On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 12:26 PM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 8:15 PM, Carl (CBM) cbm.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 3:02 PM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
I can agree with this. Most articles summarise their sources, and serve as a starting point for further reading on the topic. This article appears to be the starting and the ending point. Sometimes less is more. State what is needed, and let the reader then read more elsewhere as they see fit.
Wouldn't this apply to other articles equally (e.g. our biography of Santorum or the article on cats)? If not, why not?
Part of the process of improving articles involves editing them, and that includes removing stuff as well as adding stuff. There are many cases of articles at the featured article process (and sometimes at the good article level as well) where excessive detail is removed. The specific arguments for carrying out such editing on this article belong on the article talk page.
Personally -
Once you get over the basic "What prompted Dan Savage to do this, and what did he do", putting the rest of the context and criticism and Santorum's response in place in more depth is fairer to Santorum than covering those in less depth.
Truncating it actually would be more of a BLP problem than the longer article, IMHO.