[Wikipedia-l] Why are we deleting "articles"? (semantics and consistency issue)

[Brion VIBBER]

Lars Aronsson wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Jul 2002, Daniel Mayer wrote:
>> It is already difficult enough to explain the difference between
>>certain types of wikipedia-specific pages, mere definition pages, vandalized
>>pages and an actual encyclopedia articles without added confusion.
> 
> 
> Wikipedia is the application of wiki to the goal of building an
> encyclopedia.  The question is which terminology to use:
> 
> 	Wiki term		Encyclopedia term
> 
> 	page			entry (German: Stichwort)
> 	article			article
> 	redirect		reference (?) (German: Hinweis)
> 
> The difference is that a non-article "entry" in a printed encyclopedia
> is a single line (East Germany, see German Democratic Republic) while
> the word "page" sounds like it contains a lot of text.

"Page" is standard _web_ terminology for a single 2-dimensional 
continuous expanse of space that contains text and/or images, of any size.

"Entry" is I think not general enough, because we use the same tools to 
access and edit both encyclopedic material ("entries") and support 
materials: commentary about articles, the introduction to the 
encyclopedia and how to use it, and personal bios of the contributors 
and editors. I would hesitate to call these "[encyclopedia] entries", 
but I would not hesitate to call them "[web] pages".

Just my two cents.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)