Wikipedia supports HTML comments. You can enclose text in <!-- and -->. This means that while the text will still be visible in wikisource, it will not be visible on the displayed page.
I see in many articles that people add comments like: "To do: .." or "needs to be expanded" or "who was this?". Some pages also have "Notes to Wikipedia editors" and the like.
In case of detailed discussions, this should of course be moved to the Talk page. But if it is useful to have directly in the text but only useful for editors, we should use HTML comments for these kind of meta- remarks. A non Wikipedia editor should not be exposed to meta-content like this.
So when you see such a remark and don't want to delete it, please enclose it in <!-- and --> to hide it from the rendered page, but not from those who edit it. You *must* use this exact character sequence, the shorter <!- foo -> or other variants like <- foo -> will *not* work.
Thanks!
Erik
erik_moeller@gmx.de (Erik Moeller) writes:
I see in many articles that people add comments like: "To do: .." or "needs to be expanded" or "who was this?".
It's a good thing to display those remarks; don't hide them in comments!
Otherwise it's a nice feature that we can write comments.
|From: Karl Eichwalder ke@gnu.franken.de |Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 04:57:01 +0100 | |erik_moeller@gmx.de (Erik Moeller) writes: | |> I see in many articles that people add comments like: "To do: .." or |> "needs to be expanded" or "who was this?". | |It's a good thing to display those remarks; don't hide them in comments! | |Otherwise it's a nice feature that we can write comments. | |--
The html comments are kind of cute, but the talk pages are a better place for discussing the faults of articles. Since there are very few articles that couldn't be expanded or don't need work, comments, displayed or not, don't add much. If they are displayed, they look kind of amateurish.
I usually edit out any unecessary html I find, and move comments like "who is this?" to the talk page.
Tom Parmenter Ortolan88
My concern about encouraging the use of HTML comments is that they might end up being used as a kind of "secondary talk", hidden from observers, and only noticed by people actively editing an article.
There are a lot of times when I'm puzzling over an edit war, but I almost never edit in those cases, because of my political position around here. If people start leaving comments like
<!-- YOUR MOTHER SUCKS DUCKS IF YOU CHANGE THIS PART -->
that's not good. :-)
--Jimbo
Tom Parmenter tompar@world.std.com writes:
The html comments are kind of cute, but the talk pages are a better place for discussing the faults of articles. Since there are very few articles that couldn't be expanded or don't need work, comments, displayed or not, don't add much. If they are displayed, they look kind of amateurish.
Yes, but I've very special comments in mind:
1. ''[We must replace this list of items with running text.]''
2. ''[Hier den Text von en: einfügen]'' -- this means in a German article the English version offers more info one is considered to translate and to add here.
Otherwise you are right.
--- Tom Parmenter tompar@world.std.com wrote:
The html comments are kind of cute, but the talk pages are a better place for discussing the faults of articles. Since there are very few articles that couldn't be expanded or don't need work, comments, displayed or not, don't add much. If they are displayed, they look kind of amateurish.
Comments belong on talk, no question about it. But an article that clearly points out that a certain topic should be covered but isn't looks a lot less amateurish to me than an article that silently omits the topic. These omission notices are important information for our readers, most of whom come through Google and will never even discover Talk:.
Axel
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The html comments are kind of cute, but the talk pages are a better place for discussing the faults of articles.
Talk pages are for comments /about the article/. HTML comments in the source text are for comments /about the source text/ that don't relate to the article. Most people aren't programmers, and so will have no concepts matching the latter; that's OK, they'll never use them. But they are vital to those of us who /do/ understand the difference, and their existence doesn't make the experience for non-techies any more difficult.
There is at least one area of wikipedia work that I do which I think HTML comments will come in very handy; HTML tables. HTML tables can get quite complicated and messy, and being able to leave notes for future editors to help them add to the table is something I just don't see the talk: page as being very good for. Very complicated lines of TeX might also benefit from an HMTL comment or two, though I imagine math equations aren't as likely to be modified by future contributors.
In a closely related vein, there are a lot of articles which use standardized "templates"; for example the planetary data sheets or the tatobox for biological species. Filling the template with HTML comments describing what sorts of stuff goes where, and what the preferred formats are, will help to keep these things consistent when new people use the templates.
Tables are death to a living article. Except for standardized tables for a few routine situations, lists of the state bird, flower, motto, the taxoboxes for animals, etc., I believe tables should be assiduosly avoided. The more coding there is in an article, the less chance that people will edit it. I usually don't bother with any article that has a table in it on the theory that I can accomplish more elsewhere where there are none, which is identical to my policy on trolls and edit wars.
Tom P.
|From: Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca |X-Sender: bryan.derksen@shawmail |Sender: wikipedia-l-admin@wikipedia.org |Reply-To: wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org |Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 18:30:02 -0700 | |There is at least one area of wikipedia work that I do which I think HTML |comments will come in very handy; HTML tables. HTML tables can get quite |complicated and messy, and being able to leave notes for future editors to |help them add to the table is something I just don't see the talk: page as |being very good for. Very complicated lines of TeX might also benefit from |an HMTL comment or two, though I imagine math equations aren't as likely to |be modified by future contributors. | |In a closely related vein, there are a lot of articles which use |standardized "templates"; for example the planetary data sheets or the |tatobox for biological species. Filling the template with HTML comments |describing what sorts of stuff goes where, and what the preferred formats |are, will help to keep these things consistent when new people use the |templates. | |_______________________________________________ |Wikipedia-l mailing list |Wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org |http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l |
Bryan Derksen wrote:
There is at least one area of wikipedia work that I do which I think HTML comments will come in very handy; HTML tables. HTML tables can get quite complicated and messy, and being able to leave notes for future editors to help them add to the table is something I just don't see the talk: page as being very good for.
Another way that I like to use HTML-style comments with tables: When a huge table (like those for US States, elements, etc) confronts a newbie trying their hand at editing, they may not realise how easy wiki editing is when all that they can see is this mass of HTML code. So I add a comment *before* the table (on its own line), letting them know that they should skip past the table code if they want to edit the ordinary running text.
-- Toby
I cannot use the [[map:27.42:88.08|27° 42' N, 88° 08' E]], link in [[Kanchenjunga]].
Regards.
On Fri, 2003-02-28 at 18:10, Pedro M.V. wrote:
I cannot use the [[map:27.42:88.08|27° 42' N, 88° 08' E]], link in [[Kanchenjunga]].
That is not surprising, as there is no support for such links on Wikipedia yet.
Magnus had added some experimental code to test.wikipedia.org at one point; I don't know if it's still in place or what, exactly, the link would bring up.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
|From: Lee Daniel Crocker lee@piclab.com |Content-Disposition: inline |X-URL: http://www.piclab.com/lee/ |Sender: wikipedia-l-admin@wikipedia.org |Reply-To: wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org |Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 18:12:57 -0600 | |>> The html comments are kind of cute, but the talk pages are a |>> better place for discussing the faults of articles. | |Talk pages are for comments /about the article/. HTML comments |in the source text are for comments /about the source text/ that |don't relate to the article. Most people aren't programmers, and |so will have no concepts matching the latter; that's OK, they'll |never use them. But they are vital to those of us who /do/ |understand the difference, and their existence doesn't make the |experience for non-techies any more difficult. |
This seems to be a distinction without much of a difference. Anyone who edits the article will see the comments, and probably not know what to do with them. The only examples given so far have been comments about the article itself. If there need to be comments about the coding, the talk pages can bear this extra burden.
If the coding of the article is so complex as to require comments, then A) it is too complicated, so that no one can edit it, or B) the comment can just as well be on the talk page. Comments such as these are for real code, not Wikipedia articles.
IMHO, Tom P.
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