Wikipedia:Related information/answers

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common."^[1]

"I've Never Seen That. I Hate It."^[2]

" I just don't like it."

"I can't admit that maybe the past was bad."^[3]

"Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent."^[4]

"The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from the old ones."^[5]

“Change tends to fill people with this incredible fear.”^[6]

"Habit with him was all the test of truth, / It must be right: I've done it from my youth"^[7]

Following advice at wp:layout the Related information heading has been added on an article-by-article basis. The concept has not met with much opposition from the editors familiar with those articles. Instead, opposition has come from a handful of outside editors, often expressing a visceral dislike of the concept in the form of blanket reverts.^[8] This page responds to concerns raised by those editors.

Generic objections and responses

Violates consensus. Objection: The idea is against consensus (or against policy).

Response: There is no consensus (or policy) prohibiting a navbox heading. Even if there were, "violates consensus" is not a valid objection to a Wikipedia edit. See also wp:BRD ("Do not accept "Policy" , "consensus", or "procedure" as valid reasons for a revert").^[9]

Subject to opposition. Objection: There is significant opposition to this proposal.

Response: While the ardor of those opposed to this idea is genuine, consensus is achieved by reason, not passion. "Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth."^[10] See also wp:NOTDEMOCRACY and wp:Polling is not a substitute for discussion.

New. Objection: The idea is new (or unprecedented, or non-standard, or not yet widely accepted, or not policy, or against standard practice). (A similar objection is that there must be consensus before the idea is implemented. Here is what happened when one editor tried to meet that objection.)

Response: As a preliminary matter we should keep in mind that, as Jimbo Wales puts it, Wikipedia is "a permanent work in progress." Preventing new ideas because they are new is a logically invalid Catch-22 argument (a new proposal becomes standard by use; but use of a new proposal is prohibited because it is not standard).^[11] Further, it ignores the organic nature of Wikipedia.

Proposal objections and responses

Unnecessary. Objection: It is faster to press End or grab a scroll bar and run it down to the bottom than it is to find the table of contents and scroll to the bottom of it to see if there are navigation aids.

Response: That scrolling to the bottom of the article is quicker than scrolling to the table of contents is a dubious assertion, particularly if the table of contents appears in the first screen. That said, pressing End is faster for that rare user who is specifically checking an article for navigational aids. However, the vast majority of users will not routinely press End. As explained at the Manual of Style (March 4, 2010): Headings provide an overview in the table of contents and allow readers to navigate through the text more easily. If the article has navigation aids then the table of contents should reflect that fact.

Objection: Navigation boxes are already set apart by graphics.

Response: Because they lurk at the bottom of the page, navboxes are like Easter eggs to the casual reader. This "hide the ball" effect is only growing worse with the trend toward collapsed navboxes.

Unnecessary clutter. Objection: Readers familiar with Wikipedia know that navigational aids are always at the end of an article, so the Related information heading needlessly lengthens the table of contents and breaks the flow of the page.

Response: The cost of an additional line in the table of contents and an additional heading in the body must be considered against the benefit of providing helpful information to readers. As to cost, readers familiar with Wikipedia can quickly scroll past the appendix listings in the table of contents – it matters not whether there are five rather than four headings to skip. Similarly, the distress some editors may suffer because they find a navbox heading visually unattractive is likely to be minimal. So the cost of the heading seems small. As to benefit, as discussed above most users will benefit from a "heads up" in the table of contents that an article includes navigational aids. In addition, having a "Related information" heading draws the attention of casual readers information rich navboxes while, at the same time, they separate the internal links in the navigation aids from the external links in the external links section. So the benefit relative to cost seems large.

Navigation aids are not part of the article. Objection: Headings are for sections are "part an the article" and navigation aids (the navigation boxes, interwiki links, categories) are not part an the article.

Response: Please provide a citation to support this contention. Perhaps that citation will explain how it can be that See also links are "part of an article" but navbox links aren't.

Navigation aids are not part of the printed article. Objection: Navigation aids do not show in a print version of the article and might not be copied or mirrored by other sites that use Wikipedia content. So the proposal leaves a dangling empty section at the end of the printed or mirrored article.

Response: Wikipedia is not a print encyclopedia. That aside, printed and mirrored versions do include succession boxes (for example, Julius Caesar), which are one type of navigation box. Such versions omit important information to the extent they do not also include other navigation aids.^[12] Until that problem is fixed the dangling "Related information" heading will alert readers of a printed or mirrored version to look for additional material available in the on-line Wikipedia article.

Execution objections and responses

Wrong title. Objection: The title is meaningless.

Response: This is a debatable point. Regardless, out of context the "Related information" title is no more meaningless than the widely used "See also" title. It is by use that readers learn the meaning of article headings. So the benefits of the "Related information" title will increase as the title is more widely used. That said, Wikipedia is all about constant improvement. If you have an idea for a better title then you are free to propose it.^[13]

Should be handled by interface. Objection: A better solution would be to provide the navigation information link outside the article view itself. (For instance, as the other language or category wiki links are handled.)

Response: No explanation is given to support this conclusion (which seems to be directed at the concept of locating navboxes at the foot of an articles rather than the concept of providing a heading for those navboxes that are so located). Assuming nevertheless that an interface would be a better solution, the problem is that no such interface is presently available. The solution proposed in this essay is the best available solution.

Notes

^ -John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704)
^ "instant reactions to the 'new' are often misguided" - http://volumeone.org/street/a/article14
^ lyric from the song Momentum - http://www.ildb.info/Aimee+Mann-MOMENTUM,lid221787-a585.html
^ Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel prize in literature (1872-1970)
^ John Maynard Keynes
^ Rem Koolhaas - [1]
^ -George Crabbe, poet and naturalist (1754-1832)
^ See, for example, these twelve "no" edits.
^ With regard to why the proponents of this idea are trying to build consensus by adding the title to articles, consider this history:
Well actually I did raise this at MOS (or rather WT:LAYOUT) when I first had the idea. I started out at VP:Sandy, then went where she suggested and asked there. The response was that WP:LAYOUT could only reflect existing practice, so changes to WP:LAYOUT could only be considered if the practice was accepted. As Bwdik notes, there's an obvious paradox if we change everything so that it meets current guidelines but also say we can't change current guidelines because everything is already done that way. We end up with a dead encyclopedia that way. The recommendation at the time was (seemed to be) to try it out and see if it met with acceptance on an article-by-article basis, by the editors of those articles. I don't think the concept has met all that much opposition on that basis, rather the opposition has seemed to be external from editors actually familiar with each article. It seems to stem more from ideological opposition and/or "not in MOS" grounds, sometimes including blanket reverts. Franamax (talk) 23:07, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Following that advice, those who believe that the Related information heading is a good idea began making edits. And, to save the trouble of explaining the edit repeatedly, wrote the Related information essay to refer to. See generally WP:ESSAYS.
^ Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662), in W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.), The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York: Viking Press, 1966.
^ See also wp:GOOGLEHITS (merit not determined by the number of Google hits generated).
^ The rationale for not printing navigation boxes is that these items contain wikilinks that are of no use to print readers.[2] There are two problems with this rationale: First, other wikilink content does print, for example See also and succession boxes. Second, navigation boxes do contain useful information regarding the relationship of the article to the subjects of related articles.
^ Rejected alternate titles include "Navigation aids" (would be confusing in any article dealing with nautical topics and has a faint suggestion of some hideous disease) and "Navboxes and categories" ("navboxes" is wiki lingo and "navigation boxes" isn't a whole lot better).

[1] -John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704)

[2] "instant reactions to the 'new' are often misguided" - http://volumeone.org/street/a/article14

[3] yric from the song Momentum - http://www.ildb.info/Aimee+Mann-MOMENTUM,lid221787-a585.html

[4] Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel prize in literature (1872-1970)

[5] John Maynard Keynes

[6] Rem Koolhaas - [1]

[7] -George Crabbe, poet and naturalist (1754-1832)

[8] See, for example, these twelve "no" edits.

[9] With regard to why the proponents of this idea are trying to build consensus by adding the title to articles, consider this history:
Well actually I did raise this at MOS (or rather WT:LAYOUT) when I first had the idea. I started out at VP:Sandy, then went where she suggested and asked there. The response was that WP:LAYOUT could only reflect existing practice, so changes to WP:LAYOUT could only be considered if the practice was accepted. As Bwdik notes, there's an obvious paradox if we change everything so that it meets current guidelines but also say we can't change current guidelines because everything is already done that way. We end up with a dead encyclopedia that way. The recommendation at the time was (seemed to be) to try it out and see if it met with acceptance on an article-by-article basis, by the editors of those articles. I don't think the concept has met all that much opposition on that basis, rather the opposition has seemed to be external from editors actually familiar with each article. It seems to stem more from ideological opposition and/or "not in MOS" grounds, sometimes including blanket reverts. Franamax (talk) 23:07, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Following that advice, those who believe that the Related information heading is a good idea began making edits. And, to save the trouble of explaining the edit repeatedly, wrote the Related information essay to refer to. See generally WP:ESSAYS.

[10] Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662), in W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.), The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York: Viking Press, 1966.

[11] See also wp:GOOGLEHITS (merit not determined by the number of Google hits generated).

[12] The rationale for not printing navigation boxes is that these items contain wikilinks that are of no use to print readers.[2] There are two problems with this rationale: First, other wikilink content does print, for example See also and succession boxes. Second, navigation boxes do contain useful information regarding the relationship of the article to the subjects of related articles.

[13] Rejected alternate titles include "Navigation aids" (would be confusing in any article dealing with nautical topics and has a faint suggestion of some hideous disease) and "Navboxes and categories" ("navboxes" is wiki lingo and "navigation boxes" isn't a whole lot better).

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