On Mar 17, 2008, at 5:59 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/17/08, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
*What should the namespace be called?
I don't like this word "extensions" - I thought you meant some kind of plugin architecture at first. The most accurate word would be "appendices" wouldn't it? Failing that, something like "related information"? I'm thinking of online newspapers where it often happens that there is an article, then links to various related things, like galleries, tables, charts etc.
Being a namespace, we want one word - Appendix works, as does Supplementary. I'll add a section of the proposal for other proposed names.
You're certainly right that there is a need for ways of grouping other information with an article, where it doesn't fit *inside* the article. But the idea of another article being such an attachment is awkward, and makes me think immediately of content forks.
See, I think article forking is what we have now - look at [[George W. Bush]], or try to find the article on the 2008 Democratic primaries. We routinely content fork our articles. This, at least, branches them into a namespace attached to the main article so that we still have some sort of coherent whole.
I don't think that trivia is a good candidate, for instance. Most of the trivia we delete not for space reasons, but because it's, well, trivial and isn't really adding anything of value. Galleries would be great though.
I'm definitely of two minds on trivia sections. I think they're silly, but on the other hand once in a while I find something in there that makes me smile. And they're clearly seen as desireable to some people. My biggest concern with deleting them tends to be that they seem like a valuable resource that's not reproduced elsewhere.
But as I said, I do think they're silly. And I won't be sad to lose them.
*Are there more issues we need to solve?
Rules. Social issues. Safeguards. Avoiding all kinds of horrible crufty garbage accumulating just because it's below the radar.
As I suggested in the next section, obviously this will be a problem, but I also don't think it's one that can be solved via prior legislation. A policy on these concerns will form "in the trenches" as it were.
*Where should the line between sub-article and extension be drawn?
Where the logical choice is between throwing out the extraneous material, or putting it on the extra page. If the choice is between the main page, or the extra page, keep it on the main.
I largely agree, though I suspect that "move to extensions" will be the new merge. That said, the forces on Wikipedia that tend towards the verbose tend to overwhelm editors at every turn.
*How should the main extensions pages be organized?
There are more than one?
Well, one for each article. I'll rephrase the question in the proposal to be clearer.
*How should individual extensions be linked to within articles? (In the form of "Main article: Topic" or through small sidebar boxes, for instance.)
No one looks at the sidebar.
To be clear, I meant boxes on the right like we use for WikiQuote and the like - since our sister project links are, in many ways, similar to extensions in purpose.
*What extensions should be linked to from within articles, and what extensions should be linked only from the extensions page?
If it's worth keeping the information, it's worth linking to.
This does largely disable the need for a main extensions page, and I'm not entirely sure it's true. I think there's a lot of stuff we could link in the main article, but that it might only serve to clutter the main article with a link to something that is better left in the subpages. I think our readers will pretty quickly be trained to use extensions effectively, especially if the main extensions page for each article is well laid out.
-Phil