Forum:SH Archive/Threshold between CA and GA length

This page is an archive of a community-wide discussion. This page is no longer live. Further comments or questions on this topic should be made in a new Senate Hall page rather than here so that this page is preserved as a historic record. 1358 ^(Talk) 11:40, January 22, 2012 (UTC)

So, at the recent Mofference, it was decided to add a new rule to the WP:CAN page: My question is how does this work in conjunction with WP:GAN Rule 7: In other words, what's the procedure to determine whether a lead is necessary? Is this a decision only the GAN page can make? Can it be made on the CAN page? Do these two rules need a bit more ironing out so that we don't have articles bumping up and down from CAN to GAN and then back down?

In full disclosure, this has to do with an article I recently nominated to CAN: Wind Dancer, and I opposed the provision at the Mofference that threshold articles must be given a lead to see if it they can reach 250 words. Because I feel that this is a broader issue, that goes beyond that article, I thought I'd start a Senate Hall thread so we can hash these sorts of situations out. I want to adhere to the guideline, but I also want our parallel procedures (GAN and CAN in this case) to run well together, so it's necessary to decide who decides whether a lead is supported in an article. Or is Rule 7 from WP:GAN obsolete now? Thanks for any feedback! ~Savage 23:36, April 11, 2011 (UTC)

• There is no conflict here. The rules are from two different nomination systems. All the rule that I proposed asks is for you to attempt to write an intro if the article reaches 200 words. When it passes that threshold, attempt to write one as you would any intro. That's it. NaruHina ^Talk 00:01, April 12, 2011 (UTC)
  • Though I find myself surprised to say this, I agree with Naru. There is no conflict here. The CAN rule and GAN rule stand on their own individual merits. It only becomes a conflict when you're trying to create one. In this case, Bob did attempt to write an intro for the article in question, and to his dissatisfaction it brought the article over 250 words. So now he's trying to use the GAN rule as a means to not have to follow the CAN rule that we as a group established at the Mofference as a compromise to try and create some common ground for when to take a CAN to GAN. And in this case, the new CAN rule is working exactly as it was proposed, except now Bob doesn't want to follow it. If we need more standardization between these two rules, the weaselly wording in the GAN rule needs to be excised to state that intros should always be used for articles 250 words or more. Because a 250-word article can always support an intro. I haven't seen one that couldn't yet. Toprawa and Ralltiir 00:26, April 12, 2011 (UTC)
  • [Edit-conflicted with Tope] Every GAN is required to have an intro; there has never been a GAN that didn't require an intro. We've been interpreting Rule 7 as referring to the size/detail of the intro—perhaps it's worded poorly, but this has neveer been an issue of misunderstanding before. As for the CAN rule, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. All it says is that if your article word count reaches 200, and if the majority of that 200 isn't in the BTS, then you should at least try and put an intro on it. If it doesn't work, then it doesn't work. But you can at least try. The rule was put into place so that we don't have people cheating the system and writing lazily solely for the sake of not having to work as hard at writing status articles. Jonjedigrandmaster ^(Talk) 00:28, April 12, 2011 (UTC)
  • Furthermore, GANs definitely require an intro per Rule 4, which dictates that all articles must follow, among other policies, the Layout Guide, which does in fact require an intro. Jonjedigrandmaster ^(Talk) 00:32, April 12, 2011 (UTC)
    • First of all, Toprawa, please stop with the character assassination. Again, please have a look at WP:NPA; talk about my contributions, not me or what you presume to be my motives. Second of all, thanks for the explanation of Rule 7 from GAN, Jon. I do think it's poorly worded, since it sounds like it's possible that a GA-length article might not be able to support an intro. That is apparently where my confusion has come from. Third, I would argue that in the case of this particular article, there is nothing gained by adding an intro and breaking the article up into sections; I heartily disagree with Tope on the notion that a 250-word article can always support an intro; I don't see the point in repeating the two salient facts we know about this species just for the sake of adhering to the layout guide. But is that the site consensus, that the intro is worthwhile in its own right when an article reaches 250 words? I can accept if I am outvoted on that, but I'd like to hear from others. Incidentally, in this case, the majority of the article is in BTS, but I'm not going to wikilawyer this. But, in short, is 250 words, the bulk of which is not BTS, something we as a site have agreed is the cut-off point to where an article must have an intro? ~Savage 01:20, April 12, 2011 (UTC)
      • Yeah, that's twice now you've accused me of that. You're not going to hide behind false NPA accusations to protect your workaround of the community-established rule that you personally don't want to follow. If you want to start throwing policy violations at each other, then maybe you better read your user responsibilities under Wookieepedia:Consensus. But petty smear matches aside, I'm going to attempt to respond to your points. But, in short, is 250 words, the bulk of which is not BTS, something we as a site have agreed is the cut-off point to where an article must have an intro? No, we have not literally established a rule for 250 words being the cutoff for intros. However, the point behind the creation of the Mofference CAN rule was to establish that if the intro does in fact push the article over 250 words, then it needs to keep the intro and move to GAN. The idea being that this establishes a compromise to determine definitively when a CAN should go to GAN. If you want to read into that, then yes, that effectively should mean that any article that is 250 words or more therefore requires an intro (the LG's requirement of the intro aside). If you don't believe me, then go read the Mofference log for yourself. It's an unfortunate fact that the GAN rule that Bob is plugging throws an ugly contradictory wrench into this whole thing. I agree that needs to be ironed out. Toprawa and Ralltiir 02:13, April 12, 2011 (UTC)
      • [Edit-confclicted again :P] A few things: firstly, as the rules stand, the GAN requires (through Rule 4, even if not 7) that all articles on the nomination page have an intro. The CAN rules state that if an article reaches 200 words, then the user needs to try and make an intro just to ensure that it shouldn't be on the GAN. The majority of the community clearly thinks that something is gained by adding the intro, or else the vote during the recent Mofference would have gone differently. As for GAN Rule 7 itself—it's been added to the agenda for this weekend's AC meeting; we'll make a nice CT out of it and clear everything up. As far as this business about personal attacks go, let's everybody just drop all of that now. This discussion should pertain solely to the rules, which have now been clarified, so there is no reason for anybody to make any kind of attack or to accuse others of making attacks; that does nothing more than derail the discussion. Jonjedigrandmaster ^(Talk) 02:18, April 12, 2011 (UTC)
        • Thanks to both of you for the clarification. ~Savage 02:35, April 12, 2011 (UTC)
• Tope, you say you haven't seen a 250 word article that could not support a lead. Have a look at Nevoota/Legends. The non-BTS part of the article is 68 words. Top claim that this can support an intro is, I suggest, patently ridiculous.
  Jonjedimaster, I also direct you to this Good article that has no lead. And with regard to your proposition that "as the rules stand, the GAN requires (through Rule 4, even if not 7) that all articles on the nomination page have an intro," Rule 4 points to the Layout Guide, which does not require all articles to have a lead. It patently says "headings and subheadings are usually not required for very small articles." An article such as Nevoota, minus its BTS is a very small article, and your suggested ironclad rule just does not work. I have came across exactly this problem with other articles too, where the same point was claimed to the detriment of the article. The Layout Guide does not require all articles to have an intro, and the GAN specificly envisions situations that will not need a lead, as evidenced by Rule 7: a lead "if the length of the article supports it." The GAN rules, Maunal of Style and Layout Guide are all finely nuanced, and yet you seem to want to rip the nuance out. The same thing has happened with the various article guidelines, where people have tried to turn them into laws. I wrote the very first article-type guideline, so I know from the very inception that they were designed to allow for some flexibility and I have witnessed time and again, users trying to strip this away. --Eyrezer 08:49, April 12, 2011 (UTC)
  • FWIW, that's why I added the "Exceptions can be made for articles wherein the majority of the text is in the "Behind the scenes" section" part to the CAN rule at the mofference. There are cases when an intro isn't needed on a GAN, but they are few and far between, and generally restricted to articles that are nearly all Bts. Cheers, Grunny (talk) 09:42, April 12, 2011 (UTC)
    • It may just be that we haven't hammered out the correct ratio of how much "main" article there needs to be (non-BTS) before an article can support a lead. And, obviously, there's disagreement about what "support" means in the phrase "support a lead." ;) That's why I was advocating that BTS be disregarded in any word counts for bumping a potential CAN to GAN. I was outvoted, and that's fine, but maybe what I was really getting at is that BTS should be disregarded in determining whether an article should have a lead or not. If there's an issue to be talked about at the upcoming AC meeting, perhaps that could be it. ~Savage 15:22, April 12, 2011 (UTC)
      • I like that last suggestion by Bob. We should just make it so that if an article's word count, excluding the BTS, breaches X number of words, then you need to at least try to add an intro and show that it doesn't push the article over 250. That's a very reasonable suggestion that would eliminate all of this nonsense once and for all. And Eyrezer, that is completely incorrect; the Layout Guide as a matter of fact does specify that each article have an introduction. Under the article body section, it very explicitly shows that there should be an intro before the main body. Furthermore, it really takes almost no effort and very little imagination to create a small, slightly reworded lead to an article; I don't understand why so many people are so very averse to it. You won't even be that redundant if you have any amount of writing skill. I will also take this opportunity to remind everybody that before the CAN came along, every single status article everywhere was required to have an intro, and I recall absolutely no complaining about it then. Do you know why? Because it works. Jonjedigrandmaster ^(Talk) 16:54, April 12, 2011 (UTC)
        • Jonjedigrandmaster makes a good argument. I didn't consider this to be a very difficult 'problem' to solve, but here are some situations I've seen while writing.

Hydration tablet—Less than 200 words, obviously doesn't need an intro.

GSI-21D—Only 223 words without the Bts or intro. It wasn't hard to write one for this, and to not do so seems lazy. Holocron ^(Complain) 05:35, April 14, 2011 (UTC)

Again, BTS seems to be the variable we need to figure out how to handle. Eyrezer's example of Nevoota/Legends is still an example where adding a lead section would esentially repeat all information from the main body, which would be pointless repetition for the sake of slavishly following the layout guide, and I agree with him that that's not helpful. Hopefully the AC meeting will shed some light on this, as will any followup SH or CT on it. :) ~Savage 00:16, April 16, 2011 (UTC)

You realize that this was meant to reflect articles like Mandalore City, where there are 26 words (27 if you count "1,000") in the body while the BTS is two paragraphs? You've made a mountian out of a molehill here. There doesn't need to be further regulation on this rule (I'd just as soon say 200 applies to every article) because it is quite possible to see the difference between that article and Wind Dancer, which has an body that is several sentences long and has a BTS that is of comparable length: not overwhelmingly longer than the body. NaruHina ^Talk 18:42, April 16, 2011 (UTC)

How am I making a mountain out of a molehill? This isn't just about Wind Dancer; it's about articles in general. And I don't think it's something to be dismissed; imposing a lead on Wind Dancer and then forcing the rest of the article to be broken up into Layout Guide sections may be helpful by some standards, but I'm still not convinced it is the best approach, since the non-BTS part of the article is so limited anyway. Apparently you and I disagree on this point, but I don't think it's a bad idea to discuss it (since at least two of us seem to think there's room to smooth out the processes further). ~Savage 18:57, April 16, 2011 (UTC

(The keyboard I am using is American, but it is inputting in European so the prose could be rather clunky) If your objection to doing this is based on article quality diminishing once the whole layout guide has been implemented, why do you not write out the article as a GA on some subpage to prove that it will not work well(Question) Not that I think you would screw this up on purpose, for I believe in your professional integrity, but we could have another user do the same to see if producing this article would be especially difficult. I think we should have some empirical evidence before we revamp a policy made only about 2 weeks ago. (I cannot find the tilde button) NaruHina 20:23 April 16, 2011

• Good luck with the keyboard... I know how that is. :) here is the lead-added, layout-guide version of Wind Dancer. In my opinion, when you have a single sentence in most sections, there's little gained by keeping them separate from one another. In the case of Nevoota/Legends, I don't even think it would be possible to add a lead and break up the information per the layout guide. In other words, I just think we need to consider when there is enough information to support a lead (as I've said above) and not try to shoehorn all articles into one if it's the BTS that is pushing them above the threshold size. It's not a question of laziness with me; it's a question of elegance and helpfulness to our readers: the lead is supposed to be a shorter version of the article for people who don't have the time to read the whole thing. For a piece that has 150 or 200 words of non-BTS information, I don't think there's really a need for a shorter version for such readers. What's more, breaking the information up into micro-sections makes the information more disjointed and difficult to read, in my opinion. Others are free to disagree, of course. ;) ~Savage 20:48, April 16, 2011 (UTC)
• Another example similar to Nevoota is Druulgothan. I was asked to add an intro and break it into sections, which resulted in the one sentence B&A and the tiny intro here, which I don't consider to add to the quality of the article. The non-sectioned version can be seen here. This is another example where the BTS is more than half the total word count. As SavageBob has said, requiring one sentence section looks scrappy and breaks down the article's coherence. --Eyrezer 02:23, April 17, 2011 (UTC)
  • Honestly, I see absolutely nothing wrong aesthetically with the article as is. There is no breakdown in coherence—if anything, the sectioning makes the article easier to read, and thus more coherent. Jonjedigrandmaster ^(Talk) 03:47, April 17, 2011 (UTC)
  • I think the B&A should be treated like a P&T here. If there's no information to put in it besides the fact that they were a sentient species, then that can just be relegated to either the History or Society section by saying "Wind Dancers were a sentient species that...." (This does not work for Eye's because of the lizard tidbit.) This way, there would only be a single one sentence section, and it would be one joined by a semicolon. The article would be just fine. NaruHina ^Talk 16:57, April 17, 2011 (UTC)
    • Eyrezer tried that before, but he was told that the article was not adhering to the Layout Guide for aliens articles by abolishing an essential section (B&A). I would agree with you, though; I think one of the things I'm advocating against is the by-the-book-ism with which a lot of us treat the Layout Guide. ~Savage 17:09, April 17, 2011 (UTC)
      • Like I said, that wouldn't work for Eye's because there is some information to put there beyond that was a sentient species. However, that is not the case with Wind Dancer. I don't think anyone would object if you moved that fact to the History. Then your objection to the sectioning is fixed and the article can go to GA. NaruHina ^Talk 17:54, April 17, 2011 (UTC)
• FWIW, Wikipedia advocates that leads and section breaks be introduced when an article reaches the 400-500-word range: see here. I, for one, think that's more sensible than 200, but this is, of course, an art not a science. I'd even support some sort of statement that "articles should be broken into sections and given a lead when there is enough information to make any two sections, aside from the "Behind the scenes," reach [100/150/200; we'd choose one] words in length." That would seem, to me, to be a good benchmark of when sectioning and leads were warranted. Again, others may disagree and probably will. :) ~Savage 17:09, April 17, 2011 (UTC)
  • I think I'm gonna have to side with Bob and Eye on this. I unfortunately wasn't able to attend the Mofference, but I think I would've have voted against the new rule in it's current form. I agree, the Bts should not be considered at all when deciding on CAN or GAN. I also feel that it is impossible to make all 222,363 of our artcles 100% consistent due to the massive variety of content and writers. I feel a little lenience is appropriate, especially with articles at CA length. And adding an intro to a 200-word article seems very pointless to me. It's not that I'd be too lazy to write one, as it'd be very simple. It's just that I personally would be very annoyed at reading the exact same info twice, even if the writer was really good. It's still the same facts. As for breaking these articles up into sections, I'm neutral on this. I don't really care either way. MasterFred^(Whatever) 04:29, April 18, 2011 (UTC)