Category talk:Wikipedia essays

Don't fix what ain't broke
I'm too lazy to find the place to make this request for an essay guideline for NOT making a new rule which is NOT really needed or too anticipated or too based on conjecture. It complicates life. --Jondel 07:22, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Please move all essays to META
I find that Essays are cited a great deal during dialog about decision-making. I find that many of these essays are just codescending lectures by the empowered used to antagonize the non-admins. They should all be shipped over to META and kept out of the main encyclopedia server because they are getting shortcuts and being used during discussions. If any of your were facingin a traffic judge and the judge starting explaining his reasoning for this or that decision about you by quiting from the Ten Commandments or other biblical citations, you would know that there is a problem. These adages are just smug lectures and should be not so easily linked to. Such adages turn what could be adult dialog into comicbook-hero dialog. They are worse for criticizing behavior than simply say "Well, Batman or the Boy Scouts (or whomever) never did it that way..." -- 75.24.106.83 21:37, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

What are Wiki-essays?
We could use an article describing this phenomena.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 02:51, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
 * True, we could: Essays is simply a redirect to at the moment. We should do something about this...--h i s   s p a c e   r e s e a r c h 14:18, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I will create a wiki-stub...--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 15:33, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Link broken
The (Discuss) link at the top of the category page has a dangling HTML anchor. Please acknowledge or delete this message after fixing the problem. Thanks!--greenrd 17:41, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Split
That proposed split is a bad idea because the distinction is arbitrary, and it gives the idea that some essays are better than others depending on the category they're in.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  12:22, 15 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with this. It also was not a good idea to discuss this on WP:AN. Since that discussion has already been archived I assume it has been resolved negatively and the split template can be removed. (Sorry if I missed the discussion, I'm not searching the archive to find something that should have been here in the first place.) &mdash; Sebastian 01:58, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * However, since we have so many pages in this category, we might want to split it by topics. There are for instance a number of essays about POV, tendentious editing, and such. How about moving them into "Essays discussing POV issues" or so? &mdash; Sebastian 02:01, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

List of best essays?
See Wikipedia_talk:Policies_and_guidelines#A_thought_on_essays.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 19:57, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
 * It seems to be here: Wikipedia_talk:Policies_and_guidelines/Archive_5. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:10, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Move to userspace
As discussed on the Village Pump here, in an attempted cleanup, we will be moving essays to userspace if they have only been edited by a single person (not counting typo fixes, deletion notices, and other non-substantial edits, and excluding essays that are very new).  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  11:19, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
 * The potential downside to this is that, since all essays that originate in the Wikipedia namespace start out as an essay edited by a single person with few or no incoming links, if we get overzealous about moving them before they have a chance to become widely adopted, then it could become impossible for the category of Wikipedia essays to grow. Some might say this is a good thing, but usually the method of dealing with a large category is to start breaking it down into subcategories, using merge/redirects (which are inexpensive) if necessary to get rid of superfluous overlap, etc. We might try a process similar to MfD where the proposal is to userfy rather than delete. Maybe we could have a "prom" template (proposed move) and someone can have a few days to object to it, rather than it being abruptly moved. One of the difficulties with essays is that there are not as many objective criteria (such as verifiability) that can be used to assess whether they belong here, so it might all come down to ILIKEIT or its opposite. Even the POV rules don't apply, and people might want to move stuff out of the namespace that they simply don't agree with. Essays may have a use in that they can be an organized way to gather thoughts together at a permanent location and gather contributions and discussion from various users that can eventually lead to consensus; some essays may not be quite honed enough at creation to have the template. And indeed, some essays are not really proposals at all but just encourage the reader to consider something. 71.63.91.68 (talk) 16:06, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Why are the redirects deleted when they are moved? Zxczxczxc (talk) 22:24, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Subcategories?
At nearly 600 essays, it might be time to consider a system of sorting these into subcategories. I'm just open to ideas at this point. -- Kendrick7talk 03:57, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree. Let's consider existing subcategories: Category:WikiProject essays; Category:User essays; Category:Wikipedia supplemental essays and Category:Wikipedia process discussions. The first two categorize it by creator; the first and the third also concern the subject; the fourth seems rather useless and confusing. Some suggestions: 1) add keywords to essays and categorize them on a sortable list 2) create categories to mirror Category:Wikipedia administration; ex. Category:Wikipedia articles about featured content. See also my suggestion above were I suggested creating a list of most widely cited essays.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 20:23, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Good idea. It might be worth creating differing templates, too.  For example, one specifically for user essays and one for essays in the Wikipedia namespace. Hiding T 12:42, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Category had become an essay itself
20-Dec-2008: By December 2008, the page for Category:Wikipedia_essays had evolved into a long-winded dissertation with 8 paragraphs: the description of the category had become an essay in itself. I am shortening that text to a more succinct format. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:18, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Searching the 760 essays
20-Dec-2008: During 2008, the number of essays had grown from 600 to over 760 essays. I wrote another essay to explain searching among those essay titles to find specific topics:
 * WP:About essay searching - lists 750 essays for searching.

As better methods are found for searching, or scanning, those essays, those methods should be explained within that essay. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:18, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

sub-categorising essays
I think it would be sensible to sub-categorise essays. I have made a start with Category:Essays supporting editor endurance. I note some fair degree of redundancy between the essays, and some mergin may be warranted. See this for a list of 960 essays with #incoming links. I think it may be helpful. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:05, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Standards for essays
Are there any standards for essays? Can any Wikipedia editor create an essay that says anything they want, and post it to Wikipedia space? Jayjg (talk) 00:37, 16 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Policies and guidelines


 * "Essays are the opinion or advice of an editor or group of editors, for which widespread consensus has not been established. They do not speak for the entire community and may be created and written without approval. Essays that the author does not want others to edit, or that are found to outright contradict widespread consensus, belong in the user namespace. See Category:Wikipedia essays."


 * So, a lot is allowed, like e.g. this essay
 * Follow consensus, not policy Count Iblis (talk) 03:49, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Dump the essays proposal at Village Pump
--IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 18:19, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Archived to Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_56. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 20:19, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Your categorization pleas have been answered
...by WP:ESSAY C/C. There are now over a dozen categories. ɳorɑfʈ Talk! 01:27, 5 March 2010 (UTC)