[WikiEN-l] WikiProjects overriding global guidelines?

Tue Jun 14 06:14:06 UTC 2005

This is a rather specific comment, but I heavily support this sort of
thing for works of fiction in general. I think making it VERY explicit
-- i.e. in the title of an article -- that a given description of
events is a work of imagination rather than some sort of factual
account is always a good idea. It would be easy enough to have the
link [[Hide and Q]] be a redirect to [[Hide and Q (TNG episode)]],
which it probably is, if there is no need for a disambig. But I
understand that might be the pet peeve of a historian!

One of the most humorous things I ever came across in Wikipedia edit
histories and talk pages -- I think in the article on [[Atomic
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]] -- was somebody who had, quite
earnestly and accidentally, used an image from "The Onion" as an
illustration (it was from their fake "old newspaper" style bits they
run, with a picture of the Nagasaki mushroom cloud and the headline
"U.S. BOMBS THE LIVING CRAP OUT OF JAPAN" or something like that). 
Some discussion ensued over it being a good illustration when finally,
a week or so later, realized that "The Onion" is a humor magazine and
not actually a historical news source, and removed it. Embarassment
and apologies all around! Good reading for me, a year or two in the
future.

I don't present this as representative, but it is, in a sense, akin to
the confusion I'd hope to dispel. I realize, however, that my desire
to "mark" all cartoon characters with little badges of (cartoon
character) might be seen as some sort of horrible realist segregation
scheme... which it might be, honestly. Hmm.

FF

On 6/13/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm quite severely disturbed by the apparent habit of participants in
> some WikiProjects to completely disregard Wikipedia's Manual of Style
> and various guidelines, claiming that their pet WikiProject has their
> own pet style guidelines, as if Wikipedia's global guidelines have no
> say anyway.
> 
> Is this really how things are going now? Articles on topic X follow a
> certain style while articles on topic Y follow a completely different style?
> 
> Case in question: So far it seemed to me that Wikipedia uses brackets
> after article titles *only* when they are required for disambiguating
> between otherwise identical article titles. Hence, there is the title
> [[Cher (département)]] but not [[Haute-Corse (département)]].
> 
> However, the Star Trek WikiProject has now randomly decided that this
> rule needs to go, and all articles on Star Trek episodes must have an
> extra parenthesis showing what series it's an episode of, even though
> most of the titles are unique as they are. Hence, [[Hide and Q]] is a
> redirect to [[Hide and Q (TNG episode)]], and all links to such pages
> unnessarily look like this: [[Hide and Q (TNG episode)|Hide and Q]].
> 
> Add to this the fact that outside of Star Trek fandom, readers aren't
> likely to know what TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT mean anyway.
> 
> What is everybody's opinion on this?
> 
> Timwi
> 
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