On Friday, December 19, 2003, at 01:30 AM, Arvind Narayanan wrote:
On Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 09:58:13AM -0800, Daniel Mayer wrote:
Erik wrote:
I feel that it is extremely tedious to have to click around many times and load many pages to get a complete picture of an issue, a person etc.
There is little difference between clicking on a TOC link in a huge article than clicking on a link to another article.
For me there's a huge difference. My latency on wikipedia is usually between 5 and 10 seconds. OTOH I have high bandwidth. So I would greatly prefer to download a huge article at once.
Same here. At least. But for bigger articles, it's longer. I'd much rather read a short article and load expanded information in the background. I object to TOC entries, though, because the links have no context. The beauty of wiki links (and html in general) does not lie in TOCs or see-also's. It lies in the ability to connect information logically through context. If a single 'logical' entry is big enough to bring up the issue of using smaller 'physical' entries---that is, use a TOC entry with the equivalent of subpages containing sections thereof---I think the size of the entry needs to be addressed. I don't want to read that much in a single entry, and I certainly don't want to edit it. And editing *across* multiple pages? Forget it, it's not worth it, "Can't someone else do it?". That feeling hurts the wiki. A lot.
If an entry gets to that size and detail, great, let's use the information, but let's spread it out across a few entries, not just by breaking it into pieces, but by separating it into multiple topics. And if that means duplicating a little information, so be it. As you say, Arvind,
I really hate duplication of effort; If article A refers to event B and
Why is this duplication of effort? We can simply copy-paste from one article to the other.
Very true.
Also, when I look something up, I don't want a long article to read to find what I want to know. Remember, Wikipedia Is Not Paper. That means that rather than have to put all the information on one topic *and requisite info* in one place and the shorten it because there's not enough room, we can include just enough to understand the topic with a little requisite info---short enough to read quickly---and then link terms to further elaboration of each background concept. That way readers read only what they need to read. Having more and shorter articles also encourages them to grow longer, which means more information on the site---and eventually these can become multiple articles themselves. It's a wonderful circle of electronic life. Ok, the coffee can kick in now.
My apologies for rambling and twisting myself around. I'm running on very little sleep.
Peter
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