Wikibooks:Reading room/Proposals/2021/May

Eager inexperienced editors
Since the beginning of the year the Oberon book has received the attention of two eager but inexperienced editors. Scanning interactively or by automation, small syntax errors were found and within 24 hours, several pages were edited. In most cases the changes were helpful. Closing an open tag, adding the BookCat template at the bottom of a page & etc. In a few cases damage occurred. For example &#60;/div> was added at the end of a heading when it belonged at the end of the page. Consequently the default font of the page became the Wikimedia default rather than the font attribute in the opening &#60;div ...>.

One such edit is easily reviewed and approved or corrected. When a dozen or more edits occur in 24 hours, review, with correction of erroneous edits, can become a sizeable burden.

Regrettably in my two cases, explaining the difficulties resulted in the editors reverting all of their edits. Not a good outcome. Currently I can imagine two possibilities to improve the circumstances.

(1) Protect pages.

(2) When an editor is new to a book, require an interval between edits. For example, after a first edit to a book, require at least a week before a 2nd edit is allowed. As edits accumulate, the interval can decrease.

In my view, administration required for protection is excessive. The interval between edits seems a workable possibility. What other ideas are there?

Regards,        ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 13:45, 29 April 2021 (UTC)


 * I've got a counter-proposal; how about fixing the lint errors on your book? The reasons you're geting these problems (as far as I can see) is that the book has lint errors, meaning that well-meaning but maybe inexperienced editors try to fix them, but cause problems in doing so. See Special:LintErrors for the special page; there are also help pages at mw:Help:Extension:Linter and w:Wikipedia:Linter. If you get stuck, please ask at Reading room/Technical Assistance. If you fix the lint errors then things might sort themselves out. -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 15:05, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, will learn to use the lint tools, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 15:29, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, but do ask if you need help. For example, to check the lint errors for a particular page, go to page and click on the "Page information" link on the tools section of the left sidebar. If there are any lint errors on the page it will show there at the bottom of the "page information" page. -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 15:42, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Commented out the first closing span tag in my sandbox copy of HTMLDoc.Mod. Sure enough "Page information" shows "Lint errors, Missing end tag, 1". Will work through the pages, hunting errors. Thx, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 17:02, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I think I've fixed it. If you have any more queries please ask. -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 19:15, 1 May 2021 (UTC)