User talk:Father Goose/Template:BLP help

Intro
This template is proposed for the bottom of biographies of living people. It send people with concerns to Biographies of living persons/Help.

Creation of the template followed discussion at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons. ... Maurreen (talk) 07:39, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Discussion
I think it is an interesting idea, but I oppose placing this type of notice on articles. On an article, this type of notice would, in my opinion, constitute an unnecessary self-reference that is aimed at and useful to only a small percentage of an article's readers and which duplicates the "Contact Wikipedia" and "Help" links on the navigation bar sidebar, both of which contain prominent links to Contact us/Article problem.

I was ready to support adding it to article talk pages, but then I noticed that the message is already included in BLP: "If you are connected to the subject of this article and need help with issues related to it, please see this page." Rather than adding a new template, I think perhaps we ought to simply consider adding a line break to Template:BLP in order to separate the portion of the template's text which is aimed at the subject of the article (and persons connected to him or her). Emphasizing this in an editnotice, as first suggested by Father Goose at the WT:BLP discussion, would also be preferable to adding the notice directly to the article page. -- Black Falcon (talk) 21:13, 7 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I was waiting for some opposition. The flaw with Template:BLP that this is meant to address is that many people won't go to the talk page. Many people won't try to edit the page. I realize that all pages have the "Contact Wikipedia" link.
 * But for various reasons, trying to fix a page can be befuddling to the unitiated.
 * At the "On Wikipedia" survey, it was found that "Most of them (BLP subjects contacted for the survey) asked for our help in correcting problems with their biographies and several wanted to know about contributing to Wikipedia. In general, however, despite the high self-awarded marks for familiarity with Wikipedia, the subjects were clueless about how Wikipedia works, who to talk to about errors, etc." (Emphasis added.)
 * I'm open to using a method other than this template. But the goal is for a streamlined and very visible method for the uninitiated to address substantive BLP concerns. I don't think our current system does that. Maurreen (talk) 21:37, 7 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Hmm, I see your point. A talk page notice and editnotice are not too obtrusive, but they also will not be visible to those who don't check the talk page or try to edit the page. Offhand, I can think of two possible solutions that are, in my opinion, "streamlined and very visible" but not too obtrusive:
 * Add the "Contact us" link to a less cluttered location, such as the bottom of the MediaWiki-generated page, where there are only three links currently: "Privacy policy", "About Wikipedia", and "Disclaimers".
 * Add the "Help" link to a more prominent location, such as the top of the MediaWiki-generated page, near "Login/create an account". It could be reworded as "Need help?", "Need assistance?", "Questions?", or something similar, and added either a regular link (e.g., the "Try Beta" link) or a tab (e.g., "discussion", "history").
 * Do you think that implementing one or both of these changes would be an improvement over the current system? -- Black Falcon (talk) 22:55, 7 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Making a "Contact" or "Help" link much more prominent would help. But that would be more complicated to implement.
 * Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean by the MediaWiki-generated page. Do you mean the area on the top right?
 * The bottom has contact link, but the area is cluttered. When you're editing, only the three links you mentioned are visible. But for readers, there's a block of text --

*  This page was last modified on 22 February 2010 at 00:48. * Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of Use for details. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. * Contact us   * Privacy policy * About Wikipedia * Disclaimers


 * One option would be to move up the "Contact" link, or something similar, on the left-hand navigation up, maybe immediately under "Main Page." That's not as prominent as I'd like, but it's a moderate change that might be easy for people to accept. Maurreen (talk) 04:37, 8 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I was viewing the links while in editing mode, so the "Contact us" link at the bottom did not appear. As for the the other suggestion, yes, I meant the top right of the page (where an unregistered or logged-out user would see the "Login/create an account" link and a logged-in user would see links to his or her user page, watchlist, and so on). -- Black Falcon (talk) 07:24, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Not in this form
I wouldn't implement this in its current form (as a template placed within the article itself). It should be implemented like the editnotice placed at the top of the page when editing BLPs (only it should be at the bottom of all BLP articles at all times). The BLP editnotice is inserted dynamically via javascript, so creating a similar notice will require technical assistance to set up. I've made a request at VPT for help with this: Village_pump_(technical).--Father Goose (talk) 07:22, 15 March 2010 (UTC)


 * User:TheDJ has graciously prototyped it for us: Village_pump_(technical). I can tweak it further from there.--Father Goose (talk) 23:41, 15 March 2010 (UTC)


 * That placement looks good, thanks. Maurreen (talk) 19:24, 17 March 2010 (UTC)


 * The new placement has been OK'd by Black Falcon, who had objected above. Maurreen (talk) 20:53, 19 March 2010 (UTC)