Jimmy Wales wrote:
But the two examples he puts forward are, quite frankly, a horrific embarassment. [[Bill Gates]] and [[Jane Fonda]] are nearly unreadable crap.
Why? What can we do about it?
This is a common problem we have, especially with biographies of living people. They tend to develop by people adding various facts piecemeal, without any attempt to think about how to organize an encyclopedia article about the subject. At most they manage to accomplish a rough chronological sequence, heavily weighted to recent events of course. Unless somebody comes along to synthesize the material, it will remain incoherent. So the solution, it would seem, is to encourage editors to tackle an article in its entirety, or find more people willing to do so. This is one reason the featured article process is so important, because it's really this kind of treatment that is the key to featured status.
Biographies generally are also very vulnerable to a form of POV-pushing I call death-by-anecdote, and both of the examples Carr picked suffer from it. The rambling recitation of chronological facts encourages people to add all manner of trivial incidents, ephemeral news that does not contribute to any greater understanding of the subject. Often editors will key on mentioning every inconsequential matter they can find to put the subject in a negative light (or alternatively to engage in hagiography). Attempts to "NPOV" this produce a back and forth in which the discussion of some trifle grows out of all proportion to its significance.
--Michael Snow
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Michael Snow wrote:
This is a common problem we have, especially with biographies of living people. They tend to develop by people adding various facts piecemeal, without any attempt to think about how to organize an encyclopedia article about the subject.
On the other hand, [[Robert Oppenheimer]] is one of the best articles I've found on Wikipedia, let alone the best biography. I want to know what the editors of that article did that the editors of [[Jane Fonda]] didn't.
- - Ryan
--- Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:
On the other hand, [[Robert Oppenheimer]] is one of the best articles I've found on Wikipedia, let alone the best biography. I want to know what the editors of that article did that the editors of [[Jane Fonda]] didn't.
Oppenheimer is a world-renowned scientist, whos life is closed, and who's book can be written with both bookends in place.
Gates and Fonda on the other hand are contemporary personalities --each of whom have their feet in both superficial (Gates' ego, Fonda's workouts, etc.) and relevant worlds (Big business, principled protests, etc.).
When I edited the JF article, I had a chuckle at how crappy the bio section was. I did my part (should have seen it before :P) with the parts I was interested in, and left the trivial bits to someone interested in those things. The bio section was so bad as to be *too hard* to edit in my tired state when I happened to be looking it. I did put in on my to-do list though --somewhere after cleaning the bus stop toilet and giving the cat a bath.
SV
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This code has worked quite well so far, so I'd like to promote its further use on any page with excessive verticality.
{| width="100%" |- valign=top |width="50%"|
COLUMN 1
|width="50%"|
COLUMN 2
|}
SinReg, SV
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On 10/6/05, steve v vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote:
This code has worked quite well so far, so I'd like to promote its further use on any page with excessive verticality.
{| width="100%" |- valign=top |width="50%"|
COLUMN 1
|width="50%"|
COLUMN 2
|}
SinReg, SV
Great tip! The same concept can be use for additional image layout possibilities (see [[Floodgate]] ).
On 10/6/05, steve v vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote:
This code has worked quite well so far, so I'd like to promote its further use on any page with excessive verticality.
{| width="100%" |- valign=top |width="50%"|
COLUMN 1
|width="50%"|
COLUMN 2
|}
SinReg, SV
Be careful using this. Some people still browse Wikipedia on 800x600 monitors, and I frequently use my Blackberry to access Wikipedia. Formatting like this may not transfer well to small-screen devices.
Kelly
On 10/7/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
Be careful using this. Some people still browse Wikipedia on 800x600 monitors, and I frequently use my Blackberry to access Wikipedia. Formatting like this may not transfer well to small-screen devices.
Actually it seems to be designed to scale according to browser page width (I wish more pages did this!) A table may look slightly odd if the available screen width isn't enough to contain all the text and it has to wrap the columns, but at least you get to see the text without annoying horizontal scroll. Wikipedia is actually quite good at this; some sites such as gmail are utterly hopeless, apparently written by complete amateurs.
On Fri, 2005-10-07 at 14:50 +0100, Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 10/7/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
Be careful using this. Some people still browse Wikipedia on 800x600 monitors, and I frequently use my Blackberry to access Wikipedia. Formatting like this may not transfer well to small-screen devices.
Actually it seems to be designed to scale according to browser page width (I wish more pages did this!) A table may look slightly odd if the available screen width isn't enough to contain all the text and it has to wrap the columns, but at least you get to see the text without annoying horizontal scroll. Wikipedia is actually quite good at this; some sites such as gmail are utterly hopeless, apparently written by complete amateurs.
But it is markup by layout not function, and therefore bad. There should be a generic use as many columns as fit on the screen - this forces 2.
I try to use wikipedia on my phone too quite often. The main problem is the amount of clutter around the information, which lays out very badly on a small screen. AT some point I migth play around with how best to fix this.
Justinc
Well, I passed it on (i forgot where i first saw it) because I think its a good solution compared to others Ive seen. Its really simple, so its not as code-obstructive as others, and can be removed for special purposes.
The formatting solution vs function solution issue is something youre going to need to take to the W3C - HTML is all style and no function. Im sure Wikipedia isnt the only site you have problems reading on your Blackberry. Still, that does address perhaps a technical need to show wikipedia articles in extremely plaintext form - like printing mode, only with links still in place. You should take this up with the devos. There's probably already an FR on bugzilla.wikimedia.org for it.
SV
--- Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
On Fri, 2005-10-07 at 14:50 +0100, Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 10/7/05, Kelly Martin
kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
Be careful using this. Some people still browse
Wikipedia on 800x600
monitors, and I frequently use my Blackberry to
access Wikipedia.
Formatting like this may not transfer well to
small-screen devices.
Actually it seems to be designed to scale
according to browser page width (I
wish more pages did this!) A table may look
slightly odd if the available
screen width isn't enough to contain all the text
and it has to wrap the
columns, but at least you get to see the text
without annoying horizontal
scroll. Wikipedia is actually quite good at this;
some sites such as gmail
are utterly hopeless, apparently written by
complete amateurs.
But it is markup by layout not function, and therefore bad. There should be a generic use as many columns as fit on the screen - this forces 2.
I try to use wikipedia on my phone too quite often. The main problem is the amount of clutter around the information, which lays out very badly on a small screen. AT some point I migth play around with how best to fix this.
Justinc
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Alternate viewing for mobiles..
Oh I forgot, the the "basic" or "original" CSS already does this.
SV
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