[WikiEN-l] Twitterpedia will win

[Carcharoth]

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 11:13 AM,  <wjhonson at aol.com> wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: FT2 <ft2.wiki at gmail.com>
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Tue, 5 May 2009 12:35 am
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Twitterpedia will win
>
> Redundant text - "the X war was a war" duh :) Try this:
>
> "The Peloponnesian War (Ancient Greece, 431-404BC), took place between
> Athens and its empire, against the Eponymous League led by Sparta. Rock
> on!">>
>
> ---------------------
> Why do you have to state "Ancient Greece" ?  And remove "The"
> Also "was" is much shorter than "took place"
>
> "Peloponnesian War (431-404BC), Athens and its empire, against the
> Spartan-led Eponymous League."
>
> Much shorter!

Eventually, the shortening ends up in the telegraphese beloved of
newspaper headline writers and infobox entries. Here is the infobox
data from the article (minus the map):

Peloponnesian War
Date: c. 431–April 25, 404 BC
Location: Mainland Greece, Asia Minor, Sicily
Result: Peloponnesian League victory
Territorial changes: Dissolution of the Delian League
Belligerents: Delian League (led by Athens) ; Peloponnesian League
(led by Sparta)
Commanders (Delian League): Pericles, Cleon, Nicias, Alcibiades, Demosthenes
Commander (Peloponnesian League): Archidamus II, Brasidas, Lysander, Alcibiades

None of the summaries so far have mentioned the result of the war, nor
the name of the Delian League, nor the location of the war. The names
of the commanders should be omitted.

And sometimes it is the *last* sentence of a well-written lede section
that gets to the heart of the matter:

"Shattering religious and cultural taboos, devastating vast swathes of
countryside, and destroying whole cities -- the Peloponnesian War
marked the dramatic end to the fifth-century-B.C. golden age of
Greece."

That told me more than the dry facts of the first sentence (which is
also needed). The initial sentence of the middle paragraph is
important as well: "The Peloponnesian War reshaped the Ancient Greek
world."

And I still think the Wikipedia-articles-as-poetry option could be
interesting! :-)

Carcharoth