Wikipedia talk:Article wizard

Missing period (minor)

In Wikipedia:Article wizard/Referencing, there is a missing period in the first entry under Referencing. Thanks in advance had0j (talk) 09:13, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

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;Referencing :*Reliable, independent sources (see above) are preferred over non-independent sources :*Non-independent sources (like company websites or press releases) can be used to verify '''[[WP:ABOUTSELF|basic facts]]''' only. :*Blogs, social media, and tabloid journalism are ''generally not'' acceptable.

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;Referencing :*Reliable, independent sources (see above) are preferred over non-independent sources. :*Non-independent sources (like company websites or press releases) can be used to verify '''[[WP:ABOUTSELF|basic facts]]''' only. :*Blogs, social media, and tabloid journalism are ''generally not'' acceptable.

had0j (talk) 09:13, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

Sorted, thanks. Primefac (talk) 10:23, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:Article wizard/version1/maintenance" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Wikipedia:Article wizard/version1/maintenance has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 October 16 § Wikipedia:Article wizard/version1/maintenance until a consensus is reached. Steel1943 (talk) 17:09, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

sigh... Steel1943, you know you could have just asked us to look into it; we might have even just deleted it for you ourselves, or found a better use. Primefac (talk) 21:32, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Broken formatting?

Asilvering - I saw your revert to the /CommonMistakes page of the wizard. Exactly what formatting did it break? I didn't see any issues when I previewed and after I saved the changes, but if you let me know and tell me what you saw, I'll check it out, figure out what I did, and fix it. (please ping me in your response; my watchlist closet is currently stuffed completely full of old clothes and moth balls...) ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 07:54, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

@Oshwah, it created spurious newlines in a bunch of different places for some reason. I think it might have worked specifically at the screen resolution you used at the time, but not in other resolutions? Regarding the other changes that added a bunch of new wording, imo it's probably better to avoid adding more text, for the same reason it's probably a good idea to add a bit more white space - the more it looks like a wall of dense text, the less likely anyone is to read it. -- asilvering (talk) 19:20, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

Asilvering - I modified the revision, fixed the whitespacing, and shortened the text while leaving the important bits in. Can you take a look and let me know what your thoughts are? ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 21:22, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

@Oshwah the formatting is not broken this time! I still don't think the additional words are an improvement, though. -- asilvering (talk) 21:31, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

Asilvering - Thanks for taking a look and for your thoughts. I appreciate the feedback. Are there any details that I modified that you agree with? ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 21:35, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

@Oshwah, if I'm honest, not really. I do think that There are a lot of common mistakes that new editors will make while writing a draft article. Here are a few that you must watch out for and avoid: is better wording than what was there before, but it's also longer, so I'm ambivalent on it. The rest I think adds more words without improving clarity and I think that will just lead to less of it being read at all. -- asilvering (talk) 22:28, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

Asilvering - I went back and shortened the wording down. Let me know what you think. ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 00:27, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

Edit request 7 February 2026

Description of suggested change: I'd like to revise the "copyright" section below to add guidance against using LLMs per WP:NEWLLM. I'm hoping this could reduce the flood of unsuitable LLM-generated drafts I've had to reject. (Feel free to come up with a better revised header.)

Diff:

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;Copyright :Do not '''[[WP:COPYPASTE|copy-paste]]''' or '''[[Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing|closely paraphrase]]''' material from sources. Rather, summarize what the source says in your own words.

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;Copyright and originality :Do not '''[[WP:COPYPASTE|copy-paste]]''' or '''[[Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing|closely paraphrase]]''' material from sources or [[WP:NEWLLM|AI language models]]. Rather, summarize what reliable sources say in your own words.

—pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 18:30, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

Support this change which could help in decreasing the flood of AI slop that's hitting AfC and NPP. HurricaneZeta^C 18:46, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

 Done Primefac (talk) 21:20, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

Edit request 7 April 2026

Description of suggested change:
At Wikipedia:Article wizard/CommonMistakes:

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'''Using AI to write articles'''<br/>Large language models like ChatGPT can create articles that appear to look okay, but often contain untrue or hallucinated information. Ideally, ''they should not be used at all''.

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'''Using AI to write articles'''<br/>The use of large language models to create new articles is prohibited. Large language models like ChatGPT can create articles that appear to look okay, but often contain untrue or hallucinated information.

nil ^nz 23:02, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Actually, it might be worth moving this to the top of the list as well? LLM has quickly become the main issue we see at AfC it feels. nil ^nz 23:07, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

 Done Primefac (talk) 23:58, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Mental or programmatic bug

There seems to be bug that either tricks/convinces/misguides new editors into creating 2 References sections, or a programmatic bug that appends the unnecessary References section to the end of the page. Here are genesis revisions of pages created by 6 different editors [1][2][3][4][5][6] which all contain

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

(varying only slightly between editors), followed by exactly

== References ==
<!-- Inline citations added to your article will automatically display here. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:REFB for instructions on how to add citations. -->
{{reflist}}

at the very bottomg of each page.
I've never used the wizard, so I can't say which kind of bug it is.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:34, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

I suppose I would call that a "mental" bug; the Wizard preloads the lower ref text above, and whether people are copying from AI or just not paying attention (or rather... are paying attention to WP:YFA?) they're typing in a duplicate ref section. I would argue that the number of duplications like this is a much smaller number than the number of pages that have references because of the preload. Primefac (talk) 13:42, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

An additional thought (which will lead to a suggestion) is that if you do see this, check to see if there is a) similar content that might have been copied directly, b) a user draft (with other editors) that will need to be merged, and/or c) the references actually exist (i.e. in the case of AI nonsense). Primefac (talk) 13:49, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Well, my interest is just in cleaning up the page, so I probably won't do any of those things (probably why I'm not part of the NPP). Would...it be better if I didn't fix these, so that someone more motivated than I can come along and properly address them?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:01, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Eh, probably not, we have a surprisingly large number of gnomes who are good at sniffing out (a) and (b), and (c) is part of the normal review process anyway. Primefac (talk) 14:26, 20 June 2026 (UTC)