Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday 19 June 2002 12:01 pm, tarquin wrote:
alternatively, should "naming conventions" be absorbed into WikiProjects? the original proposal is about naming schemes as well as consistent content presentation.
No I don't think this would be desirable. [[Wikipedia:naming conventions]] is (more or less at least) a policy article and the WikiProject idea has never been much more than a way for wikipedians to collaborate on a certain set of related articles (which hasn't been used much BTW). Only part of what is determined in a WikiProject is what to name articles -- but those names also should conform to standard(ish) naming conventions.
In other words the WikiProject is really more informal and only enforceable through bold editing and peer pressure while naming conventions are more or less part of policy and are enforced in this light. Of course in a wiki the line between the two types of enforcement is blurred -- but a distinction should still be made.
I agree that presentation templates shouldn't be enforced on new and casual writers; partly they're too much to take on, they make newcomers feel constricted; also because (unlike page naming), it's very easy to tidy up articles later. However, they're of interest to more than the group that chooses to work on a specific project: the many players of WikiRoulette aka Random Weeding, for instance.
As I said on Talk:WikiProject, it seems to me that we currently have 4 rough meta- areas which overlap somewhat: * naming conventions * WikiProjects: presentation guidelines for types * basic topic pages, eg "[[Music basic topics]]" * WikiProjects: gathering wikipedians to work on a subject area
ManningBartlett's OO-style hierarchy of pages is clean and neat, and I think it could be used for naming and style conventions. Whether that's by seperating presentation guidelines from WikiProjects or somehow integrating it all together, I don't know. We don't want to make newcomers feel they're being herded, but when they want to look things up to ensure they're being as constructive as possible, the information should be clear and easy to find.
tarquin
At 11:52 PM 6/20/02 +0100, tarquin wrote:
As I said on Talk:WikiProject, it seems to me that we currently have 4 rough meta- areas which overlap somewhat:
- naming conventions
- WikiProjects: presentation guidelines for types
- basic topic pages, eg "[[Music basic topics]]"
I guess this is as good a conversational opening as any. :)
For the past little while, I've been working on the http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Complete_list_of_encyclopedia_topics pages. I laboriously removed all of the links to existing articles, and uncovered about 400 pages that had been orphaned except for the link from here. Since then, though, the common opinion seems to be that even after all that these pages are still more trouble than they're worth, filled with bad article titles and such.
So now I'd like to delete them, and I've been broaching the subject all over the place in order to make sure nobody's got a problem with that. These pages probably took a lot of work to make, so I don't want to dispose of them if anyone can think of anything remotely useful to use them for.
The mailing list is probably the last place I'll mention it, though. If nobody wants to do anything with these pages after this I'll finally get around to deleting them.
-- "Let there be light." - Last words of Bomb #20, "Dark Star"
For the past little while, I've been working on the http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Complete_list_of_encyclopedia_topics pages. I laboriously removed all of the links to existing articles, and uncovered about 400 pages that had been orphaned except for the link from here. Since then, though, the common opinion seems to be that even after all that these pages are still more trouble than they're worth, filled with bad article titles and such.
So now I'd like to delete them, and I've been broaching the subject all over the place in order to make sure nobody's got a problem with that. These pages probably took a lot of work to make, so I don't want to dispose of them if anyone can think of anything remotely useful to use them for.
99% of these were compiled by me, taking some public-domain word lists, auto-sorting and -wikifying them (which explains the bad titles, plurals etc.). The idea was to have a list of both "what we have" and "what we still need", ultimately aiming for the 100.000 articles:)
"What we have" is now solved with the search function, orphans, etc. (including the deactivated "all pages" function; we should get this up again, some way). "What we need" is solved even better with the "Most Wanted".
So, no complaint from me if you delete them; we *do* have a working history mechanism, just in case...
Magnus
At 09:38 PM 6/21/02 +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
For the past little while, I've been working on the http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Complete_list_of_encyclopedia_topics
So, no complaint from me if you delete them; we *do* have a working history mechanism, just in case...
Yay! Alrighty, I'll go and finally do that. I'll leave the pages in place without administratively deleting them so they can be reverted if the need ever arises.
-- "Let there be light." - Last words of Bomb #20, "Dark Star"
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