Category talk:Introductory articles

Underlying philosophy of introductory articles
It would be best to have something here explaining in more detail the underlying philosophy of introductory articles. Does anyone want to explain? Carcharoth 09:47, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

The problem is, they violate WP:CFORK. We have sister projects for that. Wikibooks, Wikiversity, and not least simple:. I find "introduction" articles in Wikipedia article namespace highly questionable, and while their intent is no doubt honorable, I don't think they can be reconciled with Wikipedia core policy. --dab (𒁳) 18:32, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
 * There are undesirable aspects to these articles, but there are also undesirable aspects to not having them. In any case the reference to "core policy" is overblown -- note first of all that WP:CFORK is a guideline, not policy, and as such is "not set in stone" yada yada yada, and secondly that guideline is mainly aimed at POV forks, which these introductory articles are not.
 * I'm fairly conflicted about these articles, but let's keep the discussion on a pragmatic level rather than dragging in "core policies", which as far as I can tell are not much involved. --Trovatore (talk) 22:53, 23 January 2008 (UTC)


 * These articles help our readers, and to me that's reason enough for them to exist. In any case, WP:CFORK covers POV forks. The way you are interpreting it, daughter articles could also be considered forks. As someone has argued before, introductory articles may be considered as the daughter article of the lead. Loom91 (talk) 13:38, 26 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Being discussed at some length at Articles for deletion/Introduction to evolution (2nd nomination). WLU (talk) 17:52, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I was a little surprised to find these articles here, as they don't seem *entirely* encyclopedic, but please, keep them! These are really a great idea - I think they can help turn wikipedia into the kind of learning resource I've always wanted it to be. 74.78.98.109 (talk) 16:55, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I dispute that "cforks" concern pov forks exclusively. Clearly, pov forks are the worst cases of cforks, but "accidential" cforks are also a nuisance, and need to be avoided. What we have here, however, are deliberate cforks-but-not-povforks. They have some merit, but, again, we have sister projects especially dedicated to do the job they are supposed to do. Again, I recognize these articles as they stand are an honourable effort to help transmitting the "sum of human knowledge", and I am not trying to shoot them down, but we must keep this category of articles on a very tight leash. Possibly, there should be a separate "Introduction:" namespace to make clear that these aren't regular encyclopedia articles. --dab (𒁳) 17:46, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with Dbachmann - see Wikipedia_talk:Content_forking. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 17:11, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I, for one, would like to defend the honor of the "Introduction to" series of articles. I would actually argue that these articles end up being more encyclopaedic than their parent articles on particularly technical subjects. Only a small selection of people are going to follow the often very technical nature of the more complex subjects these articles are desgined to simplify--which is of no use to an encyclopaedic knowledge-seeker. This is an encyclopedia, not a technical journal. Encyclopaedic knowledge is necessarily summarized to provide an overview of a subject.

Not that I'd dream of "dumbing down" the parent articles, but if we are not going to keep the introduction series on Wikipedia, we should at least have links to the articles on the Simple English Wikipedia or Wikibooks at the top of their respective Wikipedia pages, acknowledging that newcomers to the subject may have difficulty approaching the more technical article as posted in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is widely used as a first source, so I think it unfair to expect people to know to go to these other sites for the simple version without having some sort of indication for it. Amordea (talk) 12:35, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Bad name
I think calling these articles 'introductions' is a bad idea in many ways. Mostly it sounds like the name for a class that you need to start through in order to qualify for the tougher one. Introducing someone to the subject is not the goal anyway. The goal should be to have a series of articles that are overviews of topics contained in more detailed articles. A summary, if you will, which shouldn't violate WP:CFORK because it's like a spinout, though more aptly considered a spinup (or something). I think the articles should be called Overviews.--Neptunerover (talk) 02:47, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

A third level of introduction?
There is a deletion discussion for Basic concepts of quantum mechanics, an attempt to describe quantum mechanics at an even more basic level than Introduction to quantum mechanics. RockMagnetist (talk) 00:26, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Why is this a hidden category?
I think this category would be more useful in mainspace. RockMagnetist (talk) 00:39, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree. A reader curious in but without prior knowledge or expertise in multiple technical subjects should be able to navigate using this category. Gizza  ( t )( c ) 13:33, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Prerequisites Project
Please review the Prerequisites Project suggestion. Editingeddie (talk) 15:21, 20 May 2013 (UTC)