On Mar 17, 2008, at 5:59 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/17/08, Philip Sandifer
<snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote:
*What should the namespace be called?
I don't like this word "extensions" - I thought you meant some kind of
plugin architecture at first. The most accurate word would be
"appendices" wouldn't it? Failing that, something like "related
information"? I'm thinking of online newspapers where it often happens
that there is an article, then links to various related things, like
galleries, tables, charts etc.
Being a namespace, we want one word - Appendix works, as does
Supplementary. I'll add a section of the proposal for other proposed
names.
You're certainly right that there is a need for
ways of grouping other
information with an article, where it doesn't fit *inside* the
article. But the idea of another article being such an attachment is
awkward, and makes me think immediately of content forks.
See, I think article forking is what we have now - look at [[George W.
Bush]], or try to find the article on the 2008 Democratic primaries.
We routinely content fork our articles. This, at least, branches them
into a namespace attached to the main article so that we still have
some sort of coherent whole.
I don't
think that trivia is a good candidate, for instance. Most of the
trivia we delete not for space reasons, but because it's, well,
trivial and isn't really adding anything of value. Galleries would be
great though.
I'm definitely of two minds on trivia sections. I think they're silly,
but on the other hand once in a while I find something in there that
makes me smile. And they're clearly seen as desireable to some people.
My biggest concern with deleting them tends to be that they seem like
a valuable resource that's not reproduced elsewhere.
But as I said, I do think they're silly. And I won't be sad to lose
them.
*Are there
more issues we need to solve?
Rules. Social issues. Safeguards. Avoiding all kinds of horrible
crufty garbage accumulating just because it's below the radar.
As I suggested in the next section, obviously this will be a problem,
but I also don't think it's one that can be solved via prior
legislation. A policy on these concerns will form "in the trenches" as
it were.
*Where should
the line between sub-article and extension be drawn?
Where the logical choice is between throwing out the extraneous
material, or putting it on the extra page. If the choice is between
the main page, or the extra page, keep it on the main.
I largely agree, though I suspect that "move to extensions" will be
the new merge. That said, the forces on Wikipedia that tend towards
the verbose tend to overwhelm editors at every turn.
*How should
the main extensions pages be organized?
There are more than one?
Well, one for each article. I'll rephrase the question in the proposal
to be clearer.
*How should
individual extensions be linked to within articles? (In
the form of "Main article: Topic" or through small sidebar boxes, for
instance.)
No one looks at the sidebar.
To be clear, I meant boxes on the right like we use for WikiQuote and
the like - since our sister project links are, in many ways, similar
to extensions in purpose.
*What
extensions should be linked to from within articles, and what
extensions should be linked only from the extensions page?
If it's worth keeping the information, it's worth linking to.
This does largely disable the need for a main extensions page, and I'm
not entirely sure it's true. I think there's a lot of stuff we could
link in the main article, but that it might only serve to clutter the
main article with a link to something that is better left in the
subpages. I think our readers will pretty quickly be trained to use
extensions effectively, especially if the main extensions page for
each article is well laid out.
-Phil