On Thursday 08 August 2002 08:20 pm, tarquin wrote:
The reasoning was fairly simple: Wikiprojects are organized in a hierarchy. Naming conventions are increasingly hierarchic too. When I create a page, I seek information about how to name it and how to present it. It's stupid having to career halfway across the Wikipedia to find those two pieces of information.
Then just add links. Example; in WikiProject Countries add a link to the city naming convention, in WikiProject Biographies add a link to common name naming convention etc. There is also no reason why there shouldn't be links on the naming conventions pages (not the main one) to related WikiProjects. All naming convention pages are unprotected except the main one.
I refactored the whole naming conventions page so that it only has one or two sentence summaries of each convention with links to the full conventions (on separate unprotected pages). Link away, but do make note of the fact that WikiProject guidelines are very loose while our naming conventions are semi-policy for practical reasons in order to facilitate linking and reduce duplication.
Also keep in mind that the only content policy we have is NPOV (everything else is just a 'rule to consider') -- I do not want to have WikiProject guidelines even to begin to appear as if they are a kind of content policy (which may occur if naming conventions are stated on the same page).
Also troubling is the term "Presentation Conventions" which is /far/ too similar to "naming conventions" and will cause confusion with newbies about the importance that naming conventions have in relation to any presentation "conventions". As a matter of fact, I do not want us to have /any/ content convention other than NPOV -- anything more will tend to stifle innovation (consistency is nice, and I do strive for that, but it should /not/ be in any way confused with policy).
Just some things to keep in mind -- please don't think I am suggesting anything by my above statements since I still not sure what you want to do (although from what I've seen on the meta much of the above does at least appear to be founded).
--mav
On 08-08-2002, Daniel Mayer wrote thusly :
On Thursday 08 August 2002 08:20 pm, tarquin wrote:
The reasoning was fairly simple: Wikiprojects are organized in a hierarchy. Naming conventions are increasingly hierarchic too. When I create a page, I seek information about how to name it and how to present it. It's stupid having to career halfway across the Wikipedia to find those two pieces of information.
[snip]
"conventions". As a matter of fact, I do not want us to have /any/ content convention other than NPOV -- anything more will tend to stifle innovation (consistency is nice, and I do strive for that, but it should /not/ be in any way confused with policy).
[snip]
I sympathise with Tarquin. There seems to be a need for 1. conventions - sparing us the tedious task of renaming lots of articles' names, giving Wikipedia consistency that is needed more for casual readers but for regulars 2. IMO there is need for some meta information. The idea has been already mentioned and generally refuted as "a bad thing". However, now we have 36k articles, and with 100k+ ? Wouldn't we drown in a kind of information soup ? The process of classification is going on constantly. There are numerous lists and lists of lists. I am not advocating imposing some strict rules but to gradually improve and implement meta-info in some sort of unobtrusive way like the software upgrade has been. Once we had Manning with us. I suppose he is a meta information professional.
As a side note, Wikipedia is growing (not a grown-up yet) and there is accumulating more and more outdated information (probably in Wikipedia: namespace mostly) examples are Wikipedia NEWS, Most popular pages etc I think there is a need for putting some information on Wikipedia and META Wikipedia into a "historical" perspective.
Best wishes, kpj.
P.S I dropped in on Wikipedia chat yesterday but it was stagnant. That was because Wikipedians' main passtime is writing and copy editing articles. Silly me ;-))
Daniel Mayer wrote:
On Thursday 08 August 2002 08:20 pm, tarquin wrote:
The reasoning was fairly simple: Wikiprojects are organized in a hierarchy. Naming conventions are increasingly hierarchic too. When I create a page, I seek information about how to name it and how to present it. It's stupid having to career halfway across the Wikipedia to find those two pieces of information.
Then just add links.
One word: spaghetti. Just because it's a web, it doesn't mean it can't be a cleanly organized web.
I'm afraid I can't explain it any more simply than I have on http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=Presentation+Conventions , but I shall endeavour to try:
For each subject area, and for each "class" of page (eg chemical element pages, people, ships etc), there are several different pieces of meta-information. They are: * what should be covered in this area? what are the priorities? * what's the scheme for naming pages in this area, or in this class? * conventions for presentation: is there, should there be, or what is the agreed layout style? * is there a group of Wikipedians who intend to flesh out this area? * ... we may find the need to other things in the future
It merely seems good refactoring style to bring all those together.
Also keep in mind that the only content policy we have is NPOV (everything else is just a 'rule to consider') -- I do not want to have WikiProject guidelines even to begin to appear as if they are a kind of content policy
I absolutely agree. This is not about restricting new content. We don't expect people to produce fully-fledged articles on their first edit, or the grammar, spelling or typing to be perfect -- I'm not questioning that at all, and in fact I agree with it. However, there is a lot of cleaning up work going on, and part of that involves harmonizing presentation. Articles about people are a good example: I have seen half a dozen or so ways of presenting a person's name, dates of birth & death and principal achievements. That doesn't diminish the value of the content, and consistency in look & feel should be very low on our priorities. But I am not the only one who takes random walks through the Wikipedia & tidies up what (s)he finds -- while I'm fixing typos or rewriting for clarity I might as well take care of the formatting too -- *if* I knew what the agreed conventions were.
I hope I've not been misunderstood: I am *not* trying to impose or set out new style rules in these pages on Meta. I'm trying to bring together existing conventions, and set out a forum where debates about style can take place.
Also troubling is the term "Presentation Conventions" which is /far/ too similar to "naming conventions" and will cause confusion with newbies about the importance that naming conventions have in relation to any presentation "conventions".
Agreed. The name "Presentation Conventions" is gone, as far as I'm concerned. It was a poor choice. I haven't got round to renaming the page on Meta, that's all.
As a matter of fact, I do not want us to have /any/ content convention other than NPOV -- anything more will tend to stifle innovation (consistency is nice, and I do strive for that, but it should /not/ be in any way confused with policy).
*Being consistent* must not be policy, but *what* the consistency is, should one choose to be consistent -- there's got to be a consensus, otherwise it's not consistent! I get the impression we're looking at this from opposite angles:
You (seem to) think these pages will say: "here are the presentation rules! obey them!" I want them to say: "*if* you wish to be consistent in presentation (and naming, etc), here are the agreed guidelines *and* the place to debate them"
regards - tarquin
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