Last modified: 2005-02-07 10:37:30 UTC
In Wikipedia, upon loading Category:Foo, which has no content and no articles or subcategories, this error message is given: Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this name. A better error message would be "Wikipedia does not yet have a category with this name." The following advice is given: * To start the article, click [edit this page]. * Perhaps there is an entry Foo in our sister dictionary project, Wiktionary. * If you created an article under this title previously, it may have been deleted. See candidates for speedy deletion for possible reasons. A better message might be: * To add articles or subcategories to this category, you need to edit the page you want to add, and add the text <nowiki>[[Category:Foo]]</nowiki> near the bottom of the page, above the interwiki links. Please check that a more appropriate category does not already exist before doing so. * [Click here] to search for an article with the same name.
*** Bug 627 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 629 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Bugs 627 and 629 are not duplicates; they suggest different text for different cases. -B.
There's only one issue at hand, please keep it in one place.
Okay, here are the other cases that I propose handling: ** Text for new talk pages is inappropriate ** In Wikipedia, when displaying a non-existant talk page Talk:Foo, the following error message is shown: Wikipedia does not yet have a page called Foo. * To start the article, type in the box below and click "Save page". Your changes will be visible immediately. * Please do not create an article to promote yourself, a website, a product, or a business (see Wikipedia:Policy). * If you are new to Wikipedia, please read the tutorial before creating your first article. * If you create a test page, you will not be able to delete this yourself, so please only use the sandbox for experiments. A better message would be: Wikipedia does not yet have a talk page for Foo. * To start the discussion, type in the box below and click "Save page". * This page is only for discussion about the page Foo. The same goes for Category talk, Wikipedia talk, etc. ** Inappropriate result for categories that have children but no contents ** In Wikipedia, when displaying a Category:Foo that has articles or subcategories, but no contents, the following error is displayed: Wikipedia does not yet have a page called Foo. * To start the article, type in the box below and click "Save page". Your changes will be visible immediately. * Please do not create an article to promote yourself, a website, a product, or a business (see Wikipedia:Policy). * If you are new to Wikipedia, please read the tutorial before creating your first article. * If you create a test page, you will not be able to delete this yourself, so please only use the sandbox for experiments. This is followed by the list of member subcategories, the list of member articles, and an edit box. A better result might be: * This category is an [[:Category:Orphaned categories|orphan]]. [Click here] to de-orphan or add a note to it. It will display as a "red link" until someone does this. * To add articles or subcategories to this category, you need to edit the page you want to add, and add the text <nowiki>[[Category:Foo]]</nowiki> near the bottom of the page, above the interwiki links. Please check that a more appropriate category does not already exist before doing so. ...followed by the list of member subcategories and articles (no cumbersome edit box).
*** Bug 948 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Bug 948 suggested that there should be a different message for all 'talk' namespaces [see that bug for a patch that implements this], whereas this one suggests having one per namespace; I think ideally we need *both*. I definitely agree that it would be useful if there could be a different message for different namespaces, given that there's no way of creating "if clauses" within one message. I've always thought suggesting people search for a term, or look on a sister project, seems a bit bizarre for a "discussion" page; or, for that matter, a "Project" page, a category, etc. What would be really nice would be the ability to say, for instance "This category currently has no description; for hints on what should go here, see [[Help:Category]]" - since a category "exists", in one sense, if it has pages in it, but may still have no description. Similarly, a new "Help:" page could have links to an explanation of that namespace. Whereas all talk namespaces need the same instructions on what discussion pages are and aren't for. In other words, I think we need one of these messages per ["normal"] namespace (so appropriate instructions and hints can be given), and then one for all discussions (i.e. shared by all "_talk" namespaces). That doesn't mean they all *have* to be different on any given installation, of course, it just means they *can* be.
Created attachment 136 [details] Patch for bug Added a new patch for the bug. This combines the fix for bug 948 (a separete new talk page text) and also has seperate message for each non-talk namespace. I didn't think very hard about the messages, so someone probably should improve them before commiting this patch (if you post them to this bug I will gladdly incorporate them and create a new patch). So this adds 8 new page texts (which need to be written): newuserpagetext, newwikipediapagetext, newimagepagetext, newmediawikitext, newtemplatetext, newhelppagetext, newcategorytext, newtalktext
For category pages, I would recommend something like the following generic message: (This category has no description. See the [[{ns:4}}:Help|help page]] for more information.) To say that a category doesn't "exist" when it may have articles or subcategories is somewhat confusing. For talk pages, instead of "To comment on the article, start typing..." I would recommend something like "To comment on the page *name of article page here*, start typing..." There's no generic phrase like "article" I could think of that both encompasses all of the various namespaces and is clear about what is being commented on (important for newcomers).
(In reply to comment #9) > For talk pages, instead of "To comment on the article, start typing..." I would > recommend something like "To comment on the page *name of article page here*, > start typing..." Once again, we hit an awkward namespace problem, which is basically what bug 531 is about - there's no variable for "the page for which this is the discussion". On Wikipedia_talk:Foo, you don't want the message to say "...to discuss the page 'Foo'..." (result of {{PAGENAME}}), but nor do you want it to say "...to discuss the page 'Wikipedia_talk:Foo'..." (result of {{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}). On a different note, perhaps it would be good to refer to specific Help: pages in each message (e.g. [[Help:Category]], [[Help:Discussion page]], etc). This has the disadvantage that it doesn't work on fresh installs (you'll get redlinks), but hopefully this will be changed soon, and the whole Help: namespace will be available straight away.
Created attachment 140 [details] version 2 of patch Changes catagory text to suggested. Also changes talk page text to say page {{PAGENAME}} instead of article.
I am requesting comments on the texts on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Newarticletext#New_Texts_for_Patch_626_Different_new_page_text_for_each_namespace">MediaWiki talk:Newarticletext</a>.
Okay, there have been no comments on this bug for over a week (on this page and the wiki). Should it be added to CVS now, or are there any new comments?
I still consider it a non-issue and lean strongly towards resolving as WONTFIX.
(In reply to comment #14) > I still consider it a non-issue and lean strongly towards resolving as WONTFIX. But surely you can see that having a message when someone clicks "discussion" telling them to "search for articles" is at the very least confusing. Obviously, that's not in itself a software issue (it's up to the admins what goes in the message) but the software currently offers no way of suggesting a search for an article that doesn't exist (helpful) without also suggesting it for a discussion which hasn't been started yet (unhelpful). Having seperately configurable messages allows this distinction, as well as others (such as "this category contains no description"); the patch is there, so where's the harm?
(In reply to comment #14) > I still consider it a non-issue and lean strongly towards resolving as WONTFIX. > Take a look at the English wikipedia text: Wikipedia does not yet have a MediaWiki page called Newarticletext. * To start the page, begin typing in the box below. When you're done, press the "Save page" button. Your changes will be visible immediately. * If this is an article page (as opposed to e.g. a discussion page): o Please do not create an article to promote yourself, a website, a product, or a business (see Wikipedia:Policy). o If you are new to Wikipedia, please read the tutorial before creating your first article, and only use the sandbox for editing experiments. o Search for Newarticletext in Wikipedia Notice the If that is there? The software can do that check very easily. A human actually has to read it, understand it, and then determine if it is relevent. Then, and only then does the human know if they have to read the whole goob of text or not. If this patch was in wikipedia, then the software could do the check, and then the text could be shorter since it doesn't have to discuss all the cases that it could be. Starting a new page has different sematic meaning depending on which namespace you are in. Shouldn't the new page text be different if the underlying meaning of starting a new page is different?
I sent a request for comments to the wikitech mailing list: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-January/thread.html#27138
*** Bug 1350 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Created attachment 243 [details] adds namespace conditionals This is a new idea for solving the problem. Instead of adding new system messages, it adds a new magic variable that does conditional inclusion of text depending on the namespace. The new variable is IN_NS, and the syntax is {{IN_NS:namespace|text}} For example, if the following is in a template: {{IN_NS:Talk|This is in talk}} then this will add no text if it ends up in a non-talk article, but if it is in a talk page, then it will output "This is in talk". This way, text can be added that will only appear in the appropriate namespace. This allows the different new page text by allowing conditional inclusion of the approriate text for each namespace. The patch is fairly simple, but I have not tested it extensively yet (it still needs non-english testing among other things).
Created attachment 247 [details] adds in namespace conditional This new version of the patch now checks to make sure that when intval returns 0, it really is zero, so if it is not, it will be noticed as an error. Other than than, this patch is the same as before. Tested with the following as a possible new wikipedia newarticletext: '''Wikipedia does not yet have a {{NAMESPACE}} page called {{PAGENAME}}.''' * To start the page, begin typing in the box below. When you're done, press the "Save page" button. Your changes should be visible immediately. * '''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. {{IN_NS:| * Please do not create an article to promote yourself, a website, a product, or a business (see [[Wikipedia:Policy]]). * If you are new to Wikipedia, please read the [[Wikipedia:Tutorial|tutorial]] before creating [[Wikipedia:Your first article|your first article]], and only use the [[Wikipedia:Sandbox|sandbox]] for editing experiments. * [[Special:Search/{{PAGENAME}}|Search for {{PAGENAME}} in Wikipedia]] }} which worked as expected (The argument to IN_NS only appeared in the main namespace when a new article was being created. Another test I tried was the following: {{IN_NS:Talk|We are in talk}}{{IN_NS:|We are in main}} Someone should probably test this on a non-english wikipedia, as I don't have one. I believe that this version is ready to go into cvs, and I would like further comments if anyone thinks it needs work. I would recommend this patch as opposed to newpages2 patch, since this one is shorter and more powerful.
I chatted with Brion on this bug (Brion, feel free to clarify if I am misrepresenting what you said). He stated that the reason that the first implementation will not go in is that in requires translating multiple version of the message. The reason that the second implementation will not go in (at least not without more thought/discussion) is that it is a step towards turning the wikimedia language into a macro language (which is not a desired end). Then, he suggested doing something like: {{new{{NAMESPACE}}text}}. This will then be expanded differently depending on which namespace it is in. I have tested this on my test wikimedia (1.4beta5) and it works. Here are some hints as to how to do it sanely: First, decide on what nameing scheme to use. I would recommend that the english wikipedia be set up something like: Premble generic text that is needed for all the wikipedia's. {{Extra_new_page_text_for_{{NAMESPACE}}}} Then, when the text is reached, it will expand differently depending on the namespace. For example, in the main namespace, it will expand to: Premble generic text ... {{Extra_new_page_text_for_}} Which will then expand the template {{Extra_new_page_text_for_}} If, instead it is in Talk, it will expand to: Premble generic text ... {{Extra_new_page_text_for_Talk}} So, now the only thing to do is to get all the appriate templates defined. To do that, I would recommend adding these to Talk:newarticletext: {{Extra_new_page_text_for_}} {{Extra_new_page_text_for_{{subst:ns:1}}}} {{Extra_new_page_text_for_{{subst:ns:2}}}} {{Extra_new_page_text_for_{{subst:ns:3}}}} ... {{Extra_new_page_text_for_{{subst:ns:14}}}} {{Extra_new_page_text_for_{{subst:ns:15}}}} Then, you just need to eliminate all the red links by filling in the appropriate text. Now, if you want to add text specfic to say, catagory pages, just edit {{Template:Extra_new_page_text_for_Category}}. I would recommend protecting {{Template:Extra_new_page_text_for_}} since it will be seen every time that a user hits a red link, but the rest can probably be safely left unprotected. I am not an admin, so I cannot do this on the English wikipedia, but it requires no new features in the software.
(In reply to comment #21) The solution was implemented successful in the German Wikipedia; see http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Noarticletext and http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Newarticletext