Template talk:No article text

Initial comments

Writing in Wiki is not very intuitive. It just contributes to the increasing number of mark-up languages.

OK, I have changed the text to Edit and made it a link. It's a bit messy, and I don't know if it will work on all pages. Dori | Talk 14:24, Jun 13, 2004 (UTC)

Beautiful. ✏ Sverdrup 14:28, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Actually, this does not work on empty category pages ([1]). I think it's okay to keep it, though. ✏ Sverdrup 11:22, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I changed "on this topic": there may well be a page on the topic, but with a slightly different name.--Patrick 00:53, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Namespace in wiktionary link

The new [[Wiktionary:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|{{PAGENAME}}]] link results in an extra colon in non-namespaced pages. How about [http://en.wiktionary.org{{localurl:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}}} {{PAGENAME}}] ? Goplat 19:58, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Strange characters

The "edit this page" link creates wrong article titles in case the page name contains brackets or comma - e.g. "Test (city)" becomes "Test %28city%29)". I guess it was the exchange of PAGENAME by PAGENAMEE. andy 08:47, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Add direct search function to "article does not exist" page

Currently, if an article does not exist, the visitor gets a message with three options:

• Edit this page
• Look into the Wiktionairy
• Look at the candidates for speedy deletion.

I propose to add an option "search for this". When I want to know something about a certain subject, I type it directly into the address bar. Recently, I typed "w are you being served", and received the Article does not exist page. It turned out to be called "Are You Being Served?". I had to paste the text I was looking for into the search form to search for it. If the 'does not exist' message would have had an option "search for this", it would not have been neceserry to do the latter. I'm sure it would be a useful feature, the only minor disadvantage being that the 'does not exist' message would grow. Gerritholl 14:29, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've added a link to the search to this and MediaWiki:Newarticletext. Angela. 13:17, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC)

Delays?

"If you have created this page in the past few minutes and it has not yet appeared, it may not be visible due to a delay in updating the database. Please wait and check again later before attempting to recreate the page." (formatting removed)

1. Is this a new problem? This message wasn't there until a short time ago.
2. Does this belong on MediaWiki:Newarticletext? Remember that only that message (not this one) wil be seen by those following a broken link (commonly called a red link but this can be changed). Brianjd 08:31, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)

1. It has recently been a large problem. There's numerous posts over on Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) from people who are seeing this and related problems. Because they don't see their article, they hit back in their browser, and re-save it. This causes the article to be created twice, which creates all sorts of other fun problems with categories and what links here.
2. Yes, it should have been added there too. I just didn't realize there was more than one place it needed to go before I needed to allocate time to other things. -- Cyrius|✎ 12:43, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don't get it

Everytime I edit this template, it keeps saying that no article exists. But the template does exist! Do you think I should file a bug report? K. Thanks. - Ta bu shi da yu 10:41, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think the people who handle bug reports are very busy lately. You should wait precisely 15 days and then file it. -- Curps 17:37, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Delete, fancruft. (with apologies to Silsor) — Knowledge Seeker দ 05:44, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

remove "yet"?

I suggest that we should remove "yet" from the sentence "Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name." To me, this implies that we don't have the article now but we should have one. If someone types blahblah into the search box and hits "Go" and gets this message, he might feel that he should start the article. I'm basing this off a few isolated comments from users who thought they were supposed to add those articles but which got put on VFD or were speedily deleted. Maybe this word change isn't a big deal. Thoughts? — Knowledge Seeker দ 09:01, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'd suggest something along the lines of:

Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name.

Would you like to:

Start the FOO article

<the other options>

I think it would strike a balance between "there doesn't necessarily need to be an article here" and "yes, you can write an article if you want to". -- Cyrius|✎ 15:40, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, although perhaps "Would you like to:" could be something like "You may choose one of the following:" or something. Anyone else have any thoughts? — Knowledge Seeker দ 00:02, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"You may choose..." seems a little too formal to me. -- Cyrius|✎ 13:33, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, it seems too formal to me too. I hesitate using "Would you like to:" for two reasons: One is that as I understand it, colons should normally follow complete sentences. Although I don't always follow this, I feel that this text is "official" enough that it should be written more correctly. The other is, along the same lines, I feel like it is a question and should end in a question mark, which would look awkward. Let me think about other ways to reword it. — Knowledge Seeker দ 17:46, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I removed "yet". We may add "However, you can create one."--Patrick 12:44, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Removing the "yet" sounds reasonable. We shouldn't have an article for every single text string someone inadvertantly types into the Search box. --TenOfAllTrades (talk/contrib) 21:33, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Missing dot

The line "Search for <article> in other articles" lacks a dot at the end. I think this should be fixed. Meneth 15:42, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Thanks; I added periods to the first two options. — Knowledge Seeker দ 16:49, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Namespace dependent

The German Wikipedia has de:MediaWiki_Diskussion:Newarticletext namespace dependent noarticletexts. This is a good idea: compare de:Bild:Stelvio.jpg and Image:Stelvio.jpg. How could this be implemented for the English language Wikipedia? Gerrit ^CUTEDH 21:58, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

bugzilla:2388

See: bugzilla:2388 – "handling: add a "purge" link to MediaWiki:Noarticletext" Regards Gangleri | Th | T 03:23, 2005 Jun 19 (UTC)

Good idea, done.--Patrick 13:57, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Link to deletion log

I thought it would be useful to suggest creating a link to the deletion log after the last line, so that new users can more easily find and contact the admin who's deleted the page. This might be handy in case something was speedy-deleted or just voted out. This would be done using the form:

talk:No_article_text Check for No article text in the deletion log

[{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Log|type=delete&user=&page={{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAMEE}}}} Check for '''{{PAGENAME}}''' in the deletion log]

At the same time, please bypass the redirect by changing "candidates for speedy deletion" to "criteria for speedy deletion". -- Netoholic @ 6 July 2005 19:56 (UTC)

Actually the CSD link is already skip-redirected (with pipe). I like the log search link, added it and added it as well to MediaWiki:Newarticletext, which is what people more often see when attempting to reach a deleted article through Go or links. I also added an AfD link, since for AfDed articles this will contain some good discussion of why it was deleted (much better than the deletion summary). Deco 03:45, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

no offense but...

The new version is quite ugly. --Ixfd64 10:29, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Remove frame

I'm impressed that no administrator has yet to discover that the frame around this message has been replaced by a frame in the CSS of MediaWiki, thus rendering the current message with a double ugly-bugly frame, could someone with power, please fix it. As you can see from the message above, it has been a looong time.... --Dittaeva 20:01, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm not an admin, but I think they know, it's just that it isn't automatically generated by non-Monobook skins. --WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 19:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

candidates --> criteria

I changed the phrase "See candidates for speedy deletion" to "See the criteria for speedy deletion", as that is where the link goes. New editors might type the term in the searchbar and wonder why they aren't at the same page they got when they clicked the same phrase. Prodego ^talk 22:24, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Wiktionary link to search?

Wouldn't it be better to have the link Wiktionary:PAGENAME replaced by Wiktionary:Special:Search/PAGENAME? I'll also put the opposite forward at Wiktionary. Vildricianus 15:51, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Different message for talk pages?

I've had some questions from users about the template messages on talk pages without content of existing articles, e.g. Talk:Raul. It states "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name.", problem is that it does have an article with this exact name, just not a talk page. Can a seperate talk page template be made and used? -- Jeandré, 2006-04-24t12:15z

That's something to request of the developers (unless some sort of conditional, namespace-based construct could be devised). For the time being, I've reworded the message to broadly reference all pages. —David Levy 12:46, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I believe ParserFunctions could be useful here. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 13:49, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

That's what I was thinking, but I'm not familiar enough with the syntax to suggest a specific implementation. —David Levy 14:12, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Done. I also hid the AfD link for non-article pages, and the Wiktionary and Commons links for pages that are neither articles nor categories. (Images are handled differently anyway.) I'm almost tempted to use the trick from Template:Exists to hide the AfD link entirely unless the target page exists, but I'm not sure how reliable it is. I also took the opportunity to remove hardcoded instances of "Wikipedia" from the text, and to fix a number of cases where article names were URL-encoded twice. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:31, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

The rest is fine, but somebody please get rid of the italics; they're really ugly. --Rory096_(block) 03:03, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The italicized text serves a syntactical function (comparable to quotation marks) in a manner consistent with other boilerplate messages. (See our merger/split templates.) —David Levy 03:12, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

No need for special cases for the Image: namespace

This message is not used for images at all; the noimage message is shown instead (example). So there's no need to add elaborate conditionals to test if {{NAMESPACE}} equals "Image" — it can't happen. (On the other hand, newarticletext can be shown for images if one tries to edit a nonexistent image page, for example by clicking a link like this. This is arguably a bug.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 11:00, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

The same is true for MediaWiki pages as well; those just display a blank page if they don't exist. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 11:07, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

To link "spam" to WP:SPAM, "deleted" to WP:CSD or WP:AFD, and "article policies" to whatever page that is. Thanx. 68.39.174.238 17:02, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the spam thing should be on MediaWiki:Newarticletext, shouldn't it? æ² ✆ 2006-06-16t19:13z

Frankly it looks ugly and I think it might be a bit abrasive sounding (Direct address, etc), however if nothing else it should probably link to the appropriate policies. However it may indeed belong somewhere else. 68.39.174.238 20:24, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I also forgot, I'm surprised "is not" wasn't linked to every debaters favorite pages to begin with ;D "LOL"! 68.39.174.238 20:25, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Regarding removal of new paragraph

Hi all - although I appreciate your intent in adding the new paragraph regarding vanity pages, I don't feel this is appropriate. For one thing, WP:AUTO is only a guideline not policy; speedy deletion does not allow the deletion of such pages; and these pages comprise only some of the poorly-created new pages. I also feel that the wording is excessively verbose. If you can come up with something to replace it that is more true and less wordy I'd be happy to see it added. Deco 04:19, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Rather than removing it you should have proposed an improvement. We're now receiving legal threats from people who are angry that we've deleted content they paid to have inserted in Wikipedia. I can't disagree with your claim of some, since it would still be true if 99% of newpages were paid advertisements, but I don't see how the fact that not all of the newpages are garbage justifies removing the notice. :) --Gmaxwell 07:54, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

We have disclaimers, we won't get sued, there's no reason to have it in bold everywhere. It's m:instruction creep. --Rory096 17:41, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

we won't get sued .. if only that were true. ducks paddling furiosly under the water, and all that ... --AlisonW 20:55, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Fine, we won't lose in a lawsuit. Do you really think somebody suing that something they submitted to a private website would win? --Rory096 04:12, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Caselaw suggests that someone doing so would win if they could show and traceback malice. WP is presently treading a very fine line to ensure as much freedom to edit (and create) as possible whilst protecting our users and good name. There aer, however, regular complaints about content, sometimes via lawyers with threats, which mean that if we can be seen to take sensible steps to reduce the likelihood of spam, etc. then we are in a better position to solve such complaints without actually finding ourselves in court. Someone who desires to create an good article will not be prevented or delayed by these few words, but tidying up after the person who is not here to "do good" will be easier because the status of such miscreations is far clearer. --AlisonW 11:50, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I'll put it back. If it needs to be trimmed was can talk about it. --Tony Sidaway 08:03, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Okay, if you'd rather discuss it, can we first address the very serious problem that it makes the claim that we can speedy delete this type of information, none of which is eligible for speedy deletion? In fact, it is often retained in AfD, since it can be improved into an article. I suggest we simply say that it "may be deleted or drastically modified". Deco 08:16, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

He did. --Gmaxwell 09:06, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Not exactly. He left in the part about speedy deletion. They will never be deleted in accordance with speedy deletion; there is no such criterion. They may be deleted via other means. Deco 09:08, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Advertising copy and marketing material is routinely speedied. Would you like some examples? --Gmaxwell 09:10, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I just added that text to MediaWiki:Newarticletext, not seeing this discussion yet, I do think it should be included, but I didn't want to seem like I was just ignoring other people's opinions. - cohesion 09:16, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Such deletions are out-of-process. You can raise this on Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion if you want - I think consensus is on my side here (regarding the current state of CSD, at least, rather than what should be the rule). Deco 09:28, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

There is no reason for me to raise anything on the CSD page because I have no complaint to make there about current practices. --Gmaxwell 09:41, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Let me make myself clearer. Currently this box asserts that such material "may be deleted without further notice in accordance with our speedy deletion policies." The policy named and linked there does not authorize or permit such deletions. Therefore, this is a blatant lie that will show up every time anyone creates a new article (the text was copied to MediaWiki:Newarticletext). This misrepresentation of our policies will spread distrust among our new users, encourage out-of-process deletions, and absolutely cannot be tolerated should be removed. I really don't think I'm alone in opposing this wording. Deco 09:44, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Am I supposed to be convinced by your bold text? How about you propose revised wording here rather than just complaining? For example, the original version of this text did not include mention of the criteria for speedy deletion... Did you find it less objectionable? --Gmaxwell 09:48, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry that I wasn't more clear. I'd be happy if the reference to speedy deletion were deleted, and this was what I intended to propose above. I had the impression that you were asserting the truth of this statement and refusing to consider removing it - if you do not hold this position, then I apologise if I came off too forcefully. Thanks a lot for discussing this with me. Deco 09:56, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Deco is correct—speedy deletion of vanity material and advertising is not policy. This problem could be solved by changing in accordance with our speedy deletion policies to in accordance with our deletion policies.. Spacepotato 10:04, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Sensible change. Done. --AlisonW 10:23, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your support and this change. I am fully in accord with the text as it stands. I apologize again for overreacting. Deco 11:09, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

No apology needed! The level of spam/SEO/marketing/advertising 'articles' we are getting is close to getting out of hand and we need something in there that might either stop them, or make clear to the creators that we will stop them. Hopefully thyese additional notices will work against the spammers but not put off good editors creating sensible articles ... --AlisonW 11:44, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I noticed the new paragraph a day ago or so, and just came across this discussion. I support the new paragraph (although Deco's point about speedy issues is a valid one), and I certainly believe we get a terrible mass of spam, but I'd be curious, if it's feasible, if someone would provide some hard numbers on this subject. i.e. how many spam pages we get per day/week/month, how they break down in terms of how they are dealt with, etc. JesseW, the juggling janitor 23:40, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Well there is a nontrivial number that gets missed... but it's hard to count that because it's not missed any more once you've found it. :) In general it's hard because people don't always agree on what is spam. Why not check for yourself. Open up Special:Newpages, jump back 10,000 pages or so and start clicking at random, or just walk through a bunch... There is a lot of okay stuff, but a lot of junk too... --Gmaxwell 23:55, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Will do, and will post the results. JesseW, the juggling janitor 03:47, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I've looked through 40 (in order), starting with 02:56, 21 June 2006 ‎Melodious Thunk, and I find it nearly impossible to decide what's "spam" or not merely based on the content of them. I deleted a few as being obviously non-notable groups, and a few more I was very unsure about, and a few others were depressingly in need of massive cleanup (i.e. they were better than nothing, I suppose, but could hardly be considered articles) and many of the others were filling out members of a set, and some of the rest were excellent short articles.

I suppose, the question I was really asking was more like: What sort of content is being paid to be put in Wikipedia, how much of it do we get, and what sort of "legal threats" are we getting in regards to it? JesseW, the juggling janitor 04:21, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

People are paying to have content inserted in Wikipedia? Who/what/where/how/when? And they're making legal threats against US for that? Stifle (talk) 10:21, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Deco's original concern; I regularly encounter readers (not regular editors) who are baffled by the bold warnings and admonishments which begin to appear as soon as one tries to contribute to Wikipedia. This is an example of user interface recapitulating administrative needs; when it should instead address the needs of most users and find ways to best achieve the goals of the site -- not just ways to make administrative tasks easier. I changed the text to make it less frightening; we're not trying to keep people from contributing here, just clarifying what is and is not acceptable. +sj + 15:40, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Our readers need a Wikipedia which isn't unreasonably biased by commercial abuse and self promotion. Our editors need to be treated with the basic human respect that comes from not demanding they spend infinite amounts of time deleting content which we should have advised people not to post in the first place. Because your involvement with Wikipedia is mostly within the realm of speculating and talking to people who are pretty smart, you might not be aware... but many people are actually surprised that Wikipedia doesn't permit companies to write articles for advertising purposes. We are frequently offered money to host articles and links(you have an OTRS login no?), and we encounter people who think Wikipedia is funded, at least in part, by articles on products and companies. In any case, your changes are confusing because it implies that we don't want people writing articles on companies or people at all... which isn't the case, we especially want people to avoid starting articles on themselves or on companies who are compensating them.--Gmaxwell 15:58, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

WP:BEANS

Adding a "don't advertise" clause seems more likely to increase than to decrease advertising/marketing efforts in the medium term. Not sure about the short or long term effects. +sj + 15:48, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

WP beans only applies if the subject wouldn't have thought of it in the first place. If you're already at the new article page, thats probably not the case... although with your weaked and confusing new text (can we not have articles on companies at all?) perhaps I could see where it might cause problems. --Gmaxwell 15:51, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Repair it, please

Please... I'd like to ask someone (admin preffered) to revert the changes made by Gruch tooday. It causes crash on empty sites - there's no text visible in template and there are some problems with links... MonteChristof 18:44, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Odd, it worked fine for me. I also tested it while logged out without any custom CSS. Could you be a little more specific? – Gurch 01:06, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've reinstated the change I made in August as it seems unlikely that there is a problem with that. I will leave the other changes for now and possibly reintroduce those that don't cause a problem at a later date when I am confident as to which ones they are – Gurch 21:42, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Preload

At MediaWiki talk:Newarticletext#.22Please_make_a_GOOD_new_article.22 I've suggested adding a pre-load template, Template:Noarticletext preload, to the "Start the article" link on this notice. Uncle G 17:16, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. Is it this easy to implement? —Centrx→talk • 17:51, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

interwiki bit might need slight changes...

I'd like to comment on the interwiki box added recently, since I think it needs two small graphical adjustments. First of all, shouldn't it be centered vertically with respect to the rest of the "empty page" box? (wait a minute, that's just an optical illusion) Secondly, its contrasting border clashes with the grey outside border of the main box - shouldn't their borders match? I hate to be a nitpicker, but this issue has been staring at me as I go through tagging articles for speedy deletion. Nihiltres^(t.c.s) 04:16, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Formatting and display of interwiki link box

{{editprotected}}

Some desired improvements to the interwiki link box:

• Only display the box for pages in the main namespace (this can be done with {{#if:{{NAMESPACE}}|| [insert markup for box here] }}).
• Make the border and style of the box match the rest of the skin (class="infobox" should do this; failing that, at least use style="border-color: #aaaaaa".
• Don't underline the page name. Underlining isn't used elsewhere in the interface (partly for accessibility reasons, to better distinguish hyperlinks), and having it in bold is quite enough.

Thanks – Gurch 11:37, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Gurch, you have some good ideas. Can you code an example in your userspace so that other users can discuss the exact changes you are proposing? Thanks. --Selket ^Talk 16:20, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree exactly with this proposal - here's a mockup. Try *previewing* a transclude onto a nonexistent article using "{{User:Nihiltres/Sandbox}}". Nihiltres^(t.c.s) 20:37, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I had in mind. Thanks for taking the time to create that – Gurch 06:43, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Y Done --ais523 10:54, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

I'd like to suggest one further change: I created a version of the interwiki box with a table that centres each image relative to the others, keeps the project names lined up, and uses slightly larger (not much difference) images set to a consistent scale. I did this because it bothered me that the Wikinews icon seemed out of line with the others, and the image scale didn't seem consistent (varying image height, for example.) This change would lengthen the interwiki box by 12 pixels vertical as rendered by my Mac OS copies of Safari and Firefox. Again, the mockup is located at User:Nihiltres/Sandbox, though this version currently has its selective display of the interwiki box disabled, a change which should not be copied. I updated it to correspond with recent changes made by Centrx. I'm now an admin, so I can make the change, but I'd like confirmation that this is a worthwhile one to make. Thanks, Nihiltres^(t.c.s) 15:08, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this would be an appropriate change for you to make if you wanted; it looks better than the current version. --ais523 09:40, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the confirmation, I'll make the change momentarily. Nihiltres^(t.c.s) 14:43, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

I tried it, but the formatting was broken so I immediately rolled my change back. I'll be checking the code I used, one moment. Nihiltres^(t.c.s) 15:23, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

I figured it out - my preview version didn't take into account the way the ParserFunction interacts with the table notation (breaks it). I'll fix it before trying anything else. Nihiltres^(t.c.s) 15:29, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Problem solved, I added the table as HTML rather than as wiki table syntax. Nihiltres^(t.c.s) 20:27, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Deletion log

{{editprotected}}

The deletion log is now shown directly on the page below this table (for example, see GTAForums.com). The line

If a page previously existed at this exact title, check the deletion log and see Why was my page deleted?.

should be replaced by something like

If the page has been deleted, see Why was my page deleted?.

This issue was brought up at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Deletion log visible by default. –Pomte 17:52, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Done. Cheers. --MZMcBride 18:20, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

This does not appear to be working for (at least some) anons: see MediaWiki_talk:Newarticletext#link_to_deletion_log. 64.126.24.11 18:01, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

Due to the problem raised above, please revert this edit. –Pomte 18:22, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

No, see my comment here. Prodego ^talk 18:25, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Resolved (at least partially), thanks Prodego. 64.126.24.11 18:35, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Although it looks like it's being removed from this page: [2] -- nae'blis 03:20, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

repeated links

See http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10914 please. Jidanni 08:04, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I see. I am hesitant to change it because the message is organized in this way to be consistent with the messages for other namespaces. —Centrx→talk • 03:15, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Why no Wikiversity?

Too soon? When someone is directed to a page that does not exist, they get suggestions for searching in most of the sister projects. I can understand excluding Wikispecies, due to its narrow scope, but why no Wikiversity? Could someone please add this? -Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:15, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Sure, just one question: How should it describe Wikiversity? Give me the text I should use and I'll gladly insert it. Nihiltres^{t.l} 13:47, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks [logo] Wikiversity "(free educational resources)" or "(free learning resources)" maybe? Many of the sister projects have "free" in their description, which I think is unnecessary. -Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:27, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Y Done - Nihiltres^{t.l} 20:59, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! -Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:22, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Search by namespace

In order to simplify searches in the same namespace, I added "prefix:{{NAMESPACE}}:" to the keyword. Before one ended searching in article namespace from the page http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_River (currently not a redirect) -- User:Docu (May 6, 2009)

I wasnt to add the Movie title "ILLTOWN" and the actors and storyline, it is very worth learning about and watching. I have not found it on the website

Wikipedia:Article wizard2.0

Hi, I'd like to include a reference to Wikipedia:Article wizard2.0. There's currently (for the mainspace) a reference to Requested Articles ("add a request for it."). I'd like to amend it so that it says "Start the X article (using the Article Wizard if you wish) or add a request for it." I'm not sure how to do that though, I don't want to muck it up. Rd232 ^talk 01:01, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

Please fix the above link so it's not to a redirect page. Thanks, Majorly talk 18:13, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Done. Cheers,  Skomorokh  19:20, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Would someone mind if I transclude the editnotice of the wizard's default page directly into this message if it's displayed on New article name here? That page has been protected now due to repeated recreations, but that means that editors who end up there will be much more confused now and might not find their way back (they won't get the editnotice since "view source" doesn't display it). I initially didn't want the page protected in the first place, but the growing deletion log is certainly not helpful either. So, something like {{#ifeq:{{PAGENAME}}|New article name here|{{Editnotices/Page/New article name here}}}}
Any objections? Amalthea 10:40, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's a good idea, now that protection seems necessary. It really needs an explanatory message, and the editnotice (Template:Editnotices/Page/New article name here) doesn't load if you can't edit. Rd232 ^talk 12:12, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

My main concern is that this is a bit of an abuse of this message, and I don't really want it to serve as a precedent for other cases. Using the messages to show some distinct behavior on one particular page is a bit of a hack. One alternative would be to unprotect it and build a hard restriction into the abuse filter, but that would be even worse, and have a more measurable impact on performance.
I'll just do it then. Cheers, Amalthea 13:54, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I updated Wikipedia:Article wizard 2.0/Wizard-New edit instructions so it knows not to load the edit instructions. It would be slightly less hacky if the detection here merely suppressed the noarticletext notice, and Wikipedia:Article wizard 2.0/Wizard-New edit instructions showed the editnotice. Rd232 ^talk 14:24, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

 ! it doesn't seem to work. I get the editnotice (on top of the noarticletext message) when logged in as me (admin). But logged in as user:disembrangler (non-admin), I just get the View Source / This Page Protected message. So the page needs unprotecting to show noarticletext. Or else this hack needs implementing elsewhere... Rd232 ^talk 14:27, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

You know, we could just transclude the edit notice onto New article name here, protect it and have done with it! Plus we wouldn't be confusing people with the delete log. I could live with that exception. Rd232 ^talk 14:29, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's not an article, and it should be found by Special:Random. :)
I'm off to MediaWiki talk:Nocreatetext to propose the same change there, not sure if I get around to making it till Sunday though, but feel free if to do so yourself if there are no objections. Amalthea 16:09, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, should be good now, I made the change to MediaWiki:Nocreatetext. Amalthea 10:48, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Man ... OK, that was just the message if your account generally lacks the rights to create pages. I've changed MediaWiki:Titleprotected now, tested it as IP, normal user, and admin, both when viewing the page and when attempting to edit it (action=edit), and the message finally appears exactly once in every case, either via Template:Editnotices/Page/New article name here, MediaWiki:Titleprotected, or MediaWiki:Noarticletext. This should really be it, now. :) Amalthea 12:42, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Pages with missing end bracket

We had a discussion at VPT about missing end brackets. I've been researching the hits for those pages and it's considerable, so I added it as a reader service. Examples: Georgia (country has been viewed thousands of times in 2008, to a lesser extent but on a continuous basis, we have Lost (TV series, House (TV series with more than hundreds by month, and so on. This can happen for all pages with end brackets, and they are countless, so I expect that there are on average at least thousands views of pages with missing end bracket a day. Cenarium (talk) 17:53, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I would change the implementation a little bit. Highlight using the <em> tag and only on the part that is changed. Indicate that the error is where the data is inputted by using the URL. This shows users that the problem is with the auto linking software.

Did you mean: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_(country)

Another possible correction could be checked by removing the last letter if it is a symbol (like punctuation). — Dispenser 05:46, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Please remove the example article from the code! Majorly talk 18:41, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Wow, I should have tested it on a page besides Georgia (country. :( Thanks, Majorly! Cheers, Amalthea 18:46, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, tweaked the formatting.
Chopping off trailing characters could be done with {{Str left}} and {{Str len}}, and might help with plurals as well.
Cheers, Amalthea 18:46, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't the same thing be done for MediaWiki:Nocreatetext? Rd232 ^talk 19:56, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Adding [not found] or something similar to the title

{{editprotected}}

Browsers usually display the window title before the page completely loads. Unfortunately it contains the same text if the page exists and if it doesn't, making it necessary to wait for the page to load. As a counterexample, for redirects you immediately see that you have been redirected.

I'd suggest adding a tag like [not found] in the title bar. Something like:
{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{#if:{{NAMESPACE}}|{{NAMESPACE}}:|}}{{PAGENAME}} [not found]}}

--htamas (talk) 01:11, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Fairly sure DISPLAYTITLE doesn't allow this, so disabling this for now. DISPLAYTITLE is supposed to only allow code that doesn't prevent the title from being linkable (like italics or an initial lowercase letter). I've added the code to Test Wikipedia. Doesn't seem to work there. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:42, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I see. Should have read the article about DISPLAYTITLE first. Could you suggest some other way to implement this feature? --htamas (talk) 14:57, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Fix sidebar

{{editprotected}} The sidebar with interwiki links breaks here, for example. While this is not major, given the silly (and salted) nature of that page name, it is still important to have this code working in all cases. I'm not sure why this is happening, so I don't know what should happen to fix it. — This, that, and the other (talk) 10:24, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Then don't request an edit, I don't know either. Actually, I'm not even seeing the problem? Non-existent pages don't have interwiki links. Amalthea 12:04, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I am referring to the sidebar with links to the search pages on Wiktionary, etc. What do you mean by "don't request an edit"? The specificity of the request may be minimal, but it is indeed a problem that needs to be fixed. — This, that, and the other (talk) 06:34, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah, my mistake, I followed the redlink and got to the editing page, which shows a different message. Nonetheless, use the {{editprotected}} if you already have a "complete and specific description" of a requested change, just as it says on the template. If you only see that something is wrong, but don't know how to fix it, just start a thread and ask for input. If the talk page enjoys little traffic, advertise it at the WP:Village Pump (technical). Chances are that the random admin you'll attract with it won't know how to fix it either.
I'm fairly certain that it can't be fixed, actually, since the added characters from the sister project prefix will push titles that are close to the max length over the limit (anything over 240 characters I assume, since "Special:Search/" uses up 15 characters), leading to MediaWiki not rendering them as valid links. I can think of two workarounds, one is to suppress the display of the sidebar if the page name is over a certain length (using {{str ≥ len}}), the other is to use external links instead of wikilinks since the special page we're targeting here actually does accept search requests, i.e. those faux subpages even if the total length of the respective wiki link is too long.
Amalthea 14:52, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Amalthea is right. I did some tests and a [[wiktionary:Special/Search/Pagename]] link can handle a "Pagename" up to 240 characters but not more. Apparently the "wiktionary:" part does not count towards the 255 total. And you are right that making them [external] links allows using the full 255 characters.

But I changed those links to use {{sec link auto}} so that for users on the secure server they become secure links, just like we have done with the main page and some other system messages. {{sec link auto}} uses [[normal]] links on the normal servers, and [external] links on the secure server. So I think we are stuck with the 240 characters limit. Well, for the users on the secure server the full 255 characters now works fine, check it out.

And yeah, we can use {{str ≥ len}} to hide the sister box when the pagename is too long. But do we really have any pagenames that long? And I am not sure which is more confusing, a broken box or a disappearing box. But I guess it is cleaner to hide the box.

--David Göthberg (talk) 07:37, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

More notices

I am planning to do several technical changes to this system message:

Since some time now we have the "magic" links Special:MyPage/skin.css and Special:MyPage/skin.js that takes you to the skin file for your current skin, for instance your /monobook.css. But those links fail for IP-users and for users who have javascript disabled in their browser. Those users instead see MediaWiki:Noarticletext for their non-existing /skin.css page. So I intend to add a fall-back: When going to for instance User:Example/skin.css and the automatic redirection fails, {{skin-file disambig}} will be shown instead of the usual content of MediaWiki:Noarticletext.

I noticed that this message has a fix that shows the editnotice for Enter your new article name here, even when just viewing that page. See section "Wikipedia:Article wizard2.0" above. So far so good. But as you guys can see if you follow that link the message gets double borders. If/when I add {{skin-file disambig}} that too will get double borders. That's because the borders of this system message is added in MediaWiki:Common.css instead of here, which means we can't handle the borders here as we need. So I am planning to update MediaWiki:Common.css so this system message has no default borders, and then add the borders locally here.

So, we already load the editnotice for Enter your new article name here and I am planning to add {{skin-file disambig}} which is similar to an editnotice. I can imagine a number of other cases when this could be useful. So I want to add the editnotice loader to this system message, so editnotices are shown also when viewing non-existent pages.

Note that we already load editnotices in more cases than when just editing a page. They are also shown when non-admins are "viewing the source" of protected pages, and they are shown on top of .css and .js pages in MediaWiki space already when just looking at the page without editing or "viewing the source". See for instance the box at the top of MediaWiki:Common.css that says "This is the CSS for all skins", that's the editnotice for that page.

--David Göthberg (talk) 06:25, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Y Partly done - I have added {{skin-file disambig}} and removed the double borders. Which unfortunately means that more users see double borders during the time the CSS is decaching. And I feel slightly silly, after I deployed it I realized I could have made the transition smoother, but too late now.

I have not added editnotice loading to this message yet. I would like some comments from other users before I do that.

--David Göthberg (talk) 07:03, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

"Alternate"

{{Editrequest}}

Please change "alternate" to "alternative", which enjoys much wider recognition as standard usage (see also the entry on "alternate" here).

I also request that the same change should be performed on another page, MediaWiki:Titleprotectedwarning. I could create its talk page and leave a message there, of course, but it seems to me rather wasteful, so I have merged the two similar requests. Waltham, The Duke of 10:00, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Y Done Happy‑melon 16:48, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! This is a fairly visible message, so I wonder how I hadn't caught this detail before. I suppose I never cared to read the whole thing. Waltham, The Duke of 02:23, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

First letter of titles IS case sensitive for subpages etc.

Per example copied from Bug 27963: When I visit a nonexistent subpage, for example Talk:Washington,_D.C./archive_1 it reports via this template that the page does not exist and that "Titles on Wikipedia are case sensitive except for the first character." However, the page Talk:Washington,_D.C./Archive_1 does exist, and the only difference is the capital A in Archive.

The expected behavior, especially based on this template, is that the first character after a slash in a subpage name should not be case sensitive. We should either change the actual behavior of the software (my preference) or change the template to help people figure out what happened when they accessed a subpage with an incorrect capitalization on the first letter, even though other areas of Wikipedia will 'correct' that for them.

WBTtheFROG (talk) 04:39, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

The first character of "Talk:Washington,_D.C./archive_1" is "W". Happy‑melon 09:43, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Per MediaWiki's internal storage, that's true. Per intuitive naming conventions, "archive 1" is the title. (Some people would also use your logic to say that the "T" in Talk is the first character, not knowing about namespaces). The full URL is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Washington,_D.C./Archive_1. Usually whatever is after the last slash is the intuitive title and everything before that is just context. As somebody with some Wikipedia experience, I think of "Archive 1" as the title of that page, and the other items ("Washington, D. C.", "Talk," "en," and "Wikipedia") as just contextual qualifiers.

When browsing through your computer's filesystem, as an analogy, I think of only what follows the last slash as the name of the current directory. In modern OS interfaces, that last/most deeply nested title is all that's shown by default. See the bug discussion for a more detailed analogy here. WBTtheFROG (talk) 19:16, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

merge

At MediaWiki talk:Newarticletext#merge I suggested that the very similar message "Newarticletext" be merged into this template. Thoughts? John Vandenberg ^(chat) 06:07, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like a good plan. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:56, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

nopermission

The documentation claims "an optional parameter nopermission" is present. I can't find it in the template, and MediaWiki:Noarticletext and MediaWiki:Noarticletext-nopermission look the same to me. Is it just me? Rd232 ^talk 04:44, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

This feature was never actually introduced. The reason MediaWiki:Noarticletext was moved into the the template namespace was to allow the two messages to use a common base, yet customise parts of the message. There is some brief discussion at MediaWiki talk:Noarticletext-nopermission where this approach was suggested by User:AlexSm. However neither of us followed through and added the nopermission parameter at that time. (I wasn't exactly sure what the differences should be ... apart from the removal of the "Start the xxx page" when this is not appropriate. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:51, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

That was that bit that I was surprised to see in MediaWiki:Noarticletext-nopermission - it's worth excluding, surely. Rd232 ^talk 12:26, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Sure, now done. What other differences should there be, if any? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:55, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I can't see any. The complexity of the template doesn't help... :( Rd232 ^talk 22:52, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

The complexity does need to be addressed. I spent about 5 hours looking at this template before finally realising that this template could not be the message I was seeing (i.e. Newarticletext) John Vandenberg ^(chat) 03:39, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do. Just realised that I was working in the sandbox with this code last year, but never implemented it! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:16, 18 May 2011 (UTC)