User:El Sandifer/Branching

Branching articles is a technique that helps to organize topics that call for deeper and more substantial coverage than is appropriate for a single page, but where giving sub-topics their own articles might be seen as overly obscure or insufficiently notable. When a page gets overly long, it becomes difficult to read, and can even pose a technical problem for some browsers. Branching uses a system of subpages to create a nested series of articles that split off from each other, allowing individual sub-topics the ability to be thoroughly covered without convoluting the main article.

How to branch an article
Because subpages cannot be implemented in the article space without causing technical difficulties, article branching is accomplished through use of templates. An early draft of the template can be seen at User:Masem/heirtoptest.

That said, because branched articles can pose difficulties in cleaning up, particularly if branching is done inappropriately, a "Branching Proposals" page will be set up to allow for discussion of proposed branching structures. This might be balanced with a whitelist of situations where branching is generally accepted - books can be branches of an author, episodes can be branches of a TV series, etc.

Linearity
The most important guideline in structuring a branched article is this: The article and sub-articles must be easily rearranged to provide a single, linear document. What does this mean? It means that every sub-article should branch off from a clear point in its main article such that someone who wanted to reconstruct the whole article could just copy the sub-article into that point in the main article.

Similarly, every sub-article should only have one parent. For classification schemes that do not lend themselves to single parentage, the category system may be more appropriate.

There are a handful of cases where this may prove difficult, and where a topic may have very strong claim to appear in two branched hierarchies. In this case, several options exist.


 * If the topic is independently notable, consider simply creating a separate article from it, and linking to it normally.
 * If the topic is not independently notable, consider whether it can be effectively split into separate sub-articles for all possible parents, each one dealing with the specific relevance of the topic to its specific hierarchy.
 * It is technically possible to put an article in multiple hierarchies. This is strongly discouraged, and should not be done if at all avoidable. Under no circumstances should an article appear in more than to hierarchies.

Branching vs. Hypertext
A branching article structure should not primarily be a hypertext. Hypertext is great, and we implement it throughout Wikipedia (including within branching articles), but that's not what branching an article is good for. What branching an article is good for is for taking a topic that is too large to get into a single reasonably sized article and getting it to still read linearly and in a well-organized fashion.

Hypertext links may be used among parts of a branching article - linking from a sub-topic to another sub-topic as one mentions the other. And of course branching articles should contain links to articles outside of the branching. But branching, as a whole, is a linear structure. The use of hypertext should be convenience links inside of an overall linear document.

Redundancy
In order to help readers navigate the article, be sure to include a brief lead section for the sub-article where it branches off from the parent article. Beyond that, however, duplicating information in multiple places within a branched article should be avoided.

Obviously different parts of a topic are related, and some mentions of other parts of the topic are always going to happen, but for the most part a given bit of information should be in one place. For instance, consider an sub-article on a book by a philosopher. That sub-article might have some information about how the book modifies ideas the pholosopher laid out in a previous book. Where does a discussion of these changes go? Should it go in the article on the newer book? In the older one? In a sub-article that addresses this theme across the philosopher's work more broadly? Reasonable cases can be made for any of these, but you'll have to pick one and stick with it. Note that this rule applies only within a branched article. It would be perfectly reasonable to cover the information about the topic a second time in an article on that topic in philosophy in general.

Here's a trickier example of fictional characters. A character sub-article will have a fictional biography that talks about the character's history. That biography shouldn't just be a list of events by episode - it should track the specific narrative arc of the character, cutting out as many details about other characters as possible. So even if both a character and an episode article describe the same event, the character article will give information about its relevance to the specific character, while the episode article will talk about its role in the plot of that episode.

Content of sub-articles
For the most part, sub-articles should be treated as part of the main article, and developed according to the wiki-process. Thus their length, level of detail, and sourcing should be considered not independently, but in the context of the larger coverage of the topic.

Sub-articles are not an excuse to go into excessive detail on things. Content policies such as WP:NOR and WP:NPOV still apply to sub-articles, and they must not lend undue weight to one aspect of a topic, advance fringe theories, or serve as POV forks.

It is especially important not to use sub-articles to "hide" controversial information deeper in an article where it will not be seen. For instance, while it is often sensible to have a "criticism of" sub-article, the main article should still give a clear acknowledgement of any controversies that exist. Furthermore, it would be inappropriate to split off a "criticism of" sub-article while retaining detailed favorable information in the main article - if one is to be split off, the other should be split off at the same time.

Deleting sub-articles
Since sub-articles are treated for most purposes as part of the main article, AfD is rarely appropriate for them. In general an inappropriate sub-article should simply be merged back into its parent article after a discussion on the parent article's talk page. The resulting empty page can be changed to an appropriate redirect, or simply speedied so long as consensus exists to do so on the parent article's talk page.

The appropriateness of branching
A key question comes in where to begin branching an article from. After all, we don't want every article on biology or on a biologist to be a sub-article of Biology. So where do you begin to branch? Here are some important things to consider.


 * 1) Can there be sub-articles? After all, if a topic is coverable in a single, reasonably sized page, there's no reason to branch off of it.
 * 2) Will all of the sub-articles have single parentage? Since branching is linear, a single article can only have a single parent. You don't want to branch from a point where you'll have a confused tangle down the line where articles lack a clear parentage back to the main article.
 * 3) Can the subject be arranged linearly? Remember, the key thing about branching is that it can be reconfigured into a single article. If the topic and all sub-articles will not lend themselves to a linear summary then branching is not ideal.
 * 4) Is everything that should be said about the sub-articles going to be heavily relevant to the parent articles as well? For instance, you could make every US president a sub-article of President of the United States. But President of the United States is most primarily an article about a political position. And Jimmy Carter as an article is going to have to deal with his time as Governor of Georgia, as well as with political issues that came up during his Presidency, neither of which are relevant to President of the United States.

Thinkers and philosophers
Thinkers and philosophers often have a large body of work, all of which is complex in its own right. But generally we treat these works as part of a larger system of thought as well. The branching structure allows individual works and concepts by a thinker to get full, thorough treatments while still arranging everything in the larger context of the thinker's work.

For example, Jacques Derrida has articles on seven of his books, and should have articles on the remaining fifty-five. On top of this, detailed treatment of criticisms of Derrida and responses to Derrida could fill numerous articles. And we have several articles on concepts Derrida has come up with - Différance for instance. As it stands, basic information about Derrida is scattered across all of these articles, often intermixed with highly technical discussions.

A branched structure, starting with Jacques Derrida and leading into detailed and organized treatments of his works and major ideas would help organize this massive topic so that someone can come to the article and work their way up logically from basic concepts to more specialized material.

Lengthy biographies
Some of our biographies have lengthy sections for early life, particular careers, etc. Biographies of politicians are particularly prone to this. Branching is a great way of handling this problem.

Indeed, many of these articles, such as George W. Bush, already use a de facto system of sub-articles that creates articles such as Early life of George W. Bush. Structuring such articles into a branched structure will often improve organization and readability, allowing for easier navigation among parts of the topic.

Sporting events
Topics like the 2008 Summer Olympics involve, by extension, lengthy lists of athletes, descriptions of competitions, and information about what happened. This is unsurprising for a mutli-day athletic event at which numerous competitions happen at once, but it poses an organizational problem. A branching structure makes organizing this information in relation to other information much easier, and would improve navigation within an article like this.

Serialized fiction
The lengthy plot summaries and character lists that characterize our coverage of serialized fiction make this an ideal area to branch. Although plot summaries should be concise and to the point, for an extremely long-serialized work of fiction like a television series or a comic book, often even a concise plot summary strains the limits of what we can cover. For example, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, across all seven of its seasons, has 109 hours of television screen time. On top of that there are two video games, a number of novels and comics, and, more recently, an ongoing comic series. A concise plot summary of all of that would still be overwhelming.

With branching, however, our coverage of Buffy can remain well-organized and detailed. A main article. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, could lay out the basic details of the franchise, and a multi-level hierarchy of sub-articles could provide information that is both concise and thorough without having to worry about article size limits.

When creating a branched article in fiction, it is important to remember that Wikipedia is not primarily for plot summaries. Plot summaries should still be concise, following the relevant guidelines. Branching is not an excuse to add more in-universe material - the primary focus of our coverage of fictional subjects is still secondarily sourced information and coverage of their cultural impact.