Board Thread:Wiki Discussions/@comment-3448772-20131101035205/@comment-3448772-20131102222607

Jarie Suicune wrote: Sorry if I'm just butting in, but I've had trouble hopping in to adding new pages to wiki's for much the same reason: Templates. I can handle copy-paste-modify fine enough, but knowing which one is really the best model to use, especially when you don't have all the data to fill everything up, can be lousy. You don't want to start it if you won't finish it to a certain minimum... I've had a number of pages made for various things deleted just because they were basically stubs that didn't catch anyone's eye enough to help flesh out (and subsequently removed completely), kind of like what James said.

I also tend to misword or mix up certain things (I'm only human after all... it can be hard to remember every detail of hundreds of games/shows/books seperately) and the data simply gets wiped rather than fixed by moderators on several wiki's, which has been a major discouragement to try very often... Though I do add some useful stuff where I can. I know what you're talking about. The main problem with templates is telling which one to use and when to use it. But if you don;t know which templates to use for a page you can always ask an admin. Most admins are generally friendly and are willing to help teach new editors the way of the wiki.

As an admin, whenever I see a new article that isn't up to code I generally only delete it if it is just one line, but if it is more than that then I try to fix it up. But I'm sure admins of other wikis delete larger new articles. The best thing to do in the occasion that your new article is deleted is to contact the admin who deleted it and calmly ask them why it was deleted and how to improve it.

As for the removing of information that is flawed it is a bit more complicated. As an admin I tend to check the edits of new users to make sure they are valid. In the case of the addition of a good amount of content I tend to check one part of it and use the validity of that one fact to estimate the validity of the whole edit. I'm sure other admins use a similar method which can cause edits to be un-done when they are simply just flawed and not full on false. The best thing to do is if you aren't completely sure about a fact, look it up on similar website or just go back to the source and confirm it. But if you do make a factual mistake while editing and the edit is un-done, contact the user who removed it and let them know that you just mis-remembered it and then re add the fixed edit.