From: Erik Moeller on Thursday, December 18, 2003 4:57
PM
Daniel-
> 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.
When I read an article about a well defined subject, and I want to get
all
the information about it, I don't click around at
all. I just read the
article from top to bottom. I might skip a certain section, but I
don't
need to click anywhere. And when I do use the TOC, it
is substantially
faster in terms of latency than browsing of separate articles. Not
only do
I not need to wait for the page to load, I can also
easily get context
--
information about where I am within the structure of a
topic -- simply
by
scrolling, rather than using
back->click->back->click..
Well, that's nice, but it's not fair or appropriate for you to assume
that what you like should be mandated for all. Assuming that all readers
would be happiest if they had the version you like the best--when there
is evidence to the contrary--is not appropriate.
I, for one, when I read a sentence like
The [[asthetic appeal of sport]] is what sports art, including sport in
film, attempts to capture.
..will follow the link if I don't feel as if I understand what the
"asthetic appeal of sport" is; but if I feel that I do understand it, I
am glad that the author didn't force me to waste time skimming through
information I didn't need.
If I have an article like [[sports]], after Cunctator
split it up into
lots of tiny fragments, this possibility is no longer there. To some
extent I agree with the split ups, but I find it questionable whether
[[professional sports]], [[aesthetic appeal of sport]], [[nationalism
and
sport]], [[female sport]] etc. should really be
separate entries. Even
worse is that the article has a long list of "See also"s -- these are
one
of the worst ways to structure information.
Erm--I didn't break out [[female sport]]. Don't bame me for that one.
I *drastically shortened* the list of "See also"s. Again, don't blame me
for that one.
The one complaint that is reasonable and honest is that my
summarizations of the subtopics in [[sport]] were too drastic.
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.
And that is, in my opinion, a reasonable summary of the most important
issues relevant to our basic understanding of sport that can be gleaned
from professional sports.
I don't know if all my edits were exactly right, but the entry needed
some drastic editing. By separating out some of the more digressive
sections it's much more clear what information is needed and what is
not.
In my experience, separating articles so much also
leads to
inconsistencies in style and neglect of articles about fringe
subjects.
For example, I predict that the newly created
[[regulation of sport]]
will
be neglected, while I believe it would not have been
if it had been
kept
as a section within the article. The reason is simply
reduced
exposure.
Who knows? The longer the entry, the more difficult it becomes to
properly edit its subsections--or to entirely reorganize it if
necessary.
30-40 KB is
unreadably long for all but the most important topics
... A max of 15-25 KB minus markup is more
readable for most topics.
Well, these are mere statements of opinion. And of course the amount
of
information that people can stomach in one sitting
varies greatly. I
do
notice, however, that these are not so far apart. If
you take my
minimum
and your maximum and take the average, you arrive at
27.5K, which
seems
reasonable to me. The sports article is currently a
mere 5K, which is
IMHO
a clear sign that it is far too fragmented. It also
has no real
summaries
of the sub-articles it links to. Overall it gives a
very
unprofessional
impression to me.
The version beforehand felt very unprofessional to me. I expect that it
will achieve a happy medium at some point.
But I get the feeling that what feels "professional" to you is "what
would look best on paper".
I would also probably be very pissed if Cunc had done
this, without
prior
discussion as in this case, to one of "my"
articles. One key reason is
that the history gets completely lost in the process. Sure, you can
still
fish it out, but people will assume that Cunc wrote
the individual
pieces.
I have invested many days of research in some articles
I worked on,
and
getting fair credit in the page history is very little
to ask for in
return. Having a carefully planned out article structure messed up in
this
way would also make me quite angry. Be bold, but also
be respectful
toward
other people's work.
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'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*.
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."
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/ is far
more useful for the reader ..
I'm glad that you are so confident that you are correct. For me the
issue
is still quite foggy. While I agree with you that
summaries of
subsections
are useful, I feel they should not be created
needlessly. That is, if
we're below a certain size -- maybe the 27.5K from above -- we don't
need
to split the article up unless there is a clear
logical separation.
For
example, in the [[Mother Teresa]] article we split
away everything
that is
about the [[Missionaries of Charity]] (Teresa's
order), which is fine
with
me because there's a clear distinction here. But
stuff like "History
of
.." should really only be split off if we're
approaching the size
limit,
in my opinion. Otherwise the disadvantages of
splitting appear to
outweigh
the advantages.
Again, your idea of a reasonable size for an entry differs from mine,
and from other people.
I think "History of X" entries are very different from "X" entries.
The
entry "X" should tell the person what X is--not what it was.
--tc