User:El Sandifer/Branching/Objections

Subpages
Concern: Branching effectively duplicates the functionality of subpages, which are turned off in the article space.

Response: The decision to turn off subpages in the article space is, for the most part, a technical decision to not use a specific feature of MediaWiki in a specific place. Although there has been discussion of subpages in general, that has mostly centered on the need to avoid POV forks and the like. Ultimately, there is no substantial consensus against splitting a topic over multiple articles, and the fact of the matter is that an article like George W. Bush already uses de facto subpages. We are not beholden to the past decision not to use a technical feature of MediaWiki.

Maintenance inssues
Concern: Branching violates our notability guidelines by creating non-notable articles.

Response: Article size, on Wikipedia, is a technical concern - both because of the difficulty of screen reading compared to paper reading, and because of a historical concern for users of now almost wholly obsolete browsers. As a result, we try to cap article size at around 60k. By comparison, Encyclopedia Britannica has articles 18 times larger than that in some cases. What this means is that we split topics into smaller chunks than Britannica - instead of one massive article on the United States of America, we have many smaller articles that de facto branch off from it. We already do this. The question is how this already existing practice relates to notability.

The task of identifying 60k chunks of a topic and the task of identifying notable topics for coverage are different, and that our notability guidelines were never designed or intended to handle the task of organizing coverage of a topic.

Concern: But that means that there are no policies in place to control what sub-articles get made.

Response: That is no more true than the statement "there are no policies in place to control what sections of an article get made." Which is a bit of a non-answer, but it remains the case - the area of article organization is comparatively under-policied on Wikipedia. That said, it is not generally a disaster - there's no great push to make organization more policy-based, and our articles generally speaking work well on this front - certainly no worse than they work on areas we have detailed policies regarding.

It is important to make clear that removal of inappropriate content from sub-articles and merging upwards in the branching structure does not require AfD, and can be done by any editor. Sub-articles that remain redirects for a few days are valid speedy candidates.

Concern: Branched articles will be difficult to manage and require admin tools to clean up bad decisions.

Response: In this regard, branched articles will have some of the same flaws as categories. Before they are implemented we will have to create a deletion/discussion page for community consensus on reorganizing pathological cases. It may also be prudent to create a basic system of approval for branching proposals - that is, a requests page where one can say "I think this topic should be branched, and that these articles should be brought under the main article." This will give the community the opportunity to nip ill-advised branching structures in the bud without reversion and deletion being necessary.