[WikiEN-l] That's a Micropaedia

Thu Sep 15 19:23:42 UTC 2005

--- dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:
> "Article intros that can fit into the first screen." Oh, absolutely, by all 
> means. 
> 
> (Now, the Micropaedia is about a third of the Britannica's total content. And
> a Micropaedia article is typically about, well, one screen. So, OK if someone
> wants to suggest that an appropriate balance for Wikipedia is for about a 
> third of its content to be one-screen articles, OK).

I know the above is a rant, but would like to bring home this point: 
*Articles can and should serve those seeking either a micropedia or
macropedia-sized article. The way this is done is through the use of lead
sections (aka intros or section 0) that concisely summarizes the most important
points of the whole article. Most of the time this should be done with three
paragraphs or less but all the time these intros should be able to stand alone
as concise encyclopedia articles in their own right. 

In fact it would be real neat to take the section 0 of selected articles to
nearly-automatically generate a concise encyclopedia either for print (as a
desk reference) or for mobile devices.

See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lead_section
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Summary_style

-- mav

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