Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Organized Labour/Summaries

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This is an idea that started from the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Organized Labour#Internationalisation. Currently it is in the development stage, and any input and opinions would be appreciated.--Bookandcoffee 20:23, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Summaries and lead sections 2 Why part of this WikiProject? 3 Simple English 4 reduce to Translation summary 5 Forking 6 AfD

[edit] Summaries and lead sections

How does a summary differ from a lead section? - Jmabel | Talk 22:23, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

It differs in that it is restricted to 150 words and should cover the most important parts of a topic. This admittedly is very much like a lead section, but basically, some of the lead sections currently aren't up to scratch, and use terminology that might not be as easily translated. The purpose is to write summaries that will be easy to translate. - FrancisTyers · 23:12, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps In Brief is a better term than summary. The addition of a quick reference is a common feature in print material, it addresses a couple issues. The first is the reluctance of people to read to any depth. I would say it is a reasonable assumption that many people who access Wikipedia are not looking to write their thesis on the subject they are looking up, and the inclusion of this format allows for a quick grasp of the subject matter. Is this what I was looking for? The remainder of the text is then available for a more in-depth read.

There is also the old adage about writing a speech. Tell them what you are going to say - then say it - then tell them what you just said. This summary helps provide that clarifying overview.--Bookandcoffee 00:34, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why part of this WikiProject?

What about this is specific to organized labour articles? - Jmabel | Talk 22:23, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

It is part of a couple of efforts that we are making to improve coverage of trade union topics in other languages. We would like to produce some stub articles automatically from the information we have in the templates, and we would like to produce some easy to translate summaries of high importance articles that can provide a good base for expansion. - FrancisTyers · 23:12, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

The idea is not specific to the WikiProject. The practical fact is that we are searching for ways to improve labour articles, and to expand labour coverage into the sister wiki projects. But the concept itself could be implemented just as well on any project, or any page on the site. I see this as a two pronged effort of setting up usable summary texts so that we can actually create new non-English articles, but also as a test bed to see if the concept improves articles. Do editors like the idea? Do the In Brief texts evolve into stable useful summaries? Does this improve the reader’s experience? If we can develop some answers to those questions then we may have a process/idea that is worth bringing to the attention of the larger community.--Bookandcoffee 00:44, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Simple English

Would the creation of articles in simple English be more beneficial in easing translation? Warofdreams talk 01:50, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

That’s an interesting idea. I’m hesitant though - I think the largest difficulty we’re going to face is the logistics of keeping track of things and getting editors involved. Simple is a very worthy project, but by moving this effort there, or importing text here, we would be transferring efforts to an area that is already short of labour, and I think it would unfortunately be more difficult to keep things moving.

I do, however, think that Simple should be one of the translations that we work towards.--Bookandcoffee 16:52, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] reduce to Translation summary

Perhaps it would make more sense (for now at least) to move the summary box down to the bottom of the article, collapse it into one of those ^{show / hide} boxes and simply call it Translation summary.

I’m worried that my enthusiasm for the In Brief idea may impede implementation of the more direct goal of an internationalization effort by forcing editors to consider accepting two ideas at once. With the summary as a simple tag in with the {{commons}} tag and such it should be less intrusive. The text would still be available for editors to work on, but there would be time later to re-introduce the idea of using the summary for the article itself.--Bookandcoffee 15:13, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I think this would be a better approach. - Jmabel | Talk 22:08, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I went ahead and made this change. Currently it's in the ==See also== section. There is a small wrinkle with producing a couple lines of white space, but other than that I think it looks ok. --Bookandcoffee 18:30, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Problem solved. Now if we just had a cool little "Translation" graphic for the box...--Bookandcoffee 21:29, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Forking

Erechtheus brought up a good question about forking. There is some danger of the summary and the main article diverging. I think there are a couple solutions to this:

1. The first is to not use the summary format, and instead write the summaries directly to the project page. I'm not in favour of this because it creates a static summary which is not easily available to other editors of that page - presumably the very people who would be capable of generating a valid summary. And in the end this doesn't really solve the problem, as the two will diverge as the main article evolves.
2. The second solution is to find an effective way to communicate the notion of "Summary". The page already outlines the instruction that the summary is to reflect the text, and that changes are to be made to the main article before the summary. Is there a better/clearer way to communicate this? Is there a need for some sort of notice to be crafted on the summary page itself? Is there a need for guidelines for questioning/disputing the summary content?--Bookandcoffee 18:47, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

• I think that the guideline WP:POVFORK is probably the best document to explain the concern with what is being attempted. Don't get the wrong impression from the name of the link above -- it discusses forking in other contexts besides POV forks. It looks to me like the guideline suggestion would be to userfy the summaries or place them on the article talk page. Erechtheus 21:04, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AfD

Well, there is a summary going through the AfD process (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/International Confederation of Free Trade Unions/Summary). The notion of summaries seems to have lost steam, and the AfD notes that the ICFTU summary is already out of date, a problem which will be an ongoing issue. Perhaps it is still a useful idea, but I'm not sure.--Bookandcoffee 18:39, 28 November 2006 (UTC)