User:Jorge Stolfi/On standards

Why did made those edits?
I presume he was tring to imitate Roman, which was cited here as an example of the correct disamb format. It happens that several of the disambs I wrote, in the format anvil (disambiguation), have been sitting there for a year, and were never considered unhelpful to the reader (or to editors) until now. But a few days ago someone silently deleted 2/3 of kaffir (disambiguation). I tried to argue with him, but his reply was basically "your arguments don't matter, that text has to go because it does not conform to the disamb MoS". And now nother decides to reformat anvil (disambiguation), obviously caring only for the looks and not for contents. Coincidence?

What has the Latin alphabets page to do with disambs?
First, the page alphabets derived from the Latin very likely violates the Manual of Style (in general, not the disamb section) in may points. But even if it doesn't, the cost of reading all the MoS to make sure that it doesn't would deter some good editors from creating such a page today. After my experiences this week with the anvil and kaffir pages, I don't know whether I will ever feel like creating another non-trivial disamb page. Who knows what the disambs standard will be next month? Will someone come up with a standard for tables that does not cover that one?

Furthermore, the Latin alphabets page can be viewed as a disamb page for the term "Latin alphabet". Suppose someone decided to recast it into "standard disamb format"; that is, just a bullet list of the alphabet articles, without the extra information?

That is pretty much what has been happening to my disamb pages. Last year, a disamb page could still be considered "an article on a term, or a set of related or potentially confusible terms, that have two or more largely unrelated senses". Being articles, not special pages, disambs were supposed to be edited with the same care, thoughtfulness, and specificity that befits single-subject articles; and following the same general rules for articles, such as bolding and italic. The fact that they had a special "disamb" format was merely a logical consequence of Rule #1 and common sense. (Namey, since each reader will be interested into only one sense, the best solution is to put each sense into a separate article, move as much detail as possible to those articles, and provide just a quick summary with links. But you all know that.)

On the other hand, by those same principles, it was OK to leave in the disamb page any basic information that applied to all the senses -- such as the etymology of the name (as in [radius (disambiguation)]]), or the "ordinary" sense of the word (as in image). It was OK also to to adapt the layout, wording, and organization of the article to the subject at hand.

This view -- "disambs are articles" -- left space for personal style and creativity, just as in single-subject articles; so editors could take pleasure in producing disamb pages that appealed to their logic and aesthetic sense (including being consistent with their interpretation of the "Wikipedia style", to the extent that they considered appropriate).

As long as that view prevailed, the differences between the formats of, say, anvil (disambiguation) and image were no more objectionable than those between, say, hammer and William Shakespeare.

But then someone decided that disamb pages were "non-articles in article space", and that they should be force-fit into a single standard format. So my disamb articles are now being changed to a style and organization which to me is uglier and/or less logical and/or less helpful to the reader than my own; not to mention inconsistent with other articles (in markup conventions and quality of writing). With due proportion, it is like the Louvre sawing off all its pictures to fit the ISO 216 standard.

I can see the same thing happening with other kinds of articles too. A couple of weeks ago, someone deleted the taxobox of Rhinogradentia without explanations. Neither the article nor the taxobox were my creation, but having read the book I felt that the taxobox made all the sense, and the article was much nicer with it than without it. I reverted with a short explanation, he reverted back with "no taxoboxes for fictitious species". I dutifuly checked the MoS and found nothing abut that topic. I tried to argue again with the fellow, but all I got was "I see your arguments, but still no taxoboxes on fictitious species".

I left it at that. Well, yesterday someone -- perhaps the same fellow -- deleted the taxobox from "cabbage" (not my work either) with the excuse that it was just a cultivar and not a species; so now the reader must go to Brassica olearacea to know the plant's family and such. Needless to say, I don't intend to waste my time arguing about that. I am sure that enforcing that fellow's ad-hoc taxobox standard will be considered much more important than making cabbage a better article for the reader.

Now tell me about "owning". It would seem that those who make a taxobox template feel that they automatically own all the biology (and pseudo-biology) articles; just as those who make a standard for disamb articles may feel that they automatically "own" all said articles...

Note, these are not the ordinary disagreements between editors with different tastes or opinions. I believe that I have always coped gracefully with such incidents over the past year and a half, and, as you know, they are not a real threat to Wikipedia. The recent incidents are different: it is me, an ordinary editor, against The System. I cannot hope to convince that opponent with logic or hard work, or reach a compromise with him, or get the support of other editors, or say pretty please with strawberries and cream, as in an ordinary edit war. Nope, if my work does not fit the current standard (approved late last night by five out of seven votes), then I am ipso facto wrong, period.

Recent edits to anvil (disambiguation)
I never claimed that my disamb pages were perfect, and I have no problem with the removal of excess wikilinks (as a matter of fact, I have removed many myself). I am pleased to see that someone restored most of the damage, and even more so seeing that the page is almost back to my original arrangement. (One entry got lost, but I can take care of that.). However, the original markup (bold for head terms, italic for titles), while not as clean-looking as the current markup, was IMHO helpful to the reader, and more consistent with the style of other articles. But what can I do...

Negativism
My problem with the current style standards -- not just the disamb ones, but all of them -- is that they have became too complex and too oppressive, and are only getting worse with time. So naturally the only suggestions that I can make are "destructive" ones: fewer and simpler standards, fewer and simpler structuring mechanisms, good examples instead of written rules, more tolerance for diversity and creativity, focus on the quality of individual articles rather than on uniformity, etc..

In particular, one should avoid mechanisms that lead to the partitioning of articles into groups (like the sharp article/disamb distinction, or the root page proposal). As happened with disamb pages, and is happening with species pages, once you gather a set of pages into a conspicuously marked group, any inconsistencies in the format of those pages will look like "defects", and there will be pressure to fit all those articles into a common standard. The effort spent instituting and maintaining that consistency will be taken away from the more important task of improving the contents of individual articles. More importantly, editors may be deterred from improving those articles, either for fear of breaking some unknown policy that the "owners" may have established for the group, or because of the perceived need to make the same improvement in all articles of the group, "for consistency". (E.g., if someone were to add a section "Writers of the period" to History of Brazil (1889-1930), he would probably feel pressed to add a similar section to the other articles of the series.)

Thus, as in the case of disamb pages, that indirect negative impact on article quality may easily negate any advantage that the reader might derive from the grouping.

Indeed, I suspect that even the simplest grouping devices, like the thematic boxes and links in History of Brazil, may end up doing more harm than good. Suppose that those devices did not exist: would those articles be worse than they are now?

The History of Brazil article would actually look a little nicer, without those flashy "main article" links and the distracting navigation box. On the other hand, the editors of that article would feel more pressured to make it into a coherent and well-balanced summary, a real good article that can stand on its own. Editors would be more likely to read the article end-to-end and make the text flow better across sections, for example. Or perhaps someone would put up a map or nice photo where the navbox is now.

That article would still point to the subsidiary articles: by wikilinks in the text, through the "see also"s, or through a bullet list in the article's head section; and the subsidiaries would still point to each other in the same ways. So the reader who feels like knowing more details can still find the relevant articles without any difficulty. However, by removing the implication that these articles are part of a series, or subordinated to History of Brazil, each of them would be free to evolve on its own, without the costs and constraints that derive from that grouping. In particular, the editors will be free to split or merge children nodes without fear of "breaking the group's structure"

Jorge Stolfi 23:35, 6 March 2006 (UTC)