Help talk:Model page for person

From Familypedia

This help page is an exact copy of Bill's recent trimmed "Help:Starting pages for people, etc etc" page. It's purely for people pages, so it doesn't belong under that all-purpose name. Robin Patterson 12:32, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Which Page styles should we promote?

First off, In the context of a help article, we should not barrage the user with choices. There should be maybe 3 choices there tops. Something for someone who just wants a quick nice looking article fast (person infobox) and something that research genealogists would feel suits their needs (maybe bill's deal). That makes two choices. The third? Whatever. But Person infobox should be named the Standard template, and we should have more than 3. We don't want to propagate a hodge podge of article styles. Other wikia's don't have so much trouble establishing a look and feel to their site, I don't see why we should be so challenged.

Why should person infobox be the standard? Well aside from the simplicity of a fill in the slots form and the data delarative value, I don't understand why we should advocate the creation of pages that look like a memory dump that you get after a computer crash. Just take a look at the standard pages on the other wikis and compare to our so called "standard" format. Here's a people page for one fellow- w:c:dememoryalpha:phlox. Ok. Maybe you find this fellow more charming w:c:uncyclopedia:Richard M. Nixon, or the slightly more virile w:c:marveldatabase:Susan Storm (Earth-1610). Now look at our standard page output. John Adams (1735-1826). Why should anyone put material to our site? Look at the pages on Ancestry and genealogics. The standard page looks like a Bank statement. No one wants to be turned into statistics, and that's what this layout does to folk's beloved ancestors.

As for blank piece of paper choice? What's the point. That says- do whatever comes into your head- giving no guidance whatever. So why is it in help? They can do that now by hitting the edit button. ~ Phlox 19:02, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

(See Forum:Improving the "people-page start page")

[edit] Much progress

Goaded by genius-in-wolf's-clothing Phlox, we have fixed most of the above. This is now the main entry for beginners. It calls Help:Starting pages/Infobox Layout. Robin Patterson 00:58, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Info pages

Going beyond that, with work by Phlox and AMK, we now have Info pages. Better in the long run, and worth encouraging.

But their instructions are at present rather poor. I tried one a few weeks ago by following one or other set of instructions. AMK patched up the result but apparently did nothing to the process that got me there. So anyone else could make the same mistakes.

I tried one again tonight. The result looked extremely unpromising when I saved the info page. But then I GUESSED (I was not told - but I should have been) that the second input box wants the same pagename entered in it (without the "/info"). It worked.

If you experts can improve the instructions that accompany those pairs of inputboxes, so that fledgling programmers such as I can get it right without any guesswork, I'll support the promotion of info pages here. It could be option 2 on the help page — with appropriate changes to wording on that page and the pages that link to it. It could be promoted to top spot instead of bottom on the page that has several options.

One other question relevant to this help page:

If people use the current standard person page, is there any work wasted when someone decides to "give it" an info page? If there is, you experts should try to adjust the standard offering so that it is info-page-ready. You could even add a comment telling users they will enhance the page's value (and probably save typing time) if they add an info page at an early stage.

Robin Patterson 15:34, 19 September 2008 (UTC)