHANGED_TEXT

Lalmohanlal (talk) 18:08, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I edited the template for the person who needed the Wikipedia. so please unblock me.

This is not the place to ask for unblocks. You are also not blocked. Primefac (talk) 18:09, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Sources-only beta phase

Perhaps the Wikipedia:Article_wizard/CreateDraft screen could be edited to include an additional paragraph at the end, "BETA - experimental - start with sources assessment. Write your draft title here: (BOX)", which creates the draft from another template, Template:AfC preload/draft-sourcesonly, so that helpees don't spend weeks writing articles without proper sources or notability? The articles would go into the review queue just like any others, with the difference being that if the draft is approved, the reviewer would still need to not-ready it and write 'Congratulations, source check passed, please proceed to writing your text' in comments. The template could be edited to include draft into some category like Category:AfC/Experimental sources only. Three months later someone could check whether this category has a higher success rate. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 06:33, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Could you sandbox the changes please to get a better idea of what is desired? Primefac (talk) 06:57, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

User:Gryllida/sandbox Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 12:20, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Haven't had a chance to really look into this, but my initial thought after a quick glance is that I am not overly thrilled at the idea of forcing people to use VE. Primefac (talk) 09:35, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

My motivation for this was that VE allows to easily create a list of adequately formatted sources without the user needing to manually fill in their title and publisher. So (i) isn't VE on by default for new users in the first place; (ii) if it isn't, and if there is no consensus on forcing or instructing the users to use VE, then how can this desired functionality, if at all, be achieved without VE? Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 11:50, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

The source editor also has a "cite" option for easy filling-out of references, so while I get your point it's not like VE is the only tool for the job; I have no issues with describing how VE sourcing works but a link to WP:INTREF3 for those using source wouldn't hurt. Primefac (talk) 14:29, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Instructions to switch to VE removed. Link to the intref3 added. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 05:52, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

(Note that it may be necessary to move the header into a new template, like {{AfC/sourcesonly-header}}, to prevent cluttering the draft itself; then users won't tamper with the header while writing the draft.) Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 06:37, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

@KStoller-WMF and the rest of the WMF Growth team have been considering a project that would ask new editors to add sources when creating articles (as in step 4 of this vision), so pinging for awareness. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:06, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. It would be great to connect with the team. Two remarks:

• The new users already add sources. The problem is that, while 95% of their sources are useless at establishing notability in 95% of cases, the new users also write a massive and promotional draft text, which is a waste of time really - they need to be working on extracting information from good sources, not from their head or YouTube.
• The new article creation process would also be cool to have at sister wikis, listed at http://wikimedia.org - each of them has a very specialized article creation process. I would suggest including at least one contributor into a growth team beta testers group, and actively liaising with this group as a part of the development process.

Hope this helps (and correct me if I'm wrong; the above are my personal impressions). Regards, -- Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 05:57, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Overall, I'd be very interested to see the results of any beta test. I think there are some potential challenges, though, especially if users would have to opt in to the beta. I think most newcomers are unaware that whether their draft is accepted or not is 90% about how good their sources are; they think it's much more about what they've written. So I imagine that many of them would see the option to make a source-only draft not as "this could save me the effort of writing out an article on a non-notable topic" but rather as "why would I want to introduce an extra hurdle for myself when I could just go ahead and write the article?" {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:11, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

That's why I've included words 'easier' and 'shorten' in the text of the wizard screen. Once more data is obtained, these may be accompanied by data, like 'two times shorter', for example, or 'with a 2 times higher success rate'. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 05:59, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

(The sources review may be quicker than the text review, as there is no need to check for text or photo plagiarism, npov, etc.) Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 05:59, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for looping me into this conversation, Sdkb!

@Gryllida, I would love to include you in future Growth team conversations about the Article creation for new editors project. Do you have any thoughts on any of the project ideas listed in there? Do you think I should add this "sources only" idea to the "initial ideas" list?

I find the idea of emphasizing the importance of reliable sources to new editors very appealing. The concept of a "sources only" first step draft is intriguing. I do have a slight concern that this beta test may not yield definitive results due to the influence of self-selection bias. Nevertheless, that doesn't imply that you won't gain valuable insights from such a test. I would be genuinely interested in discovering the percentage of users who proceed with the "sources only" draft. KStoller-WMF (talk) 17:35, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi KStoller-WMF

Thoughts about the ideas listed in there:

• The page you linked includes a list of six personas. Perhaps these are newcomers with different preferences for how they would like to be guided in writing of a new article. They will correspond to different article wizards. How would a newcomer choose which wizard to use?
• The "New user article flowchart (from Kudpung)" looks interesting. Is it known, at the moment, which category do the majority of new registered users fall into? Do they want to edit an article; to create a new article; to do something else that's not mentioned (hang out with other contributors; to ask a question; to help with draft review or edits patrol; etc)?
• "New landing page proposal (from Novem Linguae and Kudpung)" looks interesting, the new landing page is cheap to try, and the 60 thematic article templates look interesting. Perhaps about 10% of the conflict of interest contributors could learn from it. Others probably won't. (This is a guesstimate.) These templates could be improved by showing newcomers some examples of stubs which need to pass review prior to expanding into a full article.
• "Vision for a better Article Wizard (from Sdkb‎)" the step 4 for this is effectively what I am proposing, just as a part of a bigger proposal and my 'get a reviewer approval of your sources first' algorithm is not implemented. Overall, a lovely idea.
• "Create a special page for starting a new article (from Tgr)" is excellent, bit too simplistic as any information from current article wizard or any of the other proposals would be good to have.
• "Reference requirement for new article creation (2023 Wishlist proposal from Mega809, ranked #26 out of 182 proposals)" is good, also too simplistic, as it is a very easy to bypass by a spammer or a coi editor who does not have a clue.

I would strongly suggest to try all of the above on the test wiki (test.wikipedia.org) or several test wikis etc, with a shorter approval process for a new extension or new software??

Yes please add my idea. It overlaps with other ideas partly I think. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 06:35, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you so much @Gryllida! I've added your idea to the "initial ideas" section. Please feel free to revise the title I gave it: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth/Article_creation_for_new_editors#Initial_ideas:

I hope to write up an initial summary of the feedback we've received from community members and add that to the Community discussion section next week. Your feedback will definitely factor into that!

As for the feedback on personalizing the Article wizard for newcomer personas, I hadn't really considered that approach. That's an interesting idea, although it would be difficult to categorize each new editor in this way. I have been thinking more about personalizing the Newcomer homepage based on the interests a new account holder expresses in the Welcome survey. Do you think that's an approach we should consider?

I agree that there is a lot of overlap between these ideas. Hopefully the Growth team can move forward with a project that helps address the underlying needs behind most of these ideas, and then A/B test the impact of the change on both new editors and experienced editors.

We will definitely release any changes to beta and test wikis before a wider release. The Growth team also generally releases initially to our pilot wikis before we scale features to more wikis.

If we only had the chance to move one of these project ideas forward, is there a particular one you think we should start with?

Thanks for all of the feedback! KStoller-WMF (talk) 19:17, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

It is an interesting survey.

• I would like to know how newcomers respond to it. Some might not have the time to do it and others might appreciate it.
• Though I guess each question and the survey itself may need to stay optional and they need to be clearly made aware that they can come back to it later (and receive the remaining bits of their welcome message after they have finished filling it in).
• Another question I'd suggest to add is something that would lead the newcomer to certain sister projects such as wikimedia commons, wikibooks, wikisource and the like (like do you have interest in (please tick): photography and video taking, literature, book writing, etc one item per sister project) and then as a part of welcome message they get links to the sister projects which they might be interested in.

I would suggest to start by some things like these

• asking the existing volunteer reviewers and developers about the form of the software they would prefer -- a gadget, an extension, a toolforge tool, etc. It could be an important factor in keeping other contributors engaged
• asking for feedback from all sister wikis, and giving them time to respond, about their ideas - this could make your newly written software more universal in application to these sister wikis

Hope it helps, and please let me know if you have other questions. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 00:52, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

(Hi KStoller-WMF, I forgot to ping you in the message above I believe) Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 00:53, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

This is super helpful, thanks @Gryllida!

I just looked at the data, and it looks like on English Wikipedia in 2022, 62% of newcomers are answering at least one question on the Welcome survey. Every question is optional, and we will definitely keep the survey questions optional. If we start to use the data to help personalize the homepage, we will allow users to complete it at a later point from the homepage, just as you've suggested.

It would be interesting to use the Welcome survey to identify newcomers that might be particularly interested in one of the sister projects. We've generally been very Wikipedia-focused; the newer Add an image task utilizes images from Commons and data from WikiData, but it's still a Wikipedia edit.

Thanks again for all of the feedback, I'll keep this all in mind as we further refine our project ideas. KStoller-WMF (talk) 22:01, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm a bit concerned I don't know how the survey works from technical perspective. Is it possible to customize it and use a different set of questions on a sister wiki? Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 03:28, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

@Gryllida It's not currently possible to customize the Welcome survey, but that is something we have considered: T222924. You can see that there are some concerns listed in the task, but the main blocker is simply that it didn't seem like a high priority for many wikis, so we didn't work on it. KStoller-WMF (talk) 20:58, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi KStoller-WMF,

• Is the survey enabled at sister wikis?
• What is it - is it a mediawiki extension? I browsed the links from the linked Task and they weren't making this very obvious.
• I would like to install a wiki and this software on it, and make the survey customizable. Could I be provided a shell access somewhere for developers on your servers? I can add another one or two people from on-wiki who could help with editing the code.

Regards, Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 00:50, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Hello @Gryllida

The Welcome survey is added to one unique non Wikipedia project: French Wiktionary. This survey, and the rest of our features, are part of the Growth extension.

And we welcome contributions from volunteer users!  

Thank you for your interest, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 16:21, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi Trizek (WMF) and KStoller-WMF, thanks for the clarification that this is the Growth extension.

How can I install a wiki with shell access and share the shell access with other wiki users? This is done at toolforge https://admin.toolforge.org/tools and it works very well for collaboration and effective maintaining of useful tools. It would be great to have access to infrastructure for development of wiki extensions too, not each interested person has access to a server where to host mediawiki and provide ssh access to others with it running 24/7. I hope you have a solution for this. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 22:18, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

@Gryllida, have you looked at the ressources created by the Developer Advocacy team, in particular their developer portail? This team is your point of contact to setup your environment and discover Mediawiki's code. Then Growth can guide you through their extension.

It is possible to setup a local environment for test purposes, several options are available. You can request a developer account for making technical contributions.

Trizek (WMF) (talk) 11:50, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi Trizek (WMF) Thanks, I will check, if toolforge does not allow running a mediawiki, then I will try to request a cloud vps for volunteer collaboration on editing the growth extension. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 23:19, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Gryllida Please let us know if you have projects regarding Growth extension, so that we can guide and advise you in our best capacity! Trizek (WMF) (talk) 11:42, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks Trizek Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 06:43, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi Sdkb what is the best procedure to implement such a test? What software would you like to be implemented? I showed an edited screen for article creation wizard and the corresponding new draft template which it could lead to. It needs some cleanup so that users aren't presented with clumsy text on top of their draft and it is only a one-liner, but this is a purely technical question and could be done by anybody who is copying these pages and templates to the correct namespaces. What do you suggest doing now? Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 22:24, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

@Gryllida, the complexity of User:Sdkb/Vision for a better Article Wizard is beyond what could be accomplished in source code, so it would need to involve software development from the WMF using whatever language they use to produce the wiki interface. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:47, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi Sdkb - No, I mean the additional option with sources-only based draft creation, which was described in my original paragraph in this section. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 05:57, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

As that's your suggestion, I'll defer to you about what implementation approach would be best. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:40, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi Sdkb I'm limited in what I can do to the article wizard because of permissions. I have provided the materials for implementing it and I am hoping someone with the correct permissions can add it to the wizard. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 23:13, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

"Referencing" section

I notice that this section mentions reliable sources, but doesn't use the phrase "significant coverage" anywhere. Could someone add something like that please? It has links to notability guidelines but it really wouldn't hurt to mention "significant" or "in-depth" right where the wizard talks about reliability of sources. I'm currently talking to a new editor who feels the article wizard has been misleading about what kinds of sources are useful, and I think this minor edit could really help. -- asilvering (talk) 22:10, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Not sure if I've understood or if I'm even looking at the right thing, but I would say sigcov is an aspect of notability, not verifiability, so this should rather be mentioned in the first ('Notability') section of Wikipedia:Article_wizard/Referencing. But it is true that this isn't mentioned there, either. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 11:55, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

This seems reasonable. I think I hear the phrase "significant coverage" more often, but in that sentence the best wording I can think of is "The topic of an article must already have in-depth coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject," which I think works well. I don't have a strong preference of whether to link to SIGCOV there or not; I've always found it a bit weird that that just links to GNG, rather than something talking about that more specifically. LittlePuppers (talk) 14:50, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

@DoubleGrazing I agree with you about sigcov is an aspect of notability, not verifiability. The page is called "Referencing", which is why I titled my post that. You've got the right URL. So long as "significant coverage" is mentioned somewhere on that page, I don't really care where - I'm trying to head off the frustration from people who say "what do you mean, the NYT isn't good enough?!" There's really nothing in the article wizard that gives them much of an indication that we actually care about the volume of coverage. They have to click on the link to WP:N to find that out, right now.

Also, while I'm at it: I notice that this section says Your article will be rejected if the topic is not[...]. Can we change this to "will be declined"? I don't think this will fully clear up the declined/rejected confusion, but it might help. -- asilvering (talk) 23:59, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

I think we're saying the same thing anyway, but just to reiterate, sigcov is needed only in sources that the author is relying on for GNG notability. Beyond that, content can be supported by reliable sources even if they only make passing mention of the subject or verify a single fact.

I guess the wider issue here is that many editors don't realise that for GNG, all the criteria must be met in the same source. I wrote recently a half-baked essay on this, WP:GNGSC (I know someone else has said the same thing better elsewhere, but I can't find it for now). I think that's the message we need to somehow get to esp. newbie editors. Would certainly reduce the traffic at the AfC HG somewhat... -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 07:21, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

I made User:Primefac/RefTypes a number of years ago that explains the various types of references and what they're good for, for reference. Primefac (talk) 07:31, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

JS Article Wizard

I want to suggest that a JS article wizard be worked on. Some advantages would include helping new creators identify pages that already exist, as well as the suggestion of redirects. It could also help with stuff like prefilling page creation forms for new editors. Awesome Aasim 20:48, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Edit request 14 October 2023

Description of suggested change: Transclude the template Wikipedia:Articles for creation/ScamWarning somewhere in the article wizard, per consensus at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation § More paid-review accusations. Limited participation, but I can't think of any reason why this change would be controversial.

While specifics were not discussed, I think placing it under Wikipedia:Article_wizard/CreateDraft would be a good idea. A whole page dedicated to the warning would be also nice.

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit template-protected}} template. Specifically, a consensus on where it should go. Discussion is still ongoing, and I don't really want to have to move it to multiple different pages. Primefac (talk) 15:23, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

I can't think of any reason why this change would be controversial @Ca, overall, I'd support having some sort of scam warning, but the major downside to this is that it contributes to banner blindness. There are a million pieces of important information to throw at new editors, and there are editors advocating for each of them to be shouted as prominently as possible, but if we actually did that (and we kinda do), new editors would either have to spend several hours reading before being able to do anything, or (what actually happens) they'd pay attention to whatever is most shouty at the expense of whatever is second-most shouty, which they'd start ignoring. So what we want is to communicate what we need to, but to do it in the most concise possible way. In this case, that'd mean rewriting the first/second paragraphs to boil it down to a single short paragraph, and then putting everything else (e.g. the "what to do if you've been targeted" info) behind a "learn more" link. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 15:48, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Fair, I'll start a discussion soon at WT:WPAFC. Ca ^{talk to me!} 20:00, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

A discussion proposing changes to the article wizard should be held here, at the article wizard's talk page. {{Please see}} notices can be placed at other relevant talk pages. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:28, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Discussion on Scam warning has cooled down

I am not sure what to make of this discussion but it failed to generate a lot of comments, despite me informing WP:VPPR. It has since cooled down and diverted to another issue. So I am asking for any template editor to use their discretion on where to place the warning and how the warning should be presented.

Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation#Where_should_we_place_the_scam_warning? Ca ^{talk to me!} 13:57, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

 Done I went with ARandomName123's suggestion at Wikipedia:Article wizard/CreateDraft, since it was the only concrete idea. My reading of that discussion is that adding a warning here was uncontested, but there seems to be agreement that it may be worth advertising in other places as well, which is out of scope here. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 18:40, 10 November 2023 (UTC)