Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section/Archive 15

'Lead section TT first sentence content'
Jargon. What does it mean, and why isn't it explained in the title? Thank you.GeorgeLouis (talk) 01:13, 8 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I hadn't noticed that before. It appears to be about Transclude text.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:55, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

A lead is not a lede
The term "lede" was deleted from this guideline, with consensus, for a reason. Why is it back in?


 * 1) A Wikipedia is a concise summary of an article that provides all the most crucial information that encapsulates the topic in a nutshell, so that a reader can immediately get an answer to the question "what/who is [topic] ", with no further reading.
 * 2) A journalistic is a teaser introduction to a longer piece that intentionally omits the most crucial details so that the reader is essentially forced into at least skimming the entire piece to find out what the story is. Update, 02:51, 28 February 2012 (UTC): As some cited sources point out, there is also a newspaper (versus, magazine, etc.) definition: an extremely brief intro to an article the provides nothing but the one or two most important facts in a bit more detail than the headline.

People not understanding this and writing Wikipedia leads as if they were journalistic ledes is a frequent, growing and decidedly non-trivial problem. By including "lede" as an alternative term for "lead" here, we are directly encouraging journalism-style abuse of the lead in Wikipedia articles. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 20:49, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The journalistic technique you refer is described as "burying the lead" at News_style; that would suggest that a good lede, is, as it says there, the sort of informative statement that we would want to encourage. I checked the usual suspect dictionaries, who mostly said "lede: same as lead" or gave a definition entirely compatible with our aims. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 20:54, 18 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Hmm, except others have contradicted this claim before: Perhaps the most salient comment from the previous version of this discussion:
 * "[D]ictionaries say that the term 'lede' is only used in News journalism, and the overall information appears to be that it is only applied to a particular style of introduction that is specific to News. News style ledes have a particular length, around 25 words, and you have to apply to 5 specific criteria. Our leads are nearly always longer than that and not all of those criteria are applicable for us either. In addition the style of a lede is unencyclopedic.Rememberway (talk) 05:46, 17 May 2011 (UTC)"
 * I.e., reliable sources clearly indicate that they are different words, not alternative spellings for the same thing, and that lede is a jargon term exclusive to news journalism, which Wikipedia is.


 * This looks to me like yet another case of WP:SPECIALSTYLE, and a particularly bad one, because the specialist preference here goes far beyond a spelling tweak, and is pushing a word with a very specific meaning in a way that is causing genuine encyclopedia problems. In several debates about this in the past, the consensus was clearly to remove "lede" and to not promote the "WP:LEDE" shortcut. The only support for including "lede" has been based on incorrect assumptions, namely that the terms are interchangeable and that lede doesn't have a specific meaning that is  WP-compatible. — SMcCandlish    Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 21:03, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

"Lede" and "lead" are the same word, just spelled differently to avoid confusion with the element Pb. The fact that the same word may have different meanings in different contexts is well established in English. Here is what I said about it sometime in 2011:
 * I don't think it really matters whether the term is in the first sentence of the MOS. Either way "lede" is the standard professional term, so plenty of people will use it (it's not as if removing it here causes people's vocabulary to change). The main argument I see for putting it here is to help people who may not recognize the spelling (note WP:LEDE redirects here). It seems like a very minor issue.

&mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 21:23, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
 * If it were a minor issue, it would not keep coming up. It's not a minor issue, because lede is not an alternative spelling of lead, though it obviously originated as one. It has a reliably sourced very specific meaning that is directly at odds with WP:LEAD (lead=summary, lede=teaser!) and people are confusing the concepts. There are innumerable awful leads on the project written as ledes.  This problem has been worsening not improving. Yes "lede"  a standard professional term, and that's precisely why it shouldn't be used here, and consensus has more than once already agreed it shouldn't be used here, because it means "frustrating teaser that near-forces more reading" not "informative summary that helps avoid wasting users' time". Adding/removing the term here  cause people's vocabulary to change.  Probably 99.something% of Wikipedians have never encountered "lede" before coming here. The only ones that would have are journalists, PR professionals, and university students in these fields. — SMcCandlish    Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 12:12, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Switching to Commonwealth English, you say? Aaaah, how nice to be reminded that the Canadians, British, Australians, and New Zealanders all share a head of state. (Jimmy Wales, of course, silly.) Tony   (talk)  12:39, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Anymore people keep forgetting about the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 18:05, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

As far as I can tell "lede" was inserted into the lede of this page after this discussion in September 2010, in which there was clear consensus to include it. Looking through the history, it seems that the stable state of the page since then has been to include "lede" in the lede. So the claim that there is consensus to remove it does not seem so strong; if there ever was such consensus, the discussion in September 2010 and the stability in the 18 months since then seem to have superseded it. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 18:04, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Also, it is not the point of a journalistic lede to hide information to convince the reader to read the rest of the article. News articles are meant to be written in an inverted pyramid style so that the reader can stop reading at any point without missing any more important information than they have already read, and so that editors can cut off paragraphs from the bottom if the story needs shortened. Compare News_style. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 18:13, 23 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Actually, it was added at least as early as January 2009, seen here.
 * I'm not convinced by SMcCandlish's claim that a lede is supposed to be a frustrating teaser. In my experience, and according to my dictionaries, lede simply means "introduction", e.g., here and, by the way, is not marked as being jargon in dictionaries like M-W.   WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:37, 23 February 2012 (UTC)


 * As a reasonably well-educated speaker of British English I had never come across "lede" until I hit Wikipedia, so assumed it was some strange US usage. I would encourage its suppression, as it doesn't seem to do anything positive for the encyclopedia - it either baffles or misleads, depending whether the reader has met the word before or not. "Lead" seems the right word to be using. Pam  D  23:40, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Rememberway (talk) 05:46, 17 May 2011 (UTC)"I.e., reliable sources clearly indicate that they are different words, not alternative spellings for the same thing, and that lede is a jargon term exclusive to news journalism, which Wikipedia is.
 * How would we "suppress" the standard American English usage? It's true that we could just not list it here, but people who write "lede" instead of "lead" would still do that, and WP:LEDE would still redirect here. The only advantage I see to including the term "lede" in the lede of this page is so that people who don't know it (e.g. many British English speakers) will at least realize it's an established usage. But regardless whether we include the word here, people will still use it. (Also, the claim that it is misleading is actually wrong; a journalistic lede is not a teaser, it is just the first couple sentences of a news story intended to give a summary of the most important facts.) &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 01:01, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * That's utter nonsense. "Lede" is not "the standard American English usage", it's a journalism and PR jargon word, and it's not limted to American usage. Trying to cast this as a WP:ENGVAR issue is misleading. Simply recycling the assertion that "lede" just means "short intro" when this has already been proven false is just WP:IDHT gaming. I repeat, again:"[O]thers have contradicted this claim before: Perhaps the most salient comment from the previous version of this discussion: [D]ictionaries say that the term 'lede' is only used in News journalism, and the overall information appears to be that it is only applied to a particular style of introduction that is specific to News. News style ledes have a particular length, around 25 words, and you have to apply to 5 specific criteria. Our leads are nearly always longer than that and not all of those criteria are applicable for us either. In addition the style of a lede is unencyclopedic.
 * — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 03:08, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

On Dictionaries: Oxford English Dictionary (searched online) does not include "lede" in this sense (only in 3 senses marked as "Obsolete" including "A people, nation, race. Also, persons collectively, ‘people’."). It is not included in Chambers Dictionary (1998) in any sense. We should not be using it Wikipedia. Pam D  09:16, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Wow, I had no idea lede was that journo-geeky insider jargonistic (probably because I do actually come from a PR background, so I'm used to its use in the context of journalistic writing).  While I can't see anything wrong with leaving WP:LEDE as a redirect, it's not a term we should be encouraging.  It confuses people who don't already understand the term fully, and it misdirects those who do into writing leads like journalistic ledes, a major problem site-wide already. — SMcCandlish    Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 09:38, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
 * In what way are people writing ledes here like journalistic ledes? The claim that journalistic ledes are meant to hide important details or serve as a teaser is simply false, as our article on news style explains. But in any case calling the first section the "lead" has exactly the same problems as calling it a "lede", because a British journalist would use the spelling "lead" for that word anyway. We'd have to use the other term, "introduction", if we wanted to avoid any conflation of Wikipedia ledes with journalistic ones. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 01:23, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
 * In every way applicable. See the various lead cleanup templates, and you'll in minutes if not seconds find numerous examples of excessively clipped newspaper style ledes masquerading as Wikipedai leads, that dismally fail to summarize the article an only provide the most basic hint what the "story" of the article is, alongside egregious "bury the lead"-style, frustrating "teasers" as typically found in magazine journalism, that intentionally hide information and essentially force the reader into digging. I'd bet good money that there would be a strong correlation between the writers of both types of awful-for-Wikipedia lead styles and their use of the jargon "lede", because people who do this are usually from journalism or PR backgrounds (either vocationally or by having taken public relations classes, worked on a school paper, etc.). Most editors intuitively understand what an encyclopedic lead should do; it takes experience with editorial modes that intentionally do something different to not "get it".  Using "lead" doesn't entirely raise the same problem because "lead" is a general term that British journalists also happen to use.  "Lede" is a news-journalism-only term with no application outside of journalism. THat said, I have zero objection to focusing on "introduction" and "intro" (I just added "intro", which was conspicuously absent for no good reason) and moving this page to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Intro section or something if that's a serious proposal. Anything to get people away from promoting the idea that the intro/lead sections of articles here are journo-style ledes of either of the unhelpful and non-encyclopedic newspaper and magazine varieties.— SMcCandlish    Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿ ¤ þ  Contrib.  14:40, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The word "lede" has always given me the impression that there is a knowledgeable/powerful group of editors who use an esoteric language and have no wish to include new members in their group. I've stuck around over the years, and decided to ignore whatever difference there is (or is intended to be) between the words "lead" and "lede", but I can't offhand think of another single example of such offputting jargon. Pam  D  08:24, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The phrase "lead section" is the same jargon, though. There's no difference at all intended between the words, the point of the spelling is just to avoid confusion with the element Pb. But, like I keep saying, the only real reason I see to include "lede" here is to help people who have not seen the American spelling before. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 11:26, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It's not; see above. "Lead" is general, and happens to overlap British journo usage. "Lede" is journo-only, and means only one of two things, both of them non-encyclopedic styles (newspaper extreme brevity, or magazine teaser). — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿ ¤ þ  Contrib.  14:40, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I've never come across the idea of inventing a different spelling to avoid confusion with a homograph (is it a US practice?) - most users of English learn to cope OK with many sets of letters which have multiple meanings, whether pronounced differently (wind, row, polish) or the same. But "lede"? Jargon of one particular industry (and possibly US-only at that), and inappropriate here. Pam  D  16:21, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It isn't a common U.S. practice. "Lead" referred to a metal strip used in the newspaper printing process, so it was convenient for employees to differentiate within internal documents (which the general public never saw), thereby ensuring that instructions weren't misinterpreted.
 * I agree that the spelling typically describes journalistic leads and could be misleading here. —David Levy 17:13, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

In-depth analysis of entire debate, from "lede" appearing here in 2006, to now
It was demanded of me to demonstrate consensus against "lede". Be careful what you wish for. Here's over five non-stop hours of research, reading and commentary, compressed down into quotes and observations, presented in chronological order (and skipping the ongoing version of the debate at WT:Manual of Style/Lead section, since it's right here and you don't have to dig in archives for it. Depending on your reading speed it should take 10 minutes or so to plow through. I wrote it as I was going, so it's a rapid-fire braindump, and probably has a bunch of typos. I'll clean it up and put it in a separate page for future reference, since I'm sure people will try to editwar "lede" back into the guideline again.

Analysis of previous "lede" debates

 * 20 June 2006: "Lede" is rather forcefully introduced – fatefully begins this long dispute by  "lead" with "lede", with no explanation.
 * 26 June 2006: Reversion starts happening only days later – "removed the esoteric 'lede'. For most editors it will be an unknown word, detracting from productivity rather than providing a helpful guideline". And so it begins.
 * June 2006: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section/Archive 1 – "Lede" is immediately controversial: "never heard of this before", "where does that come from?...Is someone having us on?", Lede' is a well-known technical term in the English-language journalism, writing, and typesetting fields" (journalism and, formerly, typesetting, and mostly not outside the US, but there's no evidence this is true of writing generally, and piles of evidence it isn't), "lede is a needlessly obscure term - it might be accurate, but [not helpful] for ... accessibility to as wide a selection of people as possible" ("might be accurate" but demonstrably isn't), "there are over 10,200 Google references to just the phrase 'Bury the lede (which is more journo jargon, in fact that phrase is the most common journo use, and not about encyclopedic writing! That 10K GHits are about the jargon usage just proves the point that it doesn't make sense here), "Do we really really need to introduce editors to yet one more specialized word? ...'Lead section' and 'Introductory section' are more recognizable terms for the subject being discussed." Note that even this early it was considered important to link it as lede if it appeared at all. This was always done whenever it was put back in except recently (when it's been either unlinked or liked to grossly misleading article prose about non-encyclopedic lede-writing). I've restored that wikt link, at least for while we still have this silliness in the guideline at all.
 * July 2006: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section/Archive 2 – people experimentally adding "lede" as an alternative term meets immediate resistance. "[I]s it appropriate to mention 'lede'? The intros of our articles aren't known as the 'lede'." (NB: Posted by someone who has lived for extended periods in both the UK and North America.) This demonstrates clearly that there was no general consensus to use this term because it was supposedly common, but rather that it's . The rationale that we should retain it because it's a real and common usage and removing it would be confusing is circular reasoning and putting the cart before the horse. It's blatantly fallacious. And it's been demonstrated false, since no confusion has ever been evident when it hasn't being the guideline, but confusion, strife and journalism-influenced, encyclopedically-poor writing of leads happen whenever it is added, to the present day, bordering on six solid years showing what a bad idea this is. It's misplaced "specialist style pleading". NB: That its inclusion in the guideline is causing it to be used on WP, not it's use on WP leading to an inexorable consensus to include it in the guideline, is easily statistically provable by simply observing how rapidly and severely the usage of "lede" declines in the guideline's talk archives in the months after "lede" is removed from the guideline text. More on that later. A wider corpus of usage in article talk will surely demonstrate the same effect (esp. if over-use by small numbers of prolific posters here is accounted for), and show a concordant rise in usage when WP:LEAD wrongly promotes this term.
 * July 2006: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section/Archive 2 – This absurdly-named thread posits "No need for Wiki to be old fashioned and reject new words", when of course we do precisely that all the time, following boring, fuddy-duddy, yawn-inducing style and usage authorities like dictionaries, the major style guides on both sides of the pond, other encyclopedias with high-end professional editorial staffs, etc., and rejecting neologistic shite. The proponent says the usage has grown beyond journalism, but then undermines his own argument by citing "how to write" guides that are largely about how to write for journalism. Another editor cites more-reliable sources that show it's just journo jargon. Proponent digs up some usages from fiction, and the opponent quits, but the debate lost the fact that most fiction writers come out of journalistic backgrounds. No sources cited in favor of the usage are things like style guides, dictionaries, encyclopedias or other reference works that might show that the term is in common general usage outside journalism. Because it's not. It's also proven to be mostly an American journalism term, making it not only jargonistic but just geographically colloquial jargon.
 * 28 May 2007: Worse confusion ensues – people start insisting on linking "lede" to News style, which is about the worst thing we could do, because it goes into great detail about the newspaper journalism style, and thus (despite the footnote-hidden disclaimer not to do so; talk about "burying a lede"). This marks the beginning of "lede" in this guideline being not just weird and confusing and irritating, but palpably detrimental to encyclopedic purposes, for no purpose other than to let some journalist editors get their way and push their jargon on everyone.
 * 3 August 2007: Revertwarring like this has sporadically happened over the last 5+ years. Opponents of "lede" say it looks like a typo, it's confusing, it causes problems, etc., while proponents of it just stamp their feet and insist, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, "lede is correct". Cf. WP:SFF again. This WP:IDHT nonsense is the #1 tactic of those who insist on pushing specialist jargon, spelling, punctuation, etc., for personal or professional-habit reasons with no regard to its negative effects on the encyclopedia and its audience, which is the world's most general in all of history. They really need to get with the program and see the global encyclopedia forest instead of their nitpicky "give me my jargon or give me death" trees.
 * 7 August 2007: We finally stop promoting the shortcut WP:LEDE; over the ensuing months, use of "lede" instead of "lead" predictably and palpably declines on WP. See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section/Archive 7 with (and it's a criticism!) of "lede" from Feb. through June 2008 (5 months), in 15 topics plus subtopics, in 8,700 words.  Contrast this with the previous year's Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section/Archive 3, from May through June 2007 (3 months), 15 topics with some subtopics, none of them debates about the term (which would necessarily skew the results) and  occurences in 35,000 words. Some easy math: That's a drop in frequency to 1 use in 8,000 words from a former 1 in 1,167. That's more than a  in usage after just a few months in late 2007 to January 2008 of not pushing "lede" in everyone's faces and promoting it as "Wiki-preferred". Rapidly, most editors naturally went back to plain English instead of obscure jargon. I advance this as clear mathematical evidence that the idea that "we use it because it's common and because if we don't people will get confused – we're just being descriptivist" is pure, unadulterated hogwash.  And (please bookmark this discussion, those of you who think about this sort of thing) it's a great case study against excessive use of our own internal wikijargon (which most editors think "lede" is), and against making WP even more jargonistic by accepting terminological and stylistic practices imported from specialist fields into a general-purpose encyclopedia unless for very good reasons on a case-by-case basis.
 * October 2007: I first tried to rectify this mess by boldly removing "lede" from WP:LEAD's lead heh on the basis that we're encouraging the writing of journalistic style ledes instead of encyclopedic lead sections. Please note that this problem was raised explicitly ; this is not news (no pun intended) . My change was immediately reverted on the false basis that "'lead section' is just as journalistic as 'lede section', since they mean exactly the same thing. It's good to point out the spelling 'lede' (I would support moving this guideline to that name)." What a horrible idea! As explained earlier in the February 2012 cycle of the debate, the fact that use the terms interchangeably does not make them synonymous outside of journalism. "Lead section", "lead", "lead-in", "leader", "lead paragraph", and so forth are used both in and out of journalism, on both sides of the pond. "Lede" is used almost exclusively in journalism, and mostly American news journalism. See the philosophical and mathematical concept of "not equal to".  I left the issue alone for a long time.
 * February 2008: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section/Archive 7 – the fact that "lede" is confusing and misleading is raised starkly: "A lede is a term primarily from journalism, and is usually just a paragraph or just a very few sentences, but an introduction is very typically a whole distinct section. Isn't this guideline really on article introductions?" No one contradicted this, though no one then supported a move to using "introduction" instead of "lead" in the name of the guideline (an idea that's just come up again).
 * June–July 2008: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section/Archive 8 – The inclusion has sparked confusion and controversy: "Is this vandalism, or is it some jargon...?", "It's journalist jargon", "A piece of pretentious ignorance", "I was taken aback the first time I saw it.", "[It's used] to differentiate from lead: 'tip, clue to a good story'" (not relevant on WP), "removing it would confuse people" (this was proven false by removing it for many months, more than once), "the etymology is [as disambiguation from the element Pb, 'lead';] a strip of the metal [was] used to separate type" (not relevant to WP), "It's surely not necessary to include every synonym. It's not a thesaurus entry, dictionary entry or even an encyclopedia article; it's just a guide for editors...[lede] is just a bit of distracting clutter". supported it (even the one who thought removal might cause confusion reversed himself and removed it from the guideline text.
 * August 2008: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section/Archive 8 – someone cared enough to finally suggest putting it back in, but under the straw man argument "lede is not so dead as some suggest", when no one had suggested it was dead (it's simply excessively jargonistic and is being grossly misapplied here to mean the near-opposite of it actual definition - an excessively inclusive introduction to a piece). The proponent also suggested it would be "for the benefit of those who may be confused by the variant spelling, but as already noted, there is no evidence of any confusion happening when it's left out of the guideline, only when it's included! The proponent seals his case's doom with "the lede spelling is ... in active use in the news industry", citing three journalism publishers. That is  exclusively news jouro jargon is the whole problem.  NB: The term  based on an archaism (more on that below) and is clearly obsolete, even if not extinct yet, because its rationale for existence – distinguish the written word from the metal homonym as used in old mechanical typography – is moot in the age of electronic printing.
 * August 2008: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section/Archive 8 – "RH [The Random House Dictionary] is engaging in folk etymology to support the unsupportable.", "The term is in active use by the Associated Press" (yes, we know; that's the issue - no one outside of journo houses does so), "Whether lede's in use is irrelevant. 'Irregardless' is in use, too, but it's still bad English.", "The use of the word, 'lede', is just an attempt to be elitist, especially since there is hardly any verification that it is in current common usage", "Wikipedia is not a newspaper, magazine, or journal. The word is archaic, elitist, and irrelevant." (technically it's "neo-archaic" and obsolescent, heh), "I fail to see how the history of the term is relevant in any way." (of course pushers of specialist style say this all the time, and assume that no one else cares because they don't), same writer: "Arguments about the term being élitist are irrelevant" (of course pushers of specialist style say this all the time, and assume that no one else cares because they don't), same writer: "The only reason to include the word in the lede of this page is for the benefit of those who aren't familiar with [this] other spelling yet." (which is an utterly bankrupt reason that amounts to "The only reason to include it is because I like it and I want to force you to learn it, sooner rather than later"; see WP:NOT, WP:NOT). This go-around,, the one I've quoted extensively here, who pops up to re-re-recycle the same arguments in these debates, as if they had never been debunked already, much less every single time. "Lede" was removed as a result of this debate.
 * January 2009: "Lede" was put back in with no discussion – it was immediately flagged as jargon and wiktionaried, but tolerated for a while. Those of us watching out for it eventually got bored and stopped doing "neighborhood lede watch". Another common specialist style-pushing strategy is to wait until critics of the proposal have moved on and then try again and hope no one notices. Fail? Wait and try again. And again. This is slow-moving version of the "asking the other parent" form of forum shopping (here, looking for a new human audience of editors who might support instead of oppose, simply by means of temporal attrition and retrying in the same place rather than re-posting on a new page).
 * January–August 2010: no actual rationale for "lede"), "for a news article it summarizes the story; for entertainment or feature stories the lede is a 'teaser (the former is false - we know from reliable sources that define "lede" in newsroom usage that it means a highly pared nutshell of only the most important couple or handful of facts, nothing like an encyclopedic introduction; the latter is true, and the main problem here!), same editor: "We have to keep our readers in mind..."lede" is much more specific" (yes, we shouldn't push journo jargon on them, and yes, "specific"ally non-encyclopedic; proponents of "lede" are making their opponents' points), same editor: "that makes it 'jargon'... the inside language used by editors among themselves, and not meant for the general readership. Exactly what we need as editors for the talk page" (I'm glad to finally see a concession that it's insider jargon, but am completely dumbfounded that anyone here could forget that, so that made no sense whatsoever), etc. This one's worth repeating in near-entirety: "I do see the term 'lede' as being completely pointless complication. Everyone knows what 'lead' is, and even if they didn't it would be pretty darn obvious what it means. 'Ledel looks like a typo to the uninitiated. Is there any benefit what-so-ever to using the term 'lede'? ... So we're just confusing people to no benefit at all. Why?". More from others: "People who write for Wikipedia will want to stretch their language a bit." (there's no policy that suggests this; it's an elitist and highly un-wiki position to take, and the suggestion that we have to learn some particular special flavor of jargon, e.g. from journalism, is just out of the question; see again WP:SOAPBOX, WP:TEXTBOOK), "I was uninitiated. But I came to understand what it meant on Wikipedia" (further concrete proof that "lede" in the guideline is not reflecting practice, but wrongly compelling it by confusing people into thinking it's WP jargon).  Another to quote at length: "Frankly, all the above justifications [for 'lede'] sound like elitism to me. I'm not saying that's what anyone intended, but that's how it comes across. It sounds like saying 'lede' is cool because it's something others don't know and won't understand, a badge of honor for an insider's club. Jargon is useful if it serves a purpose by saving work or being specific. This is none of that...the term should be deprecated...It's an active detriment to clear communication, used only because it's obscure." "I was confused and thought "lede" was a British spelling like kerb or gaol. Now that I understand it, I see no reason to prefer it over "lead", which is perfectly fine and does not cause any confusion.", next editor: "I was assuming it was US English. Off with its head!", "I also don't like 'lede.' There's historically a reason journalists use it, and there isn't for us. Also, what journalists call a lede is not what we call a lead anyway. For most readers, it will just look like a spelling mistake.", "It looks like most editors do not like 'the lede'.", "readers will want to understand what it means and will look for that here" (nah; "it will just look like a spelling mistake", and anyone really curious knows how to put "lede" in the search box here or at Wikitionary), and "The best way to disfavor its use is to not mention it at all.", and finally "My dictionaries give lede as an altered spelling of the noun lead (defined as a short summary serving as an introduction to a news story, article, or other copy), introduced to avoid confusion with the metal, without giving a distinction in meaning." (note lack of citations, and we've already seen that most dictionaries don't have it at all, while those that do, among other reliable source mostly contradict this notion).   "Lede" was removed as a result of this strong-consensus discussion, and it stayed out with no controversy for a long time.
 * 19 September 2010: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section/Archive 13 was posted in response to somone putting "lede" back in without discussion or consensus a few days earlier, others taking it back out., victory was declared by "lede"-pushers, and the term was put back in the guideline text. But the rationales given make no sense: User:CBM again: "[L]ede" is the standard professional term" (, not encyclopedia writing or anything else; see WP:NOT), and "it's not as if removing it here causes people's vocabulary to change" (except that it been absolutely proven to do so, or more to the point that pushing said jargon in WP:LEAD causes it to be incorrectly adopted and misused by people who don't understand what it really means), and "The main argument I see for putting it here is to help people who may not recognize the spelling" (this non-rationale has already been debunked three different ways), and "It seems like a very minor issue." (of course pushers of specialist style say this all the time, and assume that no one else cares because they don't; ignore the majority who disagree. Here's another, which shows how the confusion works its black magic: "[I]t is used by editors. So it should be in the guideline, which is meant to be descriptive more than prescriptive...it'll help prevent confusion" ( about that has been shown to be backasswards). A more sensible comment: "It doesn't need to be in the guideline." (Right! Same editor points out we have an article at Lead paragraph that explains the concept and even the etymology of "lede" and what "lede" specifically means, so the "confusion" nonsense is entirely out the window), "[L]ede is journalistic jargon. Wikipedia is not journalism and should avoid unecessary jargon when there is no realistic chance of confusion... promoting this unusual word probably leads to more confusion than just omitting it entirely.", "[L]ede is an innacurate word to use to describe the lead paragraphs of Wikipedia articles", "As I understand it, 'lede' isn't necessarily a 'teaser'; I've always thought of it as...President Kennedy was shot and killed yesterday afternoon in Dallas (that editor does understand it perfectly: both magazine-style teasers and newspaper-style barely-more-than-headlines are  encyclopedic, and they are the only two non-vague definitions ever reported here in reliable sources); "In standard journalistic practice..." (WP:NOT journalism, so WP doesn't care, and it's not true anyway, it's simply common in two kinds of principally American journalism), ""Burying the lede" is to hide the most salient fact deep in the story..." (yes, we know, and that is a red herring, since no one is talking about buried "ledes", but about the two actual-practice types of lede reported in reliable sources – too-short nutshells and sneaky teasers), and finally CBM re-re-repeats "just a different spelling of the same word" (proven false every time he says this, year after year).  Supporters of "lede" then organized and posted a series of rapid-fire formal Keep !votes, which were predictably incoherent rehash and which everyone else just ingnored as noise; here they are in order: 1) "it's a synonym", which has been proven false; 2) "taught in college-level journalism", which simply proves it's journo jargon, which isn't appropriate here; 3) "It is an English language word variant", which is a non-rationale ("thither" and "ain't" and "dat's wack, bee-ach" are variant English too, but that doesn't make them encyclopedic), and amounts to another false assertion of synonymy; 4) "for the same reasons described above", an argument to avoid here; and 5) a bogus WP:ENGVAR claim. ENGVAR: Just because some extremely field-specific jargon isn't common in the UK doesn't mean that it's general usage in the US; it's not, and it's still extremely field-specific jargon. The !voter who brought up ENGVAR in this September 2010 discussion destroyed his own point by praising UK dictionaries for how great they are at noting American usage, yet pointing out that none of those he consulted even knew this usage existed, making it super-duper-mega-geeky, not just parochial. In point of fact, to really blow the ENGVAR thing out of the water, it  in the 2nd ed. of the Oxford English Dictionary, as "obsolete" since they'd been going out of their way to collect strange usages). We know for a fact from other sources mentioned in other version of this debate that the Middle English spelling was pulled back from the linguistic graveyard, thirty-odd year ago, specifically because of confusion with a typesetting term. It's an obsoletism that's been resurrected as a neologism, so it's doubly not standard English. To depth-charge the sunken wreck of the ENGVAR argument, neither the American Heritage Dictionary (the conservative, prescriptivist one) nor most (if any) Merriam-Webster print editions (the more liberal and more descriptive works) have an entry for it, and these are by  the most-used American English dictionaries between the two, AHD and MW. I don't think anyone really pays attention to what the Random House Dictionary, which is notoriously unreliable, says.  Webster's New World Dictionary: Not listed. Webster's II (Riverside): Not listed.  Even the massive Webster's Third International unabridged, the second largest English-language dictionary in the world after the OED: Not listed.  M-W.com only in the last few years, because it is neologistic, narrow jargon perhaps only 36 years old, finally added a relevant definition for it in their "is not paper" online edition. But get this, it's a piece of "smoking gun" evidence  using it here! "lede (noun) \ˈlēd\ : the introductory section of a news story that is intended to entice the reader to read the full story. Alteration of lead. First known use: 1976."  I.e., America's favorite dictionary publisher say it is, and only is, a recentism referring to a manipulative teasers, exclusively in newswriting). I couldn't make this up! After being hijacked in a "let's !vote after everyone else has left, and ignore their arguments to pretend we have unanimity" move, the derailed debate ends with an ironic comment showing that the usage is confusing for no net gain and is definitely being perceived as a "Wikipedianism".


 * It is patently clear that only a WP:False consensus was made to add it back in, reached by less than 24 hours of discussion, involving !votes by no one but five fans of the term (everyone else had already said their piece and moved on, almost uniformly against), that did not provide a sound rationale for the reversion of its previous long-standing removal, which was arrived at after a much longer discussion (i.e., an actual consensus, especially taking into account the general revulsion that dates to 2006, and rose to a strong tide in 2008). It's not been re-addressed until now because most people DGaF and have not noticed the correlation between the rise of "lede" being prominently used in this guideline and the increase in crappy lead sections that mirror newspaper or magazine style (or sometimes, awfully, both).

So, good luck demonstrating consensus to keep this confusing, misleading and strife-generating term in the guideline. I "rest my case", "QED", etc.

— SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿ ¤ þ  Contrib.  20:45, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Comments
All I can say is essentially what I have said before: I don't think it really matters whether the term is in the first sentence of the MOS Really: I don't think it really matters and I have no plans to re-insert it if it is removed, just as I was not the one who re-inserted it in 2010 and I will not be the one to re-insert it when it is removed again after it is added again in a few months.

I do think that the long arguments presented in the collapsed box above provide a nice example of how English prescriptivism can work in the context of the MOS, and that these arguments are generally as full of content as the standard arguments against ending sentences with prepositions. We know how long people have maintained that particular bugbear, so it's not too surprising that those who are uncomfortable with "lede", for whatever reason, will find reasons not to like it, even while those who are comfortable with it find those reasons lacking. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 22:37, 27 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I certainly don't think this guideline needs a great big spiel stuck in about lede. Isn't it enough to just say that some people don't like the term without quoting dictionaries etc.? And to back that I can point to WP:POLICY. Does anyone here actually really think we use verifiability or reliable sources or primary or secondary or original research in a way that is accurately reflected in dictionaries? Juts mention some people don' like it and leave it at that. Dmcq (talk) 10:33, 29 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree; the first sentence could just say "The lead section (also known as the lead, lede, introduction or intro) ..." and the rest of the text about "lede" could be eliminated. The fact that ledes on Wikipedia are different than ledes on newspapers is obvious to anyone familiar with both, and meaningless to anyone who is not familiar with both. In particular, readers who don't know the spelling "lede" will not also use that spelling as a cue to write in newspaper style, since we already said they don't know what the spelling "lede" means.


 * I can imagine two editors having the following conversation:
 * A: I need to edit the lead of this article.
 * B: Why would you edit the lede?
 * A: It's turning into too much of a lede.
 * B: What? I thought you said the lede?
 * A: Right, I didn't want the lead to be a lede.
 * B: What do you want the lede to be?
 * A: A lead!
 * Nobody uses the words in contrasting senses like A does there. The people who use "lede" simply use it as a synonym of "lead", and the MOS can just present it in that way. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 12:24, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * This is getting like Airplane! "Surely you can't be serious", "I am serious. And don't call me Shirley," ;-) Dmcq (talk) 12:39, 29 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I think you've missed far too much of the debate. The is that saying things like "also known as the lede" has caused problems and raised 4+ years of frequent dispute. Just the last point alone, per WP:BATTLEGROUND, is enough to either remove the term, and revert attempts to reinsert it, or explicitly deprecate it, which is more practical. If it causes strife for no clear gain, throw it out. It's just commonsensical (and here's some some keywords for WP "issues" over the years that resonate similarly: Esperanza, spoiler warnings, and date linking & autoformatting).  Wikipedians who have picked up "lede" believing it to be cool insider Wikipedia jargon – and it's been shown that there are many of them – use it as synonymous.  By very stark contrast, everyone with an (American, anyway) journalism and PR background, even just from one class in college or from working on the high school newspaper, already has a concrete and deeply set notion of what "lede" means and exactly how a lede works and is written (and not even a consistent notion - newspaper vs. magazine/TV journalists mean something very different but still very definite by it). It's nothing like a WP lead. Most of these people will not even read a guideline linked to from "WP:LEDE" because they already know what it is, they think. Same result if they see "lede" as synonymous with "lead section" at the top of this guideline. "I know how to write a lede already; moving on".  The encyclopedia is chock-full of journalistic leads (especially in BLPs, which makes it an even more major problem than it might be otherwise).  Even non-journalistic editors are subtly influenced to write more news-style after adopting this term.


 * There is a clear consensus, reviewing the weight of debates since 2006, to deprecate "lede". A lede in the journo sense (which is the only sense this neologistic and barely sourceable jargon has) is not at all a WP lead. I agree that the recent wording was too much. I was not the one who started adding footnotes and sources; defenders of "lede" did that, misleadingly.  I'll go make another edit to pare that down, and see if it sticks. — SMcCandlish    Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿ ¤ þ  Contrib.  15:13, 1 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I've chopped all that stuff by around 70%, here. Hopefully it will settle in. My real preference it to never mention lede at all, but someone would just editwar it back in, odds are, since this has happened many times already. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿ ¤ þ  Contrib.  15:38, 1 March 2012 (UTC)


 * What would it mean to "deprecate" a word in this sense? The MOS covers article content, not talk page content, and the use of "lede" is on talk pages, not in articles themselves. The MOS can't change the actual English language that editors use when they communicate with each other, which is why I think the only benefit of mentioning it is to help those who don't recognize the spelling. This is a general problem with English prescriptivism: no matter how many times someone says "ain't isn't a word" or "don't split infinitives", they are unlikely to actually change the way native speakers use the language. The arguments against "lede" seem to be some combination of personal dislike of the word (or of "specialist" usages in general) and prescriptivism about how Wikipedians should express themselves. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 16:02, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Why split hairs? MOS promulgates styles rules of all kinds, a large number of which affect non-article pages as well as articles. You know what "deprecate" means, and the guideline text doesn't use that word anyway, even in the footnote. It just explains the facts of this situation – what lede is, where it comes from, what it means, and how it isn't comparable to what WP means by lead – without saying anything judgmental about users of the term.  It has nothing to do with "like", and everything to do with "this guideline is not going to promote a term that is directly misleading editors into writing news-style ledes instead of encyclopedia leads." We have reliable sources taht they are not synonyms, so using them as if they are is wrong and worse than pointless anyway. — SMcCandlish    Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿ ¤ þ  Contrib.  15:35, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * "The MOS can't change the actual English language that editors use when they communicate with each other"? I think, and hope, that it can.  I like the current version (though perhaps "lede" does need to be in bold as target of redirect from WP:Lede?).  It acknowledges the existence of this other, strange, word, but does not encourage its use. "Lede" is not familiar to the generality of educated native speakers of British English: I cannot speak for the minority who are journalism specialists, or for speakers of other variants of English, but the absence from my two main dictionaries (OED and Chambers) suggests it is not common. If editors use such a jargon term, the implication is that it means something other than what is meant by the common word "lead", and this is puzzling and offputting to the novice editor.  Pam  D  17:46, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * "Draught beer" is unfamiliar to the generality of educated native speakers of American English. Therefore if British speakers use this spelling, they must mean something other than the common American term "draft beer", and this is puzzling and offputting. I don't think this sort of argument would convince an educated British speaker to change they way they spell the word, and it would require some audacity for me to tell them that even though they are an educated native speaker, I know their language better than they do. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 19:51, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * That's a totally inapplicable, if cute, comparison, since "lede" is unfamiliar to the generality of educated native speakers of American English, too, and all other varieties, period. It's not a word in normal use; it's news journalism jargon, and we have multiple reliable sources for that. No amount of wishing or assertion on your part is going to change that.  Not that I support the notion that it's MOS's job to "change the actual English language used by editors when the communicate with each other" here, though MOS:LEAD including the term lede as if it were a synonyms has actually be having precisely that effect, with unhelpful consequences. I'm going to quote you as writing "I don't think it really matters and I have no plans to re-insert it". So why generate more argument about it? If it's not important, just walk away. — SMcCandlish    Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿ ¤ þ  Contrib.  15:35, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The issue had been stable since September 2010, until you started this thread, apparently for the purpose of re-opening the discussion on it. If you didn't want anyone to respond, what was the purpose of your original post? I think there is some value in pointing out what I see as the general flaws in the arguments against "lede" that are sometimes presented, because otherwise editors who don't realize may think that those arguments are generally accepted.
 * I never said I didn't want anyone to respond. I didn't even say I didn't want you to respond. I pointed out that said it didn't matter yet you still keep arguing, which indicates that you are simply "sport arguing", a WP:NOT problem (both #FORUM and #BATTLEGROUND). You've attempted to poke holes in others' arguments (and do so again immediately below), while avoiding the main one. — SMcCandlish    Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿ ¤ þ  Contrib.  17:16, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * In this case, the argument against mentioning the spelling "lede" seems to be (1) that people who don't know the spelling "lede" will see it here, and despite not knowing what it means they will view it as a sign to change the way that they write ledes on Wikipedia; (2) the idea that journalistic ledes omit crucial information - except that they do not, this is called "burying the lede" and is considered bad writing, and news stories are supposed to have the most important information near the beginning, not hidden lower down; (3) possibly, among some editors, a general dislike of specialized terminology; (4) possibly, among some editors used to British English, unfamiliarity with this American spelling and consequent discomfort with it - notwithstanding that "lead section" would have exactly the same meaning for a British journalist as "lede section" would for an American one, including any meanings that differ from ledes on Wikipedia. I don't see any of these reasons as very compelling. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 19:00, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * None of those are the principal argument at all, which is that reliable sources that provide a specific definition of "lede" give definitions that are incompatible with WP:LEAD. This has been explained to you many times. Please stop playing WP:IDHT. — SMcCandlish    Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿ ¤ þ  Contrib.  17:16, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * The ENGVAR-related arguments just aren't convincing. Okay, PamD isn't familiar with lede.  I have no idea what a draught beer is (other than, I assume, some kind of beer).  Draught beer isn't in my dictionary, either.  We are, therefore, apparently equal in our ignorance about these two terms:  we each know what one of them means, and we each are ignorant of the other term.  Shall we therefore excise both lede and draught beer from our talk pages, so that neither of us ever encounters an unfamiliar term?
 * I believe that the fact that (1) the spelling lede is actually being used by editors and (2) other editors [e.g., PamD] don't recognize that spelling is a compelling argument for including it in an "also known as a lede, lead section, introduction, etc" sort of way. That way, when editors who happen to be ignorant of this particular spelling come to this page, they will immediately see that it's just a variant spelling for something they already know and understand.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:11, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The current wording is perfectly fine. The term is included, but effectively deprecated because . The fact that some editors user it here has also been demonstrated to be mostly a "monkey see, monkey do" fad directly traceable to promotion of the WP:LEDE shortcut as "Wikipedia jargon"; as soon as that appeared, "lede" usage shot up like rocket on WP, and as soon as that shortcut was no longer advertised here, the usage dropped like a rock. There's years of debate on this, analyzed in detail above, and all of it boils down to "okay, fine,  it in passing so people stop periodically editwarring to add it back, but make it clear that it's  a synonym, it's newsroom jargon with meanings that conflict with MOS:LEAD." — SMcCandlish    Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿ ¤ þ  Contrib.  17:16, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Anchoring the lead paragraph.
Can the standard for the lead paragraph be changed to include an anchor?

Wikipedia is the natural home for glossary information required by other websites. Rather than building their own glossaries, web authors should be able to link directly to Wikipedia. However the critical information in a Wikipedia article is in the lead sentence, and I can find no way to link directly to that paragraph the way I can link to the following sections in the article. That omission may be unimportant when an author uses an endnotes style of glossary references, but it makes using Wikipedia difficult for authors to use frames to provide footnotes that can be read simultaneously with the page using the defined term.

For example, if I am writing a page that discusses Aristotle's concept of causality, I can use the URI "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality#Aristotle" in a link, with a target of MyFootnoteFrame and the Wikipedia article on causality will open in that frame directly at that section. But if I use the URI "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality" the article opens at the top of the page with (today) three inches of page space before the lead sentence. For the purpose of putting footnotes in a compact frame, that effect is quite undesirable.

I tried adding ' ' to the lead sentence (I now think '  ' would have been better), but that was remove (by Izno) as "unstandard".

So what is the standard practice, or what should be the standard practice, to enable authors to point directly to the lead sentence? What should be the standard URI (URL + # + anchor) to that sentence? Should a shortcut template be added so that users can obtain the URI? What instructions should be placed in this MOS article to guide Wikipedia editors in entering lead paragraph anchors? Is it possible that such anchors (and shortcuts) could be generated automatically?

Since I am in the process of building a website that requires a good glossary that I can present in a footnotes frame, I would appreciate some guidance. Should I put my efforts in upgrading Wikipedia to serve this need, or should I write my own glossary that simply links to Wikipedia? DrFree (talk) 17:00, 11 March 2012 (UTC)


 * This is outside my area of competence, but anchor allows you to create anchors wherever you want. Also, the folks over at WT:ACCESS usually know about things like this, so you might ask them.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:41, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Articles at Wikipedia should not have obfuscating wikitext added simply for the convenience of external websites. I have removed from Uniform resource identifier because it does not assist the article and has the potential to confuse editors (why is it there? what is it for?). For assistance with technical issues, see WP:VPT although that page is intended for editors working within Wikipedia. Johnuniq (talk) 04:16, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * By the way, proposals for procedural changes (such as adding an anchor to each article) can be made at WP:VPR. Johnuniq (talk) 06:33, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Proposal for graphical development of page headers
Wikipedia seems to crave images. I help out at the Graphic Lab and I'm often amazed by the seeming desparation to get more images onto Wikipedia, as evidenced by the sheer volume of low-quality images uploaded for want of a better image. (Where no image would be preferable, IMO.) And then there's pages like the Main Page and Portal pages that are as ugly as sin. Forgive my nostalgia but when I was a child I used to read encyclopedias for fun, and the images and diagrams were intrinsic to that experience. I'd like to see Wikipedia change drastically in terms of graphical content. Not just thumbnails everywhere but some sort of modern day illumination, with greater freedom of expression possible, making WP a more appealing read. By way of an example, what does anyboby think of this mockup of a graphical page header? (Further links are in the image description.) Any comments would be appreciated. Regards, nagualdesign (talk) 15:46, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Looks good, but would be a huge target for vandalism and argument (also, how would the fade be done?). It would also be problematic for those on smaller screens and the title may not be readable, would depend on what's behind it. Probably too many issues to implement, but if you wanted to try to get consensus, I suggest WP:VPP. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 22:21, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Cheers for the feedback. In answer to your questions, the fade would be part of the image and the background would always be specifically designed to cope with different text overlays, just as we do when designing websites. In this instance the clouds could be removed and the sky lightened slightly to provide a cleaner backdrop to the text. In the case of Portal:Space, for example, it could be a starfield (example) and the page title could be rendered in white instead of the usual black (check out the logo on my user page). At the moment the page just has a black table background. It's surely meant to represent space but it's hardly Web 2.0 is it. As with all things wiki, images would be proffered and then chosen by popular demand. They would be no more susceptible to abuse than they are already. nagualdesign (talk) 04:52, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Your illustration is lovely, and would work somewhat well for a small number of pages on wikipedia. There are, you're right, many low quality images on wikipedia, but I'd prefer a LQI to no image: information first, aesthetics second. YMMV, of course. There are few arguments against a desire to improve the quality and layout of images on wikipedia; but there are also limitations that you need to take on board; not least that we serve multiple platforms across a range of connection types - including restricted bandwidth connections. This is why, for instance, we use thumbnails: we prioritise small size over aesthetics. You are showing no evidence in your post of any other consideration but aesthetics. So. It'd be great if we could improve the look of wikipedia, but we - you - need to understand all the use cases before you charge ahead. Here's a pair: how do these things - for instance your lovely mock-up - work for partially sighted users, or on screen readers? --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:01, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I foresee huge POV arguments about what is the "primary" image. Dunno how we could get around that. Also, could someone draw up an image of how it would look with, say, a giant staring Jimbo on top? (Or any large sitenotice really...) I'm worried that we might run seriously low on vertical space. --Yair rand (talk) 20:14, 14 February 2012 (UTC)


 * You can get Wikipedia on your mobile/smartphone, right? Is it the same page that's served to mobile devices or do they view a different version? The header background image would simply be ignored by page readers (bgimages have no alt tag) and the page title would be treated no differently to any other page. As well as being designed with an ample 'bleed' to allow the image to accomodate varying widths, it could also respond to the window width by using one of a range of images at different sizes (2 or 3 would be more than enough), that way the smallest size could be no image at all (perhaps just a colour fade to provide a suitable backdrop to the title). I imagine that the code that changes the number of columns on a page depending on the window width would hold the key to swapping between images. Again, I don't see why there should be arguments about what is the "primary" image any more than there is now. I suppose the largest obstacle is, as you say, varying bandwidths. Is there an opt in/opt out system for graphical content on WP (apart from default thumb size)? nagualdesign (talk) 21:15, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

That mockup looks brilliant. Nagualdesign, I hope you have not goven up because of Tagishimon. The problems he and others mentions will only be encountered if poor.y implemented and can be easily avoided. I really appreciate your enthusaism and I think that graphic artists are not given due credit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.66.202.85 (talk) 04:57, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Lead section for World Expo 88
I was wondering if the lead section on the World Expo 88 was adequate. The article contains 26,566 characters and has a 2 paragraph lead. I added the Lead too short template last year. It hasn't been expanded since and has now been removed from the article by User:Pmsyyz, who has been removing the template from articles when the lead is clearly too short. I have asked him to stop doing that but he continues to remove the template regardless. Can I get some clarification? - Shiftchange (talk) 06:07, 24 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Why don't you expand the lead yourself, if you think it needs expanding? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:03, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

"refers to"
Yugoslavia does not "refer to" such and such. It "was", rather, such and such. This is not a dictionary. I'd be interested in knowing what percent of articles in English Wikipedia start with this flawed phrase. It really should be focused on in the style manual. The phrase "refers to" suggests the article is to be about the word or term that is the title of the article. However, this is in the vast majority of Wikipedia articles not at all the case.

In Wiktionary, it would be a fairly good way to start an article, using this "refers to" expression. In Wikipedia, however, it is in most cases simply nonsense. The topic of articles here in Wikipedia are in almost all cases about a topic that the title "refers to" ... not about the article title words themselves. Which is to say, this article should not start out by focusing on the word "Yugoslavia" (which it does as it is now), but should instead focus simply on Yugoslavia. The article should not at all begin with talking about what Yuguslavia "refers to", but should instead start out by saying that Yugoslavia "was" a series of political entities and so on. I hope it won't be too many years until the administrators finally realize how silly it looks how so many articles start out with this "refers to" silliness. Please take this topic to your leaders, guys. :-) It's been a blemish on Wikipedia for years. --31.45.79.44 (talk) 03:01, 2 April 2012 (UTC)


 * In general, "refers to" is indeed bad. But in this case, although there was a series of entities that were Yugoslavia, we can't say that Yugoslavia was a series of entities any more than we can say that the King of England was a series of people. The first word of the article Yugoslavia does not have to be the title of the article, but there doesn't seem to be an easy fix to the first sentence by just replacing a word or rearranging. A complete rewrite would be needed. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 03:10, 2 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Carl, yeah, I follow your observation that you make there. Rewrites and such may be necessary in this and other cases. My post happened to originally be made in the Yugoslavia article discussion (I was then directed here, as this was said to be a more appropriate place for the general point I was making). All in all, what I am saying is that absolutely no Wikipedia article -- except perhaps those that are in fact about a word, as opposed to a topic (that has a name) -- should start out with anything containing "refers to". The introduction should quickly present the topic of the article (not present the word that happens to be the name for the topic of the article). To further illustrate the point, imagine the article about the planet we live on starting out by presenting what various stuff the word earth "refers to". This would be to immediately steer the reader into some minor side issue of the topic of the article.


 * Of course, the article about the globe we live on should have as its introduction some fast facts about what this ball we call home is (again, not what the word earth refers to). I'm not sure why this linguistic mess is so obviously hard to grasp for a whole lot of Wikipedia writers. My perspective on this may be influenced by English not being my first language. I guess a lot of people use terms and phrases without really thinking too much about what the words really, semantically and such, mean. In these cases the style manual could be a great tool, to simply make it a Wikipedia rule that "refers to" is a common "trap" of wrong phrasing, and that any case of this common phrase in an intro should be looked into to see if it makes sense. --31.45.79.44 (talk) 19:34, 2 April 2012 (UTC)


 * There's a section about this in the "Writing better articles" article. Perhaps it could be linked to somewhere in this article as well.--NapoliRoma (talk) 21:13, 2 April 2012 (UTC)


 * NapoliRoma, thank you. The section you linked to is great to know about. :-) So Wikipedia has indeed made special mention of this problem. Yes, I highly agree that the section should be linked to and mentioned more. As I said previously, I see this "refers to" mistake in a whole lot of articles. Thanks again for that great link. --31.45.79.44 (talk) 21:40, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

WP:BOLDTITLE: descriptive titles "should" not be bold?
There's a discussion on Talk:2011 Tucson shooting/GA1 that descriptive titles should not be in bold. The wording that descriptive titles should not appear in boldface was introduced in 2008. It is interesting that most of the examples given in WP:SBE, a supporting essay, do show the descriptive title in bold. I suspect that the wording might be more appropriate as it was previously - "it need not be in boldface". These featured articles use bold type for descriptive titles: Yellowstone fires of 1988, Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident, July 2009 Ürümqi riots, Inaugural games of the Flavian Amphitheatre. It seems inappropriate for a guideline to be so strongly imposing a preference which is widely ignored. I would welcome a move back to "need not". Thoughts?  SilkTork   ✔Tea time  11:35, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I think part of the problem is identifying which are actual descriptive titles, and I wouldn't describe those myself as examples. Having said that, I quite "need not" as it gives more flexibility to embolden, without any other effects. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 12:50, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Why are we putting the article title in bold? If there is a solid reason for it, why is that reason different if the title is descriptive? I suspect we bold the title to quickly and easily identify for the reader the focus of the article, and so the reader knows they have landed in the right place. We should not force the language to simply accommodate the title, but if it is possible to use the title in the opening sentence, then it would make sense to bold it.  SilkTork   ✔Tea time  13:22, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree. The real issue, which seems to have become muddled somewhere along the line, is whether to include the article's title in the first sentence.
 * Inaugural games of the Flavian Amphitheatre is a good example of a descriptive title that naturally fits within a normal introduction. I see no reason why it shouldn't appear in bold.
 * 2011 East Africa drought is a good example of a descriptive title that shouldn't be forced into the lead (resulting in something along the lines of "The 2011 East Africa drought is a severe drought has been affecting the entire East Africa region since mid-July 2011.").
 * I think that we should briefly explain the distinction, as we currently provide almost no indication of when it makes sense (or doesn't make sense) to include a descriptive title in the lead. (The wording "does not need to appear verbatim in the main text" is extremely vague.)  —David Levy 17:53, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

"Need not be" is certainly better than "should not be." I haven't seen a good explanation of why "should not be" makes sense, and there are many examples where "descriptive" titles work very well in bold. Another problem with this rule is the use of the word "descriptive." Hopefully all our titles are descriptive, but the rule seems to try to distinguish between titles that are "merely descriptive" (used a few paragraphs above the rule) and some other type of title. I doubt that this is useful distinction, but if it is to be used we should try to describe it better. Probably a better approach would be to write something like: "Some titles may be difficult to use verbatim in the first sentence and need not be bolded." That takes care of the 0.1% of titles where bolding seems awkward, and doesn't impose anything on the 99.9% of titles where bolding seems quite natural. Smallbones (talk) 18:26, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The distinction, which I agree could be conveyed with greater clarity, is one between formal/de facto names (e.g. President of Ireland, Statue of Liberty, Hindenburg disaster) and descriptive titles lacking widespread recognition (e.g. Electrical characteristics of dynamic loudspeakers, 2011 East Africa drought).
 * Otherwise, I agree with the crux of what you've written. But as noted above, this is more a matter of whether to include the title in the lead.  It would make sense to explain that "merely descriptive" titles should be included (and bolded) when this can be accomplished without redundancy or other awkwardness.  (Inaugural games of the Flavian Amphitheatre is an excellent example.)  —David Levy 18:45, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, I think we're getting there. I think the guideline is taking us away from the issue by talking about descriptive titles. The issue is if the title can be accommodated in normal English in the opening sentence. If it can, then use it and bold it. If it can't, then don't bend the language in an effort to include it, and don't attempt to bold parts of the title as in The Beatles in the United States. If that is what we are working toward, then we need to look at appropriate wording.  SilkTork   ✔Tea time  20:29, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Possible wording:
 * Thoughts?  SilkTork   ✔Tea time  21:48, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The one reason to address the distinction between a formal/widely accepted name and a title that's merely descriptive is that we always include former in boldface. So we should simply note this fact, followed by the type of explanation that you suggest above.  Example:
 * —David Levy 22:42, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, I like that - clearer and more helpful. Though the word bold is more common than boldface. Boldface is little used jargon - if it is felt that bold by itself is not clear enough, then bond font could be used, though bold is what is generally used.  SilkTork   ✔Tea time  23:27, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * "Bold" seems fine to me. I've edited my example accordingly.  —David Levy 23:43, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Overall, this seems like a huge improvement to me. Well done!  Suggestions:
 * Use permalinks to the examples. I think one issue we've had with this guideline over the years is that example articles change significantly as Wiki Happens, and everybody is left wondering exactly what the authors were thinking when the example was added.
 * Since we bring it up, we might want to better specify what a "significant alternative title" is, and provide a counter-example of what not to do. Perhaps find something with a lot of synonyms, and show how ugly the huge mass of bolding is?
 * Again, great job on this. — DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:41, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Linking/bolding issue

 * Oh, one more thing: While we're at it, I have some uncertainty about the "don't bold titles with links" guideline, currently a bit further down the page. Take a look at History of the Americas.  What's more important: A contextual link to Americas, or bolding the title?  In other words, which of the following examples do we prefer?
 * I know sometimes we can avoid the problem by rewording, but assuming we cannot, which guideline takes precedence? — DragonHawk (talk|hist) 04:07, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I know sometimes we can avoid the problem by rewording, but assuming we cannot, which guideline takes precedence? — DragonHawk (talk|hist) 04:07, 6 January 2012 (UTC)


 * In my opinion, if the article's title is merely descriptive, it's preferable to include the link. Some such articles don't even contain the title verbatim, so it certainly isn't essential that it appear in bold.
 * Conversely, if an article's title is a formal/de facto name for the subject, it's preferable to shift the link to the relevant term's next instance. —David Levy 04:24, 6 January 2012 (UTC)


 * It's a good point to raise, though opinions may be divided on which is more vital, the link, or the confirmation of the topic. As the solution is debatable, and we have agreement on the basic proposal, I don't wish to hold matters up on what we have agreed, so I will action the wording that has been agreed, and then we can separately discuss the linking/bolding issue.  SilkTork   ✔Tea time  10:59, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

My feeling is that if people have arrived on a page regarding "history of the Americas", then reassurance that they have arrived at the right page for that topic is more vital than immediately linking words in the title. In the example given, DragonHawk has recently written an elegant solution, in which the term Americas is defined in proximity to the use of the term: "The history of the Americas (North, South, and Central America, and the Caribbean) begins...", which is in line with WP:EXPLAINLEAD. If the word is important to the topic, it will shortly be mentioned again, and on second use can be linked. If the word is obvious, then it doesn't need linking on first use if it contradicts with the bolding rule. If it is not obvious, then a brief summary is more useful than a link. I think we are all familiar with the "next link quest", where you are on a page, and are taken through a succession of links and pages in order to get a reasonable summary of a concept, and you end up far from where you started. While I do enjoy such serendipitous browsing, I would like an option regarding initiating such a search: give a basic summary, enough for understanding of the topic in hand, and provide a link for further detail at the earliest convenience. The link should not be vital to understanding. It should always be an option.  SilkTork   ✔Tea time  10:59, 7 January 2012 (UTC)


 * On this issue, my preference isn't particularly strong; I favor the approach that I described above, but I regard both options as reasonable. —David Levy 11:42, 7 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The third opinion included:




 *  SilkTork   ✔Tea time  11:45, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry to chime in late here, but this is the first I've noticed these changes. I have some concerns about this section as it now stands. Substantially, the indeterminance of whether to bold that was once contingent upon whether a title was merely "descriptive" seems only to have been displaced onto whether a title can be fit acceptably into a sentence, which seems an assessment at least as disputable as whether a title is merely descriptive. I suggest that the "descriptive" concept is good, but should be refined. Notably, re the primacy of linking versus bolding, I would suggest that the relevance of linking correlates with whether titles would be bolded under this standard because articles titled like "(event) of (location)" naturally benefit from linking (event) and (location) and would generally be characterized as "descriptive" and unbolded, and thus this criterion often obviates choosing between bold or links, which seems an important benefit given the fundamental nature of the bold-vs-link editing conflict. Perhaps the test for bolding should be whether the topic has a common name, per WP:COMMONNAME? Still imperfect, certainly, but it is very much a tried and relied upon criterion and one fairly complementary to the "descriptive" standard already in use.

Also, I advise that the examples provided be illustrated as in use, consistent with wiki-linking:

I suggest that this display also demonstrates that, as to the raised matter of concern about being on the desired topic, the leading links guide the eye to the topic at hand, much as bold does. The title itself at the top of the page can easily be referred to as well, if titular verification is desired, or if a topic is too broad be effectively described there then the first sentence defines the article's scope, if crafted appropriately per MOS:LEAD. This display also demonstrates that even the fitting-in-a-sentence standard still leaves many articles without bold, and to the extent that the lack of bold is a problem, this standard does so in a pattern that is actually harder to anticipate than that of the "descriptive" standard, and thus would seem only to exacerbate concern about not being on the desired topic if bold text is not encountered.

I propose changing the guidelines to advise bolding if a topic has a common name, which is similar to but more specific than advising against bolding for a merely "descriptive" title. ENeville (talk) 21:46, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Following up, I remain concerned that this change moves the line but only makes it blurrier, thus not in the long term reducing contention the likes of which precipitated the proposal. At the least, I will edit the examples as I suggested and no one opposed. ENeville (talk) 17:06, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Hydraulic fracturing
There is a request for comment concerning citations in the lead of the Hydraulic fracturing article. Beagel (talk) 10:37, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Non-English titles
Currently this guideline says: "Although Wikipedia's naming convention guidelines recommend the use of English, there are instances where the subject of an article is best known in English-speaking sources by its non-English name. In this case, the non-English title may be appropriate for the article."

This paragraph is wrong at many levels. First "naming convention guidelines" is wrong it should be "the Article titles policy"

"English speaking sources" I think what that means is "reliable English language sources" unless we are only using verbal sources such as radio broadcasts as sources.

If a subject is best known with a certain spelling in reliable English language sources then that spelling is not a "non-English name" but the English name of that subject.

Every article has to have a title and what that title should be is decided by the Article titles policy. This is described and made reasonably clear earlier in this guideline (eg under WP:LEADSENTENCE). By the time one comes to write the lead for the article whether the name is one used in reliable English language sources, or a name taken from reliable foreign language sources (because "there are too few reliable English-language sources to constitute an established usage" WP:UE) does not alter how it should appear in the first sentence (whether or not the name in the lead comes from reliable English language sources, or reliable foreign language sources, how it is handled regarding bold etc is exactly the same), so I do not see the relevance of this section and I think this section: Non-English titles should be deleted. -- PBS (talk)


 * There's a heated discussion of this currently at Wikipedia_talk:BLP and it's probably not useful to start a second discussion of what's basically the same point here, at least until the dust settles there. Pam  D  11:01, 20 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I am aware of that conversation but this is not directly linked to that. AFAICT this section has nothing to do with that discussion. If you think otherwise then please explain how.  -- PBS (talk) 17:01, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Generic (list) titles and boldface

 * Similarly, if the page is a list, do not introduce the list as "This is a list of X" or "This list of Xs...". A clearer and more informative introduction to the list is better than verbatim repetition of the title.

The recent overhaul of this page removed the (imho still valid) rationale that generic titles shouldn't be bolded. This was done in favour of going straight ahead to suggesting that it does not make sense to repeat the title verbatim to begin with.

This is very sensible imho, but it leaves those cases unresolved where the the title of a list happens to lend itself for verbatim repetition. In such cases, the page title also should not be bolded imho, for the still applicable reasoning behind the older version of this MoS page (generic titles).

Could this be amended by including clearcut advice that list titles, by simple virtue of their generic nature (i.e. the "List of X" title was generically constructed by Wikipedians), should never be bolded even in those cases where a list title happens to be repeated verbatim?

This rationale also affects other generic types of page titles, including e.g. discography pages (which are also lists). I'd just very much like never having to come across something like this again, or at least having clearcut MoS advice to point to when cleaning up such things -- because many established editors don't give a flying fuck about the MoS, and unless something is spelled out for them, they will deliberately ignore the reasonings behind items of the MoS. These editors tend to build their own rules into any rule vacuum. Of course, these same people are also the ones who shout everything down as "WP:CREEP", even though such rules are preceisely the opposite: aimed at reducing the variety and arbitrariness of rules which people make up when left to their own devices (fantasy rules such as: every single last page must have something bolded in the lead, if at all possible). --213.168.119.30 (talk) 13:27, 23 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Well... to the extent that we're trying to document the community's actual practice, rather than prescribing what they ought (in our not-so-humble opinions) to be doing, I think that we shouldn't be discouraging the use of bold-faced text. The community, after all, seems to be very fond of this needless use of bold-faced text.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:25, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if you're trying to make a point, but Wikipedia is consensus-based. Consensus in turn is based on reasoning, not on individual whims. Also, thank you for not even acknowledging my main point: We currently have a situation in which some generically titled pages include boldfaced verbatim repetition of the title, while others don't. So, thanks for your input, but I'll wait for more informed opinions from others. --213.196.214.78 (talk) 23:51, 23 April 2012 (UTC)