Wikipedia:Historical archive/Policy/RefactoringPolicy

Refactoring is essential to the Wikipedia process. --TimShell (and others!)

How much and how often should refactoring be done?

View 1. As often as one sees something incorrect, obviously biased/partisan. It is better to change a page immediately, when one sees something perceived to be a problem, rather than to discuss changes that need to be made. Adherents of this view: Larry Sanger, LinusTolke

View 2. Only after a discussion has played out. It is better to let the original author of a page to make changes to it. Adherents of this view:

View 3. The middle road -- respect for a dialogue qua dialogue should be

respected, but at the same time a minor tweak early on can avoid a flame war.

To refactor or not will often depend on the context, and so either rule 1

(change immediately) or rule 2 (wait for the discussion to end) are too

extreme. Adherents of this view: Jimbo Wales, Atlas 2091, Kpjas

View 4: Whatever you do, preserve information. If you think, in your judgment, a page simply needs to be rewritten or changed substantially, go ahead and do that. But preserve any old contents you think might have some discussion value on a /Talk page, along with a comment about why you made the change. Even if you delete something that's just plain wrong, odds are that it got there because someone believed it was true, so preserve a comment that it is in fact wrong to deter later editors. --Lee Daniel Crocker

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I understand your point, Jimbo, but mainly what I'm concerned about is that people will start treating Wikipedia as yet another discussion forum, rather than an encyclopedia. As I see it--and you can feel free to disagree and act however you please, this being a wiki after all--all that emotional energy that goes into hashing through partisan and other issues could much more easily be channelled toward improving articles. The purpose of the wiki, as I see it, is--well, it's whatever people make it--but what I'd like it to be is the creation of good encyclopedia articles. Discussing things is usually aimed at changing people's minds. But what's the point of doing that on the wiki (except some ancillary social reason)? To improve articles, presumably. But what's stopping us from just going right in and improving them? Why engage in the discussion? You'd have to have a good reason, I think. So just go in and make the changes, I say. The article author can always go in and look at your changes and decide

to change it back, or, if he's reasonable, just make sure that the views on the table are fairly presented. -- Larry Sanger

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I believe that when retitling, making additions, spelling or grammatical corrections, etc; immediate with no discussion is best. But with large deletions or replacements, it might be better to suggest changes in a discussion, lest the original author get discouraged and quit posting. One person's improvement is another's desecration, and nobody likes to see their work just flushed without warning. Then again, oversensitivity can be detrimental to progress, and they could just restore it. What I'll do is; as long as the changes are a synthesis, immediate; when they're a competition, discuss (on a separate page). -- Atlas 2091

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The immediate work with other peoples articles are best used with a respect for other peoples views, contributions, and work. I believe that all contributers to wikipedia, i.e. all that have enough enthusiasm and courage to press "edit this page right now" followed by "Save" also has the required respect for other people. If that would not be the case, the whole wiki-pedia idea is doomed and in order to get anything out of it we would at least need to rethink the whole authorisation handling in order only to allow a selected set of people the editing rights. As long as we need not do this, there is no point in hindering the creative spirit in any way. LinusTolke

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Should discussion occur on the page itself or instead on a *Talk or *Discussion page?

View 1. On the page itself. Adherents of this view:

View 2. On a *Talk or *Discussion page, always (or almost always). Adherents of this view: Larry Sanger, LinusTolke

View 3. The decision to keep the discussion where it is, or move it to a *Discussion page, is contextual. Factors involved in the decision include such things as: how long is the discussion likely to continue, is resolution likely, is the discussion particularly flame-likely, etc. -- Jimbo Wales, Kpjas

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There's an excellent reason for Wikipedia in particular to encourage the practice of moving discussions to separate pages: the pages are supposed to be encyclopedia articles, not discussions. What contextual factors would outweigh this? Sure, there might be some. Can I have an example, though? -- Larry Sanger

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What is the purpose of refactoring?

View 1. There is one main purpose to refactoring and editing pages in general, and that is to create good encyclopedia articles. Adherents: Larry Sanger, LinusTolke

View 2.

View 3. I propose that there is a long-run and short-run purpose. The long-run purpose is to turn a discussion into a resource. The short-run purpose is to channel a discussion in a useful direction, i.e. to help aim it at the future time when it can be a resource. Adherents: Jimbo Wales

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Discussion:

Occasionally a useful middle-ground is to separate the commonly-accepted summary from the discussion. A good way to do this is to place the summary at top, then use two horizontal lines and a word like Discussion: before the discussion. If the discussion grows large or unweildy, it can later be separated into other page(s). --CliffordAdams

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My main reason for opposing this habit, and advocating that people move discussion to discussion pages, is that Wikipedia articles are supposed to be encyclopedia articles (right?), and encyclopedia articles don't have discussion right there on the page itself. The effect of having the discussion right there on the page itself makes it seem as though the discussion is just as important (an end in itself, as it were) as the article, which it most certainly is not, in my opinion. -- Larry Sanger

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Why not? If an article is biased, or out and out wrong, then anyone who makes even a cursory glance at the page should be warned of the possibility. Isn't that at least as important as the contents of the page, since they are worthless without the grain of salt that tells you to take? Hiding such comments on a talk section would seem to give the page an air of legitimacy that is potentially harmful - in such a case we need big blinking lights on the page itself. -- Josh Grosse

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In that case, I'd say you're right, Josh. But for general innocuous discussion, that's what the Talk Page is for. --LMS

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I'd say you're wrong, Josh. If an article is biased or incorrect, a discussion on whether or not it is biased or incorrect and how does not improve the article itself. The best thing to do, instead of commenting it, is to rewrite it in order to remove the bias or incorrect things. The second best thing, if you don't trust yourself with writing an unbiased version of the article, would be to add another version of the article. In that case we don't have "Biased article + Discussion" but instead we have "Biased article (bias 1) + Biased article (bias 2)" and that would much better server the purpose of alarming glancing users of the page's status. Furthermore it is far better source for a later refactoring by someone who trusts himself to be unbiased. LinusTolke

I have two cents as a newbie. I like the idea of everyone adding their knowledge to this Wikipedia. I do not like the idea of the discussion/forum stuff. There are doers and talkers. I will be doing some additions to the Wikipedia, I wish the talkers would go just away! You are parasites, trying to slow down or even stop the good thing that is happening here. Please go away! gg

What would you do if some indiscriminately removes your long article ?

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Though I wouldn't state my views quite as drastically as gg above, I pretty much agree. It feels as if articles after reaching a certain size start accumulating /Talk text instead of being further revised. I'm definitely not innocent of this, either.

Personally, I find long pages of discussion between two or more persons next to useless since it mostly hides the information that is in there somewhere from public view. These discussions tend to contain good points, but the problem is that they are stuck in the middle of a discussion. I'm sure that a page like neutral point of view could be reduced to half the length without losing anything, and still improve clarity.

And yes, I'm writing as an addition to a discussion. Perhaps I should just dig into neutral point of view instead, picking out the good bits and pushing the rest off to /Talk. Hm. --Pinkunicorn

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There are a number of /talk or other discussion oriented pages which could use a bit of traditional Wiki refactoring. It took me a long time to read through neutral point of view, and Abortion/talk. But there's useful content there, on the other hand all of the discussion on Logical fallacy/Talk is about an old version of Logical fallacy/Straw man and has little to recommend it other than historical value. Perhaps we could talk about a policy for cleaning up the /talk pages a bit... I'd recommend using the traditional wiki refactoring technique of adding a summary with whatever consensus we've arrived at the top, grouping separate discussion items together, and placing them towards the bottom.

I fully expect that someone (probably Larry) will object that this takes away valuable time from creating encyclopedia articles, but I don't think that's necessarily true for a couple of reasons. First, I think most people want to at least read through the /talk pages before editing an article - otherwise who knows what kind of minefield they'll be walking into, and this will take less time and mental energy if the talk pages aren't cluttered up with tons of useless crap, which is poorly organized. Second, I think the energy spent in summarizing the discussion on most talk pages can result in new information for the main page. This is certainly what happened on Logical fallacy/Straw man. -- Mark Christensen

I second this suggestion. --Pinkunicorn

So do I. --Kpjas

Why would I disagree? Refactoring discussion pages with a view to creating better articles is one of the best things that you can do with a convoluted, too-long discussion page. That will result in better articles and actually keep people focused on the task of article creation. Moreover, it allows one, if necessary, to continue the discussion with a better view to what's happened before. --LMS

I was just guessing as to what you'd think based on your previous comments. You said, "What's stopping us from just going right in and improving [the articles themselves]? Why engage in the discussion? You'd have to have a good reason, I think. So just go in and make the changes, I say." And I took that and other comments (here and elsewhere), as an indication that you tend to think discussion is not very valuable for the Wikipedia, especially when the same effort could be spent on "pure" work on articles. Of course, in some cases this is exactly the right attitude. This is particularly true when those engaged in the discussion are engaged in name calling and other unhealthy behavior.

But as someone who's watched other Wiki's develop into resources, I tend to think of nearly every discussion as something which can eventually be refactored into useful information. If you look at Ward's Wiki, you'll see that there is now a large repository of information about Extreme Programming. In fact, I think it is the most useful resource on Extreme Programming I've seen, and all of the really useful pages have come from lots of discussion, and multiple attempts at refactoring-- Mark Christensen

Well, I see your point. I was mainly thinking about the situation where people have (as they sometimes will--not always a bad thing) created a huge Talk page. I agree, one can almost always glean useful information from that. I do think, though, that that isn't the format that's best to follow in creating Wikipedia articles. That might, I guess, be the case for some topics, such as drugs--although I think that if people are well-meaning, cool-headed, etc., they can accomplish more by simply adding the information they'd use in their arguments to the article itself. On the other hand, that can create a really biased article--in which case, I guess it is a good thing to remove the bias to a Talk page. It's a bit of a conundrum.

I keep this in mind, that it's only the habits we encourage that keeps Wikipedia from turning into another H2G2 or Everything2. I really don't think we want Wikipedia to go that route. That's mainly why I'm concerned about this. As long as the partisan wrangling stays on a few pages like abortion/Talk, drug/Talk, etc., OK. But I don't like it. You know, another reason I don't like it is that I think it is possible for ya'll to approach partisan topics in a nonpartisan way--for whatever reason, though, a lot of Wikipedians seem to resist it. But it just takes a bit of discipline (and knowledge and research). For example, I am totally non-religious, but I would not think of debating the merits of religion with anyone, and I would pride myself on being able to present the religious point of view in as sympathetic way as possible. (Not that I have done this in my philosophy articles--I haven't adapted all of them for Wikipedia yet.)

By the way, this discussion needs a new home, since it doesn't actually concern refactoring policy. :-) --LMS

Please see Larry Sanger/What Talk pages are not for. --LMS

See also PolicyPolicy.