User talk:User4/TEMPORARY ENTRY-Misc Nambla papers, book recommendations, etc.
Etenne - please undelete this page. User4 (talk) 06:03, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
Etenne - do you see the value of this, once it is (beginning to be) formatted correctly? Of course, it should soon be broken down in separate entries. But I had put the raw material here (so that it was somewhere) and then it could be worked on (by me or someone else). Had I not returned to request its undeletion, do you see how the value of this compilation would have been lost? It's good to "clean house", but it should be done carefully, don't you agree? User4 (talk) 17:04, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
- It is not a question of whether I see the value or not. You need to get it out of your head that someone is going to come along and finish what you have started. When I took over as curator of en.boywiki, at least 95 percent of the entries had not been updated in over three years and many much longer than that. This approach to editing may work (somewhat) on Wikipedia or other smaller wikis comparable to BoyWiki, who have 10 or more active editors or a larger admin.staff. That is simply not going to work here, we don't have people doing that kind of editing. So if you start something, you need to at least get it to the point, where it may not be perfect, but at least it's readable and usable or at least does not cause the boywiki software to send your friendly and personable curator problem messages that might cause him to make unpopular decisions. That's why unfinished entries need to go in either the draft or user namespace. However, if you think it is to the point were someone might be able to make minor edits to improve the page (and all the links work and it doesn't have any major syntax errors in it etc..), you can always make it a fledgling entry by adding {{stub}} to the page--Etenne (talk) 19:00, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
- I didn't know you were getting so many error messages - sorry about that. That is a useful suggestion, using the nowiki tags. I'm still learning, you know. We all are.
- "You need to get it out of your head that someone is going to come along and finish what you have started."
- Wikis are supposed to be a collaborative effort. Nothing can ever really be "finished" on a wiki - improvements are always possible.
- I think the problem is one of public relations - encouraging people (in the right way) to become editors. Then if someone (like me) leaves something only partly finished, someone else can come along and finish it.
- Maybe we should spend some time thinking about how to encourage more people to become editors, and then how to keep them when they do become editors?
- Uh, could you explain to me again how to put things into the draft or user namespaces? I still don't understand what those mean, or how to use them. User4 (talk) 19:20, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
The best way is if you know you are not going to have time to finish an entry right away is simply to name the entry as a draft i.e. [[Draft:My new project]] and then adding it to the draft category by adding [[Category:Draft]] to the bottom of the page.
Or the same thing with the user namespace [[User:User4/My new project]] It is also recommended that you add these pages that are intended to one day be finished entries to Category:Draft.
If you have already created the entry... you can do the same with the move function.. the list of the namespaces is on the drop-down list. --Etenne (talk) 19:36, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
