Daniel Mayer wrote:
On Thursday 08 August 2002 08:20 pm, tarquin wrote:
The reasoning was fairly simple: Wikiprojects are organized in a hierarchy. Naming conventions are increasingly hierarchic too. When I create a page, I seek information about how to name it and how to present it. It's stupid having to career halfway across the Wikipedia to find those two pieces of information.
Then just add links.
One word: spaghetti. Just because it's a web, it doesn't mean it can't be a cleanly organized web.
I'm afraid I can't explain it any more simply than I have on http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=Presentation+Conventions , but I shall endeavour to try:
For each subject area, and for each "class" of page (eg chemical element pages, people, ships etc), there are several different pieces of meta-information. They are: * what should be covered in this area? what are the priorities? * what's the scheme for naming pages in this area, or in this class? * conventions for presentation: is there, should there be, or what is the agreed layout style? * is there a group of Wikipedians who intend to flesh out this area? * ... we may find the need to other things in the future
It merely seems good refactoring style to bring all those together.
Also keep in mind that the only content policy we have is NPOV (everything else is just a 'rule to consider') -- I do not want to have WikiProject guidelines even to begin to appear as if they are a kind of content policy
I absolutely agree. This is not about restricting new content. We don't expect people to produce fully-fledged articles on their first edit, or the grammar, spelling or typing to be perfect -- I'm not questioning that at all, and in fact I agree with it. However, there is a lot of cleaning up work going on, and part of that involves harmonizing presentation. Articles about people are a good example: I have seen half a dozen or so ways of presenting a person's name, dates of birth & death and principal achievements. That doesn't diminish the value of the content, and consistency in look & feel should be very low on our priorities. But I am not the only one who takes random walks through the Wikipedia & tidies up what (s)he finds -- while I'm fixing typos or rewriting for clarity I might as well take care of the formatting too -- *if* I knew what the agreed conventions were.
I hope I've not been misunderstood: I am *not* trying to impose or set out new style rules in these pages on Meta. I'm trying to bring together existing conventions, and set out a forum where debates about style can take place.
Also troubling is the term "Presentation Conventions" which is /far/ too similar to "naming conventions" and will cause confusion with newbies about the importance that naming conventions have in relation to any presentation "conventions".
Agreed. The name "Presentation Conventions" is gone, as far as I'm concerned. It was a poor choice. I haven't got round to renaming the page on Meta, that's all.
As a matter of fact, I do not want us to have /any/ content convention other than NPOV -- anything more will tend to stifle innovation (consistency is nice, and I do strive for that, but it should /not/ be in any way confused with policy).
*Being consistent* must not be policy, but *what* the consistency is, should one choose to be consistent -- there's got to be a consensus, otherwise it's not consistent! I get the impression we're looking at this from opposite angles:
You (seem to) think these pages will say: "here are the presentation rules! obey them!" I want them to say: "*if* you wish to be consistent in presentation (and naming, etc), here are the agreed guidelines *and* the place to debate them"
regards - tarquin