Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
"A short article is not a stub." Repeat 10 times under your breath.
... A subject that can be exhaustively covered briefly, is not a stub. Period.
Thank you for saying this. Often, especially in biographical articles, I've been seeing facts tossed in that seem way below the bar for encyclopedia-worthiness: names of the subject's children, birthplaces of people they know (!), etc. Are people adding stuff like that in order to get stub tags removed?
IMO, making an article "not a stub" by padding it with trivialities does not make the article better. It clutters Wikipedia and distracts from the genuinely important content. A one-paragraph article that crisply tells the noteworthy fact or two about its subject can be an excellent article.
Is there any controversy about that? Or are those trivial facts getting in not because of stub tags but just because lots of people love to pad?
Ben
2009/2/22 Ben Kovitz bkovitz@acm.org:
Is there any controversy about that? Or are those trivial facts getting in not because of stub tags but just because lots of people love to pad?
I don't think stub tags have anything to do with it - anecdotally, whilst I've seen many people writing into OTRS asking how they can get "notices" removed from articles once they've been worked on, they only ever talk about things like {{unsourced}} or {{wikify}} and I've never seen stub tags mentioned.
People just like to add trivia, I think.
2009/2/22 Ben Kovitz bkovitz@acm.org:
IMO, making an article "not a stub" by padding it with trivialities does not make the article better. It clutters Wikipedia and distracts from the genuinely important content. A one-paragraph article that crisply tells the noteworthy fact or two about its subject can be an excellent article.
Is there any controversy about that? Or are those trivial facts getting in not because of stub tags but just because lots of people love to pad?
If there is only one noteworthy fact about the subject, the article should probably be merged per BLP1E. If there isn't more than a paragraph worth of stuff to say about a subject, you need to think long and hard about whether there should be an article. In some cases, there probably should, but I think it most cases such a lack of information is a sign that the article should be deleted or merged.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
If there is only one noteworthy fact about the subject, the article should probably be merged per BLP1E. If there isn't more than a paragraph worth of stuff to say about a subject, you need to think long and hard about whether there should be an article. In some cases, there probably should, but I think it most cases such a lack of information is a sign that the article should be deleted or merged.
This is certainly not the case in, for example, medieval history. It's all relative to a background: what expectation is there of ample factual material?
And another thing - I'd resist this in all cases where there was a place for a person in a line of succession boxes. It is really no good merging an article if it messes up some useful navigation.
Charles
2009/2/22 Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
If there is only one noteworthy fact about the subject, the article should probably be merged per BLP1E. If there isn't more than a paragraph worth of stuff to say about a subject, you need to think long and hard about whether there should be an article. In some cases, there probably should, but I think it most cases such a lack of information is a sign that the article should be deleted or merged.
This is certainly not the case in, for example, medieval history. It's all relative to a background: what expectation is there of ample factual material?
And another thing - I'd resist this in all cases where there was a place for a person in a line of succession boxes. It is really no good merging an article if it messes up some useful navigation.
Sure, like I said, there will be cases where it is appropriate. I think those cases are quite rare, though.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
2009/2/22 Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
If there is only one noteworthy fact about the subject, the article should probably be merged per BLP1E. If there isn't more than a paragraph worth of stuff to say about a subject, you need to think long and hard about whether there should be an article. In some cases, there probably should, but I think it most cases such a lack of information is a sign that the article should be deleted or merged.
This is certainly not the case in, for example, medieval history. It's all relative to a background: what expectation is there of ample factual material?
And another thing - I'd resist this in all cases where there was a place for a person in a line of succession boxes. It is really no good merging an article if it messes up some useful navigation.
Sure, like I said, there will be cases where it is appropriate. I think those cases are quite rare, though.
While it is fashionable, seemingly, to look at these small "issues" separately, as if they can be treated as isolated cases where hard-edged rules apply, I think this is the wrong approach. And I don't think it for the general good to dismiss exceptions. Anyone who formulates a general "rule" is under the obligation to think through the exceptional cases, and I deprecate the business done the other way round, where the onus is put on thoughtful people to point out that clumsy rules can do harm.
Charles
2009/2/22 Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Sure, like I said, there will be cases where it is appropriate. I think those cases are quite rare, though.
While it is fashionable, seemingly, to look at these small "issues" separately, as if they can be treated as isolated cases where hard-edged rules apply, I think this is the wrong approach. And I don't think it for the general good to dismiss exceptions. Anyone who formulates a general "rule" is under the obligation to think through the exceptional cases, and I deprecate the business done the other way round, where the onus is put on thoughtful people to point out that clumsy rules can do harm.
But my "rule" was that people should think about it. That rule doesn't really have exceptions - thinking is always appropriate.
On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 4:24 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
If there is only one noteworthy fact about the subject, the article should probably be merged per BLP1E. If there isn't more than a paragraph worth of stuff to say about a subject, you need to think long and hard about whether there should be an article. In some cases, there probably should, but I think it most cases such a lack of information is a sign that the article should be deleted or merged.
This is certainly not the case in, for example, medieval history. It's all relative to a background: what expectation is there of ample factual material?
And another thing - I'd resist this in all cases where there was a place for a person in a line of succession boxes. It is really no good merging an article if it messes up some useful navigation.
Succession boxes are useful navigation? :-) In some places, and for some things, yes, but succession boxes can be misused and overused, like anything else. In particular, I hate those articles where someone held multiple offices and titles and you see 5 or 6 succession boxes (or those big list templates) crammed in at the bottom of the article. Sure, I use them sometimes to find other articles, but they *look* horrible and unprofessional.
Those big "list" or "topic" template (footer boxes?) are bad in other ways as well. They mess up "what links here". There was a time when "what links here" for a random Nobel laureate would get you relevant links to articles related to that person. Now you get all the other Nobel laureates in the list as well, and when the footer bloat is bad you get totally unrelated articles appearing in "what links here" because those articles appear somewhere in some broad topic template that's been stuck on the bottom of 50 or so articles. Really annoying - categories was (is!) meant to avoid that.
Carcharoth
Carcharoth wrote:
On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 4:24 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
If there is only one noteworthy fact about the subject, the article should probably be merged per BLP1E. If there isn't more than a paragraph worth of stuff to say about a subject, you need to think long and hard about whether there should be an article. In some cases, there probably should, but I think it most cases such a lack of information is a sign that the article should be deleted or merged.
This is certainly not the case in, for example, medieval history. It's all relative to a background: what expectation is there of ample factual material?
And another thing - I'd resist this in all cases where there was a place for a person in a line of succession boxes. It is really no good merging an article if it messes up some useful navigation.
Succession boxes are useful navigation? :-) In some places, and for some things, yes, but succession boxes can be misused and overused, like anything else. In particular, I hate those articles where someone held multiple offices and titles and you see 5 or 6 succession boxes (or those big list templates) crammed in at the bottom of the article. Sure, I use them sometimes to find other articles, but they *look* horrible and unprofessional.
Oops - you'd better stay away from [[Pope Julius II]], then. I'd argue that it is exactly in such cases, where someone has a career with numerous spells holding different offices, that succession boxes show their greatest value. It is much more clumsy to express such careers in full detail in the main text. Climbing the greasy pole does belong in displayed form, I'd say, since those who don't want the details should be able to ignore them.
Charles
On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 12:50 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Carcharoth wrote:
On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 4:24 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
<snip>
And another thing - I'd resist this in all cases where there was a place for a person in a line of succession boxes. It is really no good merging an article if it messes up some useful navigation.
Succession boxes are useful navigation? :-) In some places, and for some things, yes, but succession boxes can be misused and overused, like anything else. In particular, I hate those articles where someone held multiple offices and titles and you see 5 or 6 succession boxes (or those big list templates) crammed in at the bottom of the article. Sure, I use them sometimes to find other articles, but they *look* horrible and unprofessional.
Oops - you'd better stay away from [[Pope Julius II]], then. I'd argue that it is exactly in such cases, where someone has a career with numerous spells holding different offices, that succession boxes show their greatest value. It is much more clumsy to express such careers in full detail in the main text. Climbing the greasy pole does belong in displayed form, I'd say, since those who don't want the details should be able to ignore them.
15 succession boxes? That must be some kind of record. Personally, I'd find a good timeline there easier to read than trying to work out which bits overlap where from the succession boxes. And its the timeline I want, really, not who came before and after (though that information should still be present if salient and accessible even if not).
When you click open the templates at the bottom of Pope Julius II, only about 60% of the article's screenspace is actually the article itself. The other 40% is the succession boxes and templates. Maybe I need to switch to a skin that puts categories somewhere more visible?
I wonder if there is also a record for the number of navbox footer templates shoehorned in at the bottom of an article? I found five here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_I_of_England
But I'm sure I've seen more. And there is invariably massive redundancy between the template listings, the succession boxes, and the categories (different ways of presenting the same, or nearly the same, information). A better-designed system would give the reader the option to switch on and off the bits they want to see - in a more permanent fashion than "show/hide".
Carcharoth
On Feb 22, 2009, at 9:23 AM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
2009/2/22 Ben Kovitz bkovitz@acm.org:
A one-paragraph article that crisply tells the noteworthy fact or two about its subject can be an excellent article.
If there is only one noteworthy fact about the subject, the article should probably be merged per BLP1E. If there isn't more than a paragraph worth of stuff to say about a subject, you need to think long and hard about whether there should be an article.
Well, I checked and it turns out that two of the articles that I had in mind are (a) longer than one paragraph, and (b) do not have the stub tag on the main page. :) They are, however, rated Stub-Class on their talk pages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dora_Kent (5 paras) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Nickel (2 paras)
These are the kinds of good short articles that I have in mind, though: they tell what made the person notable, they provide a couple links for further info, and that's it. Expanding them with trivia would obscure the notable facts. "The more you write, the less chance that people will read it."
(Hmm, I'm not sure that the fact in the Laura Nickel article about the Midnight Special Law Collective is really notable. Before it was added, the article really was one paragraph.)
Ben
2009/2/23 Ben Kovitz bkovitz@acm.org:
On Feb 22, 2009, at 9:23 AM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
If there is only one noteworthy fact about the subject, the article should probably be merged per BLP1E. If there isn't more than a paragraph worth of stuff to say about a subject, you need to think long and hard about whether there should be an article.
Well, I checked and it turns out that two of the articles that I had in mind are (a) longer than one paragraph, and (b) do not have the stub tag on the main page. :) They are, however, rated Stub-Class on their talk pages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dora_Kent (5 paras) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Nickel (2 paras)
Dora Kent should redirect to Alcor_Life_Extension_Foundation#Dora_Kent (the section already exists and contains details not given in the Dora Kent article - it also misses some details, so a merge may be appropriate). The person is only notable because of one event - her death and preservation - in those cases, we generally merge (I know she isn't living, so BLP1E doesn't strictly apply, but the logic behind it still does).
Laura Nickel is also only notable for one event, but there isn't an obvious merge target. A new article on the discovery of Mersenne Primes could be created listing all the known examples with details of their discovery, but unless someone actually wants to do that the current article may as well remain.
On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 11:39 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
2009/2/23 Ben Kovitz bkovitz@acm.org:
On Feb 22, 2009, at 9:23 AM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
If there is only one noteworthy fact about the subject, the article should probably be merged per BLP1E. If there isn't more than a paragraph worth of stuff to say about a subject, you need to think long and hard about whether there should be an article.
Well, I checked and it turns out that two of the articles that I had in mind are (a) longer than one paragraph, and (b) do not have the stub tag on the main page. :) They are, however, rated Stub-Class on their talk pages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dora_Kent (5 paras) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Nickel (2 paras)
Dora Kent should redirect to Alcor_Life_Extension_Foundation#Dora_Kent (the section already exists and contains details not given in the Dora Kent article - it also misses some details, so a merge may be appropriate). The person is only notable because of one event - her death and preservation - in those cases, we generally merge (I know she isn't living, so BLP1E doesn't strictly apply, but the logic behind it still does).
Laura Nickel is also only notable for one event, but there isn't an obvious merge target. A new article on the discovery of Mersenne Primes could be created listing all the known examples with details of their discovery, but unless someone actually wants to do that the current article may as well remain.
So what would you do with this article?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Stuart,_Duke_of_Kintyre
That is one of several articles where the child seems to be notable because they were born into nobility or royalty or some other hereditary position. Even if they die in childhood, they still seem to get separate articles.
There was a list somewhere of people sorted by age. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Template_computed_age
But then someone "fixed" the system and it broke.
I *think* it was this edit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Age&diff=next&old...
So I can't currently find a list of all the articles we have of children who died while very young, though distressingly most of them seem to be articles about murders of children.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Murdered_children
How would you approach those articles? The same as for any other murder?
And then there are the child saints:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Child_saints
Compare:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fausta_of_Sirmium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_of_Rome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Nikolaevich,_Tsarevich_of_Russia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Vicuna
And how would you cover the story given in this article?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Bowen
Carcharoth
2009/2/23 Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com:
So what would you do with this article?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Stuart,_Duke_of_Kintyre
That is one of several articles where the child seems to be notable because they were born into nobility or royalty or some other hereditary position. Even if they die in childhood, they still seem to get separate articles.
He was a duke, that's not a single event. It is very unusual for someone that died an infancy to be notable, but this is such a case - there are always exceptions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Murdered_children
How would you approach those articles? The same as for any other murder?
Murder is a difficult one because in many cases it just boils down to a matter of what you call the article. Should it be [[Joe Bloggs]] or [[Murder of Joe Bloggs]]? I would say the latter is preferable because most of the article will be about the murder and what happened afterwards, rather than about the person, but it makes little difference. In the case of multiple murders, there should certainly be one article discussing them all.
And then there are the child saints:
Being a saint is like being a duke, it's notable and is not a single event.
And how would you cover the story given in this article?
That article seems pretty good to me. This is an example of a child whose life was actually notable, not just one event in his life (one aspect of his life, sure, but that's the case with most notable people).
Thomas Dalton wrote:
2009/2/23 Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com:
So what would you do with this article?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Stuart,_Duke_of_Kintyre
That is one of several articles where the child seems to be notable because they were born into nobility or royalty or some other hereditary position. Even if they die in childhood, they still seem to get separate articles.
He was a duke, that's not a single event. It is very unusual for someone that died an infancy to be notable, but this is such a case - there are always exceptions.
Being a duke is not an event at all. What did HE do to make himself famous? All that's there could have been included in his parents' article. What's so notable about his having been given a silly title?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Murdered_children
How would you approach those articles? The same as for any other murder?
Murder is a difficult one because in many cases it just boils down to a matter of what you call the article. Should it be [[Joe Bloggs]] or [[Murder of Joe Bloggs]]? I would say the latter is preferable because most of the article will be about the murder and what happened afterwards, rather than about the person, but it makes little difference. In the case of multiple murders, there should certainly be one article discussing them all.
Or [[Joe Bloggs murder]] to avoid having too many articles beginning with "Murder". These mostly have a place, since there are enough events surrounding the murder that merit telling. Still, the naming issue is somewhat less significant than having the article in the first place.
And then there are the child saints:
Being a saint is like being a duke, it's notable and is not a single event.
It's more akin to the child murder cases, since there is often a question of martyrdom involved.
And how would you cover the story given in this article?
That article seems pretty good to me. This is an example of a child whose life was actually notable, not just one event in his life (one aspect of his life, sure, but that's the case with most notable people).
It's a great example of maudlinism run rampant. Why this 2-year old, and not another who died of cancer? It's not a unique fate.
Ec
On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 3:15 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote
2009/2/23 Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com:
It's a great example of maudlinism run rampant. Why this 2-year old, and not another who died of cancer?
Just pure random luck.
On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 1:09 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 3:15 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote
2009/2/23 Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com:
It's a great example of maudlinism run rampant. Why this 2-year old, and not another who died of cancer?
Just pure random luck.
"luck" was probably not the right word there, in this context.
Someone mentioned John Travolta's son, and another public figure (David Cameron) recently had a similar tragedy befall them. The other example I've been following (someone likened it to a car crash) is Jade Goody. Lots of editing activity at those articles, but seems to turn out OK in the end.
Carcharoth
On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 6:24 AM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.comwrote:
On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 1:09 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 3:15 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net
wrote
2009/2/23 Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com:
It's a great example of maudlinism run rampant. Why this 2-year old, and not another who died of cancer?
Just pure random luck.
"luck" was probably not the right word there, in this context.
I was being sarcastic. Obviously there are reasons that there's an article about Ben Bowen and not about every 2-year old that died of cancer. In fact, there's at least one good one: There are not verifiable sources for every 2-year old that died of cancer.
I was listening to Wikipedia Weekly from a short while ago when they were discussing what should be in Wikinews vs. what should be in Wikipedia vs. what should be in both, and I think a case could be made that the story of Ben Bowen is a good candidate for Wikinews instead of Wikipedia. I think it's a useful story, and belongs somewhere (along with, in my opinion, stories about even less publicized 2-year-olds so long as they can be derived from verifiable sources). But it does seem out of place in an encyclopedia - the impact of this particular child will likely not be historically significant 20 years from now, though I think it will provide a glimpse into the culture in which we live. Newspaper archives are a good source for such cultural information, I'd think. The [[StoryCorps]] project is also archiving this "slice of life" type information, although they're doing it in a way which doesn't enforce verifiability.
That said, I don't think Wikinews is currently in a state where it can handle this type of content, and I have no problems with it living in Wikipedia until there's a more suitable home (I know, this notion is blasphemous, but I'm an outsider so I can make such blasphemous statements). A Wikinews article on Ben Bowen would likely look completely different from the Wikipedia article on him, and I think it'd necessarily be worse instead of better or even just different.