Summary style (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Response to Bryan Derken)

Mon Jun 7 17:54:36 UTC 2004

--- Abe Sokolov <abesokolov at hotmail.com> wrote:
> ...
> In particular, I had compelling reasons for withholding this option at the 
> time. Notice that as the reader moves down the page, the narrative builds on 
> points already established in the text. Unless someone rewrote and 
> significantly expanded each section of the article, Bryan's proposals 
> would've left the individual components of the series superficial at best 
> and incoherent at worst. BTW, this was stated a number of times on the talk 
> page (and not just by me), and so far no one has responded to this-- at 
> least to the best of my recollection.

Under my plan the content you wrote would stay almost exactly the same; I just
want to summarize the 85KB of text you wrote into a ~20KB top-level survey
article and give the different 'pages' of the series real names. Of course the
~20KB survey article will be inadequate compared to the 85KB of text, but the
survey article would be for people who do have the time or interest in the
topic to read the 85KB of detail. Those that do will likely skip past the
survey article and go directly to the detail. Both user types are still served.

> But at the root of this disagreement, we're likely dealing with competing 
> stylistic preferences-- not the realms of black/white and right/wrong. On 
> one hand, I favor quality (which requires multiple contexts-- the scholarly 
> approach to achieving NPOV) over brevity; and IMHO, the way the article's 
> currently organized is best suitable considering the diverse 
> historiographical tradition on the subject. (Not to diverge, but I can offer 
> evidence that the writers/editors/readers stating that they see things 
> similarly outnumber the two of you). On the other hand, the two of you seem 
> to stress "news style" more so than I do, making them less able to stomach a 
> "long article."

We can still give a sense of the "diverse historiographical tradition on the
subject" with a summary. I think that I'm pretty good at that. But building a
good summary takes a good deal of time - time I do not want to expend unless
I'm reasonably sure my efforts will not be lost in the page history. And "news
style" does not correctly represent what I want since that refers to the
organization of individual articles. Summary style takes some ideas from news
style but applies them within the context of an encyclopedia and most
importantly to topics instead of articles. 

> We should keep this difference of opinion respectful. Although I think that 
> Mav is wrong here, it does not diminish the great deal of respect that I've 
> developed over the past ~year and a half for him, recognizing a prodigious 
> range of talents and abilities.

Thank you. :) Even though we often disagree and I think you could stand to be  
more cooperative sometimes, I also have a great deal of respect for your
knowledge of history and ability to write at length on it. I would just like to
distill that a bit in the form of separate top-level survey articles so that it
is also accessible to those who do not have the time or interest in the topic
to read so much text. Those that do will still have easy access to what you
wrote (and many people will want to know about a single aspect of a topic -
summary style allows them to read a survey article which will point them in the
right direction toward the detailed article on the aspect they want lots of
detail on and still provide some context to the whole subject). 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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