On Wednesday 18 September 2002 09:59 pm, you wrote:
Both. I think that articles (and collections of articles on related topics) will evolve in this direction naturally. General articles will serve as broad introductions to a given topic and also provide a jumping-off point to more detailed and specific treatments.
Stephen Gilbert
I agree - this is exactly what is being done for the country and state articles. I also try to encapsulate the essence of a subject by always writing a good definition and have that serve as the introductory paragraph.
That way if the reader /only/ reads the first paragraph then they will still get a good idea of what the subject /is/. Intro paragraphs are also great places to entice the reader into reading more. This does lead to some minor redundancy between the body and the intro though. But since only the most important facts are supposed to be stated in the intro this is hardly a liability. See http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)