[Wikipedia-l] Action plan for 1.0 - news style intros should be recommended more strongly

Tue Jul 20 07:04:19 UTC 2004

David Gerard wrote:

> On 07/19/04 01:53, Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
>> --- Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>> If we are meant to be only be using short stubbish articles for
>>> everything (I have heard some people saying using only the first
>>> paragraph of articles), then how will we keep this separate from the
>>> main articles? Go the same way as monobook.css and have it like
>>> [[Christianity/stub]]? There are little conceptual problems that need
>>> to be thought through before we jump in head-first into preparing for
>>> this.
>>
>
>> Section 0 of every article should ideally have a lead section in it 
>> that acts
>> as a concise summary of the entire article. Each of those lead 
>> sections should
>> then be usable as concise encyclopedia articles in a single volume desk
>> reference (with maybe an overview also thrown in for some subjects). 
>> Selection
>> of articles and validation of those sections would still be needed, 
>> of course.
>> Thus nothing need be compromised on Wikipedia. 
>
>
> Absolutely. That's why a strict [[news style]] [[inverted pyramid]] 
> intro -
> first sentence, first paragraph, following paragraphs in order of 
> droppability
> - is my very favourite article intro style.
>
> Currently, [[Wikipedia:News style]] speaks of it as almost optional.
> I strongly suggest this status be upgraded, something like: "Although
> optional, a news style intro is strongly recommended if you want an 
> article
> to be in Wikipedia 1.0 - many print articles are likely to be only the 
> intro
> of the web article." Thoughts?
>
> (Note that none of the 1.0 plans so far detract from the live wiki 
> itself,
> and in fact would increase both its coverage and quality in useful ways.)

Although there is much merit to having the initial section of an article 
give a general overview of the topic.  I don't think that the 
application of "news style should extend any further than that.  
Wikipedia is not a newspaper.  Being able to drop paragraphs at the end 
of an article to fit the available space is fine for newspapers who have 
short daily deadlines to meet.  The weeklies have more freedom on this 
and monthlies and quarterlies even more.

A biographical article needs to present the person's life in a 
chronological structure.  Many famous people had some of their most 
significant events at the end of their lives.  What would a biography of 
Lincoln or Kennedy be like if we had to cut the story of their 
assassination  as a means of making those articles shorter?.

I can see that the desire to have a large number of articles is driving 
the move the have severable opening stubs.

The important question comes down to is it better to have a large number 
of short articles, or a much smaller number of comprehensive, 
well-written and thoughtful articles.

When it is finally published, the hype will have preceded the event, and 
created high expectations.  Which would be a better review?
    1. The new paper Wikipedia is a collection of short articles.  The 
material appears very accurate, but any person who browses the net  
could have found all this very easily.  Why did they bother?

or

    2. The new paper Wikipedia is a series of interesting and very 
informative article.  Interspersed are a number of shorter articles with 
a promise that these subjects will receive more thorough treatment in 
the future.  We look forward to those future editions.

Ec