Create page after search not found

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki

Step by step reproduction of current problem (without enhancement)[edit]

  1. Search for "harry styles".
  2. Try to edit (create) the article "harry styles".

There is no link on the page to do so.


Work around[edit]

  • Create a link to the new article in an existing page, then click the link and an edit page appears.

or

Solution[edit]

When a page is not found after a search, the resulting page should include a link to create the page.

For an example, see the wikipedia "no go" search results message.

Discussion[edit]

"traditionally wikis are an exploratory medium; you find pages through links from other pages or RecentChanges. creation of new pages is something that's to be done in context, by editing a page to create a link.

"orphan pages are thought of as a problem, and creating a contextless page from a search encourages orphan creation so at least to the old fogeys this maybe is less than ideal

"on the other hand, wikipedia's nature as a reference work puts more emphasis on search than traditional wikis, so maybe it's not totally inappropriate"

discussion from brion on #wikipedia (freenode)

See also[edit]