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# Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz/Proposed templates for Wikipedia pages

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After some positive response from [Wikipedia mailing list] I am encouraged to propose some tentative template patterns for Wikipedia pages.

First, what are those templates ?
When we write an Wikipedia article/page about for instance a novelist, a historical figure, a country etc there usually is a set of information that if missing would make the page incomplete.
One wants to have birth/death date for persons, countries always have a capital (or two).
We could discuss and agree (let's hope) on some common, indispensable information sets for some kinds of pages. First, of course, we should agree on what kind of pages need tempalates at all.

How do we go about those tempalates ?
Please remember that it is not my intention to force anyone to use templates or to restrict author's freedom in any way.
Perhaps it could be a helpful addition ?
Or it could foster completness of pages and their quality ?
There are, I think, two possible paths we could take.

- Guidelines
- Changes to the wiki software

  Guidelines

Just Wikipedia pages with our consensus on desirable content for a given type of page.
It could be even incorporated in the heading or footer of all newly created pages as a link "Author's guidelines".

  Changes to the wiki software

It could become a new option for creating new pages in Wikipedia.
Then every new page ("Describe the new page here.") could have some additional boxes for required information. After saving it would generate a page with this information but remember it would stay freely editable afterwards.

Some categories that might need templates :

- biographies
- countries of the world
- movies
- bands/artists
- historical anniversaries
- books/objects of art
- more to follow

Biography

- First, middle, last names; aka aliases pseudonyms
- birth/seath dates
- birthplace
- nationality/nationalities
- ???

Country

- The capital
- Population
- Language
- ???

Movies

- Title
- Release year
- Company
- Director
- The cast
- The plot
- etc etc

This sounds like a good idea, Krzystof. --KQ

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Last edited June 16, 2001 12:14 pm (diff)
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