Wikipedia talk:Printability

Please help
And feel free to speak your mind. Don't hold back, doc, I can take it. –  Paine 

Greek and Latin plurals
I've seen various cases of Greek and Latin plural forms that are manually flagged as printable, for example. To what extent does that represent or contravene current best practices? What about other non-English languages?

(If I skimmed over the essay too quickly and missed the place where this was explained, feel free to clarify.) --SoledadKabocha (talk) 23:52, 16 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't think this issue has come up in a discussion seeking consensus, not to my knowledge, so maybe it's time that it did? My thoughts have been to 1) try to follow those before me, and it seemed to me that the Latin plurals were favored by editors who had come across them in the past, and 2) in the English language, the other-language type plurals seem to mostly appear from Latin, and the rest from other languages.  So it has seemed the right thing to make the Latin types "printable".


 * I don't have a leg to stand on, though, when it comes to the Greek. I am admittedly biased in favor of the Greek forms of words and other aspects.  You and I have been doing this awhile, SoledadKabocha, so tear it apart or be kind – or do both.  If I can learn from you, then so shall we improve the project. – Paine EllsworthC LIMAX ! 03:44, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Explain this to me please someone.
I really just don't understand all this talk about printworthy? What do you mean printworthy? Its an online encyclopaedia, no one is ever going to print it. Or is that not at all what it means help me :O. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 08:40, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi, EoRdE6 – Some time ago (when Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, was much smaller) the imaginative originator of this project, Jimbo Wales, envisioned something similar to other encyclopedias, a set of book volumes that could sit on shelves in libraries and in people's homes – a printed-on-paper version of Wikipedia. So "printworthy" originally meant that such redirects were "suitable for a paper-printed version of Wikipedia", and "unprintworthy" meant "not suitable".
 * This project and its encyclopedia kept growing and growing, and with each day of this fast growth the possibility of a paper edition became less and less likely. At present, this reference work is large enough so that most of us agree with your assessment when it comes to a paper version.  However, linked in this essay is information about the already-published compact disc version, in which "printworthy" redirects were included and from which "unprintworthy" redirects were excluded.  This will be done again, and each time it's done, the "printworthiness", or as in the essay, the "printability" of redirects will be taken into account.
 * So it looks to me that you have a good handle on what the terms "printworthy" and "unprintworthy" mean, and I hope this gives you a better idea of the need for a guideline to help editors determine how to sort any given mainspace redirect to either the or  category.  Joys! – Paine EllsworthC LIMAX ! 11:54, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
 * This project and its encyclopedia kept growing and growing, and with each day of this fast growth the possibility of a paper edition became less and less likely. At present, this reference work is large enough so that most of us agree with your assessment when it comes to a paper version.  However, linked in this essay is information about the already-published compact disc version, in which "printworthy" redirects were included and from which "unprintworthy" redirects were excluded.  This will be done again, and each time it's done, the "printworthiness", or as in the essay, the "printability" of redirects will be taken into account.
 * So it looks to me that you have a good handle on what the terms "printworthy" and "unprintworthy" mean, and I hope this gives you a better idea of the need for a guideline to help editors determine how to sort any given mainspace redirect to either the or  category.  Joys! – Paine EllsworthC LIMAX ! 11:54, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Miscellany
One afterthought in closing, certainly more than one hour later: "While a printed version may ultimately be considered impractical, getting ready for it would still be a good idea." Some of the points made or indicated below are relevant to a print edition alone, in my opinion. And maybe not worthwhile.

. First, the companion bullet listing needs some parenthetical annotation --eg: (oops, typed a full stop/period after "Mr")-- and this one does not. Second, Mr Easy may be unnecessary for convenient use of our online search, because the target article will show up among the hits, yet be invaluable in print. (There are much better examples of that kind.) Third, what about Mister Easy? Should we anticipate a general instruction at Mister or Mr.

Dr. Seuss and Doctor Who. First, should we provide general instructions at Doctor or Dr --presumably directing users to Mr or Mister-- or even Mr. if all Mr without a do sort before all Mr. with a dot? Should we tag particular redirects for a context where some such general directions are in place, or try to tag them more generally, to be useful regardless of the other decision? For sure someone will look up Doctor Seuss or Dr Who. Second, in some few cases including these two --unlike all people with PhDs, or all Sirs and Kings-- we should provide at least one entry each under D and S, or D and W. (D alone is sufficient for Doctor J, perhaps in exception to general instruction about Doctors.) How should we do it? We now sort the article Dr. Seuss as "Seuss, Dr." and Doctor Who as "Doctor Who". Some redirect, not the article itself, must carry the second listing: perhaps Seuss, Dr. sorted as "Dr. Seuss". If not, then sorted there, which addresses both subpoints of this paragraph? (I tagged several Seuss and Geisel redirects this week but dozens of alts and typos remain untagged.)

Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel. First, I have supposed that alphabetical placement is the main point and almost the only one --rather than printworthiness as a junior version of notability, say. We now sort the joint biography under "Canter, Laurence". Thus is unprintworthy, because it sorts adjacently or nearly so, but  is printworthy. Whatever the main point may be, it occurs to me this is vulnerable to a re-sort under "Siegel, Martha" --with or without renaming as Martha Siegel and Laurence Canter. (The record shows Paine Ellsworth tagged Canter unprintworthy, .)

Alice and Martin Provensen. Such article names are common for joint biographies. The criterion of alphabetical placement makes the two personal redirects unprintworthy. Equally, "Alice and Martin Smith" would have two personal redirects both printworthy because so many sortkeys begin "Smith". The rarety of Provensen as a surname also makes "[the] Provensens" unprintworthy, regardless whether we have judged that a redirect is useful. (I recently added Metadata and Categories to the two Provensens personal redirects, and did not tag them unprintworthy.)

The Chronicles of Narnia. The Chronicles of Narnia became an official title of the early 1950s Narnia children's novels. (I don't know when between publication of the second book as Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia and issue of a boxed set.) We treat the book series as primary topic, sorted under C. Same for the 21st-century film series. We also have an eponymous category, sorted under C. Should we make a couple of redirect, perhaps Narnia books and Narnia films, printworthy in order to carry sort under N? Compare Harry Potter (book series) under H and Harry Potter (character) under P. Existence of such an article pair must alert some readers of the notorious print edition. Compare Nancy Drew is under D, and the lead sentence identifies a fictional character only, but it is really about the series and the franchise as much as the character. Along lines covered in this paragraph the question is which incoming redirect to make printworthy with sort under N. (Just now I re-sorted the multivocal article under N in its two series categories.)

Concerning template R from writer, P.E., you commented in edit summary a few months ago "unprintworthy at least half the time",. I infer a criterion that is a junior version of notability. All of the pages, or nearly so, point from writer to work, so the two pagenames that are entirely unrelated.

--P64 (talk) 22:41, 8 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Read it and workin' on it. – Paine 07:23, 12 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Sorry, P64, for taking so long. Lately I've been trying to stick to basic, mundane edits that don't involve a lot of thinking, as I've been under the weather and dusting my brain with meds.  I've made a few initial changes on the subject page to the first item, Mr Easy, and will continue to deal with your welcome inputs. Thank you! and Best of everything to you and yours! – Paine  02:20, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Is it really worth the work to categorize?
A paper version seems increasingly non-viable, and a digital disk can include all redirects at (relatively) low cost. Is there any real benefit to investing editor time on categorizing printworthy vs nonprintworthy? Alsee (talk) 22:41, 15 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi, Alsee - It is evident to me that this separation, between printable and unprintable, has been an important objective for many years. Just because we can do something (include all redirects on disk) does not necessarily mean that we should.  There are some redirects that can and should be excluded from a disk version as superfluous and unnecessary.  They are necessary here online as search terms, etc., but would serve little or no purpose in a CD/DVD version. – Paine  06:28, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Paine, Many unprintworthy redirects would be awful on a paper version, where you're forced to visually browse/search for articles alphabetically. On a disc version redirects would serve the same purpose they do online - search terms. We don't have any article at Goldilocks and the three bears. It's a redirect it to a merged article for the original story - without Goldilocks in the title. For a paper version it would be a critical fail if we didn't list "Goldilocks and the three bears" as printworthy redirect. For a disc version shouldn't we avoid potential fail cases like that? Shouldn't we save work and just let the disc include all redirects for search value? I felt like I was wasting my time trying to figure out how to categorize the untagged redirects. I'm just trying to figure out if there's any good reason for me to spend time on this, every time I create a new redirect. Alsee (talk) 17:56, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, Alsee, first of all Goldilocks and the Three Bears recently became the "common name" title of the article, so it's not such a good example; however, I do get your meaning. Disk versions are carefully constructed to include only certain articles and are not thus far designed to be all inclusive, so printability actually becomes an even more important issue.  Your predicament is pretty much the same as other editors, to include myself.  As I believe I said in the essay, deciding which way to tag a redirect is still a subjective call in many cases.  That is the whole purpose of this essay → to construct/mold/sculpt a useful guideline to help editors like you and I make the calls more easily.  To understand all the whys and wherefores, you are invited to familiarize yourself in detail as to the actual construction of the disk versions as they are linked in the essay.  Or you can trust me when I say that none of this has ever been, or is now, a waste of time.  Our efforts to establish printability/printworthiness of mainspace redirects (and thank goodness it's only for mainspace redirects) make the disk producers' jobs just a bit easier. – Paine</b>  14:59, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
 * The Three Bears. When Paine E tagged unprintworthy in May 2014, its target was "The Story of the Three Bears" (if i understand the history) with DEFAULTSORT "Three Bears" (its short history reveals conveniently). Paine was next to tweak the target article, followed in its long inconvenient history by re-sort under "Story of" . Last month May 2015 the target article was moved to "Goldilocks [...]", and re-sorted just so (DEFAULSTORT deleted). Only moments ago I made the redirect printworthy with DEFAULTSORT "Three Bears".
 * On paper some listing under Three is worthwhile if not priceless (as was that under Goldilocks previously) and the printworthy redirect now provides such a listing. It is worthless in a unified digital edition only if everyone searches that edition automatically, exclusively; no one scans it. And only insofar as such search is adequate, which depends on how the user's hardware, software, and skills/knowledge/errors.
 * For a more complex and an exhausting example --here and concerning the next section too-- consider the very long list of redirects to "Dr. Seuss" (of which I covered several last month). --P64 (talk) 20:26, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Forget printing
As you yourself have noted, desecrating tree corpses is not an issue anymore. The criteria behind printworthyness/printability are of interest, though. Basically, the question is whether a redirect is "encyclopedic".

The distinction is about being informative to the reader. We place articles at the most frequently used titles in the reliable literature about a topic. After that, we normally want redirects for all titles in use in the literature, reliable or not, because a reader normally encounters a topic not in the reliable literature, but somewhere else. The exception from this general rule are synonyms from non-English languages, like Teilchenbeschleuniger (particle accelerator). This in turn has its own exceptions, like official names and topics strongly connected to a language.

There are three classes of non-encyclopedic redirects.
 * Navigational redirects, which facilitate finding articles. These are generic or unintentional variations of topic names and their synonyms. They can also be used preventively to avoid creation of duplicate articles on the same topic.
 * Deprecated redirects. These are only kept to prevent link rot or preserve edit histories, like CamelCase links.
 * IAR redirects, per WP:CHEAP and WP:R: Someone finds them useful. (Examples not covered by any of the other three cases?)

The above should cover all article space redirects.

Regards, 85.178.220.97 (talk) 23:21, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Book Index
If a printed book had an index... Dpleibovitz (talk) 22:04, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * would unprintable redirects still show there? Would it suggest that all redirects be unprintable?
 * would piped links show up as the equivalent of redirects?

Template fix proposal (printworthiness auto-categorization)
Please see Templates for discussion/Log/2020 February 5 (for merger to Template:R to anchor, and fixing of code causing it to auto-categorize things as unprintworthy unless explicitly told not to.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:24, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Objection to "Redundancy"
has objected to the "Redundancy" section of this essay here (permanent link). This is a continuation of this previous discussion (using only permalink to avoid pinging another user whose involvement is insubstantial).

I am involved, but I am not the one objecting.

I have no further comment. I'm mainly curious whether there is any previous discussion about said section to which we should refer. --SoledadKabocha (talk) 01:27, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Shortcuts
Should shortcuts be marked as unprintable? ― Qwerfjkl &#124;&#9993;  09:30, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Obsolete?
Dead tree Wikipedia is practically impossible, and hardly desirable even if it were possible. Any digital offline version should be searchable and therefore would benefit from even most "unprintworthy" redirects.

Nor would including all redirects take up too much space in an offline archive. A redirect takes up very very little space compared to an article above stub-class, and could be stored even more efficiently in an offline digital version by just making a database table to store redirect names instead of storing the wikitext.

I can understand that makers of offline archives might legitimately want to exclude some particular specific categories of redirects like CamelCase legacy redirects a la HomePage and cross-namespace redirects like MOS: redirects or Administrators noticeboard [sic] - since those are actually never going to be useful. Even with those, the CamelCase ones do no harm, and the cross-namespace ones would be excluded anyway since that's obvious - but I could understand classing those as unprintworthy through their rcats and leaving it at that.

On the other hand, encouraging the spending of volunteer effort to to categorise navigational redirects eg. Mr. Easy as unprintworthy when they would be just fine in any real offline Wikipedia archive seems strange. CharredShorthand (talk) 16:54, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

This page could use some serious rewriting
It's full of confusing tongue-in-cheek references (wiki editor in-jokes) and phrases like "answer the heavenly question, PITA boy". Since it's a help page in Wikipedia_talk, it should be written in clear, professional, respectful language understandable by all. 2A00:23C5:FE56:6C01:D055:A2C3:378D:6737 (talk) 15:16, 13 July 2023 (UTC)