This is an
essay on
Wikipedia:Ignore all rules. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Wikipedia has many rules. Instead of following every rule, it is acceptable to use common sense as you go about editing. Being too wrapped up in rules can cause you to lose perspective, so there are times when it is better to ignore a rule ( WP:IAR). However, ignoring a rule or editing in such a manner as will cost another their time is generally, incivil and unprofessional. This essay is a discussion of a few little things which can save a lot of others their precious time. In short, it's about exercising a bit of forethought in aid of common courtesy, such as you might like to receive yourself.
Or Give fellow editors a break!
“ | Since you can't give people back lost leisure time | ” |
Courtesy to others is important in any enterprise, no less one with hundreds of thousands of contributors. Because we each have no idea of how many people will have to evaluate what was done and why, it is important to formulate any edit summary where article prose changes aren't the major change with especial care.
Such edits are as a class anything involving applying any maintenance tag, for those tags may adversely impact the time of many others if hung without regard to the needs of editors who come along later. You can't give people back lost Leisure time so formulating such edit summaries clearly has a very large multiple, in their cumulative effect on the time spent by the many—in short, the many editors coming along later need to understand why you judged something needed done—and whether it's reasonable now for them to judge such can be cleared if you haven't. They need two things, When and Why, or your action wastes their time—a Very Bad Thing.
Fortunately, the edit summary is easy, so "one" Right Thing is to just include the template name inside a single pair of Curly-braces ("{...}") with a clear summary following:
"++{refimprove}, some brief rationale following"
A talk link, if things found in the article are such that a longer explanation, will help others can be very important. With many tags, not initiating a talk page section with "your gripes" is a Very Bad Thing—why bother if you can't be bothered? Who can read your mind later? So making your mind known is really the important thing, for you are not fixing the problems but crying "The Emperor has no clothes" and expecting and asking others to spend their leisure time by hanging a tag.
This new section on the talk should be a list of specific problems, preferably numbered or bulleted a single kind of problem or your prose rationale describing why something is in need of such controversial tagging.
While there is no doubt resorting to a talk page post is usually best for large changes, it is important for courtesy's sake to also connect the dots by linking the talkpage section title you initiated. For those seeing summaries in watchpages, these new sections should also be documented in the article edit summary as an active link in the edit summary.
Properly adding the same section link and inside the tag is also very courteous, and far more effective than just wallpapering with default plain vanilla tags parameters—making both links gets to be easy with a little practice.
"++{refimprove}}, see reasons on /nowiki> [[talk:This article#Refimprove tagging on</nowiki> date={{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}} ]] "
{{mergeto|List of foo|Talk:List of Foo#Merge in GaGa Glops proposal 2008-{{MONTH}} |~~~~ |{{Subst:DATE}} |Think this term too unpromising to ever be made a standalone article. This page should be made into a redirect to section of [[List of Foo]] article | Otherwise, this page needs a project to adopt it and really work at researching the topic }}
"| {{subst: DATE}} "
inside the template. It formats things correctly for you. So remembering those fifteen extra characters... saves others their time.This is an
essay on
Wikipedia:Ignore all rules. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Wikipedia has many rules. Instead of following every rule, it is acceptable to use common sense as you go about editing. Being too wrapped up in rules can cause you to lose perspective, so there are times when it is better to ignore a rule ( WP:IAR). However, ignoring a rule or editing in such a manner as will cost another their time is generally, incivil and unprofessional. This essay is a discussion of a few little things which can save a lot of others their precious time. In short, it's about exercising a bit of forethought in aid of common courtesy, such as you might like to receive yourself.
Or Give fellow editors a break!
“ | Since you can't give people back lost leisure time | ” |
Courtesy to others is important in any enterprise, no less one with hundreds of thousands of contributors. Because we each have no idea of how many people will have to evaluate what was done and why, it is important to formulate any edit summary where article prose changes aren't the major change with especial care.
Such edits are as a class anything involving applying any maintenance tag, for those tags may adversely impact the time of many others if hung without regard to the needs of editors who come along later. You can't give people back lost Leisure time so formulating such edit summaries clearly has a very large multiple, in their cumulative effect on the time spent by the many—in short, the many editors coming along later need to understand why you judged something needed done—and whether it's reasonable now for them to judge such can be cleared if you haven't. They need two things, When and Why, or your action wastes their time—a Very Bad Thing.
Fortunately, the edit summary is easy, so "one" Right Thing is to just include the template name inside a single pair of Curly-braces ("{...}") with a clear summary following:
"++{refimprove}, some brief rationale following"
A talk link, if things found in the article are such that a longer explanation, will help others can be very important. With many tags, not initiating a talk page section with "your gripes" is a Very Bad Thing—why bother if you can't be bothered? Who can read your mind later? So making your mind known is really the important thing, for you are not fixing the problems but crying "The Emperor has no clothes" and expecting and asking others to spend their leisure time by hanging a tag.
This new section on the talk should be a list of specific problems, preferably numbered or bulleted a single kind of problem or your prose rationale describing why something is in need of such controversial tagging.
While there is no doubt resorting to a talk page post is usually best for large changes, it is important for courtesy's sake to also connect the dots by linking the talkpage section title you initiated. For those seeing summaries in watchpages, these new sections should also be documented in the article edit summary as an active link in the edit summary.
Properly adding the same section link and inside the tag is also very courteous, and far more effective than just wallpapering with default plain vanilla tags parameters—making both links gets to be easy with a little practice.
"++{refimprove}}, see reasons on /nowiki> [[talk:This article#Refimprove tagging on</nowiki> date={{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}} ]] "
{{mergeto|List of foo|Talk:List of Foo#Merge in GaGa Glops proposal 2008-{{MONTH}} |~~~~ |{{Subst:DATE}} |Think this term too unpromising to ever be made a standalone article. This page should be made into a redirect to section of [[List of Foo]] article | Otherwise, this page needs a project to adopt it and really work at researching the topic }}
"| {{subst: DATE}} "
inside the template. It formats things correctly for you. So remembering those fifteen extra characters... saves others their time.