I've been working on a proposal for implementing a sub-article like
functionality in the mainspace using templates. My reasoning here is
simple - we often have multiple articles on very closely related
topics. From an editorial perspective, these are generally treated as
wholly discrete and separate items. Discussions of one article do not
apply to or happen on another, etc. From a reader's perspective, the
divisions are less rigid - if I am learning about Descartes on
Wikipedia, every article on the topic is, for me, part of a related
whole.
By finding a way to think about linked articles as a whole, we improve
our ability to deal with coverage systematically.
Ergo my proposal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Phil_Sandifer/Branching
The biggest hurdle I see is the question of control. Like categories,
branching provides a great opportunity to screw up a lot of things
quickly. It violates the basic wiki principle of having things that
are easy to do be equally easy to undo. Which means we probably need
to develop some sort of way of controlling when articles branch. I
would imagine that a white list of accepted reasons (Books by an
author can always branch off of that author, episodes of a TV series
can always branch off of the TV series, etc) and a Branching Proposals
page where other proposals can be considered by the community would be
a good idea, along with policies that make merging branched articles
and deleting ill-advised branches easy.
What do people think? I'd love comments and thoughts about how to
proceed implementing this.
Best,
Phil Sandifer