User talk:Doom/Sandbox

I anticipate problems with this lead sentence:


 * In the beginning of an article it can be useful to present some general evaluation of the subject; an expression of the subject's place in the constellation of human knowledge.

The difficulty is that I'm sure someone is going to think it's too windy and verbose; but there really is something I'm trying to say in there, but I suspect that it's too subtle for the average wikipedia copy-editor. Out in the wild, that sentence would have a half-life shorter than Californium.

Maybe subtlety isn't the domain of the wikipedia. How can I make it clearer what I'm getting at (without being even *more* windy and verbose...)?

This is the issue: Currently the NPOV discussion raises the idiom under discussion here as a "special case" that applies to esthetics. I suspect that this is wrong; it also could easily be applied to supposedly harder-edged subjects.

For example, a discussion of software methodology might discuss functional programming as well as object-oriented programming, but it would be incomplete if it didn't indicate that objects are a decades long obsession of the computer industry, while functional programming is almost entirely only of academic interest. It would be extremely difficult to say this without some form of peacock-weasel combine.... Doom 04:20, Jun 27, 2004 (UTC)

Separate principle
I think you've got a good point about summarizing or providing overviews on subjects and placing them in context in the greater world.

I wonder, though, if you shouldn't call out this separate principle into a separate style guideline -- say, Put subjects in context or Summarize subjects.

I think that in creating any kind of text, we have to deal with competing principles. For example, it's important to be brief and concise, but it's also important to be complete. I don't think it's a bad idea to make separate style guidelines for each and let contributors find the Aristotelian mean between the two extremes.

In other words: I think your point is good, and I think it'd be a shame to bury it as a caveat to weasel words and peacock terms. Why not give it its own space to develop? --ESP 15:32, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * I'll take it under advisement that maybe there are two pages inside my proposed replacement for the peacock-weasel nodes; but I don't think you can convince me that the right way to cover this is with three pages (the existing ones plus my new one). There are already too many pages in the style guide. (I could be conviced that the right thing to do is to drop all of them and say "just read the NPOV article again").


 * Right here. I agree with this idea. There are in fact too many pages in the style guide. I certainly can't remember why people would want to read quite so much. In fact, in the interest of making something that is actually consumable in one or two sittings (for those of us out there who are not super-awesome readers and grammatical and spelling whizzes who actually love reading this stuff...I am considering condensing all of this stuff into a quick one or two page guide with simple examples.


 * I just feel certain that many of the things that are frowned upon in the style guide are things that I have done. And all this after I have already spent on the order of 4-6 hours reading and trying to learn before making lots of updates. With this much talk and writing about style, its just hard for new wikipedians to be bold. And, btw, I like the ideas you describe here. Not sure if replacement is best...I might favor integration.--Jpittman 17:04, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * I actually have trouble understanding why you like the idea of having fingers pointing in different directions in different pages, but dislike the idea doing that inside of a given page.


 * My initial suspicion was that you were just being territorial, though it could be that it's a difference in style. You like simple, straight-forward statements; and if anything, I've got to fight a tendency to over-complicate and prevaricate.  -- Doom 00:56, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)