Supporters of this rule include:
Opponents of this rule include:
After discussion, this rule was largely rejected. While there was some initial support when proposed, support slowly dwindled over time. However, it makes for an interesting debating point.
Supporters of the rule "Always leave something undone" include:
Opponents of the rule "Always leave something undone" include:
I have to say, I was very surprised to see the rule, and I was not surprised at all that there was more opposition against it than support in favour of it.
Isn't this the kind of thing the Talk pages are ideal for? If you think you left something important out, why place an irritating and annoying note on the actual article when you can note it on the Talk page for contributors to see? In fact, perhaps the top of each Talk page should have a bullet-list of things that are missing from the article, so people can pick something to write about or fill in. I did it this way on Talk:Vulcan (Star Trek), for example. -- Timwi 19:12 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I agree with Timwi that the Talk page is a better place for remarks about what would be useful to add ("make omissions explicit"), except in special cases. E.g., if a list of the provinces of a country is not complete, I would mention that on the page itself. In such case incompleteness would otherwise be close to incorrectness. - Patrick 23:19 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Could someone inform a new user what is the rule about writers referring to themselves? In my piece on Dirk Hartog I said that I had seen Dirk Hartog's plate in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam last year. This was instantly removed. Is this not a fact that may be of some interest to someone? Who makes these decisions? Dr Adam Carr
Just add (to be written - biographical information). Martin 15:51, 14 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I ran a few queries on the database about the above notes and I found a few pages (at least with todo, fixme, because there is a lot with in progress that are probably legitimate text). Most of these were not links and the pages had not been worked on for a while. I think this sort of litter is not too productive so I removed them. I don't know if it's mentioned somewhere, but there should probably be a standard way to leave notes so that it can be tracked more easily. For example including something like ''This page is still [[Wikipedia:FIXME|in progress]].'' in the article with the rest of the note inside HTML comments. Or it could be left in the talk page, but the former might be better in my opinion. Of course, some people work on temp pages and don't create the article until they're somewhat done. Opinions?
FIXME and such are common conventions in computer programming but I don't think they work well in wikipedia. First and most importantly, they are distracting. Any article in wikipedia is in progress. You can add FIXME to any article. Some article lacks the birth and death date and some article about an artistic work lacks the social significance of the work. Talk pages or embedded HTML comments are a better solution. -- Taku 21:20, Nov 18, 2003 (UTC)
Sometimes such things are very useful in resolving NPOV and other disputes and suchlike. See, for example, Open Directory Project (at the time of writing). I think a robotic removal of such things would be a mistake, but by all means go through and either fix them or change them into HTML comments or talk page notes as appropriate. Martin 23:52, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)
(moved here from the page itself)
Unfortunately, this recommendation is hardly practised as of February 2004. I wonder why. --
Taku
I have noticed that several times when I or someone else tries to mark a section of an article as a stub, someone comes along and either deletes the note or changes it to mark the entire article inaccurately as a stub. This has happened so often lately that I guess I should ask. Is it against policy to mark a sectoin as a stub? If so, is there any preferred way to draw attention to an article where a relevant topic is barely mentioned and needs to be expanded upon? -- Jmabel 23:52, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
At present there are many articles in the Wikipedia namespace that seek to give guidance on how to write better articles. I propose consolidating these into a much smaller number. On User:Jongarrettuk/Better writing guide I propose how these could be consolidated. The proposal is not to change advice, just to consolidate it. If I have inadvertently moved what you consider to be good advice that is currently in the Wikipedia namespace, please re-add it. I'm hope that the proposal to merge all these articles, in principle, will be welcomed. Of course, it may be preferred to have 2, 3 or 4 inter-connected articles than just one and would welcome advice on how this could be done. (In particular, perhaps all the guidance on layout should be spun off into one consolidated article on layout.) I'm also aware that putting lots of different bits of advice together may throw up anomalies or bits that people now disagree with (including bits that I myself disagree with:) ). I ask for support for the consolidation. Once the consolidation has happened, the advice can be changed in the normal way. Please feel free to improve on the current draft consolidation, but don't remove or add advice that is not currently on the Wikipedia namespace. If all goes well, I'll add a new Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles page on the 19th, though maybe some bits of the new article will need to be phased in over a longer period. I'll also take care to preserve all the archived discussion in one place. jguk 19:51, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Supporters of this rule include:
Opponents of this rule include:
After discussion, this rule was largely rejected. While there was some initial support when proposed, support slowly dwindled over time. However, it makes for an interesting debating point.
Supporters of the rule "Always leave something undone" include:
Opponents of the rule "Always leave something undone" include:
I have to say, I was very surprised to see the rule, and I was not surprised at all that there was more opposition against it than support in favour of it.
Isn't this the kind of thing the Talk pages are ideal for? If you think you left something important out, why place an irritating and annoying note on the actual article when you can note it on the Talk page for contributors to see? In fact, perhaps the top of each Talk page should have a bullet-list of things that are missing from the article, so people can pick something to write about or fill in. I did it this way on Talk:Vulcan (Star Trek), for example. -- Timwi 19:12 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I agree with Timwi that the Talk page is a better place for remarks about what would be useful to add ("make omissions explicit"), except in special cases. E.g., if a list of the provinces of a country is not complete, I would mention that on the page itself. In such case incompleteness would otherwise be close to incorrectness. - Patrick 23:19 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Could someone inform a new user what is the rule about writers referring to themselves? In my piece on Dirk Hartog I said that I had seen Dirk Hartog's plate in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam last year. This was instantly removed. Is this not a fact that may be of some interest to someone? Who makes these decisions? Dr Adam Carr
Just add (to be written - biographical information). Martin 15:51, 14 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I ran a few queries on the database about the above notes and I found a few pages (at least with todo, fixme, because there is a lot with in progress that are probably legitimate text). Most of these were not links and the pages had not been worked on for a while. I think this sort of litter is not too productive so I removed them. I don't know if it's mentioned somewhere, but there should probably be a standard way to leave notes so that it can be tracked more easily. For example including something like ''This page is still [[Wikipedia:FIXME|in progress]].'' in the article with the rest of the note inside HTML comments. Or it could be left in the talk page, but the former might be better in my opinion. Of course, some people work on temp pages and don't create the article until they're somewhat done. Opinions?
FIXME and such are common conventions in computer programming but I don't think they work well in wikipedia. First and most importantly, they are distracting. Any article in wikipedia is in progress. You can add FIXME to any article. Some article lacks the birth and death date and some article about an artistic work lacks the social significance of the work. Talk pages or embedded HTML comments are a better solution. -- Taku 21:20, Nov 18, 2003 (UTC)
Sometimes such things are very useful in resolving NPOV and other disputes and suchlike. See, for example, Open Directory Project (at the time of writing). I think a robotic removal of such things would be a mistake, but by all means go through and either fix them or change them into HTML comments or talk page notes as appropriate. Martin 23:52, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)
(moved here from the page itself)
Unfortunately, this recommendation is hardly practised as of February 2004. I wonder why. --
Taku
I have noticed that several times when I or someone else tries to mark a section of an article as a stub, someone comes along and either deletes the note or changes it to mark the entire article inaccurately as a stub. This has happened so often lately that I guess I should ask. Is it against policy to mark a sectoin as a stub? If so, is there any preferred way to draw attention to an article where a relevant topic is barely mentioned and needs to be expanded upon? -- Jmabel 23:52, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
At present there are many articles in the Wikipedia namespace that seek to give guidance on how to write better articles. I propose consolidating these into a much smaller number. On User:Jongarrettuk/Better writing guide I propose how these could be consolidated. The proposal is not to change advice, just to consolidate it. If I have inadvertently moved what you consider to be good advice that is currently in the Wikipedia namespace, please re-add it. I'm hope that the proposal to merge all these articles, in principle, will be welcomed. Of course, it may be preferred to have 2, 3 or 4 inter-connected articles than just one and would welcome advice on how this could be done. (In particular, perhaps all the guidance on layout should be spun off into one consolidated article on layout.) I'm also aware that putting lots of different bits of advice together may throw up anomalies or bits that people now disagree with (including bits that I myself disagree with:) ). I ask for support for the consolidation. Once the consolidation has happened, the advice can be changed in the normal way. Please feel free to improve on the current draft consolidation, but don't remove or add advice that is not currently on the Wikipedia namespace. If all goes well, I'll add a new Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles page on the 19th, though maybe some bits of the new article will need to be phased in over a longer period. I'll also take care to preserve all the archived discussion in one place. jguk 19:51, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)