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Foreign languages in lead section

I have a question regarding the use of foreign namings of places in articles leads. My point is that I beleave only the different versions from the article title should be mentioned, being useless to mention a different language naming if identical to the article title whatever the importance of the language in question for the subject is. Am I right? FkpCascais (talk) 07:26, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand the question. Certainly we do not want a lead that says "Alice Smith (French: Alice Smith) is an author...", but presumably you have something else in mind. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:02, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

There are cases exactly like that (generally for placenames), and yeah, they should be undone. But there's a different case when they should remain, namely when the place in question is home to multiple official languages, and the name of the place in one but not other of those languages happens to coincide with the English name. Various places in Switzerland (three major languages) would qualify. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 19:27, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

"Lede" again

There was consensus over a year ago ( maybe two or three; I don't recall exactly) to remove lede from the text here as misleading and unhelpful, but someone has put it back in with some nitpicky but incorrect footnote that "the spelling" lede is deprecated "by some" (really by a WP:LEAD consensus), but used by others. Lede is not "a spelling" and this is not a WP:ENGVAR issue; lede is a completely different word, a neologistic term of journalism jargon, absent from most deictionaries, that has been misapplied here. A Wikipedia lead (properly written) is a concise summary of all the important facts in an article, so that readers can get the gist of an article and not have to read the entire thing unless they need additional detail. A journalistic lede is exactly the opposite, being a "teaser", i.e. the intentional witholding of key details in the introduction of an article so that the reader is essentially forced to read the entire piece in order to understand the story. And Wikipedia articles are not stories. The observation that some people on WP continue to use lede means nothing other than a) some people with journalism backgrounds like to badly misapply their jargon, and b) many people with no journalism background see people like the former appy the term "lede" and think that it is WP jargon, and so start using it. Terminology is important. It can have a lot of psychological impact on how people participate here. E.g., there's a reason we're called editors, not authors. Two common and often coinciding major problems with articles below "Good Article" quality are a journlistic style and a lead that acts like a teaser and does not actually summarize the article. When one of our own most important guidelines encourages people to write ledes, it's no wonder. (PS: I'm not anti-journalism - I have been a journo myself, editor of one of the largest-circulation online political newsletters of the 1990s. But I am against abusing words to pander to particular interest groups.) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 18:57, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I took it out because even the references used strongly imply that it's only used by journalists, and we're not journalists.Rememberway (talk) 19:43, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Mmm. Thing is, there was a vote on it. I agree that it's a different word that is used only in a specific context, and that it's inappropriate to use it in this one, but there was a vote so I reverted it back in.Rememberway (talk) 20:00, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I can't find anything like a vote in the archives (see also WP:VOTE). There have been several discussions, going in various directions; there doesn't seem to be any strong consensus across them all. I suspect individual discussions tend to reflect the opinions of whoever is interested right then. Past discussions:

• June 2006
• March 2007
• June 2008
• Jan 2010
• Sep 2010

—DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:08, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Good old wikiality strikes again! Yay!Rememberway (talk) 20:01, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I continue to find it amazing that some people react so strongly to the spelling 'lede'. I will just quote myself from some previous dicussion:

I don't think it really matters whether the term is in the first sentence of the MOS. Either way "lede" is the standard professional term, so plenty of people will use it (it's not as if removing it here causes people's vocabulary to change). The main argument I see for putting it here is to help people who may not recognize the spelling (note WP:LEDE redirects here). It seems like a very minor issue.

— Carl (CBM · talk) 20:34, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it does seem to be a standard professional term, just not for this usage.Rememberway (talk) 21:19, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Having checked the sources, it seems they only define it as a term for news stories, so I have amended the note to point this out. Strangely, it was previously written to omit this fact.Rememberway (talk) 21:19, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

My take: "lead" is more common and more self-evident. "lede" does nothing to help editors. It looks like a typo to those unfamiliar. Nobody has demonstrated any benefit to the term. Jargon is useful if it serves a purpose by saving words or being specific. "lede" does none of that; "lead" would do just as well in every case. • I favor documenting that some use it; nothing more. I'd be in favor of deprecating it, but frankly I don't think it matters enough to warrant even that much prescription. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:26, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Looking back at the discussions, in total there seem to be more people that have expressed an opinion against it than for it; but for some reason the last discussion was virtually 100% for it. Personally I think it's annoying and I agree that it's counterproductive.Rememberway (talk) 03:55, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

"Lede" exists because printers also have to deal with "lead" (the metal), and a note sent down to the press room about "The l____ is wrong on the first column" needs to be non-ambiguous if you want the actual problem fixed. They are now both "real" words and are listed in standard dictionaries without any sort of disclaimer. (Actually, lede was always a real word; it just didn't have anything to do with writing or printing until the 20th century.)

Preserving this does help editors—those with some background in or knowledge of journalism. It doesn't help (or hurt) editors that don't recognize it, just like "em-dash" doesn't help (or hurt) folks who don't know how "—" differs from "-".

Importantly, the spelling should be mentioned here because the shortcut redirects here. If you're one of those less-educated people who sees a reference to WP:LEDE somewhere, then the first sentence should assure you that you are, in fact, in the right place. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:04, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't see why the printing tech aspect would be relevant to a wiki. • For Wikipedia, how is "lede" better than "lead", even for those editors with journalism knowledge? • To be explicit, when I write "deprecate", I don't mean "not mention", I mean "document it; recommend against it". (Again, I don't think it matters enough to warrant even that much.) —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 11:41, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

If you happen to know this bit of jargon, and you see it used, then you know, with absolute certainty, that the person is talking about the introduction to a piece of writing. If, on the other hand, you see someone refer to "lead", you don't have any certainty: WP:LEAD could be an essay about the futility of leading a a stubborn horse to water, about newbies in leading strings or needing an experienced person to take them by the hand and lead them out of confusion, about the need for bold leadership, about the amount of spacing between lines, or any number of other things. It is incredibly ambiguous. The spelling variant exists for the express purpose of providing a level of clarity that is not available with the more common spelling. Therefore it is "better", using the word better as a synonym for "less confusing". WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:51, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that may be true, but the dictionaries say that the term 'lede' is only used in News journalism, and the overall information appears to be that it is only applied to a particular style of introduction that is specific to News. News style ledes have a particular length, around 25 words, and you have to apply to 5 specific criteria. Our leads are nearly always longer than that and not all of those criteria are applicable for us either. In addition the style of a lede is unencyclopedic.Rememberway (talk) 05:46, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

When to include a person's nickname in the first sentence?

There is an ongoing discussion on Talk:Gabe Carimi whether to include Carimi's barely used nickname "The Bear Jew" in the article's first sentence, I was wondering if (and where) it has ever been determined when to include a person's nickname in the first sentence, and when just to mention it later in the article. Obviously there are some cases in which the nickname is almost synonymous with the person's name, like Smokin' Joe Frazier or Jerome "The Bus" Bettis, but in most cases it is not (like Kobe "Black Mamba" Bryant) and therefore the nickname(s) only appear in the "personal" section. So, is there a guideline for this, and (if not) should there be one? --bender235 (talk) 09:06, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

"Controversial" in first sentence of lede

A number of editors have been insisting that the first sentence in the lede of an article describe an individual as a "controversial" religious leader, because one source says he described himself that way. They argue that, despite WP:LABEL specifically stating one should not use the bare word "controversial", he did a lot of controversial things, and we do have one source in which he describes himself that way, so it must go in the first sentence (or at least the lede). A larger number of more experienced editors disagree, but so far have made no headway. If possible, it would be very helpful if members of this board could express their views at Talk:Elazar Shach#Shach - "controversial and divisive"?. Jayjg ^(talk) 19:28, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

BOLDTITLE

The MOS:BOLDTITLE section needs to be cleared up. (1) I'm curious as to where the consensus that descriptive page titles don't need to be in boldface comes from, and (2) there's the "clarification needed" bit about simple descriptions like History of the United States that needs to be dealt with. I bring this up because of inconsistency in discography articles: it makes sense to me that they typically begin "The discography of <artist> consists of...", but I'm running into conflicts with an IP who thinks otherwise based on BOLDTITLE. It would help if we could see why the MoS says not to put descriptive titles in boldface, and if the "clarification needed" bit could be, um, clarified. --IllaZilla (talk) 21:11, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I believe the thinking is/was that in the case of an article like electron, we bold the first occurrence of the term to call attention to that term as the topic of the article. In lists, the topic is not list of X; the topic is X. "List of" describes the format, not the topic. So in a discography article, the artist's name should be bold, "discography of" should not. History of the United States used to be an example of an article which properly did not restate the title in the first sentence. The article has since changed, and not for the better, I think. I do think that sometimes editors go through rather ridiculous rhetorical contortions solely to restate the page title. I usually find the resulting sentences cumbersome and less clear, so I think that's a bad thing. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 22:18, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Well personally I don't have a problem stating the topic in the first sentence of discography articles (as said above, I tend to start an article like Metallica discography with "The discography of Metallica consists of..."), so it's clear right up front that this is a list of their releases as opposed to an article about the band in general. And that's kind of my argument: in a discography article the topic of the article is not the artist in question, but rather their catalog ("discography" describing not the format of the article, but rather the subject that it covers). It seems rather simple to me to state so in the lead sentence and bold it, whereas I agree that some other topics (list of episodes, for example) don't lend themselves to this and one would have to go through "ridiculous rhetorical contortions" to try to do make it work, so it makes sense not to do so. And if the title isn't restated, then there's nothing to bold. But in a case like a discography, where it's rather simple to state the title/topic right in the lead sentence, I don't see why we wouldn't bold it. The discographies I've worked on, including featured ones, do so without any difficulty. These aren't really complicated titles like Electrical characteristics of dynamic loudspeakers, nor would they be awkward to parse into a sentence like List of Seinfeld episodes. --IllaZilla (talk) 22:56, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

"The discography of Metallica consists of..."), so it's clear right up front that this is a list of their releases as opposed to an article about the band in general. -- This is truly remarkable: I've found in the past that people who are hellbent on having something (anything, really) bolded in the lead usually disregard the fact that there is a page title right up there, in big beautiful letters. You see, the average reader -- can read. The page title is part of the page, it's not just a "container designation". Do you realise that your reasoning is tied to your erroneous assumption that there is no page title? We bold things on many articles purely as a visual cue for the reader. And on most articles, there is no reason not to do so. But when there are valid arguments against it (as is the case for these class of daughter-articles), there really is no reason to bend over backwards just to bold something. There's always the page title right up there.

whereas I agree that some other topics (list of episodes, for example) don't lend themselves to this and one would have to go through "ridiculous rhetorical contortions" to try to do make it work, so it makes sense not to do so. -- If that is what you actually believe and not just an unspoken concession you're making to the developing discussion, please tell me why you reverted me on such articles as well and then refused to restore my edits, let alone to apologise for undoing my work. (Relevant article history links: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13])

I don't see why we wouldn't bold it. -- Reasoning provided below. --87.78.50.129 (talk) 11:49, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

• In lists, the topic is not list of X; the topic is X. "List of" describes the format, not the topic. So in a discography article, the artist's name should be bold, "discography of" should not. -- Exactly right.
  So in a discography article, the artist's name should be bold, "discography of" should not. -- There is an imho compelling three-step argument to leave the artist's name unbolded as well (or the series' name in the similar case of episode lists):
  

1. Links in the boldface reiteration of the topic are discouraged in the MoS (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (linking)#General points on linking style).
   
2. It is far more convenient for the reader (and suggested accordingly by the MoS) to wikilink on first occurence of a term.
   
3. It is awkward and completely nonsensical to disregard the readers' convenience and move the link further away just so that something can be bolded.

This is also why the vast majority of featured discography lists as well as the vast majority of featured episode lists do not contain any bolding in their lead sentences.

IllaZilla, boldface in the lead is not the rug that ties the room together. It makes sense on most articles, but it does not make sense on other articles. Compiling the underlying principles, reasonings and explanations of these stylistic rules and their exceptions is the very purpose of the Manual of Style. Why are you fighting so hard against something that makes so much elegant sense? It's just a tad more complicated than you thought, that's all. It happens, and in such situations people tend to make up their own simplified rules -- but do you actually believe that simplifying the MoS to your liking is preferable over explaining the reasons behind such exceptions to you? --87.78.50.129 (talk) 10:36, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

I have one proposal

Enhancing level of quick knowledge by adding into names of articles about real persons their occupation in brackets;without any need to read an article to get an idea about who these people were-in cases when person has a little time or need the information about occupation of certain person(s) right now; without actually reading lines in that article that are saying it. Please consider the significance of this change and be ready to discuss it.

When dealing with infoboxes:you need to make sense of informations you read in infobox and orientate in it,so it may take up more amount of time than it would if there were occupations of people written in names of articles;if people needed to find quckly only that information.

Plus not all articles needing infobox(as they deal with historical person that lived in past centuries or are still living) do,in fact,have infobox. And infobox is lot harder to do than to write occupation in brackets. Plus infobox looks messy,if there are too many bits of information;so people cannot orientate as quickly as they need.

I am not saying we should get rid of infoboxes-I´m saying:"Enhancing names of articles with this information would be very beneficial to people searching through Wikipedia".

Not all articles needing infobox(as they deal with historical or contemporary persons)do,in fact,have infobox. For example: Mary Shelley,influential writer does not have an infobox,or should I ask:Is it not considered necessary to make infobox for her? Though there are lots of infoboxes being made everyday to B-class actors and actresses,she does not have infobox,because no one dare to bother. So viewers have a bad luck if they want to find out who she was in short amount of given time;they must read through her full name and lengthy dates of birth and death until they find information they so desperately needed. Another example is Günter Brus ,one of the most important figures of Viennese Actionism,creator of revolutionary book Irrwisch,coiner of "Bild-Dichtungen(Picture-poems) and first pioneer of Body painting-even beforeYves Klein.(And has such short article that it is such a shame to have the article on Wikipedia.) And so on... We definitely should include multiple occupations in brackets as long as it is in the name of article and written in thick font,so people can easily see it and it helps to orientate better as they know what kind of person is it about. We should write non-occupational information person is known for in brackets also,like in case of Charles Manson we should write [serial murderer] and so on. There should be no article about person who is not famous or notable for something. Remark about"Western cultural bias" is not on the right place,since I do not care whether we write Bill Gates [American business magnate, philanthropist, author and chairman of Microsoft] or Bill Gates [creator of Microsoft] as long as we will write the thing he is most notable for in the name of the article and in thick font for better visibility.

Pieceofpeper--D.M: 20:42, 13 June 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pieceofpeper (talk • contribs)

!SORRY FOR DUPLICATED SECTION-I FORGOT TO LOG IN AND I COULD NOT SAVE A PAGE,SO IT GOT SAVED TWICE! I DID NOT MEAN TO REMOVE SIGNATURE-I JUST WANTED TO REPLACE IT,BECAUSE IT SHOWED MY IP,AS I WAS NOT LOGGED-ACCIDENTALLY! Pieceofpeper0:14, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

We have a policy, Wikipedia:Article titles, on naming articles. In general, articles have the simplest name possible. If we have articles on more than one person with the same name, if one of them is significantly better known than the others, then that article has just the person's name as its title. Other articles about persons with the same name are then disambiguated by whatever works, i.e., occupation, title, residency, etc. Infoboxes are optional. Some editors add them, others don't care. Wikipedia is edited by individual volunteers. There are policies and guidelines established by consensus, but much remains at the discretion of individual editors. -- Donald Albury 13:11, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

What means that I must seek consensus? Or can I make some changes straight away? Pieceofpeper--D.M: 06:09, 16 June 2011 (UTC) --D.M: 06:17, 16 June 2011 (UTC) I had a discussion on WP:Article titles and after they decided that it has really nothing to do with WP:Article titles and directed me to WP:LEAD. And you tell me to see WP:Article titles... Pieceofpeper

RFC: restructuring of the Manual of Style

Editors may be interested in this RFC, along with the discussion of its implementation:

Should all subsidiary pages of the Manual of Style be made subpages of WP:MOS?

It's big; and it promises huge improvements. Great if everyone can be involved. Noetica^Tea? 00:43, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Surname clarification templates

A village pump post about the appearance of name-order hatnotes in the lead is here. Please take a look and comment. —Designate (talk) 21:35, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

verb tense in sentence that identifies subject

I can't believe I'm actually suggesting that the MoS prescribe something, but this is a little bit subtle and I wonder if some guidance is appropriate, worded in such a way as to allow for exceptions.

My sense is that the verb tense in the sentence identifying the subject of the article, ordinarily the first sentence, carries a bit more baggage than it would in ordinary discourse. Specifically, in most cases,

1. in biographies of living persons, the identifying sentence should be in the present tense
2. in biographies of deceased persons, the identifying sentence should be in the past tense
3. in articles about completed events in the past, the identifying sentence should be in the past tense

This came to my attention most recently in the bio of William Weld. Before I changed it, the article said that Weld was the 68th Governor of Massachusetts. Which of course is true — he was the 68th governor of Massachusetts, and the present tense would have been inappropriate in that sentence.

The problem is, when I read a bio and the sentence introducing me to the subject is in the past tense, my immediate reaction is "this guy is dead".

On point 3, I was involved some time ago in a minor dispute at the article on the Whitechapel murders, where the article had read [t]he Whitechapel murders are eleven unsolved murders of women..., which I thought was fairly bizarre. I do not wish to start a debate on the present existence of past events interested readers may consult the article on presentism (philosophy of time), but in fact I don't believe in presentism, so that wasn't my point; I say only that this is not my understanding of how the English language is best used.

(A well-respected but idiosyncratic contributor had objected to saying they were eleven unsolved murders, asking in that case, what are they now? My position is that, according to the English language even if not philosophically, they are not anything now, because they occurred in the past.) A solution was found that put the sentence in the past tense without taking a position on whether they currently exist.

What do people think? Is this something that should be mentioned somewhere in the MoS? (Or, perhaps, is it already, and I just haven't found it?) --Trovatore (talk) 08:01, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

On the biographies, your change of Weld's opening sentence to "is a former..." rather than "was a" is exactly what's recommended by Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)#Tense. DrKiernan (talk) 08:55, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Something like "is an American politician and attorney who served as the 68th Governor of Massachusetts" is also possible, since international readers have likely never heard of Massachusetts. It's not pretty but it works. —Designate (talk) 19:57, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Should we stress that lead should make no original claims?

I think we should stress in the article that lead should contain no original claims - as in, no information that is not repeated somewhere else in the article. I just had a discussion with an editor whose understanding of this policy differs, and who claims that that our current wording about lead summarizing the article and providing the overview does not prevent the lead from having unique claims. Using his rationale, that editors likes to merge small sections from the article into lead (sigh...). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 19:13, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

That sounds worth an additional sentence. Give it a whirl. One caveat. I must admit that I'm guilty of violating the "overview the body" principle. Sometimes I write introductory text in the lead, which tells a unifying fact about all the article's subtopics, which does not reappear elsewhere. For example, the first and third sentences of Definitions of mathematics. As much as I agree with keeping the body in the body and making the lead simply a lower-resolution version of the body, I hope we can have wording that allows the occasional use of the lead to say something important that really doesn't need to be repeated. There should be a special reason for it, though, like the use of extreme brevity for emphasis in Definitions of mathematics. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 20:36, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

I just found that my concern is already addressed superbly here: Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(lead_section)#Relative_emphasis. So, I drop my caveat. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 21:03, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

There are occasional exceptions to that rule. For example, if you include a direct quotation in the lead, it might well be silly to repeat it later. However, as a general rule, a well-developed article will not have information that appears only in the lead. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:06, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Biographical lead sections

Following some recent discussions, I recently started a discussion on the lead sections in biographical articles to try and unify those aspects of the discussion, rather than have the discussions spread all over the place. Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (biographies)#Style of lead sections and comment there (where I've mentioned some of the parts of this guideline that cover biographies). Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 16:03, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Parent articles

Link to parent article. In the event that the article is a sub-article (or similarly linked article), that relationship should be clearly outlined just before the opening sentence.

Really? I haven't seen so - I don't believe this is commonly done. If you take the FA Pedro II of Brazil with its very clear sub-pages Early life of Pedro II of Brazil (GA) and Decline and fall of Pedro II of Brazil (GA) along with others which aren't GA standard, none of the children do this. I'm yet to see it myself, and I've written some 'child' pages, some clearly so, some not. I would have thought the first sentence of the lead of the article will mention the bigger topic if it's that obvious anyway. Should this be part of the MOS? Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 20:32, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

I've seen a few articles that begin with {{Main|Some other article}}, and I always dislike it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:36, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Surplus verbiage

In my opinion:

• "A horizontal line should not be placed under this line."

should be removed, it links to a non-existent section and I am not convinced anyone would do this. (Possible WP:BEANS thing.) I'd also like to trim some excess words (but not ideas) from the "Editing the lead section" section. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 10:22, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Back in the day, horizontal lines were used a lot in articles, particularly in articles that covered more than one subject. (This was before the invention of disambiguation pages.) I'd assume that this was a problem once upon a time—most specific injunctions like that exist to solve a concrete problem—but perhaps it is not a problem any longer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:40, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Referencing

The intro says a lead should "be carefully sourced as appropriate" ... but doesn't it say somewhere else that it's sometimes acceptable not to clutter the lead if detailed, careful refs are provided later for the same info? Tony (talk) 10:00, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, in the "Citation" section lower down. I think we should say something more explicit about leads' being generally expected to contain far fewer citations than artticle bodies.--Kotniski (talk) 10:32, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Whether to source the lead is entirely up to the editors at the article (unless the lead contains material absolutely required to have an inline citation, like a direct quotation). They may be fully cited; they may be wholly uncited. Both styles comply with the MoS.

Perhaps the simplest thing to do is to omit any mention of citations from the intro to the page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:38, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

That would leave people even more at a loss for information. My impression is that the dominant view among editors is that leads should (ideally) be relatively cite-free; if there is some doubt about that, perhaps we could have an RfC to find out? --Kotniski (talk) 08:15, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that removing one phrase from the third paragraph of the page would result in a loss of information. I did not propose removing the entire ==Citations== section. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:36, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh right, sorry, didn't quite get it. Yes, removing that phrase would probably be beneficial, as the phrase misleads, though I think we should still mention sourcing in the intro, as it is one of the most noticeable differences between leads and the rest of articles. At least give a link to the Citations section, something like "For the use of references in the lead, see [#Citations|] below." --Kotniski (talk) 06:15, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Additional changes.

Just seeking confirmation of or opposition to:

1. This change since I have not yet seen any horizontal navboxes in the lead;
2. This change (already flagged for clarification);
3. This change and this change for brevity and to reduce excess words;
4. This change to simply the "clutter" section and make it clearer what the point of it was;
5. This tidy;
6. a proposition to remove the reference to templates not displaying in tooltips as a slight irrelevant and exact thing to say, there is already the "unintelligible" reasoning;
7. a proposition to simplify "Foreign character warning boxes, if required, should come adjacent to, or near, any text that has the foreign characters in question, such that scrolling is not required to see the box. This is generally after short infoboxes, but before long ones (if scrolling is required to see the infobox's bottom border on a wide shallow screen, such as a laptop). Foreign character warning boxes let readers know that foreign characters which may not be supported by their platforms/browsers appear in the article." To remove the '(if scrolling is required to see the infobox's bottom border on a wide shallow screen, such as a laptop)', leaving the principle of what is a short and what is a long infobox to common sense. Also replace "platforms/browsers" with "platform or browser" as better English. There may be consensus for always putting it above, I don't know, but that is not today's debate.

Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 15:26, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Clutter

I don't feel strongly about the inclusion or non-inclusion of the new "Clutter" section, but I want to say that the example given is a fantastic illustration of the potential problems. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:06, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

It's great IMO. —Designate (talk) 07:14, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, it was such a great example (and I simply copied it from the article without any fudging) that I thought it might be illustrative, and I was surprised that there was nothing here on clutter, given how often it's a complaint when editing the lede. BTW, I restored the dates, which had been removed; since as I understand it vital years are a minimal requirement in the lede for biographies, it would be misleading and unrealistic to give an example without them. — kwami (talk) 10:44, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

It's a pretty good example except that all that is actually useful information, there isn't good guidance about where to put it, and every possible solution runs into problems. Most infoboxes are ugly &/or unhelpful, some people will object to footnotes (esp. with foreign names where – for instance – the Chinese names are sometimes not only interesting but essential), linking the bold initial word to Wiktionary is currently against policy, &c. So not really sure what purpose it serves besides saying "I need some help in establishing consensus over at this specific article". What is needed is more concrete proposals about reducing the clutter: start by eliminating all pronunciations from initial sentences, then slowly establish consensus on where to put the foreign names. — LlywelynII 16:09, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Starting a lead section with a quotation

Like so

— IsaacAA

Is this appropriate? -IsaacAA (talk) 08:22, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

No. — LlywelynII 16:15, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Definitely no, although I'd like to see an example of what you want to do. —Designate (talk) 16:52, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I was hoping this is mentioned somewhere in the Manual of Style. –IsaacAA (talk) 13:48, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

WP:BEGINNING tells you exactly what should be first: "a declarative sentence telling the nonspecialist reader what (or who) is the subject". A quotation or aphorism doesn't meet that requirement. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:42, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Pronunciations

China, London, France, Quebec, Colombia... This has become absolutely ridiculous.

There is absolutely no information being provided that isn't better provided by linking the initial appearance of the word to Wiktionary. — LlywelynII 16:15, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Or putting it in the infobox, or even the first paragraph of the body of the article. Just out of the way. —Designate (talk) 16:53, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I just added a section saying not to duplicate WIktionary. If it doesn't get reverted, I'll start deleting unnecessary IPA pronunciations on sight. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 09:49, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, no, I don't agree with the line as stated, do not provide pronunciations for words in the English Wiktionary. Wiktionary includes obscure words with very non-obvious pronunciations. I would be against, for example, removing the pronunciation guide from synecdoche which is my new word that I Just Like Saying. It's true that a reader can look it up in Wiktionary, but how does he know that he should? He may just read it routinely as SIN-ek-DOSHE with a long O. I'm against intrusive attempts to educate readers; WP is a resource for self-education but not a teaching tool per se. But I do think some indication of very non-obvious points is occasionally justified as a service. --Trovatore (talk) 18:41, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree. If the word has a particularly weird relation between its spelling and pronunciation, like synecdoche, hendiadys, bdelygmia, enallage, epistrophe, the opening sentence should tell how to say it, even if it's in Wiktionary. OK, new rule: all rhetorical terms get an IPA pronunciation. ;) --Ben Kovitz (talk) 19:32, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Measurement of readibility

The MOS section currently says the lead should be written in a clear, accessible style.

A significant numner of articles currently have for the introduction a Gunning fog index of greater than 16. Clearly this does not really meet the intent of the MOS.

Ought the statement be made in slightly stronger language, including a suggestion that the reading skills should not be required to be higher than that of a standard high school graduate? (Gfi of 12)? Is a different standard for readibility indicated for on-line users? Cheers. Collect (talk) 15:16, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Could you run a bot to maintain a special list like this, of articles or leads with Gfi ≥ 12, for the Guild of Copy Editors? The "rule" would only be that high-Gfi text should be looked at by someone, not necessarily made into into low-Gfi text. As much as I want to see simpler, clearer writing on Wikipedia, I prefer to see guidelines that encourage thoughtful consideration rather than appeals to uniform standards and measurements. Just bringing these articles to interested people's attention ought to have a big effect, without adding more legalism to the MOS. I'd volunteer for "Gfi Patrol"! (I'm also willing to write the bot if there's a show of interest.) —Ben Kovitz (talk) 09:03, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Keep in mind that clear, accessible style is relative to the subject matter itself. There are unavoidably technical articles that will never be accessible to an average high-school graduate, and they are still appropriate subject matter for Wikipedia. --Trovatore (talk) 09:52, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

WP:MED talks about this every now and again. Some of the problems we've encountered include the machine evaluations being imprecise (e.g., sentences containing a semicolon should be processed as two separate sentences, but never seem to be correctly handled by online scripts) and tripping over "long" words that are absolutely necessary and familiar in context. So this opening sentence of:

B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL), also known as chronic lymphoid leukemia (CLL), is the most common type of leukemia.

gets a GFI of 16.0 (upper undergraduate level) in an online assessment, even though the actual complexity is about half that, because the simplistic scripts don't correctly omit (under the "familiar jargon" rule) the repeated four-syllable word leukemia from their complexity calculation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:51, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Also, summary writing creates a pressure to write longer sentences. Encyclopedia articles are summaries, and leads are summaries of summaries. So, it seems naturally that even well-written leads will come out high on the Gfi. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 15:25, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Common terms in example

It's not appropriate to have common terms wikilinked in an example of an ideal lead. I refer to that relatively unknown country, the United States, where a diversion to the entire US article just as a reader starts the lead of a specific topic seems like a weird idea. Pianist, incidentally, bunched up with the previous link, against the advice of MOSLINK, is a common dictionary term. WP's first PILLAR says that "Wikipedia is not a dictionary". I see both terms at Wiktionary. This is an unwise encouragement to new editors to inadvertently weaken our wikilinking system. Tony (talk) 12:12, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

OK ... Tony, you made these changes unilaterally. I restored the original, long-standing text and suggested, correctly I think, that you should get consensus. The implication was, as per usual practice and per wp:brd, that you should come to the talk page, and get consensus, first, rather than reverting me in turn. Fine, you think such links "weaken our wikilinking system". That is an opinion. Others may disagree. Also, in terms of general points, as previously, I do not see what wp:dictionary has to do with linking issues. The point of that pillar is that WP provides articles about things and ideas etc, not on words per se, including prepositions, conjunctions etc. Also, it means that WP articles do not simply say "The US is a big country between Mexico and Canada [end]" - they have, in principle, a lot of detail above and beyond that. If anything, wp:dictionary works against your argument, since we are very precisely not providing simple "dictionary" links when we link to other WP articles. Finally, a link is only a diversion to people who choose to follow the road by clicking on it. I, for one, credit the average reader with the ability to choose, as well as with the knowledge as to what the US is.

As to the specific changes themselves: on the field of study point, as ever we have the “well-known” and "common" problem – what does that mean? Well known to who, exactly? How common? Personally, I suspect most readers would find it odd, say, to see the page on trigonometry not have a link to mathematics, which is arguably well known enough to most people and hence something you are maybe trying to suggest should not be linked. Per the above point, that page does not simply say "stuff about numbers", not least because that seriously underestimates the scope of the topic. It is also clearly "relevant" as a link - per the exception anyway provided at wp:link. As for American/pianist, personally I am fairly agnostic about links of that sort for people, especially the nation/nationality links, although I think profession links are useful and justified when we are writing about a person from that profession (and, again, allowed per wp:link as being “relevant”); but, regardless of what I think, it is clear that a lot of editors and readers like and expect them. Again, you and I have opinions. They are not necessarily "right".N-HH talk/edits 12:33, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Your recent changes were contested, and you just reimposed them within seconds, before then coming to the talk page to argue in support of your would-be fait accompli. Your talk page justification has been challenged, and you have not responded. Hence, the substantive changes you made will be reverted again. As I said, I'm not even necessarily wedded to that version exactly, but it should stay as it was until you get some consensus to change it. That is the right way to do this sort of thing. You do not own this page or have licence to amend and edit (what was) the current version as you see fit. As you know - although it may be less obvious to other people - you came here to make these changes fairly quickly after someone noted on the wp:link talk page that advice about linking in the lead there was not as explicit as it was here. They had opened a talk page thread suggesting a change to that page and waited for responses - they did not simply assume the right to make their preferred change to the wp:link page unilaterally, and claim they were doing so because they were right or because it would better harmonise the two guidelines. If they had done that, I suspect you would have objected (as, on principle, would I have, in fact). Please see if you can view your own actions here on the wp:lead page - which are a rather obvious mirror of that hypothetical scenario, and, beyond that, also had the effect of undermining their talk page thread by pulling one of the planks of their argument from under them - from that perspective and take a step back for a second. Thank you. N-HH talk/edits 14:22, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think being a common dictionary term is, by itself, a good reason not to link. The main reason to link is salience: the link should go to a topic that is a closely related element of the context of the present topic. That's the main purpose of links! The main terms that define a topic are always salient, and the place to link to them is from the sentence that defines the topic--usually the first sentence of the article. Overlinking usually involves linking to common dictionary terms, but that's not what makes it gratuitous clutter. What makes it clutter is that the linked-to page is not salient to the present topic. The presence of the link says "this is salient!"; a non-salient link is clutter because it leads to irrelevance (or merely "distant relevance"). So, for example, the first sentence of George Washington should link to United States, even though most occurrences of "United States" should not link. It happens, of course, that people are most often tempted to make non-salient links on common dictionary terms, but we shouldn't be confused by that. --Ben Kovitz (talk) 16:04, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

I do. "Algebra is a kind of mathematics" doesn't really help the reader much. How exactly would you follow that rule for Computer? That's a "technical" field, so that previously one-size-fits-all rule applies there.

As for the link, we say elsewhere in the MOS that side-by-side links are very strongly discouraged, so we really should not be providing any examples that violate that MOS injunction. I think the link to Pianist is fine (as a matter of facilitating navigation, not for helping readers figure out what a pianist is), but we don't need both, and if you're reading about an American pianist, you're far more likely to be interested in pianos than nations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:30, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Of course helping the reader figure out what a piano is is unrealistic. I think that was your point, but we shouldn't think that defining an unfamiliar term is the primary reason for including a link. That would be treating Wikipedia like a dictionary. Most encyclopedia articles include a lot of facts about a subject that a typical reader doesn't know, even when the reader already knows the word for the subject: the subject's history, important people associated with it, controversies surrounding it, links to books and source materials, further contextual links, a more thorough definition than you can usually get from a dictionary, and completely unexpected salient facts (the most common kind). A link is for getting more information.

Consider a typical U.S. high-school student looking up algebra. That student probably thinks that mathematics is exclusively about numbers and procedures for operating on numbers or variables that only stand for numbers. The mathematics article will show that reader the existence of branches of mathematics they probably never heard of, non-numerical mathematics, the great mathematicians of history, Mayan numerals, and lots more.

The more salient the contextual link, the better, though. If we had an article specifically about Classical pianist, that's really what the first sentence of Van Cliburn should link to. Sadly, our Pianist article currently has very little content that isn't at the lowest level of common knowledge. But, it does have links to plenty of relevant information, such as other classical pianists and a genuinely informative article about the Piano. Consider a reader who doesn't know much of anything about classical music, who came across Van Cliburn's name somehow in connection with the Cold War. A good article on Pianist or Classical pianist would give that reader a sense of the classical traditions in different countries, the different kinds of piano training, piano competitions, the most famous pianists in history, and no doubt many unexpected and interesting facts.

Regarding Computer, that's a tough one. It's a good thing these are guidelines we're talking about, not rules.

--Ben Kovitz (talk) 19:23, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

What to do about the example that links both 'British' and 'envoy' next to each other? --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 16:44, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

→Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service. ;-) --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 16:49, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

I found this guideline: "When possible, avoid placing links next to each other so that they look like a single link, as in Irish Chess Championship (Irish Chess Championship). Consider rephrasing the sentence..." That doesn't sound to me like strong discouragement. It's hard to reword the sentence to break up "British envoy" without introducing awkwardness. You just have to weigh the awkwardness of consecutive links against the awkwardness of alternative wordings. An example that violates the guideline in WP:MOSLINK sounds good to me, partly because it's typical and normal, partly to encourage people to apply guidelines thoughtfully rather than legalistically. --Ben Kovitz (talk) 18:20, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Linking a common-term item such as "pianist" goes against consensus, unless there's a very good reason to do so in the context. Here, there is not. If you want to write a large-enough slab of text that creates that context, you're welcome to put it to us. But "pianist" is a common term in English, and if a reader doesn't know what it means, they should go to wiktionary or learn the language properly. "WP is not a dictionary", the pillar says. Tony (talk) 06:26, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Tony, the item is still under discussion, and consensus has not yet been reached. Please stop editing that section of the page for a while. And please read my remarks above about why to link to common terms, including Pianist. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 06:40, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Warning to editors here: if you haven't already, you might want to look over Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking (and, if you have a strong constitution, its recent archives) to get some context for the "sudden controversy" that is cropping up here. Not meaning to be dismissive of anyone's views, but this is basically spill-over from that other talk page. - dcljr (talk) 10:46, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Will do. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 15:06, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Just to reiterate/endorse a couple of the things that have come up in the above thread since I last commented -

• there is no consensus to not link to common terms, however we would define those anyway. There just isn't, and no one has ever been able to point me to where it was agreed. The guideline at wp:link says it is fine to link them "if relevant", eg as there is a strong case that "pianist" is for, er, a pianist. There is not, and never has been, an agreement to change that or override it.
• wp:dictionary is not relevant to linking, at least in the way that is regularly asserted. If anything, again as two of us have now explained in some depth, the existence of that pillar works the other way, precisely because WP pages, even those of arguably common or well known terms, are not simply dictionary definitions. N-HH talk/edits 14:19, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

• Whether a term is relevant, pertinent, salient or germane to the subject or not is but one criterion. Aside fro that, it hinges on the degree to which 'pianist' is considered a common term. Whether an editor would choose to link or unlink it will therefore depend on whether it 'crosses the line' in the that person's lexicon. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 15:30, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Don't link to germane! ;-) (Sorry, couldn't resist.) - dcljr (talk) 07:06, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Tony, do you actually object to using links to WP:Build the web? I don't buy this story that the sole reason to link another article is to "get more information" about what that other thing is. Links exist for navigation, that is, to get the reader to other pages, even if the reader can be expected to know what that other thing is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:26, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

(Excuse me for jumping in here...) WhatamIdoing, don't you mean to say, "links don't just exist for finding out what something is, but for finding out more information about them"? After all, this is an encyclopedia, so the primary function of the articles is to inform, no? - dcljr (talk) 07:04, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Not necessarily. We use links for purely navigational purposes, too, including instances in which I don't want to read article Example at all, but I'm sure that it will have a link to the page (perhaps in a navbox) that I do want to read. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:11, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

RfC about more than four paragraphs

Please offer your opinion at Wikipedia_talk:Good_article_reassessment#GAs_with_five_or_more_intro_paragraphs. Thank you! Binksternet (talk) 23:41, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Examples, please

I would very much like to see some good examples of articles exemplifying the Manual of Style/Lead secton - can they be added? Fergananim (talk) 02:09, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Try the long list at WP:FA. In theory, all of them should be good examples of any aspect of the MoS, including the lead. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:22, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

When to list adaptations

We had a long discussion about Little Busters! at WT:Anime# Adopt Visual Novel Task Force as a joint WikiProject TF with WikiProject Video games without any conclusive decision about where the info should be placed. I would ask if we could get clarrification and probably update the guideline because it was being heavily used here to defend both sides. The arguments are for that title (and its not the only title out there like this as I can think of a few others offhand) that:

For listing early in the prose

• It can, and there is evidence that it already has, confused readers because the prose lists the primary topic as the visual novel, but the first release is an manga.

• Common sense says that adaptations require something to be adapted from and as such should normally come out after the work they are adapted from. This is why it causes confusion.

• The standard for media infoboxes is to list items chronoligically. There is no consensus to change that in this article or at large.

• The reader is unlikely to read down to the third paragraph in the lead (where they learn about manga adaptations) and even less likely to read the production/development history if they are already confused before complaining or editing the article.

• There is no issue with WP:UNDUE as the adaptation was released first.

• The average reader cannot be expected to be stepped in the release history of Little Busters! before reading the article.

• There is no clear restriction against mentioning it this early.

Against listing early in the prose

• Standard structure of the lead follows article structure and this would break it.
• It adds a lot of unnecessary baggage to the first paragraph and there is no easy way to explain that concisely.
• It causes an issue with WP:UNDUE as the article isn't about the adaptation and thus shouldn't be put up front or presented twice in the lead (once up front for clarification and again in the 3rd paragraph that talks about adaptations).
• Readers should be expected to read further if they are confused.

As mentioned, clarification and updating this GL would be appreciated as its likely to come up in the future. It had already come up in the past to an extent.∞陣内Jinnai 18:22, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Can we get some clarriciation here. It isn't pressing atm, but it could be in the future.∞陣内Jinnai 22:21, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Unreadable

The last 4 words of the first paragraph are unreadable, because it overlaps with an infomation box on the right. Is this happenng to anyone else or just me? Pass a Method talk 16:11, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

It's not happening to me. Why don't you see about changing the {{style-guideline}} template to be regular size and see if that clears up your problem? (I'm assuming that's the template that is misbehaving for you.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:16, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Its still unreadable. Im talking about the information box that ends with the sentence "Please ensure edits reflect consensus." My monitor is pretty old, so it could just be i have a too small capacity. Pass a Method talk 20:19, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's the style-guideline template. If you edit the page to make the template regular size (i.e., removing the |small=yes parameter), then the whole thing ought to jump above the nutshell and thus be completely incapable of interfering with the text in the first paragraph. Did you try that? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:46, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks man, its readable now. Pass a Method talk 13:43, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Discussion at WT:VN#RfC: Listing adapations released prior to the original in the lead

You are invited to join the discussion at WT:VN#RfC: Listing adapations released prior to the original in the lead. ∞陣内Jinnai 00:29, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

"broader geographical area"? how about country?

While stub-sorting I've found a batch of stubs for historic buildings in the USA, eg Sugarloaf School, which give the location as, for example "located in Jerome, Idaho." I've been adding ", United States," and suggested to the editor that s/he should include the country as WP is an international encyclopedia (no reply yet but it was very recent), but then I wondered. Looking at the MOS it says "For example, an article about a building or location should include a link to the broader geographical area of which it is a part.", which seems very vague. The county, state, country, continent are all "broader geographical area"s, and it's talking about links, not just inclusion in the text.

I had thought that WP style was to include the country in all cases.

I tried the technique recommended above, of looking at Featured Articles, and picked a few US buildings. I found a wonderful variety of treatments in lead sentences! I will add bolding to make it easier to see the various styles.

• 7 World Trade Center: ... is a building in New York City located across from the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan. no mention of country - perhaps NYC is a special case?
• The Chicago Board of Trade Building is a skyscraper located in Chicago, Illinois, United States.
• Harris Theater (Chicago, Illinois): ... located along the northern edge of Millennium Park on Randolph Street in the Loop community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, US.
• Monadnock Building: a skyscraper located at 53 West Jackson Boulevard in the south Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. (But the third sentence is: "The tallest commercial load-bearing masonry building ever constructed, it employed the first portal system of wind bracing in America.")
• Oregon State Capitol: ... housing the state legislature and the offices of the governor, secretary of state, and treasurer of the U.S. state of Oregon.
• Tech Tower: ... located at 225 North Avenue NW in Midtown Atlanta, Georgia, USA, ...

So an unscientific sample of 6 FAs has 2 which don't mention the country in the lead sentence, and 4 which do (with 4 different spellings/versions of the name, some linked and some unlinked).

It looks, from that small sample of FAs, as if the country is more often included. I think it's helpful: a user of WP may well not remember whether a state such as "Michigan" is USA or Canada, or recognise on what continent to find "Idaho" (looks Japanese, doesn't it?).

Should the MOS be amended to say that the country should usually be included in the lead sentence, but need not be linked if an intermediate "broader geographical area" (state, county, province etc) is linked?

I note that Wikipedia:WikiProject_National_Register_of_Historic_Places/Style_guide#Opening_paragraph, which I checked as it was NRHP stubs which set me off on this, makes no specific recommendation and its examples of "typical NRHP leads" are inconsistent - compare its examples of Old North Church and Boston Public Library. Only one of their six mentions the country, though two more imply it by "American" and "United States Navy" in first sentence.

Any thoughts? PamD 15:31, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Need other opinions re Thanksgiving lede proper scope

Please comment at Talk:Thanksgiving# Proposed lede and MOS:LEAD dispute resolution. This concerns the scope of the article lede. Thanks.

Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:40, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposal to add to WP:LEADCITE

We are asked to define the subject in the lead. The formulation of this definition is often gotten from a particular source. I propose this be inserted for guidance, as the third sentence:

"Moreover, when defining the topic in reliance on a specific source or sources, it may be very useful to the reader or other editors to include an inline citation."

Thanks. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:32, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

The purpose of the lead, including the first sentence, is to summarize what's elsewhere in the article, so in theory, everything should be repeated and properly sourced elsewhere. There may be times when the first sentence would benefit from a citation, but that's equally true for any sentence in the lead. It's not really a special case. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:25, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Mathematical formulas in the lead section

Until recently a sentence in MOSINTRO read "Mathematical equations and formulas should not be used except in mathematics articles." Very recently it was changed to instead read "Mathematical equations and formulas should only be used when absolutely necessary." The intent of the change (as given by the edit summary) was to broaden the use of formulas to technical but non-mathematics articles such as Joule, but instead it has been misinterpreted to mean that even mathematics articles cannot have formulas in the lede section (see the recent edit history of Golden ratio). That interpretation has never been discussed at WP:WPM and in any case seems different from what was intended. So maybe we should have some clearer wording here, that encompasses both the routine use in mathematics articles and the exceptional use elsewhere? In the meantime I have changed it back to the way it was before since the new wording is causing problems. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:26, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Really both versions have a disconnect between intent and wording. I think the intent, at least for math articles, is expressed will in MOSMATH: "An informal introduction to the topic, without rigor, suitable for a general audience. (The appropriate audience for the overview will vary by article, but it should be as basic as reasonable.)" We have to assume that a reader landing on an an article may not know the jargon and notation of the subject, so the explanation must be as basic as possible even if that means sacrificing precision. There must be some care taken though that the lead doesn't get dumbed down to the point where it doesn't convey anything meaningful about the subject. So there is a delicate balance that must be struck and the phrase "should only be used when absolutely necessary" is heavy handed and should be changed. I don't have a proposal at the moment for what the wording should be but I'll try to come up with something if no one beats be to it.--RDBury (talk) 06:59, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

(ec) Interesting "unintended consequences" case. In the end, though, I think the liberalization that was originally intended is a good idea. At the very least, advanced physics articles should be permitted to have math in the lead. I'm not sure where the dividing line should be. I doubt that dividing articles up by "subject" is really quite the right test (surely you should allow formulas in the article on, say, the Black–Scholes formula, but probably not in most economics articles). --Trovatore (talk) 07:02, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

It appears that both this change and the addition of the sentence "Templates, other than infoboxes, should be avoided as they can make the edit window unintelligible," buried in the paragraph last summer, were both made without any discussion. Perhaps it's off-topic to mention this now but I hope this isn't SOP for this guideline since it's applied so widely. My understanding that only non-controversial edits should be made without discussion, not ones that significantly change the meaning. I'm going to go ahead and remove the template sentence since it's making it hard for me concentrate on what the rest of the paragraph is trying to say.--RDBury (talk) 07:43, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Proposed wording: I took a stab at a rewrite of the paragraph:

Even for technical articles, the lead should be written for as general an audience as possible while still being meaningful as a description of the subject. In other words readers should not be dropped into the middle of the subject from the first word; they should be eased into it. In general, specialized terminology and symbols should be avoided. Similarly, mathematical equations and formulas should be avoided unless it would be cumbersome or more confusing to explain the concept in prose. Where uncommon terms are essential, they should be placed in context, linked and briefly defined. Understandability is preferred over precision; more precise characterizations can be covered in the body of the article. But reducing the description to vague generalizations should also be avoided.

I dropped the bit about context and the example with lat. and long. because I couldn't get them to fit well, but perhaps they can be added back in. I think the the paragraph should be trying to get at is that the lead should the happy median between two undesirable extremes. There is the too technical and precise, or Bourbaki style:

A group is defined as an ordered quadruple (G, *, i, e) where G is a set, * is a binary operation, ...

And at the other extreme is the too general and vague, or Numb3rs style:

A group something that mathematicians study and has to do with the relationships between similar objects ...

I hope the proposed wording gets that across sufficiently but it might help to have several examples rather than just the lat. and long. one.--RDBury (talk) 09:13, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

My general approach is to try and aim the first half or most of the lead at people who are a year away from being able to read the main part of the article reasonably okay. That is my working definition of 'as general an audience as possible'. So if the main topic uses equations a lot readers probably should be able to deal with simple equations. Dmcq (talk) 10:04, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

This rewrite is much better than what is there now. One small suggestion that I was thinking about: perhaps "should be avoided" could be replaced with something like "used sparingly"? Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:04, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Like the proposed rewrite above by RDBury, not really happy with how it stands now – it's clumsy and the current reference to high-school is confusing an doesn't make sense to a large part of our audience who are not from the high-school system. I'd copyedit the proposed slightly differently, but it's still good.Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 14:34, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I have an issue with understandability is preferred over precision. That's fine if taken literally. The problem is that many people are likely to interpret "precision" as meaning "accuracy". I think we should be clear that we don't want to say things that are actually false, just because they're easier to understand. --Trovatore (talk) 19:03, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I see your point and now that I've thought about it a bit that passage goes beyond the current task of making the existing wording more clear. I'll drop it for now and since there seems to be agreement on the rest (for the most part) I'll go ahead and make the change.--RDBury (talk) 04:39, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

I thought I should chime in here since it was my removal of the equations from the lead of the Golden ratio article that prompted David to open this discussion questioning the recent change to WP:MOSINTRO. An important point to note is that a significant portion of the population has a reduced capability for understanding symbolic mathematics -- even simple algebra. And even among those who are capable, most avoid it like the plague. So, when a reader comes upon an article, you should assume that they will avoid an article which includes a formula in the lead. For someone who is very familiar with math, it may seem cumbersome or inefficient to explain a concept in words, but it is preferable so as not to completely lose a large portion of the audience. In other words, a geek will take the time and be able to sort through the words and figure out what is being said, but the math-impaired will never be able to understand an equation. So, the wording of MOSINTRO should reflect a bias toward "dumbing-down" the introduction of articles, even when it is cumbersome. As it is currently written, MOSINTRO doesn't do that, so I'm reverting back to the version that was in place prior to [14] until a concensus is reached. I propose taking a look at the original consensus version again and discussing specific issues with it rather than trying to rewrite it from scratch. Sparkie82 (t•c) 07:59, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

There is already substantial consensus against "dumbing down" content in encyclopedia articles. The lead of an article is supposed to summarize the article and the most important aspects of the subject. In a technical article, this is probably going to involve some amount of technical information. This information should be described in a way that is as accessible to the widest group of readers as possible without sacrificing its usefulness to readers with more background. See WP:MTAA and the discussion page for lengthy discussions about this very topic.

The current "consensus" wording of the guideline is:

In general, specialized terminology and symbols should be avoided in an introduction. Mathematical equations and formulas should not be used except in mathematics articles. Templates, other than infoboxes, should be avoided as they can make the edit window unintelligible. Where uncommon terms are essential, they should be placed in context, linked and briefly defined. The subject should be placed in a context familiar to a normal reader. For example, it is better to locate a town with reference to an area or larger place than with coordinates. Readers should not be dropped into the middle of the subject from the first word; they should be eased into it.

Let's dissect this:

• In general, specialized terminology and symbols should be avoided in an introduction. In my opinion, this is both too facile and too prescriptive to be of any use for an editor that seriously wants to write a better encyclopedia article. The lead should be written as clearly and concisely as possible, while not sacrificing its usefulness to an expert or its understandability to a general reader. Sometimes technical terms and symbols are appropriate. It is often useful to define them briefly. What should be avoided is writing that is impenetrable because of its exclusive reliance on technical terms and jargon. The solution isn't to avoid technical terms, though. It's to write more clearly.
• Mathematical equations and formulas should not be used except in mathematics articles. I agree with the spirit of NuclearWarfare's edit (but not with its wording). We shouldn't proscribe the use of mathematical syntax where it might be clarifying to readers. The article Joule is a good example, but essentially any quantitative discipline is likely to have some similar examples (e.g., Hardy–Weinberg principle in population genetics should state in the lead what the actual equations are).
• Templates, other than infoboxes, should be avoided as they can make the edit window unintelligible. What the hell does this even mean? What does it have to do with the rest of the paragraph?
• Where uncommon terms are essential, they should be placed in context, linked and briefly defined. Good, but I don't like the imperative "should", particularly when coupled with the conjunction "and". Better would be: "Where uncommon terms are essential, consider placing them in context, linking, and briefly defining them."
• For example, it is better to locate a town with reference to an area or larger place than with coordinates. This is a bad example. Our editors are not idiots. Can we either strike this or come up with a non-obvious example?
• The subject should be placed in a context familiar to a normal reader... Readers should not be dropped into the middle of the subject from the first word; they should be eased into it. Good, but I like RDBury's elaboration on this with the sentence: "Even for technical articles, the lead should be written for as general an audience as possible while still being meaningful as a description of the subject." I often see new editors gut the meaningful parts of the description of a subject in favor of some less informative waffle. It's important to keep in mind that the primary objective is to write an encyclopedia and to be as informative as possible, even about very technical subjects.

--Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:51, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

The main business I see is balancing the business of being readable to as wide an audience as possible and providing a reasonable summary the topic and the article. Without some better definition of what the audience for an article is and what reasonable means this can mean anything from producing a children's introduction to general relativity with rubber sheets to something that is aimed at a university undergraduate with tensor equations. Dmcq (talk) 14:40, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

A balance is often a difficult and nuanced thing to achieve. Getting it "just right" is often the result of many hours of discussion and careful fine-tuning. I think that it is counterproductive to attempt a one-size-fits-all solution. This guideline should provide some suggestions that might make this process easier, informed by examples and editor experience. Needless to say, I'm not happy with the mandatory language of the current revision of the paragraph; nor am I with that in RDBury's version, although that seems to be a step in the right direction.

Regarding the "rubber sheets", I do think that the perfect lead of a hypothetical article (say) introduction to Einstein's equations would include both the tensor form of Einstein's equations and their interpretation in terms of "rubber sheets" (or whatever). The ideal balance is one of inclusion, not exclusion. Sławomir Biały (talk) 00:02, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

To say that mathematical formulas should not be used in intro sections except when absolutely necessary comes close to saying "Negroes please step to the back of the bus." It's bigotry stemming from irrational phobias. We shouldn't be actively encouraging people to be generally fearful and to give in to their fears under all circumstances without weighing the advantages and disadvantages of different courses of action. I appreciate that intro sections should be accessible to as broad an audience as possible, and that might in most cases mean avoiding mathematics in intro sections. But one weighs things against each other. One shouldn't give infinite weight to one side and say "except when absolutely necessary." And mathematics is relevant to many subjects. An article on geodesy is not the same as an article about a soap opera. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:34, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I hope this edit brings the page into line with some of the things expressed on this page.

Maybe if someone disagrees with it, they should consider changing it to include something like this: "Mathematical formulas are a heinous Satanic plot, the profundity of whose evil nature cannot be conceived of by mortal humans." Michael Hardy (talk) 02:56, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm happy to have equations permitted in more than just maths articles. Mass–energy equivalence, for example, really ought to contain E=mc². WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:16, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Perhaps I'm biased but I still prefer my wording to what's in there now. I took the liberty of removing the templates bit again, this was added without discussion and the most positive comment about it was SB's "What the hell does this even mean?" Besides that the current (reverted) version is poorly organized and still doesn't capture the point made by several people here of the need to strike a balance. I'm having trouble understanding what Sparkie82 means by "... significant portion of the population has a reduced capability for understanding symbolic mathematics." I've spent a number of years teaching mathematics at several levels and know from experience that prose can often be more difficult to understand than a formula. For example how would you remove the formula from the lead in Normal distribution? Expanding it into prose would be nearly impossible and the result would be incomprehensible to anyone, formula-impaired or not. The Pythagorean theorem article, which has about as broad an audience as possible, uses a²+b²=c² which is clearer to most people than "The sum of the squares of two sides of a triangle is equal to the square of the remaining side." (Even the Scarecrow got it wrong.) I know formulas can be off-putting for many people, and Wikipedia should take that into account. But the primary goal of an encyclopedia is to impart information, not to popularize. In fact a hallmark of popular accounts of difficult subjects is that they give readers the mistaken impression of understanding rather than actual knowledge.--RDBury (talk) 00:55, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree with your comment about textual descriptions of formulas often being more difficult. The point I was trying to make was that for people who do not understand equations, a textual description is better than nothing. And for those who do understand them, it just takes a second to scroll down and see them (they're really easy to find while scanning and article.) The key is making a determination as to the composition of the potential readership of an article. This will inform decisions about content. I'm not sure if MOS is the right place for discussing guidelines about readership research, but it might be useful to touch on it so that decisions about content are based on actual data. I think most editors fall back on their own experience which may not always be representative of the readership of a particular article. If readers are commenting about content being too difficult to understand, or tagging articles with {{confusing}} tags, that's something to take note of. It appears that WP is extending a lot effort recently toward gathering readership data which will help. Perhaps a link to some of that information would be appropriate here. Sparkie82 (t•c) 20:08, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

A few additional points I'd like to throw out there to keep in mind when developing this guide: I noticed while reviewing the guide and archives at WP:MAA (thank you for that link, User:Sławomir Biały, very informative) and other discussions about accessibility, that editors sometimes confuse guidelines for the article, with the guidelines for the lead section. For example, the rule of thumb about writing one-level down, or concern about limiting content, which are guides for the article as a whole rather than the lead section, which has different criterion.

Also, User:Sławomir Biały mentioned above that an article should be made accessible without sacrificing its usefulness to readers with more background. In my experience, when I arrive at an article about something I know well, I expect that the lead will be written for a general audience and not for an expert. Often I just need to glance at it to confirm that I arrived at the right page and then reference the TOC or scroll though the body of the article or use my browser's search to find what I'm looking for. If I read the whole article, it's usually as an editor to do fact checking, clarifications, etc. So for readers with more background, I believe the lead section is not really used in a way such that the writing style and accessibility would get in the way. Also, when assessing accessibility, as someone who is intimate with the material, it is more difficult to place myself in the mindset of the general readership, so deference should probably given to the lay audience in these cases. Sparkie82 (t•c) 20:08, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

You still haven't explained who these (imo mythical) people are are trying to read math/technical articles but don't understand a=b. To my mind you are asking us to cater to a hypothetical reader, who may or may not exist, by making the lead section more difficult to understand for the majority of people who will be reading it. Isn't our goal to make articles more understandable? Asking readers skip down to the body of the article in order to find a readable description of the subject seems to run opposite to the goal of having a lead section. Keep in mind that people who do understand formulas may still not be familiar with the subject and need an easy to understand description of the subject and its context just as much as anyone else. In any case, I'm not sure what the issue is any more; are you suggesting we put "Mathematical equations and formulas should only be used when absolutely necessary." back in? If so then from the other comments here I doubt you can get a consensus supporting it. If not then what I'd like to do is keep the gist of the current version but organize and word it better; no one seems to disagree that (ironically) it needs to be clearer. Or make your own proposal so it can be discussed here.--RDBury (talk) 04:39, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

(@Sparkie82) You are presenting here a false dichotomy. The world is not divided into two classes of readers, "experts" and "general readers". The lead is supposed to be read by people with many different kinds of background, and it is supposed to provide a useful definition and capsule version of the article for all of these potential readers. In my fairly extensive experience writing leads for mathematics articles and dealing with reader responses, those written with a "general audience" in mind are reviled as being hideously unclear by both complete laymen and people who are just learning a subject (e.g., math majors just learning about compact spaces). The most important thing is to present the information that the lead needs to, in accordance with this guideline, and to do it in a way that the widest likely audience can understand. Above all, this doesn't mean that the lead should be "dumbed down". Even the most technical lead and the most reader-friendly lead to the same article should convey the same information. The difference is that a reader-friendly lead has the technical aspects placed into context, defined, and explained. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:34, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Above all, the lead should be understandable to the widest readership it can, given the composition of those coming to the article. In some cases, that may mean presenting baby food in the lead. If the lay audience can understand it, those with more background certainly will. I think the assumption that making the lead understandable will also make it unreadable is just absurd. If a significant portion of the readers coming to an article don't have the ability to read equations, then expressing the concept with text and graphics makes it more readable. And in many cases, the readership will be composed of those who actively avoid any article with an equation in the lead. If they don't read it, they won't understand it. This is a guideline for all articles, not just math articles. I would guess that the set of mathematics articles (other than beginning math and arithmetic) without equations in the lead would be a very small set. A couple of examples would be E=mc²and Golden ratio. The reason these shouldn't have equations in the lead is because they have entered the popular culture and a significant portion of the readership will not understand equations or have a tendency to avoid them, so leaving out the equations in these cases makes the lead more readable and understandable. On the other hand, articles like Stone's theorem on one-parameter unitary groups probably could never be written for a general readership (and probably has very few equation-ignorant readers coming to it.)

I actually don't have much of a problem with the current consensus (excluding the template nonsense). I jumped in here because there was an attempt to shift the bias of the guide toward including equations. This is a guide after all, not a protocol; it doesn't need to have mathematical precision. I mean, sometimes non-math articles will need an equation in the lead, and occasionally a math article won't. I think most Wikipedians understand that. The problem comes when the owners of an article, while acting in good faith, don't understand that. Sparkie82 (t•c) 20:11, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, this seems sensible: that there ought to be some balance. But let me clarify a remark that I made. When writing for a "general audience" takes precedence over conveying the necessary information, the result is always poorer for everyone (in my experience). Certainly the necessary information should be conveying in the clearest way possible. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:19, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

On the number of affected articles: WikiProject Mathematics lists 22 Featured articles and 30 Good articles on their page. My quick scan shows that only about eight of these 52 articles contain an equation in the lead. Consequently, I think it likely that the "very small set" is actually the set of maths articles containing an equation in the lead, not the other way around as predicted above. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:45, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Let me offer a counterpoint to your excellent evidence-based argument. Because of the constraints already imposed on mathematics articles (their leads in particlar), those that are likely to be on a topic that would benefit from including an equation are automatically at a disadvantage when it comes to our good article selection process. Sławomir Biały (talk) 01:52, 8 March 2012 (UTC).