Wikipedia talk:Article wizard

Wording change

In the step Wikipedia:Article_wizard/Referencing, it says Your article will be rejected if the topic is not notable, violates copyright, or is not referenced properly.. The word rejected should be changed to declined. Ca ^{talk to me!} 13:17, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Also, the sentence "Independent sources (see above) are generally acceptable and should be used before other sources." is unclear. Perhaps "Articles should depend mostly on independent sources."? Ca ^{talk to me!} 13:21, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

 Not done for now: I largely agree with the first suggestion, but only with the caveat that drafts can be rejected for those reasons (or at the very least for clear and obvious non-notability). If anything the text should be changed to "declined or rejected". The problem I have with that of course is that we do not anywhere actually make that distinction.

Regarding the second suggestion, I think the intention here is to indicate that independent sources are better than primary sources, but a non-reliable independent source is not useful (i.e. "independent sources are good but not guaranteed").

I'm closing this request for now to hash out the finer points (again, not necessarily disagreeing with them, just that they can/should be further refined). Primefac (talk) 13:34, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Hmm how about "Reliable, independent sources are preferred over non-independent sources"?

Also, I think its better to change "website" in These include academic journals, books, newspapers, magazines, and websites with a reputation for fact checking. to just media to clarify that being a newspaper/book/etc doesn't inherently make it reliable. Ca ^{talk to me!} 14:07, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree with changing it to media, but for different reasons. It is good to de emphasize the website part, since non newspaper websites (i.e. company websites, personal websites) are almost never reliable. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:33, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

"Declined" sounds good to me. Helps to keep it simple for newer editors. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:36, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

 Done for the above. I really don't like how much random bold we have going on; I do get that it's emphasising things, but (almost literally) every third word is bolded. Primefac (talk) 13:58, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Short descriptions

I have seen many drafts created by new editors have bad short descriptions, for example Special:Diff/1193700771 or Special:Diff/1193737001 - may I ask what wording is used in the article wizard? Maybe it could be improved? Sungodtemple (talk • contribs) 14:17, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

It's not the Wizard, actually, it's the Submit helper script. The specific wording on the Short description box is Briefly describe the subject in 2–5 words (eg. "British astronomer", "Cricket stadium in India"). In other words, people can't read, pay attention, and/or follow directions. Primefac (talk) 14:29, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, people can't read, but also, we open the door to this when we given them insufficient guidance. Ideally, we'd want this to work similarly to WP:SDHELPER, where a warning is provided for anything longer than 40 characters and a stronger warning for anything longer than 60.

I've added some details to User:Sdkb/Vision for a better Article Wizard related to this. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:35, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

There's a helptip which suggest to avoid going beyond 40 characters, and also a hard limit of 100 characters (beyond which you can't type further). We could reduce the hard limit if desired. – SD0001 (talk) 06:50, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

100 characters is also the current cutoff for Category:Articles with long short description, so having that be synced with the hard limit seems appropriate. A static helptip is much less noticeable (and therefore less useful) than one that appears when you go over the 40-character limit and gets stronger when you go over the 60-character limit. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:05, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Buttons

The button placement in the wizard is not standardised throughout, and rather than implement what I think is the appropriate method (e.g. personally I find Special:Permalink/1031738356 more appealing than Special:Permalink/1223709924), I figured I'd get a discussion going on the matter.

For example:

• Wikipedia:Article_wizard has a (now) centred set of buttons
• Wikipedia:Article_wizard/COIEditingGuidelines has a left-aligned set of buttons

Traversing the various paths of the Wizard's tree, it looks like we're about 50/50 for the alignment options. There are also colour variations between grey/blue but those are a bit easier to straighten out.

I'm also going to ping Oshwah and Sdkb mainly because they've been involved in the last 24 hours in button-futzing. Primefac (talk) 11:41, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for opening a discussion, Primefac (and I agree with your implicit point that a discussion might have been useful pre-futzing). I concur with you that left-aligned looks better than center-aligned. Sdkb ^talk 17:11, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

I personally prefer centered buttons, simply because it's mostly "standardized" (think message boxes, Windows notifications, wizards, etc). Left-justified just feels... unfinished to me. And I agree; thank you Primefac for starting this discussion. The most important thing is to come to a consensus; it doesn't matter who's "preferred method" ends up being used as a result. :-) ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 19:23, 15 May 2024 (UTC)