Timwi wrote:
David Friedland wrote:
I think series boxes are fine for articles that
are in a _series_, but
for groups of related articles, I think categories are the best solution.
How do you define the difference between "article series" and "groups of
related articles"?
It's somewhat nebulous, I'll agree, but to me, an article series would
be articles that (under at least one interpretation) are related to each
other linearly, that is, each article in a series has a clear previous
and next article. Articles series about history are an obvious example
of this, but there are probably other ways that articles can be related
linearly other than chronologically. An example that comes to mind
(because I worked on them) are the articles about consonant sounds. The
various places of articulation form a linear series of articles, from
bilabial to glottal.
I would say that most of the current article "series" aren't really
series as such but are just groups of related articles, and so
technically the box containing links to the related articles aren't
really so much "series" boxes as much as they are "related articles"
boxes.
Another way to consider the so-called "series boxes" might to think of
them as a sort of "tour" of a group of related articles. I could see
perhaps formalizing this idea and creating "tours" of different topics.
Of course the arguments about what is included in the tour and in what
order I can envision becoming extraordinarily pedantic, but such is the
way of Wikipedia.
I'll stop before my ramble gets too long.
-- David