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Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Modular Articles

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Sadi Carnot (talk | contribs) at 03:10, 29 November 2006 (→Article size: fmt). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Potential problems seen by DGG

obstacles

The advantages are obvious, so I'll mention a few problems ahead.

  1. Some of the articles being worked with a controversial, and involve dozens of daily edits, many of them disruptive. If there is a text unit in common in two articles, who gets to change it? To fit in with one article's other changes it may need to be modified one way, and this may not suit the other article. But otherwise they will diverge and no longer be modular. Transclusion only works with agreed-upon text, and requires disciplined and organized editing.
  2. Organized and orderly editing is entirely foreign to WP. There are always a few people who try to do it for a few months, until they get sufficiently disgusted to leave, or sometimes to become an administrator and worry about other people's projects. If WP were to change, we might be able to keep such people, which would certainly be a good thing. But if WP worked that way many of the horde of anarchic uneducated would leave, and they are what gives the project its life.
  3. Some of the articles are so controversial, that it seems desirable to keep them away from others. The D. article is very good in many respects, and the E. article has major problems keeping its integrity and seems to have required a constant running fight since WP started, Having worked a little on both, I would like to keep as much of a firewall between them as possible.

solutions

  1. This is no different to current POV problems. Discussion and consensus. Samsara (talk • contribs) 01:36, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What does

  1. See Wikipedia:Expert retention and similar pages. Not sure about the anarchic uneducated being particular useful, assuming that this definition excludes the self-educated and willing-to-learn. Not sure what difference they make to this project. Samsara (talk • contribs) 01:36, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  2. The Darwin and Evolution articles are not likely to share summary sections as far as I can tell. Samsara (talk • contribs) 01:36, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Article size

What are the intentions of this project with respect to Wikipedia:Article size? --Sadi Carnot 02:07, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can you tell me what the articles were that you've had problems with? - Samsara (talk • contribs) 02:15, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, from experience, breaking up long pages is hard enough, even when you have consensus and other editors are helping with the breakup. I have not yet fully engaged in page breakup on tensioned pages. I have, however, tested the water in this respect. The entropy page is full of tension (it has religion/evolution conflicting themes); I have already broken it up twice, and it is still growing. Other examples of water testing are:

For example, I would like to contribute to the evolution article. I own about a dozen books on evolution, particularly Darwin-related, chemical-related, and thermodynamics-related books. Presently, this article is the longest science article at WP. If it is too long for me to want to contribute to, then I can image how others feel. If I were to break up the evolution article, by myself, through much argument and debate on the talk page, it would take exorbitant amounts of energy and weeks of time. The same for the photon article.

When new users come into talk pages and suggest a page is long, e.g. see: example, they get shot down in debate and go somewhere else. Myself, on the other hand, have no trouble arguing with dozens of people until the issue is resolved. But page breakups are a whole different ball game. There should be a civilize way to go about this process so that Wikipedia stays trimmed, tight, and distributed per topic. Storage space is unlimited. --Sadi Carnot 02:45, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I think the photon article is an interesting example. Its problem seems to stem mostly from the fact that it is not written for laypeople. Most of those equations should only, if ever, appear in more detailed sub-articles. The problem here would not be of simply shunting off material, but of completely rewriting large parts of the original article at the same time. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 02:55, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I agree with you; but basically, it’s not that hard to open up some new pages, paste material there, do some cleanup work. Then let the new pages grow. My issue is not with the photon or evolution articles, directly, but with the fact that (a) articles stop growing when the page gets past 20 printed pages, (b) people stop reading when an article gets past 15 pages, and (c) talk pages of big articles are like bottle rockets constantly exploding. Periodically break up an article and these problems disappear. --Sadi Carnot 03:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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