Carcharoth wrote:
On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 4:24 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
If there is only one noteworthy fact about the subject, the article should probably be merged per BLP1E. If there isn't more than a paragraph worth of stuff to say about a subject, you need to think long and hard about whether there should be an article. In some cases, there probably should, but I think it most cases such a lack of information is a sign that the article should be deleted or merged.
This is certainly not the case in, for example, medieval history. It's all relative to a background: what expectation is there of ample factual material?
And another thing - I'd resist this in all cases where there was a place for a person in a line of succession boxes. It is really no good merging an article if it messes up some useful navigation.
Succession boxes are useful navigation? :-) In some places, and for some things, yes, but succession boxes can be misused and overused, like anything else. In particular, I hate those articles where someone held multiple offices and titles and you see 5 or 6 succession boxes (or those big list templates) crammed in at the bottom of the article. Sure, I use them sometimes to find other articles, but they *look* horrible and unprofessional.
Oops - you'd better stay away from [[Pope Julius II]], then. I'd argue that it is exactly in such cases, where someone has a career with numerous spells holding different offices, that succession boxes show their greatest value. It is much more clumsy to express such careers in full detail in the main text. Climbing the greasy pole does belong in displayed form, I'd say, since those who don't want the details should be able to ignore them.
Charles