User:Aymatth2/Opinions

Some personal opinions about writing articles follow. The Wikipedia policies, guidelines and processes are carefully thought out and sensible. A different structure might or might not work better. These are opinions about how to work within the established framework.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia
Johann Heinrich Zedler published the first volume of his encyclopedia in 1731. Carl Günther Ludovici introduced improvements. Others have made refinements. The policies and guidelines for Wikipedia articles are mostly based on long-established principles. A basic test for any content is "would the publisher of a serious encyclopedia accept this?"

Accessibility
Readers will often access Wikipedia from small handheld devices. A significant percentage of readers are color blind. The web is an important resource for people with severely impaired vision, some of whom may use a screen reader. A few personal habits / opinions:
 * As a rule, if you can't get a formatting effect with standard wiki mark-up or common templates, forget it. Default formatting is almost always entirely acceptable, and anyway the quality of the text is much more important than the appearance.
 * Putting all images on the right helps avoid problems with small screens. But if an image is being pushed down far from the text it illustrates, perhaps by a large infobox, maybe try it on the left. When in doubt it is best to try it on laptop, pad and phone.
 * Place each image inside the same section as the text that it illustrates. If the images are crowded together or are getting pushed down so they are far below the text they illustrate, there are too many images.  Excess images can always be put in a  at the back of the article.
 * It is almost always best to let images take the default width of 220px.
 * Complicated tables with many columns are hard to access with screen readers and small screens. For a lot of people, complicated tables are just plain hard to follow.
 * The caption to a diagram can mention color, but color should not be the only clue. Thus "the light red line ... the green dotted line..."  Of course, this will be meaningless to someone who cannot see the diagram at all.  The article text should therefore avoid mentioning diagrams or images, and should convey the information verbally.

Audience
It is useful to imagine that you are talking to an intelligent secondary school student on the other side of the world. They want a clear, factual overview of the subject, with pointers to where they may find more information. They do not want your opinions about the subject. They just want the facts.

Your reader may not speak English as their first language. Keep it simple. An encyclopedia entry is not the place for creative writing.
 * Short words are best and old words when short are best of all.(Churchill)
 * Short, positive sentences are clearer than long and involved passive sentences. Wrong: “It is considered by some experts that …”. Right: “Smith said …”
 * A sentence that needs more than one comma is probably too complicated. If a change in the position of a comma affects the meaning, find a way to avoid the comma.
 * Avoid slang and figures of speech.

Context
Assume your reader knows nothing at all about the subject. Give a bit of context early in the article. Always name the country when writing about people or places. Most people in Karnataka have no idea where Kansas is, and vice-versa. Don't be afraid to state the obvious: Kansas, USA.

Copyright
The author of any creative work automatically owns the copyright to that work unless they explicitly waive it. Wikipedia must be very careful to avoid copyright violations and to remove them when they are reported or detected. However, "mere facts" cannot be copyrighted, only the way in which the facts are expressed. If you stick to the facts, stating them clearly and simply in your own words, you will not violate copyright. Fortunately, that is exactly what the reader wants. It is also important to avoid distorting or misrepresenting what somebody has said or written, which would violate their moral rights. A direct quote is often better than a paraphrase. Thus, "He said, 'No doubt, Smith is a wonderful person is safer (assuming that is exactly what he said) than "he said he was a great admirer of Smith."

Ignorant and informed editors
Ignorant editors (like me) start articles on subjects they know nothing about. They have to rely entirely on available sources. Their articles may be incomplete, they may have misunderstand what they found in their research, and may not pick the best sources. That is where the informed editor who does understand the subject adds value by making the article more balanced. But an informed editor may have difficulty sticking strictly to the sources. Ignorant editors may be more objective. You don't have to be an expert to contribute.

Short and long articles
Many topics that deserve an article in the encyclopedia are short, because there is not a lot to say. A hill village with 200 inhabitants probably deserves an article. It may never be more than two or three paragraphs long. There is nothing wrong with short articles. Articles sometimes keep on expanding as editors add snippets of trivia. Beyond a certain point, they become inaccessible. Most readers just want an outline of the subject. If they want a detailed study they should read one of the books listed at the end of the article.

Write for the Future
An article may sit for years with no new information added in. A good practice is to look at the article from maybe six years in the future. Wrong: "He is the mayor of Smallsville". Right: "He became the mayor of Smallsville on ".

Redlinks and stubs
"Aguaxima, a plant growing in Brazil and on the islands of South America. This is all that we are told about it; and I would like to know for whom such descriptions are made. It cannot be for the natives of the countries concerned, who are likely to know more about the aguaxima than is contained in this description, and who do not need to learn that the aguaxima grows in their country. It is as if you said to a Frenchman that the pear tree is a tree that grows in France, in Germany, etc . It is not meant for us either, for what do we care that there is a tree in Brazil named aguaxima, if all we know about it is its name? What is the point of giving the name? It leaves the ignorant just as they were and teaches the rest of us nothing. If all the same I mention this plant here, along with several others that are described just as poorly, then it is out of consideration for certain readers who prefer to find nothing in a dictionary article or even to find something stupid than to find no article at all." Denis Diderot, Encyclopédie (1751)

Redlinks are useful if the editor making them plans to write an article on the linked subject, or if it is reasonable to assume that someone else will. For the casual reader they are distracting and possibly alarming. I dislike redlinks for every subject that could possibly have an article.

Stubs are useful if they give some information on the subject. A stub that gives no real information is annoying to the reader. They click on the link, find nothing useful, and have to click on the back button to continue reading. The reader finds “Smith was born in Smallsville, Indiana.” They click on the link and find an article that says only that “Smallsville is a community in Indiana”. Irritating.

There is an argument that stubs encourage addition of information. A reader comes across a stub, thinks "there is more to be said on this subject" and expands it. Some editors would hesitate before creating an article but would be more confident expanding a stub. But my guess is that on balance stubs are counterproductive. Many editors like creating articles so they can add to their "pages created" tally, but are less likely to expand "someone else's" article. The stub may stay a stub, distracting to readers, for a long time.

Layout and navigation
Wikipedia is a resource for people who want to find information, and should let them find what they are looking for quickly. It should also encourage browsing to related topics.

The summary may give the reader all they need, and should cover the most important points. An infobox is often a good way to give the basic facts, and makes the page layout more interesting. After that, frequent headings and short paragraphs help the user who is skimming for a particular bit of information. An article should have more headings than you would find in a magazine article and many more than you would find in a book.

Infoboxes and navbars are a great way to encourage browsing from one subject to other related subjects. They make the article “part of a series”. An infobox that appears to the right of an article may show the subject's predecessor and successor, as well as a summary of other information. It improves the page layout, and gives a useful quick summary. It is convenient for someone browsing through the list, since they can keep their mouse at the top right of the screen as they click forward or backward from one entry to the next. Another way to link to the predecessor and successor is through a succession box towards the foot of the article. This is less convenient, since the reader has to scroll down to reach the box. It makes it harder for them to click through the list.

A navbar at the foot of the page is useful to show other members of the same group, as opposed to a series. It has a more compact format, particularly if it defaults to "collapsed", and lets the reader jump at random from one member to another. A navbar could show all the members in a succession - nothing wrong with that.

Links
Excessive linking can be distracting. I tend to link to names of people, places and organizations, but not to much else. When a word or phrase is preceded or followed by others that describe it, only link the main topic as in "... the Tudor dynasty queen Elizabeth I of England". If the reader is interested in Elizabeth I, they can click through to that article. It will have links to Tudor dynasty and England. Other examples: "... Denver, Colorado, USA ..." and "... the chemical element Titanium".

Only insert links when the reader may well want to find information about the linked subject. Links to dictionary definitions are rarely useful unless the word is technical and cannot be avoided, or is the title of an article associated with this article. Assume that the reader has a reasonable knowledge of English, but avoid obscure words unless there is no alternative. “Flood” is better than “inundation”. I dislike date links. There is nothing relevant to this essay under 22 January 2010, the date it was written.

If the target of a link has a very different name from the text, it is better to link to a redirect with the text name than to the target name. A link to Léopoldville may be better than a link to Kinshasa|Leopoldville.

Quality warnings
Some editors delight in annotating articles to point out defects. This is often distracting to the reader, and not helpful to other editors. It is far better to improve the article: fix it rather than criticizing it. If that is not possible, it is often preferable to place notices on the talk page where they are less visible. Many of the common talk page templates will add the article to a list of articles needing a specific type of attention.

There are times when it makes sense to add warnings. If an article is very poor quality, biased, lacks sources or relies on just one dubious source and you do not have time to improve it, it is legitimate to warn the reader with a banner at the top of the page. If an unsourced assertion seems controversial, adding a tag makes that clear to the reader. If an article could use expansion, it may be useful to point that out at the foot of the page. A specific template like is more useful than the generic , since it is more likely to be spotted by editors working on a particular type of article.

Littering an article with notices on minor defects is not constructive. Only add notices that are helpful to readers or are likely to make other editors improve the article. I particularly dislike the “wanted” poster (see right). If there is a picture in the public domain, add it. Otherwise, add to the talk page and hope that an editor who has a picture will spot the article, put their picture into the public domain and add it to the article.

Text mark-up
I often start each sentence on a new line in the edit window. The single line breaks are removed when the article is viewed, as with this paragraph. The single line breaks help separate citation mark-up from the text and makes it easier to rearrange sentences. In my case, since I have minor vision and coordination problems, it makes editing somewhat easier (see User:Aymatth2). It also makes it much easier to see what has been changed on a "diffs" comparison. It makes no difference to what the reader will see. I seem to be in a minority on this. Other editors sometimes take out all the line breaks. I do not know why.

Notability
Some editors say a subject should only have an article if there are sources that take the subject as their main topic. That may be true with concepts. An editor could find hundreds of sources that mention "rainy day", and could use them as the basis for an original and entertaining essay. It does not belong in Wikipedia. But with tangible things – well known people, major buildings, towns, rivers and so on – I see nothing wrong with piecing together an article from sources that cover different aspects, even if no source covers the subject as a whole. That said, articles on living people, active companies and products should be subject to more rigorous tests of notability than articles on other subjects, because of the risk of abuse.

I dislike the idea of "inherent notability" as in "all kings are inherently notable". The names of many kings only survive in orally-transmitted lists, if they survive at all: "The kings of Shemandi were these: Oalaluya, Kaliluya, Taralula, Mandaluya and Tamanji. These were the kings of Shemandi." Nothing else will ever be known about these kings. An article for each of them would be silly – no use to any reader – whatever the inherent notability rule says.

A subject may be presumed notable if there is good reason to suppose that several sources exist, but they are not readily accessible. Perhaps the only online source for a Bolivian Minister of Finance in the 1930s is one article, but they would certainly have had extensive coverage in the Bolivian newspapers of that time, and the sources cannot have all been lost. If the article has useful and verifiable information from one source and there is good reason to assume there are other sources, it should be kept even if there is no absolute proof of notability in the citations.

We have to use common sense. Wikipedia should only cover subjects about which readers are likely to look for information, and where there is enough information to justify an article. Nobody is going to ask "What is a rainy day?" Someone may well ask "Where is that village?"