On 7/27/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
An eternal battle: what does one do if one section is
"disproportionately long" for an article which is "too short". Keep
it
there and hope the rest gets longer? Move it somewhere and risk being
accused of censorship?
There was a time when we had this guideline for stubs:
"Try to give more than just a definition — at least a little more. It
doesn't hurt to be provocative, as long as you attempt to be unbiased
and reasonably accurate. What is interesting and important about the
subject? If your introduction would make someone want to read further,
then it will probably entice someone to write further. As little as
one extra sentence can turn a good description into a brilliant stub,
e.g. Salvador Allende was the President of Chile from 1970 until 1973.
The CIA might have been involved in the coup that ousted him. With a
start like that, you don't have to know any more yourself; a dozen
contributors will be falling over themselves to fill in the details."
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Perfect_stub_article&am…
It wasn't sustainable, of course, but I think it reflects a very
different wiki philosophy than the notion that an article has be
perfectly balanced at any given point in time. I think the basic
philosophy is valid, [[iff]] the reader is informed about a lack of
balance through the appropriate tags. Of course, the description above
suggests adding unsourced innuendo, which we have rightly become much
more wary of in recent times.
Erik