From: "Tony Sidaway" minorityreport@bluebottle.com
Actually on "one-line articles", my preference is for articles (or at least article intros) that can fit into the first screen. This is an internet encyclopedia and if you can't say something useful in the first paragraph then the reader will wander off to another site. If an article can be written well as a single sentence, I think that's a good thing--indeed an ideal to aim for.
"Article intros that can fit into the first screen." Oh, absolutely, by all means.
Now I'm going to pretend that I didn't read that key qualification and tear off onto a rant.
ARTICLES that can fit into one screen? No, no, no. That's not an encyclopedia, that's the Britannica MICROpaedia.
An encyclopedia is not about data, it's about knowledge.
An encyclopedia's job is to make knowledge _accessible_. An encyclopedia explains. An encyclopedia _instructs_. That's what the "-pedia" part is all about. An encyclopedia is supposed to synthesize and make sense of topics.
Why on earth does my public library's reference room even have an encyclopedia in it? (Several, in fact).
Why would anyone look up something in a twenty-volume encyclopedia when the library as a whole contains fifteen hundred times as many volumes? There probably isn't a single topic in the encyclopedia that isn't better dealt with in some standalone book. And it's just as easy for me to find that book in the library's computerized catalog as it is for me to open the encyclopedia's index.
So why do I use the library's encyclopedia?
Because the encyclopedia is selective, and because it synthesizes. Because when I don't want to read all the way through a 1,000 page book about the Bounty mutineers, it tells me about as much as I need and want to know.
Also, I know that the encyclopedia is going to present some broadly accepted mainstream view of the Bounty mutiny. If I just go to the history shelves, unless I first spend some time looking up book reviews, I won't know whether I'm reading a "standard" account or whether it's some kind of revisionist account with an axe to grind.
After I get _oriented_ by reading an encyclopedia article on the Bounty, or quadratic equations, or the history of jazz, then I'm ready to move on to the rest of the library.
(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).
--- 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
__________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com
(This is related to the proper size of articles/intros discussion)
As a compromise between the deletionists and the inclusionist factions, perhaps a stub article could first go through a simple "notes page" stage.
This would have a simple template on the article itself, saying
"This article is in an embryonic [[notes]] stage, where notes are being compiled. You can add to [[/notes|these notes]], or bring bring the article to the [[WP:STUB|fetal]] level."
The notes thing could work like the {{todo}} works, by dumping text from the notes into a frame on the article.
SV
__________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com
steve v wrote: <snip>
"This article is in an embryonic [[notes]] stage, where notes are being compiled. You can add to [[/notes|these notes]], or bring bring the article to the [[WP:STUB|fetal]] level."
Oh great, next thing we'll have Wiki abortionists.
"This article is in an embryonic [[notes]] stage, where notes are being compiled. You can add to [[/notes|these notes]], or bring bring the article to the [[WP:STUB|fetal]] level."
"Once the article is [[Wikipedia:How to write a great article|born]], it can grow until it reaches [[Wikipedia:Peer review|puberty]]. At this point, it should [[Wikipedia:Featured article candidates|get engaged]] and eventually [[Wikipedia:Featured articles|marry]]. Optionally, it may [[:Category:Articles to be split|have children]]. It will finally [[Special:Ancientpages|grow old]] and eventually [[WP:AFD|die]]."
Timwi
Actually on "one-line articles", my preference is for articles (or at least article intros) that can fit into the first screen. This is an internet encyclopedia and if you can't say something useful in the first paragraph then the reader will wander off to another site. If an article can be written well as a single sentence, I think that's a good thing--indeed an ideal to aim for.
"Article intros that can fit into the first screen." Oh, absolutely, by all means.
Now I'm going to pretend that I didn't read that key qualification and tear off onto a rant.
ARTICLES that can fit into one screen? No, no, no. That's not an encyclopedia, that's the Britannica MICROpaedia.
An encyclopedia is not about data, it's about knowledge.
An encyclopedia's job is to make knowledge _accessible_. An encyclopedia explains. An encyclopedia _instructs_. That's what the "-pedia" part is all about. An encyclopedia is supposed to synthesize and make sense of topics.
And this is where I stopped reading your mail, which I found to be way to long. I (and almost everyone else) do the same thing for articles.
-- Mvh Björn