Topic on Project:Village Pump

Hi everyone,

I'm not sure that this is the right place to ask, but I figure that someone here will know: I have an idea that I'd like to run past you all. One of the things that I do (and need to do more of soon) is make screenshots for help documentation. Especially for VisualEditor, there's a lot of this, and all of it needs to be produced in a couple dozen languages. The contents of the screenshots therefore varies a lot between languages, and also through the history of the page, as different people used different pages at different times.

What I'd like is a fake "article" or page that:

• contains only public domain images and CC-0 text,
• uses most of the core wikitext markup (bold, italics, sections, images, references, lists, tables, etc.), and
• could be translated into any language.

Do we have something like this already? Does anyone foresee any problems or have any advice if I create one?

This would create an accessibility issue because it's not actual text, but text within graphics. Screen readers can't read these, so this method isn't suggested :( Also, help pages are bound to be edited, so if you want to provide up-to-date information you'd have take another screenshot for every revision (or every 5 revisions per say?) These files would be bigger too than just actual characters (letters, symbols, numbers) which are a byte each, so performance is another issue.

It is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure what advantages this could have.

I think you've misunderstood. I don't want screenshots of the help pages; I want screenshots in the help pages. "Type the data in the blank field labeled 'TYPE HERE'" is easier for most people to understand if those instructions are next to a picture of a blank field labeled 'TYPE HERE' (and maybe with circles and arrows and half of a word typed there).

Most of my screenshots need to show Wikipedia-style articles, which means that I'm always creating different bits of articles just to make a screenshot (like this one). I was thinking that if I made a whole article, that nobody would have to keep creating bits and pieces.

We already have software that automatically takes screenshots in multiple languages. The problem is not having content.

I think a fake article is a good idea. And if it was on astronomy (mentioned elsewhere), you could look at NASA topics, such as https://www.nasa.gov/topics/journeytomars/index.html or https://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/index.html .

Still, I wonder if you're overthinking this. If the article is about a fake topic, where all the words are your own, then you don't have to worry about copyright issues. I'm not suggesting you spend a lot of time creating content - rather, that you modify an existing topic. And images from the Commons shouldn't raise any copyright issues.

So, specifics - I suggest using a Simple English article, not an article from the main English Wikipedia, as your base, because the translation should be easier. And, looking at the most recent "very good articles" - https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Very_good_articles - one jumps out (to me) as most useful: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Vince_(2005) . That's because the images for an article on hurricanes can all be from NOAA, and thus public domain. (There are actually three articles about hurricanes, of the ten listed; you could also use https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_Depression_Ten_(2005) for some wording.)

Or, to return to your original idea, consider https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_galaxy - you can name your own galaxy, rather than your own hurricane.

I've started this at Help:Sample page and used it for a series of new screenshots that I added to Help:VisualEditor/User guide. I'm still sorting out what content will be convenient, but so far I think this is going to be a practical solution to my screenshot problems. Also, when I'm a little further along, I think it will need a re-write with Simple English in mind, as John suggested.

I think I'm going to need to import at least simple versions of a couple of popular template styles, so that I can show template uses in a page. Maybe a simple infobox and a common citation template would be sufficient.

Also some type of template that is normally subst:ed. The VisualEditor documentation shows a barnstar, which is not ideal for that context. (VisualEditor is usually disabled on discussion pages.)

I'm not convinced that template substitution is worth including; it is vanishingly rare in articlespace. But if you're determined, you might use <nowiki>{{No more links}}</nowiki>, as mentioned at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Substitution#Article_namespace .

I've added an old (non-Lua) copy of {{Cite journal}} for this project. I figured that, of the common types, it was the least likely to be (mis)used in other pages on mediawiki.org. I'm still thinking about an infobox. {{infobox person}} might work, since it's common, but there should be no use for that template in the mainspace. If someone has other ideas, then feel free to let me know.

Update: I think it's nearly done. I still need to add a non-citation template (probably an infobox) and maybe some computer code. If someone wants to make a "Hello, World" section with his or her favorite (and not too complicated, please) computer code, then that would be great.

It's just amazing how many fiddly little features VisualEditor supports these days. I need a template that doesn't display on the page. Something like Template:Use British English would work fine, except that it doesn't exist at mw.org. Is there anything here? I could always import it if that were necessary, but I'm hoping to find something that's already here/useful for other purposes.