Hi all! I would like to share an editing technique that's in use in the
Spanish Wikipedia and I think should be in use everywhere.
It's basically a template <https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantilla:Extracto>
that transcludes the introduction (or any section) of an article into
another article.
So for example, the Spanish article on Science
<https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciencia> transcludes the introductions of
the more specific articles on the scientific method, the history of
science, scientific laws, etc. Check it out!
<https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciencia?action=edit>
Currently there're 375 articles using excerpts
<https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor%C3%ADa:Wikipedia:Art%C3%ADculos_con_extractos>
and
counting, on topics as diverse as science, philosophy, logic, history,
countries, sports and TV shows.
Excerpts could save tremendous amount of work, avoid inconsistencies
throughout the encyclopedia, funnel collaboration, improve content through
the merging process that the use of the template leads to, and other
benefits.
I created an English version of the template
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Excerpt> but I never got to use it.
There's also some English documentation on the technique
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cascading_content>, for anyone
interested.
Kind regards,