On Friday, December 19, 2003, at 01:30 AM, Arvind Narayanan wrote:
On Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 09:58:13AM -0800, Daniel Mayer
wrote:
Erik wrote:
I feel that it is extremely tedious to have to
click around
many times and load many pages to get a complete
picture of an issue, a person etc.
There is little difference between clicking on a TOC link in a huge
article
than clicking on a link to another article.
For me there's a huge difference. My latency on wikipedia
is usually between 5 and 10 seconds. OTOH I have high bandwidth.
So I would greatly prefer to download a huge article at once.
Same here. At least. But for bigger articles, it's longer. I'd much
rather read a short article and load expanded information in the
background. I object to TOC entries, though, because the links have no
context. The beauty of wiki links (and html in general) does not lie
in TOCs or see-also's. It lies in the ability to connect information
logically through context. If a single 'logical' entry is big enough
to bring up the issue of using smaller 'physical' entries---that is,
use a TOC entry with the equivalent of subpages containing sections
thereof---I think the size of the entry needs to be addressed. I don't
want to read that much in a single entry, and I certainly don't want to
edit it. And editing *across* multiple pages? Forget it, it's not
worth it, "Can't someone else do it?". That feeling hurts the wiki. A
lot.
If an entry gets to that size and detail, great, let's use the
information, but let's spread it out across a few entries, not just by
breaking it into pieces, but by separating it into multiple topics.
And if that means duplicating a little information, so be it. As you
say, Arvind,
I really hate
duplication of effort; If article A refers to event B
and
Why is this duplication of effort? We can simply copy-paste from one
article to the other.
Very true.
Also, when I look something up, I don't want a long article to read to
find what I want to know. Remember, Wikipedia Is Not Paper. That
means that rather than have to put all the information on one topic
*and requisite info* in one place and the shorten it because there's
not enough room, we can include just enough to understand the topic
with a little requisite info---short enough to read quickly---and then
link terms to further elaboration of each background concept. That way
readers read only what they need to read. Having more and shorter
articles also encourages them to grow longer, which means more
information on the site---and eventually these can become multiple
articles themselves. It's a wonderful circle of electronic life. Ok,
the coffee can kick in now.
My apologies for rambling and twisting myself around. I'm running on
very little sleep.
Peter
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