Alphax alphasigmax at gmail.com wrote at Tue Nov 15 12:15:00 UTC 2005:
What worries me is that with our growing popularity, we're going to have more experts arriving on our doorstep, trying to write articles on their specialist areas, and leave in disgust when some 2-bit moron votes "d, nn. cruft".
As far as I can say, that has always been a serious problem. It's not a matter of elitism. An expert who is used to discussing his views with well-informed people on an academic level will not enjoy the experience of having to defend basic and established knowledge of his field against schoolkids whose only expertise is with video games. I am offering no opinion on the desirability of it, but the latter probably form a very sizable fraction of our user base.
Kosebamse
kosebamse@gmx.net wrote:
Alphax alphasigmax at gmail.com wrote at Tue Nov 15 12:15:00 UTC 2005:
What worries me is that with our growing popularity, we're going to have more experts arriving on our doorstep, trying to write articles on their specialist areas, and leave in disgust when some 2-bit moron votes "d, nn. cruft".
As far as I can say, that has always been a serious problem. It's not a matter of elitism. An expert who is used to discussing his views with well-informed people on an academic level will not enjoy the experience of having to defend basic and established knowledge of his field against schoolkids whose only expertise is with video games. I am offering no opinion on the desirability of it, but the latter probably form a very sizable fraction of our user base.
Once upon a time, I was a kid who read encyclopedias... although I find our video game articles interesting, it's the technical/Real Life details that interest me, not the plot-related "and here we see a detailed breakdown of all the weapons available, powerups, world details, monsters...". Things like "although it was brought out at the same time as (X), the (Y) feature made it more popular" *do*, because it's factual, not descriptive fiction.
Or something.
As for the "X in popular culture" plague, I recently (well, a few weeks ago) found one of these in one of the first article merges I did. I understand that the information has to go *somewhere*; it's just a matter of where... should every known appearance of railguns in ficiton appear in the "railgun" article, or be spread out between the articles on a dozen games, movies and books?
On 11/15/05, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
As for the "X in popular culture" plague, I recently (well, a few weeks ago) found one of these in one of the first article merges I did. I understand that the information has to go *somewhere*; it's just a matter of where... should every known appearance of railguns in ficiton appear in the "railgun" article, or be spread out between the articles on a dozen games, movies and books?
My general answer to this one is that X in popular culture makes useful padding untill the the article isup to a reasonable size. After that it may be time for it to be culled.
-- geni
"geni" geniice@gmail.com wrote in message news:f80608430511150500t6aaa9acjcb917f2fe5d7d4d2@mail.gmail.com... On 11/15/05, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
As for the "X in popular culture" plague, I recently (well, a few weeks ago) found one of these in one of the first article merges I did. I understand that the information has to go *somewhere*; it's just a matter of where... should every known appearance of railguns in ficiton appear in the "railgun" article, or be spread out between the articles on a dozen games, movies and books?
My general answer to this one is that X in popular culture makes useful padding untill the the article isup to a reasonable size. After that it may be time for it to be culled.
I am almost shocked speechless.
Are you seriously suggesting that we should be deleting perfectly good information simply because you think that a particular article has reached some threshold size which you consider "big enough"?
Does "Wikipedia is not paper" mean nothing to you?
On 11/15/05, Phil Boswell phil.boswell@gmail.com wrote:
I am almost shocked speechless.
Are you seriously suggesting that we should be deleting perfectly good information simply because you think that a particular article has reached some threshold size which you consider "big enough"?
Does "Wikipedia is not paper" mean nothing to you?
Phil [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
Does "the entire world does not have broadband" mean anything to you? Ok so 32 is probably a little low for an article size limit but 40+ and popular culture/trivia are second on my list of things to kill (the first being random quotes about the subject wikiquote is thata way)
-- geni
On Nov 15, 2005, at 11:32 AM, geni wrote:
Does "the entire world does not have broadband" mean anything to you? Ok so 32 is probably a little low for an article size limit but 40+ and popular culture/trivia are second on my list of things to kill (the first being random quotes about the subject wikiquote is thata way)
The popular culture sections are often magnets for irrelevant trivia, but I wouldn't say they're in and of themselves bad. The "In modern fiction" section of [[Succubus]], for instance, would probably not be worse off for losing the bit about Sluggy Freelance and the game series in which succubi are a "forgotten, yet remarkable foe."
Which is not to say that either topic is non-notable - just that they are not really relevant to a general study of succubi.
You know what's a project we don't have that would be helpful? Wikibibliography. A repository for things like "List of media with succubi" or "List of songs over seven minutes in length" or "List of books about the Vietnam War."
-Phil
On 11/15/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
The popular culture sections are often magnets for irrelevant trivia, but I wouldn't say they're in and of themselves bad. The "In modern fiction" section of [[Succubus]], for instance, would probably not be worse off for losing the bit about Sluggy Freelance and the game series in which succubi are a "forgotten, yet remarkable foe."
Which is not to say that either topic is non-notable - just that they are not really relevant to a general study of succubi.
It's not so much that it's when an article has become bloated they are the bit that can be removed with the minium of damage.
You know what's a project we don't have that would be helpful? Wikibibliography. A repository for things like "List of media with succubi" or "List of songs over seven minutes in length" or "List of books about the Vietnam War."
-Phil
Hmmm perhaps but quite a few lists perform a useful index function. Still if I saw the poject proposed I'd support it.
-- geni
"geni" geniice@gmail.com wrote in message news:f80608430511150832l7e4bf905vb81f7b7f6349610b@mail.gmail.com... On 11/15/05, Phil Boswell phil.boswell@gmail.com wrote: [geni wrote this to which I then responded]
My general answer to this one is that X in popular culture makes useful padding untill the the article isup to a reasonable size. After that it may be time for it to be culled.
I am almost shocked speechless. Are you seriously suggesting that we should be deleting perfectly good information simply because you think that a particular article has reached some threshold size which you consider "big enough"? Does "Wikipedia is not paper" mean nothing to you?
Does "the entire world does not have broadband" mean anything to you? Ok so 32 is probably a little low for an article size limit but 40+ and popular culture/trivia are second on my list of things to kill (the first being random quotes about the subject wikiquote is thata way)
So factor it out into a separate article, rather than simply throw it away. If there is sufficient information in [[X#X in popular culture]] to cause a noticeable delay in loading the article, then maybe an article [[X in popular culture]] should be created.
If the latter is not what you meant, then you might have phrased yourself a little more carefully.
On 11/15/05, Phil Boswell phil.boswell@gmail.com wrote:
So factor it out into a separate article, rather than simply throw it away. If there is sufficient information in [[X#X in popular culture]] to cause a noticeable delay in loading the article, then maybe an article [[X in popular culture]] should be created.
I have no wish to create permastubs
-- geni
There's plenty of possible analysis on the interplay between popular culture and a particular non-pop-like thing. So yes, stubs at first, but almost certainly not permastubs.
On 11/15/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/15/05, Phil Boswell phil.boswell@gmail.com wrote:
So factor it out into a separate article, rather than simply throw it
away.
If there is sufficient information in [[X#X in popular culture]] to
cause a
noticeable delay in loading the article, then maybe an article [[X in popular culture]] should be created.
I have no wish to create permastubs
-- geni _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- Ben Yates Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com
On Nov 15, 2005, at 12:12 PM, geni wrote:
On 11/15/05, Phil Boswell phil.boswell@gmail.com wrote:
So factor it out into a separate article, rather than simply throw it away. If there is sufficient information in [[X#X in popular culture]] to cause a noticeable delay in loading the article, then maybe an article [[X in popular culture]] should be created.
I have no wish to create permastubs
If the problem with the content is that it's making the article too long, it seems like a spin-off would necessarily not be a permastub.
-Phil
On 11/15/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
If the problem with the content is that it's making the article too long, it seems like a spin-off would necessarily not be a permastub.
-Phil
I supose we could argue that if we wait long enough some more popular culture will turn up. Early on in an artical's evolution triva/popula culture is a simple way to add a fair bit of stuff. As the article matures it becomes time to remove the stuff that hasn't managed to intergrate into the main article. -- geni
geni wrote:
On 11/15/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
If the problem with the content is that it's making the article too long, it seems like a spin-off would necessarily not be a permastub.
-Phil
I supose we could argue that if we wait long enough some more popular culture will turn up.
So _then_ would be the time to split it off of the main article. There's no need to do it earlier if all you've got is a stub's worth so far.
Early on in an artical's evolution triva/popula culture is a simple way to add a fair bit of stuff. As the article matures it becomes time to remove the stuff that hasn't managed to intergrate into the main article.
I don't see how having a section "X in popular culture" near the bottom of the article on X is not "integrated" properly. At least one article I've worked on comes immediately to mind ([[alternative biochemistry]]) where the references to works of fiction were initially scattered throughout the article and were later separated out into their own "in fiction" section that IMO made for a much better-integrated article. And if it became large enough to warrant, an [[alternative biochemistries in fiction]] child article would seem just fine to me.
And in any event, I still don't see any reason why information that was good to include in Wikipedia at one point in history later becomes unacceptable without any related policy changes or changes to the information itself. Rearranging and refactoring it, sure, but not deleting it.
geni wrote:
On 11/15/05, Phil Boswell phil.boswell@gmail.com wrote:
So factor it out into a separate article, rather than simply throw it away. If there is sufficient information in [[X#X in popular culture]] to cause a noticeable delay in loading the article, then maybe an article [[X in popular culture]] should be created.
I have no wish to create permastubs
If the "X in popular culture" section is so small that splitting it off would make it a stub, how could it possibly be having any significant impact on the loading time of the article it's currently in? If it's a permastub section then it can stay in the main article without causing any harm.
On 11/15/05, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
If the "X in popular culture" section is so small that splitting it off would make it a stub, how could it possibly be having any significant impact on the loading time of the article it's currently in? If it's a permastub section then it can stay in the main article without causing any harm.
In most cases it isn't a loading time issue. It's more that if you go beyond 32k people tend to feel the article is too long. This is the other side side of wikipedia not being paper.
-- geni
Mediawiki article content is contained in DIVs, not TABLEs, so most browsers will load the content as it streams across the phone line rather than waiting for the entire page to download before rendering. (I'm not sure how Internet Explorer does it, though; does anyone know?)
On 11/15/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Does "the entire world does not have broadband" mean anything to you? Ok so 32 is probably a little low for an article size limit but 40+ and popular culture/trivia are second on my list of things to kill (the first being random quotes about the subject wikiquote is thata way)
-- Ben Yates Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com
On 11/15/05, Ben Yates bluephonic@gmail.com wrote:
Mediawiki article content is contained in DIVs, not TABLEs, so most browsers will load the content as it streams across the phone line rather than waiting for the entire page to download before rendering. (I'm not sure how Internet Explorer does it, though; does anyone know?)
I doubt anyone knows.
Including Microsoft.
Sam
geni wrote:
My general answer to this one is that X in popular culture makes useful padding untill the the article isup to a reasonable size. After that it may be time for it to be culled.
Split off into its own article, you mean.
If it's perfectly good encyclopedia material _before_ the article gets "big enough", then it's perfectly good material _after_ the other parts of the article grow too. The other parts of the article growing has no effect whatsoever on the nature of the material that doesn't grow along with it.