-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 8:54 AM, Anthony wrote:
On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 1:58 PM, Philip Sandifer
wrote:
I'll limit myself to fiction articles, since
that's where I've seen
the worst effects, though I'd love to hear from people who edit in
other areas. [[List of characters in Gilmore Girls]] was the target of
a wealth of merges of characters, such that no characters in the show
have individual articles anymore. And, indeed, the old character
articles were crappy in-universe messes of the sort we want to clean up.
There are a number of problematic *types* of merges, and I think
you've hit on one of them. To my mind it never makes sense to
redirect an instance of something to a list. Certainly not an article
which clearly designates itself as a list, and more arguably not to
those listy articles whose title doesn't explicitly call itself a
list.
Of course, I see lists more as navigation tools than as articles in
themselves, whereas the standard practice seems to mix articles and
lists together. Surely it's in large part due to the fact that making
lists is much easier than making an article which provides an overview
of the topic. I also think the nature of wiki-collaboration leads to
this type of article development. So it's probably a difficult
problem to fix.
On the other hand, I just hit random page a dozen or so times and
couldn't find any instances of these list-like articles. So I don't
think it's for a large percentage of articles, though I do suspect a
sample weighted by article traffic would show a bigger problem.
And then there are articles like [[YouTube]], which is almost the
opposite problem (not enough merging - there are two "sections" which
consist entirely of ''Main article: [[whatever]]''). Although, viewed
differently, maybe it's the same problem - lack of synthesis.
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
As a deletionist, I must admit I do agree that we should look at the
topic of an article rather than its content. In some cases (A7, if I
can remember CSD correctly--the one that deals with notability), the
content is the only data to go on, especially for esoteric articles.
Ghits are often used as a gauge when information is not
available/known (e.g. if someone creates a nn bio of themselves or
their friends or some other equally obscure topic). Often, if an
article reads like it's just some random person, it gets deleted. But
I digress. We're talking about merges. A merge often happens when
there is /insufficient/ content. If the content hints at
nonnotability, it is usually deleted. We should better encourage
unmerging (is that a word...?), and create a /simple, easy to use/
system/gui for doing so. However, merging itself is not evil. If an
"article" (a stub) is two sentences long, it makes more sense to group
it with related information. That way, we (as a community) don't need
to maintain an increased number of articles (yes, they still exist,
they still take up space, but we don't need to protect them from
vandalism etc., we don't need to update them as e.g. external links
change, and a lot more), and the reader gets to read more than a few
sentences. We presume that by entering a topic, they wanted
information about it (or they wanted to edit it, but at least /some/
will want to read). Ergo, if there's only a few sentences on it
available, they will (probably) want related/more information/external
links, which a list provides.
I'm sorry to break off in the "middle" (end? I don't know) of a
[[stream of consciousness]], but, well, let's just say something
happened in the real world. Not a major crisis (or indeed something I
seriously need to worry), but more than a distraction (or more than
the average distraction). Not anything to worry about, so please don't panic
- - - --
Sincerely,
[[User:Thinboy00]]
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment:
http://getfiregpg.org
iD8DBQFIB7o0go4vt93YlxcRAv9vAJ4gNv/zdzOthyooydryXbTDpCUB7wCgg2I8
7YeJwONJ6eIuqfpwHL+KwVI=
=+Av/
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----