Erik Moeller wrote:
1. An article
with many short sections would inappropriately get a TOC
that would waste space.
Then remove some sections.
A growing article with many stub sections should have those stubs
removed then, so the TOC doesn't get in their way?
2. An article
with just two very long sections wouldn't get a TOC but
would be appreciably helped by one.
Then add some sections.
What if there is no good way to break up a few long sections into
shorter ones? Should such an article be doomed to suffer without a TOC?
I surmise you supporting the notion that some wiki-algorithm is better
at determining whether an article merits a TOC than each article's
author. I disagree, as it seems that an aspect of articles that is so
intimately married to the content as a TOC should be modifyable by
editors and not arbitrarily imposed by the wiki software.
I agree than in an ideal Wikipedia, every article would have exactly the
right number of sections of exactly the right length, and the TOC
algorithm would word perfectly. But in the meantime, with a non-ideal
Wikipedia, how can you defend the TOC feature's exacerbating the
situation by disallowing TOCs where they might be useful and forcing
them to be included where they are extraneous?
- David