Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Finance

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Contents 1 Things to do 2 Finance Revamp 3 User template 4 Banner template 5 Templates - Objecting to their irrelevance in articles they are placed in 6 Additional templates: Concepts in finance? 7 Topical structure of finance 8 Question

[edit] Things to do

What is the first step? Is it to fix the page List of finance topics --DrewWiki 14:37, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Finance Revamp

I am cutting and pasting a convo I had on Transhumanist's talk page because I think it works through most of the questions and allows for someone to see exactly what I am talking about

I saw that you had weighted in on the deletion decision for list of finance related topics and I am looking for a more experienced wikipedian than my self for guidance about a finance related issue.

I also agree the list should stay, but finance on wikipedia is in a terrible state, very un organized and haphazard. I am trying to fix this and have struggling for days to come up with a way to do this. This is what I have come up with:

Rework all finance related templates, and split them into two groups: Top layer topics, which will be templates on the right hand side (like template:finance), and Sub layer topics which would be listed on the bottom of the screen type templates (Template:Financial markets). The over arcing structure is taken partially from the list of financial topics but re-worked so that it makes more sense. The following would be the upper layor break down: user:drewwiki/sandbox1 Then each of the second row topics would have a template that goes one level futher, see user:drewwiki/sandbox2, user:drewwiki/sandbox3, user:drewwiki/sandbox3, user:drewwiki/sandbox4, user:drewwiki/sandbox7, user:drewwiki/sandbox6

After this, for the topics that have even more levels and sublevels, the system would switch to the bottom type template. Ie Template:Financial derivatives The Financial deriviates page would have the financial deriviatives subpages on the bottom and the Financial markets template on the right. This way a user could move within finance on the right and within financial derivitives on the bottom.

If I implement this, there would be lots of editing, lots of template creating and lots of time and energy, I want to make sure that this system makes sense. I would appreciate any advice or comments you would have. I tried to create a wiki project finance so I could ask them this type of question (Wikipedia:WikiProject Finance but there it was unable to really get going.

--DrewWiki 14:45, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

They look too much alike. Change that picture if possible so that the templates are easier to tell apart. Like a skyscraper for the corporate finance, etc. The Transhumanist   15:44, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry about that, yeah the images there were just for show, like a beta, but is the concept solid? --DrewWiki 16:15, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm browsing the finance section now, and your templates, to get a feel for the whole project. I should have an answer for you in less than 2 hours. The Transhumanist   16:35, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

You've got a financial markets template which goes on the right, and then there's another one named the same thing that goes on the bottom. Why 2 styles for the same template content? The Transhumanist   16:53, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Let me see if I have this straight: sandbox1 would only go on the article Finance? Then the main subtopics of finance (call these the 2nd tier) would each get their own sandbox, and each article that was a subtopic of the 2nd tier would also display the same sandbox as their 2nd tier parent? Do I have that right? The Transhumanist   17:06, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry I probubly was not clear when I wrote originally. The only thing I created was sandbox1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. All of those would be Right side Templates. Sandbox 1 lays out the section of the FINACE section as a whole( In my opinion, finance consists of: Financial Markets, Financial Market Participants, Corporate Finance, Personal Finance, Public Finance, Banks and Banking, and Regulation. Each of those section will have its sub right side template. These templates you see as sandbox 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (and then 7 and 8 later). They, essentially just show 1 level deeper. After this level, all sub levels would be of the bottom template type, (I havn't made any yet but they would look like the one I mentioned earlier, that one is currently existing). Here would be an example, for the page exchange traded derivatives, you would see on the right hand side the template that is The Financial markets, (user:drewwiki/sandbox2) then at the bottom of that page would be a template very similar to Template:Financial derivatives. Does that make more sense?--DrewWiki 17:30, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

So, the (right side) templates would each be for one article (of the same name), plus lists of that name as well. They would not be displayed on subtopic pages. That's not generally how we use templates here, but I'll reserve judgement until I've learned more about the bottom templates you envision. Tell me more about those please. The Transhumanist   17:42, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Sure, Let me build a few more, and a test page on my sandbox area, I'll get back to you tonight probably --DrewWiki 17:50, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually it took a lot less time than I thought to put together a mock up of the basic structure. Let me walk you through it.

Go to user:drewwiki/finance: This is the top level page on Finance, on the right you see the Finance sub topics. Imagine you clicked on Financial markets (from the template), it would look like this user:drewwiki/finance1 Notice that the template on the right is one level lower. Now image, from there you click on The Derivatives Market (in the template on the right) you would see User:Drewwiki/finance2 Notice on this page the template on the right leading you to the sections on the Financial market, and the fiance world in general, but at the bottom, you see the entire Derivatives world. Any page within the derivatives world would have BOTH of these templates thoughts?--DrewWiki 18:12, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Thus providing lateral and vertical navigation options. Extremely cool. My advice is to differentiate the side templates by giving each its own picture, and then as soon as you've done that, move forward: placing what you've created so far in the various articles (renaming the "sandboxes" to templates, of course), and developing them further in place so that readers may benefit immediately (as long as nobody objects). As you do so, update the list of templates at Wikipedia:WikiProject Finance, and provide instructions on how to apply them to the subject of finance as a whole on Wikipedia. So far, so good, and keep up the excellent work. The Transhumanist   00:36, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Cool, I'll start work now, I'ts going to take a while, and i'll stage it all so I can do it all at once when there done on my sandbox --DrewWiki 02:10, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] User template

Took the liberty of creating one. It looks like this:

I chose gold coins from Venice, as this was one of the first organized bourses. --Leifern 23:08, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Banner template

Started futzing around with it, but needs more work. See Template:WikiProject Finance. I really want to start adding these to all the articles that are included and also start rating them, at least for importance. --Leifern 23:31, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Templates - Objecting to their irrelevance in articles they are placed in

These templates that are popping up all over accounting and financial articles are just eye candy. How do they improve the article? Why should a corporate finance template be place in the accountancy article? Someone else placed an accounting template in the same article which I removed. There would now be two irrelevant templates in the article. There are link sections at the end of each article where required. These templates do not relate to the articles and are not turning wikipedia into something that looks nice but has irrelevant links and will confuse the reader with the enormous amounts of links which are not directly linked with the article. NilssonDenver 23:58, 7 February 2007 (UTC)NilssonDenver 23:35, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

The idea is to have both verticle and horizontal navigation abilities. So your interested in finance, specifically your interested int he bond market, so when you go to the bond market page you will see, in a template on the bottom all the articles pertaining to the bond market, but in addition, you can move vertically to any other market, or for that matter back to the top, to any other finance page. If you feel it would be best i'll take out accounting --DrewWiki 01:27, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

You are making assumptions that the links you make are relevant to the reader and the ones you leave out are irrelevant to the reader. How close or far an article is linked to another article is on a template is subjective. You could have a huge number of links and I feel these reduce the impact of the article. These navigation templates are dominating the article. The article should be the main attention of the reader anything else is secondary and should not distract from the article.

We have links in articles to other articles, we have links at the end of an article, we could then have multiple templates within an article, where does it stop. NilssonDenver 22:01, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I am not wedded to the format I am trying, and I am interested in your commments. I was trying to address a huge problem I saw within the finance related articles, in that there was no easy way to navigate through from one to the other keeping the whole structure in your mind. Maybe a portal is the best way to do this, but having links just in the article is not enough, IMOP. When I am reading about the stock exchange, I want to see where this relates to the whole world of finance. A year a go, before i was a contributing member of wikipedia, I looked up structured finance, and asset-backed securities, and was thoroughly confused by where they fit in finance, and what they were in general. Now that I have been doing these things professionally for a year, I wrote those articles, but I still wanted to fix the main issue i saw. I would be very interested in any ideas you have. I was not convinced this was the best way either, and that is why i consulted a more experienced wikipedian.

About templates dominating articles, the bottom templates definitely do not dominate the articles because they are at the bottom and people rarely scroll all the way down there, however if, because they have looked at other finance articles, know that it will be there and let them know what else is in finance, they will scroll down. About the side templates, These i dont' feel, dominate to too much of an extent, they give the reader perspective and I don't feel, hurt the aesthetic too much. But that is IMOP. Certainly not doing these templates would give me LOTS more time to fix up the articles. Can you please propose some alternatives that would give readers an idea of where a page fits within --DrewWiki 03:04, 9 February 2007 (UTC) finance.

PS would you like to join the wiki project finance?

What is the criteria for a "Finance" Article. My knowledge is on the Accounting area rather than finance. I will support any project that improves any section and will write and actively take part in any section I can offer help to.

The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Business_and_Economics is being relaunced and rather than set up a separate project, make this a project within the Business and Economics category. Also there is a push on now on the accounting section http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Business_and_Economics#Major_Overhaul as a project within the Business and Economics category. NilssonDenver 19:17, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I already categorized this project as party of the Business and Economics project, and you'll see that we're trying to minimize disruption to that area. I think we'd define "finance" for our purposes as "the commercial activity of providing funds and capital...among organizations, as opposed to finance in the broader sense. --Leifern 00:51, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Additional templates: Concepts in finance?

I'm wondering if we should have an additional template and structure covering concepts and theories in finance, ranging from simple time value of money articles all the way through to arbitrage topics. What do others think? --Leifern 23:36, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Sure can you map them out on the main page first? ALso, I need a lot of help implementing these templates and distributing them to all of the finance articles DrewWiki 20:18, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Topical structure of finance

I am uncomfortable with using templates as the primary means to provide topical structure to the finance area. I understand the need to get a handle on the various finance related articles, and I'm impressed by the hard work that has gone into creating these templates. However, I wonder if we can explore alternatives, particularly the use of summary articles and the category namespace.

We could provide a topical framework just as easily by

• associating articles with appropriate categories
• providing links to those categories in the see also section
• when relevant, writing summary articles for high level subject areas

Among my concerns:

• Usability. Templates take up a lot of precious screen real estate and crowd out other images. This presents a difficulty to some readers (mobile) and to article editors. If an editor has found an image that is specific to the topic and is, in their opinion, more suitable for the introductory paragraph's side bar he will be forced to make a choice between our templates and the integrity of his article. I don't want to put anyone in that position.

• Point of view Templates run the risk of over emphasizing the association with finance at the expense of other business disciplines. Many finance related articles are in fact related to more than one business topic. A good example is Business plan. Of course, business plans are important in finance. However, a number of other management disciplines also consider planning essential and the financial plan is only one part of the business plan. I love the idea of a finance project, but I don't think it should overshadow other parts of business.

• Anyone can edit. Templates as a primary organizing method gets in the way of the ideal that anyone can edit.
  • They require a much greater learning curve than inserting references to categories, e.g. See also: [[:Category:Foo]] or [[Category:Foo]].
  • People are much less comfortable being bold with someone else's template than they are with adding links and categories. It is hard to separate the content from the syntax and so mistakes are more likely. Most people are sensitive to that even when they are comfortable with the template syntax.

• Maintainability. The list of sub-topics related to a field is dynamic. If categories are used to provide a topical structure, the structure is self maintaining. Also more people can get involved because the learning curve for categories is minimal.

• Automation. It is much easier to create bots that walk category trees than it is to create bots that parse links embedded in templates.

• Best use of time. Designing and maintaining templates is time consuming relative to managing categories. Anyone who can do this clearly has strong analytical skills that might be better used evaluating and improving articles. See User:DrewWiki's comments above.

Egfrank 09:52, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Question

Hello, there I'm new to the project, but don't you think you should have a section on the Wikiproject Finance page that shows a picture of your userbox. Just thought I would ask. The Random Editor 21:13, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. But, note: don't just insert the template. This particular template also adds what ever page it is on to the participants category. You'll need to copy the template code and remove the lines that add the project to the categories.

In general, if you think it is a good idea and it is not a major change of direction for an article just do it. It is part of the wikipedia way: see Be Bold! for more information. Egfrank 06:03, 1 April 2007 (UTC)