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

Tue Jul 20 09:41:13 UTC 2004

Ec, I think most will agree that strict adherence to inverted pyramid
is not necessary.  We don't need for graf (n) to always be less
important than graf (n-1). However, hopefully this shows what we
should try to strive for, from the [[Pat Tillman]] article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Pat_Tillman&diff=3313964&oldid=3313922

Before the edit, the most important part of his life story was in the
last paragraph.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On Tue, 20 Jul 2004 00:04:19 -0700, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> 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
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Andrew Lih
University of Hong Kong
andrew.lih at gmail.com