User talk:The Cunctator/Agglomeration

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I thought it was general policy to split more than agglomerate? I'm sure I saw a Wikipedia: page on this one time. There's certainly ongoing tension; for instance, people often feel compelled to make a separate article for every expansion pack of a video game, even though the grand total of descriptive material amounts to two sentences, and no one will ever feel a need to link to the expansion pack article independently of the base game. In those cases I think agglomeration is the right thing. The argument I use for splitting is linking; we need separate articles for each USS Wasp because an article on a naval battle should link directly to the right one, not the one of the same name from a century earlier.

But there are editors who look on WP as more of a repository of erudite essays; they link to other articles grudgingly, they repeat info at length that is contained elsewhere, the articles are long and complicated. I'm not a big fan of that approach, because very few readers want essays; they have a question that they answered as quickly as possible. One way to get people to think about this is simply to ask "what does the reader want?" The incorrigible essayist is eventually unmasked by answers like "The readers are wrong, they should want things in the way that I present them." You may not change the essayist's mind, but most likely the majority of editors, who do want to produce an encyclopedia, will see your arguments and support the splitting. Stan 06:04, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The lack of consideration for the readership is certainly the most important problem with essay articles; there is also the significant practical problem, in that long and complicated articles are nearly impossible to edit collaboratively efficiently, and make specific interlinking nearly impossible.

It was general policy to split more than agglomerate. But there is a dedicated group of agglomerators who strongly resist any acts to split content and evidently disagree with that policy. An interesting phenomenon is that they feel that splitting is a major, wholesale change in the Wikipedia content which requires their approval before any such change is made. But they will not act to do any kind of splitting themselves. In other words, they see splitting in much the same way that the general policy treats deletion.

I do not oppose splitting articles in certain cases. The main objections I have, though, is that articles about similar topics should not be split up for the sake of splitting them up. I think articles should be split up where the topics are somewhat different, or where the length of the article necessitates it. However, unilateral splitting of articles is what I do not support. You should at least ask other users involved in the editing of an article before splitting it up. - Mark Ryan 07:08, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

From a social view : by experience, I saw some articles I was the main author, being splitted of without previous agreement, or even discussion, by others who has hardly participated to the articles in question. I think it quite rude behavior. It seems many editors have similar reaction. Negative reactions may be due to the feelings the authorship of an article is stolen, since the history is just lost; Other frequent negative reactions are due to the perception the splitter did not *get/understood* how much important it was to introduce one topic before another paragraph, or how much one paragraph was important to understand the whole story. If on top of it, the splitter does not make much effort to link both resulting articles, with small introductions or summary in the main one to explain the minor one for example, there are clearly seeds of discord planted. From that perspective, there is high risk in the short term that separation leads to an edit war.

The more editors there are, the less chance an edit war over ownership occur, but the more chance not everyone agree with the move. I remember that the many successive divisions of the USA/Irak war (my pov :-)) in growing numbers of articles, did not raise too much trouble between editors all things considered. I was surprised by this. However, I noticed some information also got lost in the process of moving and merging :-)

However, in the long term, the separated articles probably have more chance to reach a stable satisfying state, as less controversial issues will be found in the same place

From a content and access to info view : I tend to favour rather portal pages on big topics, with good introductions to sub topics, and links very well identified to separated pages. One example of such an article I gave a lot of energy to recently is w:fr:cuisine (this is both cooking and kitchen in french). The article is not complete yet, but quite well defined to my opinion. All sub topics on cooking are introduced in the article, at a minimum by a sentence, usually by a paragraph. And under many articles, there are clearly identified links to sub pages.

However, one problematic point is that it tends to reproduce the previous sub pages scheme, with one benefit (the article is not hierarchically linked as a sub topic by /) but one drawback (it is not always obvious the "sub article" is a sub of which article). That means if the reader enter the topic by the main article, it will work well, but if the reader enter the topic by a sub article, he will perhaps not find important information that is precisely in the main article or in other sub articles. I think it problematic. To my opinion, there should at least two levels of reading, a quick one in one article, and a phletora of more specialised. User:Anthere

Hello, Cunctator. I just wanted to weigh in on this discussion on your "atomization" of "agglomerated" articles. I'm certainly not opposed to splitting articles as a matter of principle, but I do think that there should be more discussion before some of the splits you've made recently.

As you give the example of Sport -- before and after -- I will focus my comments on that set of articles. Overall, some of the articles seem too specific to me, e.g., Asthetic appeal of sport, while others (e.g., Sportsmanship could lead to more detailed articles, as Anthère suggests, and still others (e.g. History of sport) are excellent.

However, I feel very strongly that the resulting article at Sport is too short and too dependent on the linked articles. For a topic as broad as sport, I think that there need to be sections on history, sportsmanship, professionalism, etc., as there were in the article before, if perhaps shorter and less detailed. I believe I understand your points about Wikipedia is not paper, but I also think that there should be acceptance that many visitors will look not follow links to more specific articles. For example, I think that there is sometimes too much subdivision of articles on smaller nations -- with separate articles for their history, military, etc. There are many that I'm interested in, but I have not yet taken the time to follow all of the links. I'm afraid of the same happening with these articles that you're splitting. I think that the approach you are advocating and moving forward with is well suited to people who are more focused on generalized surfing or detailed research, but does not serve those in the middle very well.

I believe that this should be a broader discussion -- perhaps at meta, and that people should be invited to weigh in. This is an important topic for Wikipedia, and should be discussed by more than the few of us who are editing this page. I would ask that you refrain from these efforts until there is broader discussion, or if you do not feel that that is reasonable, that you retain but edit down the sections which spawn new articles as I suggested above.

With respect, BCorr ? Брайен 16:45, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

we always go back to the "broad" approach versus the "deep" approach :-) I would support best a two or three levels of reading, rather than a collection of articles nearly at the same level. I think many readers who want to be quickly informed about sport do not necessarily want to read 10 articles. Another option I thought of, especially for simple wikipedia would be to clearly separate two contents in ONE article. One that would be a seriously meaty introduction, and the second part that would be a longer article. User:Anthere

I also dislike long articles. I try to make my articles between 2 and 5 computer screens in length. Anything less than two screens cannot adequately cover most subjects and presents the info in too fragmented a maner. Anything more than five screens suffers from lack of focus. I have split off articles when they get to four or five screens on several occasions, and have met little resistance (because I was the primary author in all cases). I can see how splitting articles that have had several contributors would require superb diplomatic skills. mydogategodshat 05:51, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I will be incorporating the issues people have brought up in the main entry when I have a chance... --The Cunctator 17:29, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I agree with the comments that this is such an important issue that splitting should be stopped until there is a wide discussion and concensus upon how and when to do it is achieved.

TonyClarke