Public outreach/Academy/RfC/Edit buttons
The edit window on the English Wikipedia has 22 buttons, most of which are not needed by the beginner. Honestly, I wonder how many experts use them, too — can we get numbers on that?
- It's now 23 buttons. I do doubt that we can get numbers on how many expert editors use them - and it's not clear what it would mean if we had those numbers.
If we can agree on a set of basic skills that we wish to teach the NIH participants, I suggest that we pare down the edit buttons to, say, 7 buttons that (1) correspond to those skills and (2) actually make the task more convenient.
We can do that using the XEB extension to the MediaWiki software, which is conveniently coded as a script by en:User:MarkS. You can see how to add this at en:User:Proteins/monobook.js.
- The absolutely important ones are (A):
- Internal link (wikilink)
- Level 2 heading
- File (image) insertion
- Signing (discussion page)
- Reference
- Citation template
- Secondary importance (B):
- External link (assuming that we can show them how to use tools to automatically generate citations; otherwise, this should be in group A)
- Bold
- Italics
- Media link (video/audio)
- Table
- Unnecessary for beginners (C):
- Math formula
- Redirect
- Non-wikify
- Horizontal line
- Strikethrough
- Superscript
- Subscript
- Small
- Hidden comment
- Picture gallery
- Block quotation
What's also helpful about MarkS' script is that clicking on the buttons often provokes a fill-in-the-blanks form that guides an editor through creating the more complicated elements, e.g., tables and citation template references. I recommend that we develop those fill-in-the-blanks forms to make them more convenient, and perhaps integrate the referencing one with Diberri's tool, which generates a full citation template from the PMID code.
- Great, if there is enough time before mid-July to do this, and test it thoroughly.