Toby-
OTOH, let's suppose that we have individual
articles on each character
in addition to an article [[Characters in Atlas Shrugged]]
that (I guess) summarises information on the characters.
I don't want that. I want an article that contains a *description of the
characters* without all the details. If anything changes, we can just do a
search/replace in that single text, instead of doing it on dozens of
pages. Only for the most important characters separate articles may be
appropriate (e.g. in a [[Disney character]] discussion, [[Donald Duck]]
would be linked to, whereas [[Lil Bad Wolf]] would be described on the
page).
In general, about the same amount of text appears
under either system
Nope, you need redundant intros with separate articles. For one paragraph
articles, this is substantial (about 20%). In addition, in my system, the
text is on one page, making it easy to do search/replace operations.
Yes, it does, and we've already decided our
standards of significance:
Gnipper *is* significant enough. Thus we have an article on him.
This is not the only question where significance matters. In my view, if a
subject is relatively insignificant, it is more proper to discuss it in
context.
> Whether an article can theoretically grow is a
somewhat counter-intuitive
> way to *determine* significance, even for a non-dynamic encyclopedia. My
> policy suggestion could also be phrased as "Insigificant subjects should
> not have their own articles but instead be merged into longer ones", but
> that's more vague and can perhaps be perceived as condescending ("Gnipper
> is no unsigificant! He's the best dog EVER!").
So is your proposed policy about potential length or
significance?
Both. Mostly it is about avoiding eternal stubs that are likely to be
neglected (I'm surprised that I think of this argument only now, it is a
very important one: very short articles on insignificant subjects are more
likely to be neglected, because fewer people will follow all the links
from an obscure page, and with more and more articles, the random page
likelihood per article decreases.), and because of all the other
disadvantages of short articles I have mentioned.
PS: Do you have any objection to [[en:Sarah
Marple-Cantrell]],
the example that got Oliver started on all this?
Yes. I would prefer this case to be discussed in the context of teenage
suicides, with a redirect to that discussion on her name.
Regards,
Erik