User:Tony May/Structure

Wikipedia has structure. In some circumstances, appropriate structure may be necessary to meet neutral point of view or no original research standards.

If an article is unstructured, or only vaguely structured, it often has a tendency to become messy as people add bits here and there higgledy-piggledy.

It is better therefore to get the structure right when writing the article the first time in order to avoid restructuring which is difficult and during which information may be inadvertently removed.

Within-article structure
Firstly, it is easier to clear the miscellaneous headings such as references, external links, etc which should go last.

Within an article the basic ordering could be as follows:


 * Chronological order
 * Geographical or spatial order
 * Alphanumerical or numerical order
 * importance or size order
 * Other

Although sometimes only one of the above is used, complicated by

Between-article structure
Articles are linked together using links. The relationship however consists more than just the physical link.

A sub-article is an article which covers a subject to a level of detail that is not possible in a more general article. see summary style.

Restructuring an article
If you think an article needs to be improved by restructuring, please be bold and do it. Examples of rearrangement include:


 * Rearrangement of the headings
 * Creation of a sub-article on Subject X using material from the main article (usually combined with reducing the specific content on Subject X in the parent article).
 * Merging of 2 or more articles.

If you wish to restructure an article, it may be a good idea to explain what you intend to do on the talk page before outlining. This will help you in two ways; (1) it will give other editors warning and allow them to add their input and (2) it will ensure that the restructuring is clear in your mind. This is particularly true if the restructuring is complicated.

Forking pages
Forking pages is discussed at summary style. Importantly, please do not fork content with the aim of violating neutral point of view.