Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Extra-Long Article Committee/Conduct

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[edit] Tread carefully

This committee could become a bad guy real quick, if we're not careful about how we start and go through with the process. -Patstuart^talk|edits 15:21, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

A way to manage that is to add citations and then making well cited sections that can later become a subpage. In doing that we create a better cited article, a longer article (for adding citations will make it longer) and having more concise articles. (Ex : George W. Bush) Lincher 20:41, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Lincher, do you have some good examples of pages that have citation subpages? As to "treading carefully, yes, I agree absolutely with this; however, for the project to be effective it may have to take on some negative connotation or association. An example is the Internal Revenue Service. No one that I know likes the IRS, but it is a useful entity that keeps country running smooth. With this said, however, I do feel that we should set up an ELAC "rules of conduct" or "rules of engagement" page. Let’s say, for example, a new user joins our group and, not yet having been seasoned to the subtleties of page conduct, goes of as a lone-ranger, using the ELAC membership argument as a basis, and starts tearing up pages. This would give us a bad name. I am going to set up an ELAC related links table to facilitate this discussion. Talk soon: --Sadi Carnot 15:24, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree, it's a good idea in principle, but you guys need to be careful; make sure nobody starts removing useful text from articles just because they're too long. BTW is there any particular reason why this was moved to a subpage? – Gurch 02:20, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I moved it here (it seems to be a conduct-related discussion) so to possibly stimulate discussion and build-up of the Conduct Table, i.e. so that we all have some rough guidelines to follow when going through the procedure of breaking up a long page. --Sadi Carnot 15:21, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I share what I perceive to be the feeling that this might conceivably be interpreted as hiding the discussion. There seems to be enough suspicion about us already.DGG 02:24, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, I just came across my first short article, with a big ugly tag on the article page, so I'm certainly curious. Do the folks putting those labels on articles know how to calculate prose size, apart from overall size? Do they understand current citing requirements, and how much that chunks up the KB? I'm wondering why they're tagging articles with 38KB prose (and 15KB of references), when articles like Hugo Chávez and History of Russia have more than 70KB prose. Suspicious isn't the word, but I'm certainly wondering about the goals of the project. Considering current citing requirments, it would be difficult for an FA to be comprehensive and well-cited at anything less than 50KB, and almost none of them are. If articles are going to be tagged (on the article page, rather than the talk page, no less), you might as well head down the entire list of FAs - and the end result will be a compromise in citations, since that chunks up the KB, and this committee doesn't appear to be taking the time to calculate prose size before labeling articles. Sandy (Talk) 06:46, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Reading through these pages, this is one of the most anti-Wiki approaches to a Project I've encountered - the tone of this conduct page is just off, and the sneaky-team, ganging-up approach isn't very Wiki-like. Some confusion:

1. No acknowledgement of prose size relative to overall size. (I hope you all know how to calculate prose size, and are doing that before tagging pages - I see no mention of prose size guidelines.)
2. Your Conduct says, "Page break-up is a heavy psychological process for many, posting talkpage notice in well in advance is recommended, i.e. there's no immediate rush (there's lots of articles to divide)." Talk pages or article pages? Tagging talk pages first might get better results than defacing well-researched and well-written articles.
3. Priorities - there are some massively huge articles out there, that have been long-standing problems. Why choose the Psycho film, with a measly 38KB prose, when there are so many articles that are truly problematic?
4. Inline citations are required on FAs. This focus on size goes against the trend, where FAs have grown in KB, often with 10 - 15 KB in inline citations, which do not detract from readability. Hence, the need to calculate overall size relative to prose size. Readability is the issue: the readers don't have to digest the inline footnote. They also don't have to digest the templates.

If you all are going to go about this Project in the team-tagging manner your Conduct page suggests, in addition to WP:LENGTH, there's WP:V policy, backed by WP:RS and WP:CITE. On WP:FAC and WP:FAR, we uphold WP:WIAFA, including the requirement for inline citations. I'd love to see you succeed on Chávez, but that's not a size issue: it's a long-standing POV problem. It has over 70KB or prose: it doesn't make sense to initiate this effort on a film article with only 38KB of prose. Good luck. Sandy (Talk) 08:04, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

The IRS keeps the country running smoothly? Well, yes, if you're the big guy, because their policy of going after the little guys who won't hire attorneys makes sure that's the case:the country runs smoothly for the big guys courtesy, in part, some corrupt bureaucracy. The problem with LA is that most people in the first world don't realize that the Internet is unequal the world over, as most other things are, and Long Articles can be not just hard but impossible to access with a slow connection. I assume that, the comparison to the IRS means the ELAC intends to act like the IRS, bully the little guys who don't have a lot of support for their articles. Why not, instead, devote some time to research, like looking at the type of connections people have the world over, explaining this to others, and making constructive criticisms about how to divide up pages in a useful manner? KP Botany 16:56, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

See WP:SS and WP:LENGTH for guidelines about 30 - 50KB of readable prose. Sandy (Talk) 19:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)