[WikiEN-l] A new and ugly trend

[Ray Saintonge]

The Cunctator wrote:

>On 6/29/07, Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl> wrote:
>  
>
>>One reason these tags may be necessary is because talk page don't work
>>as good for these issues as a few years ago.
>>
>>It used to be that if you saw a problem with an article that you
>>couldn't immediately solve yourself, you'd leave a message on the talk
>>page: "Look at that sentence, it doesn't sound right, does anyone have
>>an idea how to improve it?"
>>
>>It used to be that only a small fraction of our articles had talk pages.
>>If I came across an article with a blue link to the talk page, I always
>>took a look; sometimes there was an interesting didcussion, sometimes
>>just a cleanup notice.
>>
>>Nowadays, 90% of our articles have a talk page, and 80% of them are
>>empty.[*]
>>    
>>
>So what you're saying  is that in-page template cruft is necessary because
>talk pages have been taken over by template cruft?
>
>I hope you see the problem here.
>
His solution may be off, but he does have a point in identifying  a 
problem.  Using the talk pages for some kinds of meta data tends to 
detract from using them for discussion.

Ec