Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 45

History Articles
Recently I submitted a history article to FAC, and resulted in only recieving disputes over what the content of a history article should be. The problem is, that as far as I can see we have very little guidence on what should and should not make up a history article.

Some of the issues raised on the FAC were,
 * Should all History articles aim to have a Historiography section?
 * Should History articles cover Current Events as well as Historticaly Settled ones?
 * How to ballence 'comprehensive' with 'consice' when covering what can be a wide scope?

I think we're well in need of a Manual of Style (history) to adress these issues and any others. --Barberio 10:56, 19 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I think we need to better define what we're talking about. Are we referring specifically to articles of the type "History of XXXX", or to all articles with historical subjects?  The first type tends to follow a certain structure; the second is so varied that I can't see a single guideline being meaningful (not to mention the fact that, for specific types of historical articles, guidelines exist under the purview of various WikiProjects).  —Kirill Lok s hin 16:50, 19 February 2006 (UTC)


 * This would be for "History of XXXX" articles. (Actualy, how we name them should be a topic for discussion. 'History of XXXX'? 'XXXX in History'? 'Historical uses of XXXX'?) --Barberio 10:27, 20 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Those are really questions for WikiProject History. Markyour words 19:04, 20 February 2006 (UTC)


 * That's not a particularly active project, in my experience; posting a question there is likely to be as helpful as a message in a bottle. —Kirill Lok s hin 19:07, 20 February 2006 (UTC)


 * At the moment WikiProject History simply links off to the manual of style. WikiProject History was originally History standards, and I assume originally intended as a style document, and currently it has a grand total of two participents. I think History as a subject is far to wide of scope for a WikiProject to be the only source of style and content guidence. As with Biography writing, History writing needs its own style guide. --Barberio 10:30, 21 February 2006 (UTC)


 * The solution is to revive the Wikiproject, not to ignore it. The content of history articles is something that people interested in history articles should discuss, not people interested in colons (which is all you'll get here). Markyour words 12:18, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I can see a lot of problems with this idea. For example, should history of rugby union be formatted as a history project article or as a WikiProject Rugby union? Also a global history project, which does more than lay out an high level description, cuts across other more specific areas were there is active participation in a project see WikiProject Military history as an example. --Philip Baird Shearer 12:32, 21 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Is there any reason why seperate history projects should continue to have to re-invent the wheel, when a central guideline for all can give the general guidelines. Individual projects should decide for themselves if they need to make special exceptions.
 * The argument you give against Manual of Style (history) could also have been given against Manual of Style (biographies). Since the Biograph guidelines are usefull, I think History ones would be too.
 * This also adresses the current problems that there are no clear guidelines for what can constitute a 'History of' Featured Article. As I mentioned, there no clarity as to if Historiography should be a requirement, and if current events should be included. These are both general and global issues that should be adressed as an issue in the Manual of Style guideline, not as a WikiProject. --Barberio 11:29, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I'll point out that Manual of Style (biographies) addresses questions of style and formatting, not content. If you create content guidelines that do not match current practice, they are likely to be ignored; and, given the lack of any top-level coordination in this field (WikiProject History is dead, at least as a editorial group), the best place to find out about current practice is via the appropriate second-tier WikiProjects. —Kirill Lok s hin 14:25, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Precedence of national varieties rules
I have added the qualifier:
 *  The following guidelines are roughly in order; guidelines earlier in this list will usually take precedence over guidelines later.

This came out of a question I got on #wikipedia noting that the rules appeared to conflict with one another. I thought it was pretty clear that they should be read in order, or from most-specific to least (which happens to be roughly the order they're already in), but apparently there was confusion on the point. I think this should be non-controversial. --TreyHarris 10:57, 21 February 2006 (UTC)


 * The national varieties rules are a complete mess of arbitrary kludges, no wonder people are confused. I actually have another one to add: when a dialect has a choice between its localised version and the version that the rest of the world is using, the latter should be used. PizzaMargherita 11:05, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Interesting. So you would say to use "football" instead of "soccer", even in a distinctly American article? --TreyHarris 11:10, 21 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, it depends how deep in the list of kludges we want to put it, doesn't it? What a mess.
 * Anyway, I don't think "football" is an appropriate example here. I was thinking more in terms of Gray/Grey. PizzaMargherita 11:18, 21 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I also think that your "qualifier" is too vague and doesn't make the mud any clearer. IMHO "roughly" and "usually" should be dropped. PizzaMargherita 12:07, 21 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I tend to agree. Either it's a hierarchy with the most important rules first or it isn't. Roughly and usually sound a bit like weasel words; of course, this raises the issue of whether rules are even called for. ProhibitOnions 12:16, 21 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think the stricture against weasel words applies in the guideline space—Policies and guidelines itself uses, "sometimes", "generally", and "usually". Do you really want to start a dispute over the exact ordering of these rules?  Because if the words "roughly" and "usually" are removed, we're going to have to decide on an exact order.  (I'm not 100% happy with the current order if we insist on preciseness here, and I already know from previous comments that we're not going to exactly agree on that new order.) --TreyHarris 14:40, 21 February 2006 (UTC)


 * No, my point was the exact opposite. ProhibitOnions 15:20, 21 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry.... When PizzaMargherita said, 'IMHO "roughly" and "usually" should be dropped', and you said 'I tend to agree", you weren't agreeing with me, right?  I think you need to be a little bit more verbose to help me to understand your point. --TreyHarris 17:10, 21 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I didn't make myself particularly clear, sorry. I'm not sure that a list of points, from most to least important, is necessarily the best way to present this information; it consists of one broad rule, several guidelines, some suggestions and a couple of helpful hints; the use of "roughly" and "usually" imply that this is intellectually less than rigorous. I think it might be better to reduce the number of points and combine several things mentioned here, for example:


 * Whenever possible, write for a international audience. That's who reads Wikipedia. Use vocabulary and phrasing that will be understood by readers outside the context of the article. Never assume readers understand jargon, or omit country references.


 * Strive for consistency. While Wikipedia is agnostic as to national or other spelling, punctuation, or vocabulary preferences, articles themselves should be written in a single style to avoid jarring the reader. Articles that focus on a topic specific to a particular English-speaking country should generally conform to the spelling of that country; US-British treaties usually use British spelling by convention and articles about them should probably follow. However, proper names always retain their original spellings, for example, United States Department of Defense and Australian Defence Force.


 * Article names should reflect widespread use. Redirects should accommodate other title variants, as with Artefact and Artifact, or if possible and reasonable, a neutral word might be chosen as with Glasses. Choose a word that does not have multiple spellings if there are synonyms that are otherwise equally suitable. In extreme cases of conflicting names, a contrived substitute (such as fixed-wing aircraft) is acceptable.


 * Now, I'm not suggesting that these examples are necessarily the best way of phrasing these points, and you may think that they are better reorganized some other way. (I do, however, think that "Whenever possible, write for a international audience" is an important point that should be made.) But reducing the number of points to three with an overarching principle for each makes them easier to remember, and we don't have to worry about adding a hierarchy. Regards, ProhibitOnions 18:34, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Did I mention that there is a solution to all this? PizzaMargherita 19:40, 21 February 2006 (UTC)


 * As soon as it goes into effect, I'll be happy to change the section to fit. What is the ETA for it getting installed on en? --TreyHarris 20:32, 21 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Hopefully never. It's not a very good solution to anything, except maybe making the markup impossible to read. — Omegatron 21:40, 21 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, then, it seems we need to strive to make these rules workable assuming it's not going to be installed, unless and until there's a firm ETA. --TreyHarris 22:16, 21 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Your request for "a firm ETA" sounds pretextuous. First of all, even if there was an ETA, as you point out, it wouldn't make the current rules any less ambiguous and cumbersome, and we would need to put up with them until the proposal is implemented. Second, you know very well that there can be no ETA without a consensus. I find it very unfortunate that people who oppose the proposal don't bother reading it properly (if at all) and leave a drive-by "oppose", producing arguments that have been addressed in the proposal itself. My hopes to engage the opposition in a discussion, as you can see in the discussion section, are constantly and invariably shattered.
 * Anyway, I'm glad you admit that the current rules are not workable. What is your solution to this problem? PizzaMargherita 18:14, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Changes to Cite.
I'd like to propose a few style changes to the output of the

Most researchers believe that HIV originated in sub-Saharan Africa ; it is now a global epidemic. Some authorities estimate that AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since it was first recognized on December 1, 1981, making it one of the most destructive epidemics in recorded history.

References


 * Then you can't control the list index character in any way (well, some ways, but that's not relevant here), the above becomes:


 * item


 * Working around that limitation and inserting a link where the digit is would mean scrapping standard lists alltogather and using something like:


 * &lt;span style="margin-left: 1.5em;"&gt; 1 .&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="margin-left: 1em"&gt;item&lt;/span&gt;


 * And of course it wouldn't be semantic markup anymore if you do that since there would be no way for the user agent to know that it was dealing with a list and that it should present it as such. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 01:13, 23 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks, well bearing in mind that I'm certainly no coder, losing the  element doesn't seem like a bad idea to me. As for it not being semantic markup, I'm pretty sure the W3C will promptly comply with whatever schema we deem fit. :-D --Dv82matt 03:28, 23 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Just trust me on this one, it's a horrible idea;) --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 15:34, 23 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Agreed. A list should remain an HTML list, for standards compliance and accessibility.  —Michael Z. 2006-02-23 15:40 Z 


 * Okay, well I like the idea of linking from the numbers but not if it means manually maintaining an ordered list. So I guess that means linking from something else. --Dv82matt 01:27, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Note: The discussion "Changes to Cite." continues in Archive 46.