On 6/15/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Anthony wrote:
IMO there is a big difference between a "short article" and a "stub". "The community believes that stubs are far from worthless; they are, rather, the first step articles take on their course to becoming complete. In other words, they are short or insufficient of information and require additions to further increase Wikipedia's resourcefulness." - from [[Wikipedia:Stub]], back before people came in and ruined it.
Exactly! A good stub encourages people to add to it. A complete absence minimizes the likelihood that anything will ever be done about the subject. When it comes to athletes one needs to remember that even the third stringers were good enough to make it onto the roster of a major league sports teams.
Sometimes I wonder if it could ever catch on to have a wiki encyclopedia where every single article fits in a single normal sized screenful of information. The article would be a true summary, not a list of links to subarticles. Instead of a table of contents there could be a list of subpages - on the side and not obnoxiously placed within the article using {{Main}} tags.
Obviously Wikipedia could never be adapted that severely, but I think there are a whole lot of articles which go too far in the opposite direction. Actually, I remember reading a appropriate comment about it yesterday in the [[Wikipedia Blog]](*). "Longest articles on Wikipedia. Also known as: The Museum of Misguided Merges." http://wikip.blogspot.com/2007/06/longest-articles-on-wikipedia.html It's not actually an accurate statement though, because most of the longest articles are lists and not an example of the situation I'm thinking of.
(*) Redlink left intentionally in the hopes that someone will write an article about it, and that it won't get inappropriately deleted under A7. Wishful thinking, I know.