Wikipedia talk:New contributors' help page/questions

Date headers
Unlike the old page and the help desk, this new questions page lacks date section headings. I believe Scsbot adds them for the help desk (and uses them for archiving, too) - can we get it to do so for this page too? Gonzonoir (talk) 09:56, 3 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Support - good idea. – ukexpat (talk) 15:48, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Support Sounds good to me. I believe that Scsbot is run manually once a day by User:Ummit. I'll ping them about this discussion. TN X Man  15:54, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

If the format of this page is more or less exactly like the Help Desk or one of the Reference Desks, I could set up scsbot to add headers and do archiving with little without a whole lot of trouble. (Pardon the obvious question, but how does this page differ from the main Help Desk?) —Steve Summit (talk) 16:29, 3 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Funny you should ask that... – ukexpat (talk) 16:59, 3 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Ah. I didn't notice the main page vs. /questions subpage distinction.


 * So: was the "old version" of this page archived, and if so, where? —Steve Summit (talk) 17:24, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Just looked it up: User:MiszaBot II was doing it, moving sections older than 12 days to e.g. New_contributors'_help_page/Archive/2010/November, New_contributors'_help_page/Archive/2010/October etc. Looking at the current page it appears Miszabot is already set up to archive this one too, and it's just that the page is less than twelve days old so nothing's gone yet. So it's only the date headers we need over here. (I assume that it would be unproblematic to have Scsbot replace Miszabot for the archiving if that's an integral part of having it do the headers.) Gonzonoir (talk) 17:31, 4 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Ah, very interesting.
 * As it happens, the archiving is not an integral part of the header adding -- in fact the header-adding and archiving are two almost completely separate functions. In particular, scsbot's archiving doesn't actually depend on date headers at all.  (The reason is that it can't trust them.  The bot knows -- or rather, the bot's author knows :-) -- that the bot is semiautomatic and not 100% reliable.  If the bot doesn't run on a given day, or doesn't run correctly, it might miss adding a header, and a live editor might notice a few hours later and add it, but after a few entries for that day had been added.  Or, even if the bot does add a date header correctly, by the time it's time to archive that day, a live editor might have accidentally or maliciously altered it.)
 * And, as it happens, adding a new page to the header-adding side of the bot is much easier than adding one to the archiving side. So it won't take me long to get this set up. —Steve Summit (talk) 21:08, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay. It's set up, and a dry run has filled in all the headers back to 11/13 (with a little manual help). We'll need to keep an eye on it for the first few days to make sure it's working correctly.

Also, we may find that the headers stick around forever. I'm not sure if Miszabot knows how to delete them once there are no more entries for a day. (If it doesn't, we'll have to figure something else out.) —Steve Summit (talk) 02:42, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Grand, thanks very much! Got an eye on it. Gonzonoir (talk) 11:44, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:NCHPQ
For ease of access by the regulars I have just created the above redirect to the new /Questions page. – ukexpat (talk) 15:43, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I also created WP:NCHP/Q on 1 December; never thought of creating NCHPQ.  Giftiger Wunsch   [TALK]  16:21, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Needs archiving
I thought auto-archiving was already set up on this page previously but I guess not. -- &oelig; &trade; 15:40, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah. The auto-addition of headers was on Dec 6th, so 15 days have passed since the last edits to the earliest sections. Steve Summit, you were looking into this before - any idea why archiving isn't happening? The one thing I noticed that might be awry is that in the code for Miszabot at the top of the page, the value for the  parameter is =  . This page is no longer called "Wikipedia:New contributors' help page", so perhaps that's causing the bot a problem? (Also, even if we corrected it to the page's current title, could the fact that the page title includes a / mess up the bot's interpretation of the parameter?)  Gonzonoir (talk) 09:41, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * According to User:MiszaBot/Archive HowTo, the archive pages have to be subpages of this page, unless a secret key is used that can be provided by Misza13. Either we have to use subpages for the archive pages or ask for a key.  --Mysdaao talk 17:33, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Archiving
I have manually archived all the threads older than 12 days: I trust this is OK with everybody!  Phantom Steve / talk &#124; contribs \ 06:37, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * November: copied without date headers, as the current entries in the November archive did not have them
 * December: copied with date headers, as in future (assuming the bot can be got to work), I presume the date headers will be copied anyway
 * ...using the naming system New contributors' help page/Archive/2010/December. Looks fine to me. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:33, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * And I manually archived the rest of December today. We should pick one of two options for the future:
 * 1. Keep archiving at New contributors' help page/Archive/YEAR/MONTH-formatted titles
 * Pros: Consistent with archive page titles preceding the question page's move to its new title, which might aid navigation
 * Cons: Someone has to sack up and ask Misza13 for the secret key to make the bot do it :) (I'll volunteer if consensus favours this option or no one cares)
 * 2. Start archiving at titles formatted New contributors' help page/Questions/Archive/YEAR/MONTH
 * Pros: Archive title would more accurately reflect the name of the page it's actually archiving
 * Cons: Loss of consistency with earlier archive page titles; not 100% sure whether the bot will be happy with this four-level subpage hierarchy (Questions/Archive/YEAR/MONTH) in the page title
 * Waddya reckon? Gonzonoir (talk) 09:11, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I vote consistency with early archives. The bot is happy, I'm happy. Ease of navigation is a big plus, although not a huge hurdle to overcome if we switch. Most of all I vote do it soon. The questions page is getting prohibitively long.--Danger (talk) 15:12, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Since neither proposal's generated a storm of controversy thus far, I'll go ahead and contact Misza13 to implement option (1) per Gimme danger. Hold onto your hats... Gonzonoir (talk) 09:43, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Aaaand Misza13 supplied a key and the bot archived the page last night. O Happy Day!\o/ Gonzonoir (talk) 09:13, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I could no more create an account
-- John of Reading (talk) 16:06, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Demanding from newbies
Is it normal on this page to demand of newbies that they provide wikilinks in their articles and format citations perfectly before we will accept them for mainspace? These are things that are easily fixed - the essential requirement is that they do provide citations, which this editor has done, and mostly seem to be quality sources as far as I can judge. Imo the response was verging on bitey, which is the last thing a page specifically for newbies should be doing. Even the criticism of tone is something that can be fixed with copyediting.  Spinning Spark  17:26, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I really don't think the tone was bitey. As to the substance: by definition, nowadays it is reasonable to expect that a new article should meet minimum quality standards for references, wikification and tone before it is moved out of a sandbox into mainspace. -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  17:53, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "By definition"? Mike, really - where is that defined?  WP:YFA specifically says "...do not worry too much about formatting them properly. It would be great if you do that, but the main thing is to get references into the article even if they are not well formatted."  It does not even mention wikilinking.  My point is, we should be encouraging new editors, and knocking them back for not immediately getting all the guidelines on this site is not encouragement.  Spinning  Spark  18:15, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Help!
The article Biography appears to have been replaced by a personal one. Pendright (talk) 03:03, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you for reporting this; I've undone those edits, which seem to have been an attempt to create a separate article. While there's certainly no problem asking for help, to save time you can feel free to fix things like that yourself in the future. Also, for future reference, you posted this on the talk page of this Help page, which is generally used to discuss the page itself, and doesn't get as much attention. If any of this doesn't make sense, feel free to ask me for clarification. Happy editing, Robert Skyhawk (T C) 04:38, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Non-question removed
I removed the following text from the bottom of the project page:

Not funny 174.27.202.107 (talk) 22:16, 3 June 2012 (UTC)funny person

--ColinFine (talk) 10:25, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

removed presumed test edit
I removed an apparent test edit from the page in this edit, and left the IP a welcometest template on their talk page. - Ka renjc 15:06, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Closing this question page?
There's a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Teahouse about merging this question page with the Teahouse. Not many of this page's regulars have commented there yet.

Yesterday the discussion was closed by and the page was moved. It was agreed at Wikipedia talk:Teahouse that the close was premature and the page has been moved back again. I hope I've fixed all the links. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:48, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

MiszaBot confused?
I just came to this page, and found a single topic in a pre-box. I edited it to remove a rogue &lt;pre>&lt;nowiki> at the start.

It looks to me from the history that Miszabot has got confused and has deleted most of an entry, leaving part of it there. Deleting the tags as I did has saved the page, but there's a partial entry at the top of the page. I am not sure how to fix it properly, or whether it matters. --ColinFine (talk) 09:00, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, this one was always going to be a problem for the archiving bot. I've deleted the partial question from the noticeboard and copied it to the archive. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:11, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Merging to Teahouse/Questions - revisited
I have suggested a merge with Teahouse/Questions. Please discuss here. the wub "?!"  16:14, 22 April 2013 (UTC)