Cunc-
Well, that's nice, but it's not fair or appropriate for you to assume that what you like should be mandated for all.
That argument can be applied in both directions. So unless you come up with a very good scheme thad does not substantially affect performance, is easy to use and allows different "views" of an article, we'll have to go with what the majority prefers (and make some concessions to the minority). Given the experience of the recent poll on the Rick Santorum article, I find it likely that your view is a minority position.
I, for one, when I read a sentence like The [[asthetic appeal of sport]]
That should be "aestehtic", btw.
But if we take the case of [[professional sports]], the [[sport]] article discusses how professional sports rises from sport's appeal as passive entertainment, how professional sports have given rise to several related industries, and how professional sports comes into conflict with the concept of amateur sportsmanship.
The level of detail of this "discussion" is as high as the level of detail of the above paragraph. In other words, there is almost no information in it that goes beyond what virtually everyone knows. That is the kind of paragraph that makes articles look unprofessional unless you are fully aware when reading it that there is much more detail available. Print it and it looks really silly. "Participants are paid *by the audience* in professional sports? Wow, I didn't know that! Wikipedia is so informative!"
Who knows? The longer the entry, the more difficult it becomes to properly edit its subsections--or to entirely reorganize it if necessary.
Um, reorganizing won't exactly become easier with 20 or so separate articles where in many cases nobody will know where any specific piece of information is.
But I get the feeling that what feels "professional" to you is "what would look best on paper".
Not really, it's just that for me, the differences between what is good on paper and what is good on a computer screen are not that big. There's a certain hypertext myth that says that a "real" hypertext page needs to be small and full of links to other hypertext pages. In terms of usability studies, this has been found to be highly confusing and ineffective. Having links is good, but they should lead to reasonably sized chunks of information. The more fragmented an article is, the higher the likelihood that people will be frustrated by lots of tiny stubs.
I'm sorry, but I don't think that it's appropriate to take editing changes like this personally. It's counterproductive to collaboration and egocentric. Taking edits for structure personally doesn't help anyone.
It is not an irrational feeling. If you disagree with what someone has done to your article, then your own investments of time and energy into it are called into question, the other person in effect tries to *condition* you to behave in a certain way. It is therefore really a minimum requirement for collaboration to ask before making major changes, and to try to achieve consenus.
You know very well that your changes to [[sports]] probably would not have found consensus if you had announced them beforehand. And I believe that is the reason you did not do so. Please try to follow the defined Wikipedia decision making process. In case of minor changes, make them immediately. In case of medium changes, make them and then comment (in the edit summary or on the talk page). In case of major changes, announce them first and wait for objections before making them. In case of objections, seek consensus. In case of lack of consensus, you are free to start a vote.
It's a lot better for everyone to get your high from the act of selfless contribution or the knowledge that you've insinuated your knowledge and perspective invisibly into the stream. Once you contribute to Wikipedia, it's *not your work* any more. The original contribution is, but that's it. *You are explicitly agreeing to a merciless editing process*.
That is all well under the assumption that you agree with what the other person has done. If you feel it makes the article worse, then this kind of rhetoric falls apart.
It's reasonable and right to say "I think your changes have hurt the coverage of this issue in these ways". It's unreasonable to say "I'm angry because you changed my entries, whether or not it's for the better."
Of course. I never said it would be reasonable to be angry about changes that are for the better. It is questionable whether we agree when this is the case, though.
If you're so worried about credit, then write code to allow people to rename sections to new pages so that the version history is remembered.
That's not possible. You *can* split up the edit history (with *very* much coding effort), but it will no longer make sense. Edit comments lose their meaning, the linear structure of the history is broken up as edits which were made to other sections between two edits of the same one are no longer part of the new history, etc. Aside from that, cut&pasting is typically not limited to clearly separable sections.
So losing proper credit is very much a given when cut&pasting out parts of an article. This is probably also in material breach of the FDL. That's one other major reason that it should not be done without consensus.
I feel that if you continue to split up articles in major ways without announcing this on the talk page first and giving authors a chance to react to your proposal, you are in serious violation of Wikiquette, and possibly other policies.
Regards,
Erik