The TV IV:Proposals/Revised Help Pages

With the recent brouhaha over in Talk:Dean Stockwell the issue of setting up guidelines for references/citations came up. This is being handled over in The TV IV:Proposals/People Pages for guest-starring credits, but that's only a small section of the site. Given the site's growth over the past year, it might be time to prepare more formal user tools.

This includes:

• Citations (how and where to cite)
• Updated style rules on the basic help page for all categories of pages (people, programs, etc.)
• Image guidelines (where to get images, what screenshots to take, and the proper templates to use)
• Anything else we've reached a consensus on but haven't bothered to formally introduce

The "How You Can Help" on the front page should be updated, with links to some of these pages. The inflow of new users who stick around isn't exactly high, and I think that offering more structure and boundaries would help people feel comfortable since they know where they stand here. They wouldn't make as many mistakes, and we wouldn't seem like we're jumping on them out-of-the-blue when they do make mistakes that we then correct.

I also think introducing tools that would encourage more whole-scale creation and addition by new users would be good, such as my earlier ideas for a Random Show Box and a Requested Pages list. I remember reading something earlier this month that the majority of Wikipedia articles are created by new users, which are then "massaged" into encyclopedia-quality articles by the dedicated Wikipedia editors. However, here, the majority of articles have been created by the dedicated editors, and then most are never touched again. This needs to change if we're going to be a serious and expansive resource. -- Lampbane 11:20, 27 September 2006 (EDT)