--- dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote:
"Article intros that can fit into the first screen." Oh, absolutely, by all means.
(Now, the Micropaedia is about a third of the Britannica's total content. And a Micropaedia article is typically about, well, one screen. So, OK if someone wants to suggest that an appropriate balance for Wikipedia is for about a third of its content to be one-screen articles, OK).
I know the above is a rant, but would like to bring home this point: *Articles can and should serve those seeking either a micropedia or macropedia-sized article. The way this is done is through the use of lead sections (aka intros or section 0) that concisely summarizes the most important points of the whole article. Most of the time this should be done with three paragraphs or less but all the time these intros should be able to stand alone as concise encyclopedia articles in their own right.
In fact it would be real neat to take the section 0 of selected articles to nearly-automatically generate a concise encyclopedia either for print (as a desk reference) or for mobile devices.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lead_section http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Summary_style
-- mav
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