User:DouglasReay

Hello, I'm Douglas Reay.

I edit stuff on WikiPedia, and hope to contribute here too. --DouglasReay (talk) 12:48, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

When I initially tried to create this page, I included a link to my main home page (on another website), and got the message "Specific user page spam".

Searching for that phrase in the WikiData search box, gave the result:

"There were no results matching the query."

It took several minutes with google to find an explanation for what specifically was triggering that message, and whether it was even ok at all to create a user page, or whether trying to create a user page would get one banned.

This seems a little unfriendly for what is quite likely to be a new user's first action. --DouglasReay (talk) 12:56, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Further test, to see what happens when I try to add the link back in, now the page has been created...

Ok, well first symptom: it blocks doing the save and asks for a CAPTCHA...

Result: Ok, it seems to add it fine now, with no further warnings. So it is really only going to hit first time users.

Suggestion: alter the warning text about spamming to include a human readable message that is friendlier to new users, with a link to the explanation or a work around.

I've now tried to create a wiki data entry for the message: Q19826381 so hopefully, if any other new users tries searching for the phrase, to see what went wrong, they'll have an easier time finding out. --DouglasReay (talk) 13:24, 22 April 2015 (UTC)