On Nov 22, 2007 4:52 PM, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
The way I've always conceived it, these sections are sorted in order of decreasing connection to Wikipedia. "See also" contains links to pages within Wikipedia itself, "references" contains links to pages that aren't in Wikipedia but whose _contents_ are used in Wikipedia, and "external links" contains links to pages that aren't in Wikipedia and that cover areas not covered by Wikipedia articles.
That follows my understanding too, and I believe the de-facto consensus across the vast majority of our articles.
However, as my WP editing is wrong by following consistent paper publishing rules, and there are no consistent Wikipedia rules to match, there is no point in my continuing.
Leaving Wikipedia over the ordering of reference and external link sections seems like a bit of an overreaction to me. I suppose we could take a crack at making the guidelines explicit to see whether there really is a consensus on the matter?
I think the consensus is largely as you have stated.
Doug, the worst that will happen if you order the sections wrong is that some helpful person will come along and re-order them. I don't think that impacts the usefulness of what you're doing in any way, and I hope you will continue.
Our contributions to Wikipedia articles don't have to be perfect. That's the beauty of it. I remember several editors explicitly thanking the army of helpful people who come after them to fix their grammar, spelling, Wikipedia notation and all the rest. It allows those who have the core skills of research and good writing to concentrate on those, not minutia.
-Matt