[WikiEN-l] A new and ugly trend

[The Cunctator]

On 6/29/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> 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.
>
I totally agree.