[WikiEN-l] Proposal for Branching Articles

[Philip Sandifer]

I've been working on a proposal for implementing a sub-article like  
functionality in the mainspace using templates. My reasoning here is  
simple - we often have multiple articles on very closely related  
topics. From an editorial perspective, these are generally treated as  
wholly discrete and separate items. Discussions of one article do not  
apply to or happen on another, etc. From a reader's perspective, the  
divisions are less rigid - if I am learning about Descartes on  
Wikipedia, every article on the topic is, for me, part of a related  
whole.

By finding a way to think about linked articles as a whole, we improve  
our ability to deal with coverage systematically.

Ergo my proposal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Phil_Sandifer/Branching

The biggest hurdle I see is the question of control. Like categories,  
branching provides a great opportunity to screw up a lot of things  
quickly. It violates the basic wiki principle of having things that  
are easy to do be equally easy to undo. Which means we probably need  
to develop some sort of way of controlling when articles branch. I  
would imagine that a white list of accepted reasons (Books by an  
author can always branch off of that author, episodes of a TV series  
can always branch off of the TV series, etc) and a Branching Proposals  
page where other proposals can be considered by the community would be  
a good idea, along with policies that make merging branched articles  
and deleting ill-advised branches easy.

What do people think? I'd love comments and thoughts about how to  
proceed implementing this.

Best,
Phil Sandifer