Jump to content

Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section/Archive 17

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archive 10←Archive 15Archive 16Archive 17Archive 18Archive 19Archive 20

Use of templates for foreign translations

  1. Should this guideline explicitly recommend the use of language templates in MOS:FORLANG? The example shown uses Template:Lang, but doesn't explain this use.
  2. Should the example be changed from...
    1. '''Chernivtsi Oblast''' ({{langx|uk|Чернівецька область, ''Chernivets’ka oblast’''}})
      ...to...
    2. '''Chernivtsi Oblast''' ({{langx|uk|Чернівецька область}}, {{transl|uk|''Chernivets’ka oblast’''}})
      ...so as to make use of the transliteration template? Ibadibam (talk) 18:20, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Example of a lead section that discusses a controversy

Having an example of a lead section that mentions a controversy about its topic would be really useful. This page says that any prominent controversies should be summarized, but doesn't really suggest the best way to go about doing that. — Preceding signed comment added by Cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 19:39, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Which to mention first in lede: Official names vs. WP:UCN titles for Universities

There should be an additional example among the general comments regarding a lede's first sentence and/or in the Alternative Names, Usage in first sentence section regarding Universities and educational institutions. Many of these articles are named with an informal, unofficial name per WP:UCN. However, these articles usually start with a mention first of the formal, official name and then subsequently the unofficial and informal name(s) in first sentence. I did this in my work at Rutgers University which starts with its official name "Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey", and its also at Pennsylvania State University (starts with the official "The Pennsylvania State University") and Ohio State University (starts with the official name "The Ohio State University") or Stanford University (starts "Leland Stanford Junior University", the official name).

This would keep universities and educational institutions in consistency with biographies, WP:FULLNAME, and place name articles, WP:MPN, and with the general usage with companies and organizations (like 3M, Microsoft, AMD).

However, recently a few anon IP editors tried to make the unofficial, informal article name the first mention in the article. We need a policy to state specifically for this example to prevent the potential for this kind of edit warring. In the meantime before there is a change or addition to policy, if anyone wants to comment at the Talk:Rutgers University page to achieve a consensus regarding my comments on policy and usage, I appreciate it.--ColonelHenry (talk) 14:30, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't see why it matters much which comes first, as long as both are included in the lede. Normally when we put alternate names in the lede, we bold both of them, so people will spot it regardless. Rather than argue over this, most university articles need extensive work to remove promotional copyvio and close paraphrase. DGG ( talk ) 19:38, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

News-journalism jargon

See also Archive 15:A lead is not a lede

"(The news-journalism jargon term lede is sometimes used, but Wikipedia leads are not written in news style, and journalistic ledes serve different purposes from encyclopedic leads.[1])"

Is the spelling lede term commonly in use outside the US, because one can also state: "Wikipedia leads are not written in news style, and journalistic leads serve different purposes from encyclopedic leads"? So unless lede is universally used in English language new-journalism as a substitute for lead. I suggest that the sentence is rewritten

(Wikipedia leads are not written in news style, and journalistic leads serve different purposes from encyclopedic leads [footnote:The US news-journalism jargon term lede is sometimes used for news leads. Journalistic ledes typically take two forms ...]).

-- PBS (talk) 07:35, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Bolding subtitles

I wonder, would anyone be able to offer assistance on the issue of whether the subtitle of a book or journal should be in bold. And, should these guidelines should mention the issue explicitly? Currently, The Slave Community has a bolded subtitle, but Cultural Anthropology (journal) does not. StAnselm (talk) 12:57, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

We boldface middle names of people even when they're not part of the more common form of the name used as the article title, no? This seems to me roughly the same thing. I think the all-boldface version looks better, anyway. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:27, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
  • At this point, an article titled "Journal of Foo" may be using any of the following first sentences:
1/ The Journal of Foo is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering foo studies.
2/ The Journal of Foo, The International Multidisciplinary Journal of Foo Research is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering foo studies.
3/ The Journal of Foo, The International Multidisciplinary Journal of Foo Research is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering foo studies.
4/ The Journal of Foo, subtitled The International Multidisciplinary Journal of Foo Research, is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering foo studies.
5/ The Journal of Foo (subtitled The International Multidisciplinary Journal of Foo Research) is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering foo studies.
6/ The Journal of Foo is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering foo studies. It is subtitled The International Multidisciplinary Journal of Foo Research.
Personally, I favor (1), so I never add a subtitle to a journal article. If somebody already added a subtitle to an article, I don't remove it though, but use (2) (or, if the previous editor has used 4, 5, or 6, I use those). I base this on MOS:BOLDTITLE. The way I read those instructions, we should bold the article title in the first sentence and avoid excessive bolding. Significant alternative names should be bolded, too, but nothing is said about bolding subtitles (which we don't include in the article name either). Subtitles rarely add anything (I can't think of a single case), and frequently are mildly promotional (like the example I gave above). In my experience, even regular readers of a journal (or even their editors!) will barely know there's a subtitle. Publishers often more or less ignore subtitles, too, and only use them on a journal's cover. The standard (ISO4) abbreviations of journal names never include subtitles. Even journals that don't use abbreviations but full journal names in lists of references, will only use the title, not the subtitle. I've never seen academics use journal subtitles in their lists of publications either. Publisher's themselves often don't treat the subtitle as part of the name of a journal. Take Behavior Genetics (journal), for example. Our article does not list the subtitle (which has changed a number of times during the journal's history, without any discernible change in content or editorial policy). The publisher uses the journal name as a headline and puts the subtitle separately below it. In some cases, it's not even clear whether that byline actually is a subtitle (see this one, for example). Some subtitles (like this one) would better be treated in the text: "It is an official journal of the Society of Foo".
I really think that journal titles are different and cannot be compared with, for example, book titles (where subtitles more often than not are informative - and included in bibliographies, CVs, etc). I think David Epsteins example is a different case, too ("John Andrew Doe" really would be very awkward).
As stated, my preferred solution to this is not to mention journal subtitles at all and if we could have a consensus in that sense that would be great. Barring that, I opt for (2), which doesn't give the subtitle undue emphasis and seems to be closest to the spirit of MOS:BOLDTITLE. --Randykitty (talk) 08:26, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
Well, first of all - if they are really subtitles, (2) and (3) should have colons rather than commas. I don't have a problem with (1) - it's an editorial decision whether to put the subtitle into the lead. That might depend, for example, on its prominence on the front cover. But (3) is far superior to (2). It captures better the spirit of WP:SUBTITLES. No doubt part of this is aesthetic preference on my part - I just think (2) looks ugly. But it seems to be that (3) was the dominant practice here before User:Randykitty began systematically removing subtitle bolding. StAnselm (talk) 09:14, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
I don't see the relevance of WP:SUBTITLES, which just confirms that those should not be used in article titles (barring rare exceptions). In any case, like I said, journal subtitles rarely convey any information, so if nobody objects, I'm fine with simply removing them. --Randykitty (talk) 09:20, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
Part of the issue is that journals use subtitles in different ways. With Kerux for example, it's clear from the journal homepage that the subtitle belongs in the lead. I agree that, for example, it wouldn't belong in the lead of American Journal of Dance Therapy, if we were to have that article. But I don't think a blanket removal is in order. StAnselm (talk) 09:31, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
I'm afraid that I don't really see a difference between the use of subtitles on the homepages of American Journal of Dance Therapy], Kerux, or Behavior Genetics. Why would we need to use it for Kerux and not for the American Journal of Dance Therapy]? And do we then also remove it for Behavior Genetics? --Randykitty (talk) 14:12, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
As I said above, I think it's an editorial decision: personally, I would include the subtitle in the lead of Behavior Genetics, since it's fairly prominent on the journal cover (much more so than with American Journal of Dance Therapy). The other thing to take into account is how the journal is cited. For example, I adjusted the citation of Experimental Aging Research: for whatever reason, it had been cited with its subtitle. If that is happening on Wikipedia, it's probably a sign that the subtitle should be in the lead. But I think that's a bit of a side issue - the issue at hand is, if we have the subtitle in the lead, should it be in bold. And I think it needs to be, and it does seem to be that you're the only editor who thinks otherwise. StAnselm (talk) 21:16, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
Oh, and with Kerux, I thought it was obvious, especially if you follow the links from the homepage: Welcome to the website of "Kerux: The Journal of Northwest Theological Seminary." They always have the subtitle on the same line as the title. StAnselm (talk) 21:19, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

When the lead does give the full title, all bold of course. At a glance I see {{infobox journal}} calls for a short title but provides no place for the subtitle or full title. Maybe it should.

At a skim I see our article Behavior Genetics (journal) does not give the subtitle anywhere. That baffles me. (So does the display of one portal link, Neuroscience only, below the infobox.) --P64 (talk) 21:42, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm inclined to leave this to editorial judgement, the MOS is already too overly prescriptive. The example of Kerux is a good example where bolding the subtitle is helpful to an unfamiliar reader. The title by itself is of no help. At the other extreme is a journal with a perfectly servicable title and a subtitle that is merely a promotional strapline which certainly should not be bolded (and possibly not even stated). There is a continuum of examples of everything in between from the simple and short to the overly long and descriptive. Not really easy to construct a set of rules to strictly divide these and better to let editors decide on a case by case basis. SpinningSpark 15:54, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

  • Like User:Spinningspark, I think it better not to make a formal rule. But, informally, I think that journal subtitles sometimes do contain essential information, such as the actual topic of a multisectional journal. There is no consistency whatsoever in how publishers use them. There are also changes with time. A century ago, for books and journals, the subtitle general was accessory information. Nowadays, for both, the style tends to be to use a catchy word for the title, and put the information in the subtitle. For a book or a journal, the subtitle if meaningful should be part of the article title, and should be in bold italics. If it is not part of the article title, it should still be in bold italics at the first mention in the article. It's analogous to middle names: Even if the article title does not include it, the full name goes in bold at the first mention. If the infobox provides only for a short tile, it should be changed also. The subtitle of Behavior Genetics "An international journal devoted to research in the inheritance of behavior in animals and man" is an example of an uninformative subtitle, uninformative to the point where LC cataloging calls it not a subtitle, but "other title information" . DGG ( talk ) 19:27, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Doesn't look like any other opinions are coming in and, I myself being the only dissenting voice, there obviously is a consensus in favor of bolding subtitles. I can't say that I completely understand the distinction between informative and uninformative subtitles that St. Anselm and DGG make, though. --Randykitty (talk) 09:57, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
  • OK, one more, and this is perhaps the first time that I disagree with my old friend Randykitty--but if that's the rationale, I've disagreed too often already with my old role model DGG. I think it's a matter of editorial preference. I think this started with this edit, and in that particular case I'm with StAnselm (pardon me for excessive pinging, but this discussion is growing mold on the rind): "Genesis: The Journal of Genetics and Development" is unattractive and in this case the subtitle does add significant explanatory power. (One could quibble over whether subtitle ought to be title, but soit). A journal I have some affiliation with, The Heroic Age (journal), has a subtitle but it's not listed in our article; that's my fault, I suppose, but I also think that the title has at least a bit of explanatory force. To cut a long story short, I see no harm in leaving a first mention of a full title, including subtitle, in bold, especially if the title can have more than one meaning to a lay audience (I know, those are judgment calls too). I'm sure there are examples pro and con in existing Wikipedia articles, as is pointed out above; the principal matter for me is a. clarity and b. attractiveness, and it's for b. that I disagree with Randykitty's revert of St. Anselm in that particular case. God, Randy, it hurts me to say this, but I am fortified by very good vodka in typing this fratricidal comment. Drmies (talk) 04:46, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
The example you give is an excellent instance of a title which is uninformative without a subtitle. Genesis by itself says nothing--this could be the title for a novel, a religious work, a piece of music,or almost anything. Even if you know it's an academic journal, it could still be on religion or literature or philosophy. It's adding the subtitle that tell the reader that it is a Journal of Genetics and Development. DGG ( talk ) 06:15, 28 September 2013 (UTC)
That is why our lead has to explain what something is: Genesis (often stylized genesis) is a peer-reviewed scientific journal of genetics and developmental biology." Including the subtitle, this becomes 'Genesis: The Journal of Genetics and Development (often stylized genesis) is a peer-reviewed scientific journal of genetics and developmental biology." Note that WP:MOS precludes linking "genetics" and "developmental biology" in the bolded title, so now we're repeating that. I have already stated above that I'll follow consensus here regarding bolding subtitles, but I do have to admit that even in this case where the subtitle conveys some information, I'd prefer the lead without the subtitle. --Randykitty (talk) 09:45, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Lead sentence - bold text for partial article title

 Done

According to MOS:BOLDTITLE:

If the article's exact title is absent from the first sentence, do not apply the bold style to related text that does appear:

The Beatles' rise to prominence in the United States on February 7, 1964, was a significant development in the history of the band's commercial success. (The Beatles in the United States)

This guideline seems perfectly reasonable when - as per The Beatles in the United States example - there are two non-contiguous sections of matching text.

However consider these articles:

In each case the article's exact title is absent from the first sentence, the bold style is applied to related/matching text (or synonym, such as the person's full name) that does appear - in direct contradiction to MOS:BOLDTITLE - yet the result is, in my opinion, reasonable and better than if we did not apply bold at all.

I could just WP:IAR, but these look to me like examples of a general class that we should cater for. In each case:

  • The bold text is not a synonym of the article title, so MOS:BOLDSYN does not apply.
  • There is no separate article for the person
  • A redirect from the person's name links to the article in question

I propose that we should modify the above-quoted guideline from MOS:BOLDTITLE to explicitly allow for these situations. One possibility is:

If the article's exact title is absent from the first sentence, do not apply the bold style to non-contiguous related text that does appear:

The Beatles' rise to prominence in the United States ...

However if a significant portion of the article title, or a close synonym thereof, appears in the lead sentence and there is no corresponding separate article (especially if there is a redirect instead to this article), the relevant text should be in bold:

Azaria Chantel Loren Chamberlain (11 June 1980 – 17 August 1980) was an Australian baby girl who was killed by a dingo on the night of 17 August 1980 on a family camping trip to Uluru (at that date known as Ayers Rock) in the Northern Territory. (Death of Azaria Chamberlain, redirected from Azaria Chamberlain)

Can I have some feedback on:

  • Whether we should modify the guideline at all, to allow for these scenarios
  • The new wording. In particular:
    • I'm not sure that inserting the word non-contiguous is necessary or even helpful.
    • My extra paragraph seems a bit too convoluted.

Mitch Ames (talk) 02:52, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

  • Comment - I think your hunch about "non-contiguous" being unnecessary is correct. This case seems to be a bit more specific than that. Do you think a further characteristic of this class is that the articles are about events primarily involving one person, who would otherwise be non-notable per WP:ONEEVENT? If so, we could add a guideline specifically for those articles, e.g. "If an article is about an event involving a subject, about which there is no main article, that term should be in bold." Ibadibam (talk) 23:48, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
WP:ONEEVENT seems to cover it. My general class wasn't necessarily limited to people - but I can't think of any cases other than people. (The only practical difference between (living) people and non-people is BLP.) Your proposed guideline wording is certainly easier to read then mine, but we probably need to explicitly mention the article title (as the other BOLDTITLE guidelines to). Mitch Ames (talk) 13:13, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

What about:

In general if the article's exact title is absent from the first sentence, do not apply the bold style to related text that does appear:

The Beatles' rise to prominence in the United States ...

However If an article is about an event involving a subject about which there is no main article, the subject should be in bold:

Azaria Chantel Loren Chamberlain (11 June 1980 – 17 August 1980) was an Australian baby girl who was killed by a dingo on the night of 17 August 1980 on a family camping trip to Uluru (at that date known as Ayers Rock) in the Northern Territory. (Death of Azaria Chamberlain, redirected from Azaria Chamberlain)

Mitch Ames (talk) 12:39, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

  • I had another thought: in some sense, this is also covered by WP:R#PLA; that guideline just needs to be restated here as well. Maybe we could add something like, "...the subject should be in bold, especially if the article is the target of a redirect with that name." And also include links to both ONEEVENT and R#PLA. Ibadibam (talk) 18:33, 23 October 2013 (UTC)


New version:

In general if the article's exact title is absent from the first sentence, do not apply the bold style to related text that does appear:

The Beatles' rise to prominence in the United States ...

However If an article is about an event involving a subject about which there is no main article, especially if the article is the target of a redirect, the subject should be in bold:

Azaria Chantel Loren Chamberlain (11 June 1980 – 17 August 1980) was an Australian baby girl who was killed by a dingo on the night of 17 August 1980 on a family camping trip to Uluru (at that date known as Ayers Rock) in the Northern Territory. (Death of Azaria Chamberlain, redirected from Azaria Chamberlain)

We could link the text "an event involving a subject about which there is no main article" to WP:ONEEVENT, but I think that's an unnecessary distraction. I'd rather limit it to formatting (which WP:R#PLA covers), and WP:ONEEVENT is not about formatting. Mitch Ames (talk) 2013-10-26T17:59:39‎

There being no objections, I have added the most recent version of my proposed change to the guideline. Mitch Ames (talk) 07:57, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

How to create and manage a good lead section

I would like to invite interested parties to comment on my essay at:

  1. Do you think it is in harmony with this guideline?
  2. Do you think there is anything which contradicts this guideline?
  3. Is there anything in the essay which would be good to include in this guideline?

Your thoughts will be appreciated. -- Brangifer (talk) 08:33, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Proposal: "Avoid quoting other sources, such as dictionaries, in the first sentence."

In the past few years, I've noticed more and more articles resorting to the unfortunate practice of simply quoting dictionaries in the first sentence, rather than offering our own definition for a term. This causes several problems:

  1. It gives undue weight to that particular source.
  2. It erodes Wikipedia's reputation as a legitimate reference source. (Imagine if Britannica resorted to quoting Dictionary.com instead of using their own definitions.)
  3. It contributes to circular referencing.
  4. It avoids establishing an actual consensus on the definition and scope of the article topic.

This seems to be part of the general trend of eschewing original prose in favor of quotations on Wikipedia, which is slowly turning Wikipedia into a giant quote farm. Although there isn't much we can do about this in article body text, I feel that we need to draw the line at using quotations in the first sentence. Thus I would like to propose adding the following bullet point to WP:LEADSENTENCE:

Avoid quoting other sources, such as dictionaries, in the first sentence.

Yea or nea? Kaldari (talk) 18:23, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

It seems like WP:BEANS to me, as I've not seen this practice very often. More often in my experience, definitions are quoted in a footnote which should be fine. It seems like any discussion about the general merits of the practice of quoting dictionary definitions in the first sentence should be informed by examples. Sławomir Biały (talk) 18:36, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
I agree that footnotes are fine, or even later in the lead is OK in some cases, so long as we provide some definition on our own terms. Here's an example, if you need one. Kaldari (talk) 18:46, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
That case is obviously bad style. I don't think a guideline is necessary to sort that out. The issue there is overuse or inappropriate use of quotations, not specifically that it is the first sentence of the article. I do think there could scope for such a guideline, but it seems that the most likely candidate at the moment is the essay WP:QUOTATION rather MOS:LEAD. Besides MOS:QUOTE, which only seems to discuss formatting, I am not aware of any guideline that deals with quotations as such. It may be worth dropping by the talk page at WT:MOSQUOTE instead. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:13, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

The wording "trivial basic facts" and "significant information"

Perhaps we should clarify the line: "Apart from trivial basic facts, significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article."

I suggest the above because Pass a Method somewhat misunderstands what is meant by that line. For example, at the Christianity article talk page, Pass a Method very recently stated: You clearly misunderstand wp:lead which gives other criteria for inclusion such as "prominent controversies", facts which are "trivial", or other info relevant to a particular paragraph or an important event. The keyword in the last sentence I will highlight: "significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article". Note the word "significant" there? The info i added was merely a couple of words; this clearly means it does not qualify as being significant. It qualifies as being notable enough for the lead because its the first major empire in history to adopt Christianity.

As you can see, Pass a Method thinks that it is generally okay to include trivial facts in the lead of articles (facts not covered lower in the article) and that "significant information" necessarily means how much material it is in the lead, seemingly unlike StAnselm, Hazhk and Bobrayner...who all also weighed in on the matter at the Christianity article talk page. I also very recently reverted Pass a Method with regard to WP:Undue lead emphasis at the Premarital sex article (while making a subtle reference to his understanding of the WP:Lead guideline displayed at the Christianity article talk page), and have either seen or seen/reverted his non-compliant WP:Lead material to other articles. So I suggest that if editors are going to be misinterpreting something as straightforward as the aforementioned highlighted line, it might be best to alter it to make it clearer what is meant by it. I take "significant information" in the guideline to not only mean how much detail is focusing on it, but also (depending on the matter) how prominent the material (topic) is. Flyer22 (talk) 15:14, 23 December 2013 (UTC) ‎

Given that - according to Wiktionary - trivial means "of little significance", I suggest that the sentence "Apart from trivial basic facts, significant information ..." is self-contradictory (trivial facts are, by at least one dictionary definition, not significant) and should be reworded in any case. Mitch Ames (talk) 07:55, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
Something about that specific wording has seemed off to me. It seems that the editors who agreed to that wording, Mitch, might have defined apart differently than you do. Flyer22 (talk) 08:07, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
Remove "trivial". This guideline should not be used as a tool for placing trivia in the lead section. Binksternet (talk) 15:34, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
I was reading apart as "other than", but it could be taken as "separated from" (ie in a different section), but the sentence meaning is less than clear then. Perhaps replacing "apart" with "other than" would be clearer. Binksternet has the right idea: we should delete the word trivial - "basic facts" is sufficient in this context. Also the double negative "not appear", "not covered" might be better if reworded as positives. Is this any better?

Other than basic facts, significant information should only appear in the lead if it is covered in the remainder of the article.

I'm not sure whether this addresses the original problem of what is "significant information", but it might still be an improvement. Mitch Ames (talk) 02:03, 25 December 2013 (UTC)
Good suggestion. Binksternet (talk) 03:38, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Four-paragraph lead

I recently had a reviewer at an FA reject a lead because it had five paragraphs. It seems that the four-paragraph guideline has now been set in stone with no flexibility allowed. Reading some of the old discussions on this clause, it does not seem to have been the intention at all to have a rigid rule, but merely to give some guidance on lead length. The judgement of the lead should be focused on the content; is it a proper summary. Focusing on an arbitrary length is not really helpful and I suggest that this wording is adjusted to make it looser while still giving some guidance on length. In particular, I think the word "ideally" should be removed. The ideal depends on article length and content. A better wording might be something like "four paragraphs would be about right for a 5 to 6 thousand word article". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Spinningspark (talk • contribs) 19:47, January 2, 2014‎

If you have a FAC reviewer who is capable of reading "As a general guideline—but not absolute rule—the lead should usually be no longer than four paragraphs" (emphasis added) and concludes that four paragraphs is the absolute maximum, then I suggest that you might rightly suspect any other advice that reviewer gives you. And, yes, any such clarifications are IMO appropriate. In particular, it might be helpful to make sure that each mention of the length is correctly qualified. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:00, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Scope of article

Another reason for rejecting the lead in the same FA mentioned above was that in defining what was within scope of the article, the lead mentioned out-of-scope terms that were not in the body of the article. Now it is a ridiculous situation that the lead cannot say that a field is out of scope because the out of scope items are not metioned in the body of the article. Of course they are not - they are out of scope! In view of this attitude at FA of taking the guidelines absolutely literally, I suggest that defining scope is made an explicit exception of the "summarizing" requirement. SpinningSpark 11:47, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

For some subjects, this is very important information to include. However, having said it once, it is sometimes silly to repeat it later. For example: One might reasonably say "Leukemia differs from lymphoma, although it commonly involves the same type of cells" and then go on to have an entire section comparing and contrasting the two (sometimes overlapping) disease classes. But while it is necessary for an article like Fever to say that fever excludes elevated temperatures that are due to environmentally induced hyperthermia, there just isn't that much more to say about it. Repeating that information twice on the same page would only be pointlessly redundant and poor writing style. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:06, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
So why can't we explicitly say that information important enough to the subject to be mentioned in the lead, but not appropriate for later expansion, is allowed to appear only in the lead? Another common example is stuff like "Foo's theorem is named after James Foo, who proved it in 1974." —David Eppstein (talk) 06:33, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
I agree that the rule is wrong. It's a reasonable guideline that prevents several things, but there are plenty of exceptions to it that should be considered. I support changing the rule, so these exceptions are accepted. --NaBUru38 (talk) 23:26, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Clutter

Many people want to put the templates in the lead, like this. I always thought that the lead should have an image. Not the first time I see this. No mention about this problem here. Please add something on this. Hafspajen (talk) 04:12, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

WP:BOLDTITLE kindly provides guidance what not to do:

Links should not be placed in the boldface reiteration of the title in the opening sentence of a lead:[10]

The Babe Ruth Award is given annually to the Major League Baseball (MLB) player with the best performance in the postseason. (Babe Ruth Award)

with the rationale that

some readers will miss the visual cue which is the purpose of using bold face in the first place.

which is all cool, but it does not offer a suggestion what to do instead. I stumbled upon Banana leaf and saw the just awful tautology "Banana leaves are the leaves of banana". Well, duh! So I changed it to something meaningful [1]. However, there is no easy way to conform to WP:BOLDTITLE and provide a separate wikilink to banana anywhere near the first sentence. Sure, the lead could be completely rephrased to do that, but the above limitation sounds just too rigid in the first place. I could agree with such recommendation or guideline, but it should be phrased in softer terms, like adding a "however, when there is no simple workaround..." clause, to allow the practice in certain situations. Losing the "visual cue" is certainly a lesser evil than reading prose convoluted to satisfy artificial limitations. Thoughts? No such user (talk) 12:52, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

I am not seeing that WP:BOLDTITLE requires that banana should be linked at all, let alone in the first sentence, and there are plenty more occurences in the first paragraph. It could even be argued that linking it is a case of WP:OVERLINK. If it is not overlinking the argument that "banana leaves are leaves of the banana plant" is a tautology starts to lose its force. SpinningSpark 15:44, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
Well, it could be argued, but in this case Banana is clearly the main (summary-style) article for Banana leaves; we ought to link it somehow from the lead or a hatnote. Just now I stumbled upon Geography of Quebec, which violates the guideline in the same manner, and has done so since its inception in 2003 [2].
My opinion (and I'm open to be convinced otherwise) is that violating this guideline is sometimes a lesser evil than the alternatives. Similar problem is often exhibited in articles with obvious, descriptive titles, where the definition is unnecessary (Banana leaf, Geography of France), but there is a strong inclination to link back to the main article. No such user (talk) 16:05, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
In the case of Geography of Quebec and Geography of France the solution is simple, per MOS:BOLDTITLE:

In general, if the article's exact title is absent from the first sentence, do not apply the bold style to related text that does appear:

The article's exact title (in particular the word "geography") does not appear in the lead sentence so do not bold Quebec or France, in which case the link is fine.
Perhaps the better solution for Banana leaves and the like in general is to include the link, but not the bold:

Banana leaves have a wide range of applications ...

on the grounds that the link is more useful than the bold. Actually I just noticed that this particular article is the singular Banana leaf, but the lead sentence is the plural - which means that removing the bold is the MOS-compliant solution (if the article's exact title is absent ... do not apply the bold style). Mitch Ames (talk) 12:47, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
I don't think the MOS ever intended that to apply to plurals. It is simply a grammatical necessity that the plural has a different spelling. This is the same kind of thing as captialisation. The first word of the title is capitalised, but in running text it may not be unless the title term happens to occur at the beginning of the sentence. Even though it's plural, it is still effectively the same as the title term. SpinningSpark 20:21, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
You might be correct about the intent of not applying to plurals, but the guideline does use the word "exact", not "effectively the same", and by any reasonable definition of the word exact, "banana leaf" is not exactly the same as "banana leaves". The exclusion of capitalisation can be deduced from the first two examples ("The electron ...", "The inaugural games of the Flavian Amphitheatre ...") but the same cannot be said for plurals because there is no corresponding example. If the guideline is intended to include bolding of plurals, then it should probably say so explicitly, and not use the word "exact. You may care to raise a change proposal RFC to that end, and see what the general opinion is.
Of course one might also just reword the first sentence of Banana leaf. Per WP:LEADSENTENCE we don't have to use the article title (or its plural) in the lead so: "The leaves of the banana plant have a wide range of applications because ..." (link "banana", no bold). Mitch Ames (talk) 13:40, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
I think I'll just be bold and change the MoS to exclude pluralization and capitalization from "exact". This is a long-standing practice anyway, I haven't even noticed the "exact" phrasing. No such user (talk) 15:52, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
I think a better solution is to simply remove the word exact (which I have now done as editing of the page has commenced before ending the discussion). The problem here is people trying to treat the guidelines as legal regulations. The guidelines are just that, guidelines written by other editors. They all have a template at the top saying use common sense, but no one seems to read that bit. SpinningSpark 19:21, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
Agree on all points. Nonetheless, I'd like if we can document the original issue I raised a bit better. Many people think that the lead sentence must repeat the title in boldface no matter what, and stretch and twist its wording to fit it in. We should clarify what we consider good practice. I have my own doubts about it, too (otherwise I wouldn't raise the issue). No such user (talk) 08:22, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
The 1st and 5th bullet points of WP:LEADSENTENCE say "the title does not need to appear verbatim in the main text" and "the title of the article need not appear verbatim in the lead". MOS:BOLDTITLE says "If the article's title does not lend itself to being used easily and naturally in the opening sentence, the wording should not be distorted in an effort to include it." How much clearer do we need to make it? Mitch Ames (talk) 12:41, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
I considered the option of renaming the Banana leaf article to be in the plural, to match its lead sentence, so I checked Wikipedia:Article titles which says generally the article title should be singular. Just to mess with my head, "Wikipedia:Article titles" is itself plural and starts with the singular, bolded "An article title is ..."! Mitch Ames (talk) 13:46, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Footnote 7 blatantly violates NPOV policy

Footnote 7, with the Oxford English Dictionary example, directly advises editors to violate WP:Neutral point of view, by using shamless peacock wording to make a grandiose, point-of-view-pushing claim about the subject. "Premier" in that context is simply a synonym for "best". The example is bad, and the text explaining why it's "good" is even worse.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  14:38, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Adverbs that give a point of view are wrong only when they are vague and badly supported. Saying that the OED is the most complete and most highly respected English dictionary is not pov-pushing, it is just stating the consensus. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:40, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Ban lead quotations

I propose that quotations be banned from lead sections (unless it's an article about that quotation or something). How can a quote, or extract of a quote, be Wikipedia's own summary of its article, as per "The lead serves as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important aspects." As per the Relative Emphasis section, how can a quote or partial quote singled out for inclusion in a lead "reflect its relative importance to the subject, according to published reliable sources"? In the same section, "Significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article, although not everything in the lead must be repeated in the body of the text. Exceptions include specific facts such as quotations..." - well a quote may well be an opinion, or an extract of someone's opinion, and in what sense does it have to be covered in the remainder of the article if it is not repeated? Sighola5 (talk) 23:00, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

On the contrary the lead can be a good place to put a quote that assesses the overall significance of the subject. Also I think turning what is supposed to be guidance ("the lead serves as...") into mechanical rules ("we must ban...") is a bad idea. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:41, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
A quote that assesses the overall significance of the subject, according to one person or source - but for balance and equal weight there really then should also be a quote in the lead from every other different notable view on the overall subject? Or only one viewpoint gets a quote? Sighola5 (talk) 01:18, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
For articles where there are multiple disagreeing viewpoints, it would be appropriate to have text elsewhere describing that and summarizing it in the lead. That is not the situation I was talking about. Here is what I think is a more typical example, one I added today, where there is no significant disagreement among sources but where one source happens to summarize the impact of the subject pithily: [3]. I think this kind of quote is perfectly appropriate for the lead, would be misplaced elsewhere, and should not be banned. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:37, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
Well perhaps this proposal should be restricted to articles with multiple viewpoints/theories, which is of course very typical of Wikipedia. Regarding your example though, the Curtis–Hedlund–Lyndon theorem, no doubt a very fine article but it does appear to directly contravene this manual of style, in that significant information appears in the lead (i.e. that the theorem is one of the fundamental results of symbolic dynamics, as per the quote from a book review by a mathematician at a Texan university) which is not covered in the body (unless I missed some reference to its status in relation to its parent field). Sighola5 (talk) 03:00, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose: Absurd, oversimplified, unworkable. Even if such a restriction were only applied to "long quotations" or something, it's still not right. We don't ban particular content presentation or formatting depending on where it is in the article.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  14:42, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
This manual does ban (ok, "shouldn't") content from being presented in the lead if it is not covered in the body (except for trivial basic facts). Quotes are being used in a way that confounds this - not about formatting as such obviously, but that the words cannot be reworded by other editors because they are in a quote, plus they are given extra authority, but other quotes can't be added to the lead because it gets absurd. Anyway obviously ban is too strong a word. Sighola5 (talk) 15:20, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
I did not agree to those implications you assume, I quite obviously did not. Why not consider some actual possible wording before taking out the red pen. Lead sections are already being biased by the use of quotations not covered in the body and defended with wikilawyering, some simple wording is needed to act against that tendency on articles with multiple viewpoints. Sighola5 (talk) 17:34, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
Yet you haven't addressed the last point to you above, that ironically your own use of a quotation in a lead appears to be exactly an example of how they tend to be used in violation of this manual? It wouldn't be policy creep to amend the wording here so it doesn't refer to a quotation as a 'fact' (especially in topics with multiple viewpoints) nor give the impression that the point it conveys needn't be covered in the body. Sighola5 (talk) 18:11, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
Oh, did you have a question to me above? I thought it looked like a statement of your opinion, not a request for mine. I already gave my opinion earlier; I see no purpose to be served here by elaborating on it further. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:54, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose per pretty much what everyone has already said. --Jayron32 18:36, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose adding any text about this: "The lead serves as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important aspects." If a sentence helps to do this, it's fine; if it doesn't, that sentence shouldn't be in the lead. This applies equally to a quotation as to any other kind of sentence, so there's no need to single out quotations as special cases. --Stfg (talk) 18:45, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
See reasons above why quotations are different - they can't be reworded by other editors to reflect the balance of the body, they give added authority to one viewpoint if there are multiple, and often they are inserted in the lead without being covered in the body. Sighola5 (talk) 19:09, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
They can be replaced by other editors to reflect the balance of the body; no sentence should give undue weight to one of multiple (non-fringe) viewpoints; if things are inserted in the lead that shouldn't be for any reason, take them out of course. No difference between quotations and anything else except the need to steer clear of close paraphrasing when we replace them. --Stfg (talk) 19:53, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for addressing the actual issues here, not assumptions or the person as others so predictably are doing. The problem is that an editor then has to prove that the quotation doesn't fully reflect the body of the article in some way - it's a higher hurdle, because they can't just tweak it, they have to remove it and add their own words. And this guideline makes it higher by referring to quotations as 'facts' which don't have to be in the body. Sighola5 (talk) 20:39, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
Ah so that's enough to stop assuming good faith is it? I can't possibly have left that discussion behind because I couldn't be bothered? But having seen enough there and elsewhere, think some better wording is needed for the benefit of Wikipedia? That's not possible is it, how could anyone not be a gameplaying wikipedian? But feel free to assume I'm so stupid yet so determined that I would give up my time on what would be such an absurdly obvious ploy. Sighola5 (talk) 20:33, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
It is when you neglect to mention the context or background of your proposal in your opening statement. Eric Corbett 20:36, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps David Eppstein can speak for himself if he wants, without you stoking things up. Sighola5 (talk) 21:12, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
No doubt he can, I simply wanted to draw attention to your lack of transparency in initiating this proposal. Eric Corbett 22:07, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
Again I do wish to amend the proposal to not be about banning quotations but to: clarify the wording in this manual so that quotations aren't referred to as 'facts' and as if the point contained in them doesn't need to be covered in the body like anything else. And I can point out that your example again seems to show a violation of this which actually supports my point - the point about him being called 'father of the bomb' is significant non-trivial information yet doesn't appear to be covered in the body of the article, unless I've missed it? Sighola5 (talk) 21:27, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
Originally, the article credited Oppenheimer with the title along with Enrico Fermi, but then someone pointed out that Leó Szilárd was also called that. So we cut it back. It's referenced. It's in the title of Cynthia Kelly's book. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:26, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
I noticed the phrase is mentioned in the bibliography but as I understand it, and please can someone correct me if I'm wrong, as per this manual of style, although it says quotations don't have to be repeated in the body, there should still be a sentence or paragraph within the body about Oppenheimer being called that? The source book has content to support it (e.g. reporters dubbed him that after the war, he used that status to lobby Truman). Sighola5 (talk) 23:46, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

WP:BOLDTITLE and election articles

Should WP:BOLDTITLE be modified to clarify the acceptability of the lead sentence of election articles? Many election articles are written with a lead sentence that may violate a strict reading of WP:BOLDTITLE. For example:

I believe that these and similar examples from other years, states, cities, and some countries, make appropriate use of bold in lead sentences of Wikipedia articles. I would change some of them after their bolded parts, e.g.:

The problem is that these (original or modified as I've suggested here) and thousands of related examples appear to violate this rule: "In general, if the article's title is absent from the first sentence, do not apply the bold style to related text that does appear." But these uses of bold are too good to change. I believe the rule should be rewritten to allow this use of bold in lead sentences. Moreover, I believe that articles about specific elections should be written with a minor variation of the title in bold, and Wikipedia rules should encourage this. —Anomalocaris (talk) 08:01, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

  • Comment IMO, we should write the lead following the conventions of good style, and then, *if* the title of the article happens to appear, it should be bolded. These examples have been twisted in order to fit in the title. As for whether we should relax the rules to allow bolding approximations of the article title, I do that, but I don't know if formally allowing it would help avoid that problem, or make the leads even worse. — kwami (talk) 08:40, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Interesting. The aim behind WP:BOLDTITLE is to prevent distortions of the language in an attempt to get the title into the first sentence, and also to prevent seemingly random bolding of words that appear in the title. The bolding is to reinforce for the reader the topic of the article, and also to reassure the reader they have arrived at the right article for their search term, particularly if they have used an alternative term.
Where there is a slight variation between the title and the opening sentence, perhaps the question should be: why is there a variation? Sometimes the title includes a non-WP:Natural disambiguation, usually involving a parenthesis, such as Mercury (planet). The opening sentence does not include the disambiguation term, and that is understood.
In the cases above, the title is comma disambiguated - though perhaps WP:Natural disambiguation would be more appropriate, as the date is not so much a disambiguation as a fact that is an essential part of the topic - as indicated by the opening sentence. Other sources sometimes use the natural form - Britannica, CNN, presidentialelection.com.
I suppose my thinking is that if there is no clear reason why the title and opening title should be different, that editors look to harmonize them. Either the disambiguation comma is the more common form, or the natural disambiguation is. Giving readers two difference versions is perhaps not helpful. So - either change the title to match the opening sentence, or change the opening sentence to match the title, depending on which form is the most common. SilkTork ✔Tea time 08:48, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
  • I agree that bolding like these is fine (but I'm not sure a change to the guideliene is necessary). I also agree with SilkTork that the comma disambiguated titles are odd - I never did understand why something like the 2012 United States presidential election is found at "United States presidential election, 2012". After all we don't have article titles like Kentucky Derby, 2012. --ThaddeusB (talk) 13:07, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
I think they were just naming conventions that stuck and no one is going back to change them all. Im in gfavour of the status qupo as we dont need to bold for the sake of it. We have the infobox that is titled with the details and the page title itself.
User:David Levy had some views on this issue.Lihaas (talk) 19:55, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Agreed with SilkTork (and with Kwamikagami that "I do that" as a WP:IAR matter when it seems to make sense to me to do so). I think it's correct to treat comma disambiguation as just another form of disambiguation, and not as a barrier to boldfacing. But in any case where YYYY Topic makes for a better lead it almost certainly makes for a better article title than Topic, YYYY, so a WP:RM would likely be in order.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  14:47, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Maybe some verbage could be added to say "If a reasonably close natural language equivalent to an article title exists in the first sentence, it could also be bolded." Thus we discourage people from writing awkward sentences just to have a bolded title, but we still allow the article to have the reinforcement provided by bolding the title, and thus the way the above articles handle it seem just fine to me. --Jayron32 18:39, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
    I agree with that concept (and I see nothing problematic about the boldface text in the election articles' leads). But I also agree with ThaddeusB that a change to the guideline's wording might not be called for.
    My concern is that "reasonably close natural language equivalent to an article title" (or similar wording) would leave too much room for interpretation. In addition to the problem that you mentioned (writing awkward sentences just to have a bolded title), users sometimes retain the natural sentence structure but insert boldface formatting wherever words from the title (or related words) appear, even when they're scattered. (See the example of The Beatles in the United States, which is based on an actual style error that remained in place for two years.)
    Given editors' propensity to overuse boldface text (with the inverse occurring practically never), it's better to err on the side of advising against it (with the knowledge that sensible exceptions will be made). —David Levy 21:46, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
  • I agree with SilkTork and SMcCandlish that the year in election articles is a form of disambiguation, which is a de jure but not a de facto barrier to boldfacing. So the rules must be changed to accommodate disambiguation titles that use a disambiguation term offset by commas or parentheses. But before proposing rule changes, I would like to clarify something. Many if not most Wikipedia election articles that do not follow the pattern I noted above suffer from a variation of the actual style error that prevailed for so long in The Beatles in the United States, by boldfacing part but not all of the title. There are over 23,000 articles with the word election in the title, and 93 of the first 100 search results have a year in the title, so this question affects a lot of articles: Are these actual style errors where the bolding should be removed from the lead sentence?
Yes, those are typical examples of editors applying boldface styling to whatever words from the title (or related words) they could find, purely for the sake of displaying something in bold (mistakenly perceived as a requirement). —David Levy 09:11, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't think we should have a special rule here, per WP:CREEP. These cases are a subset of articles with descriptive titles that do not require bolding, such as Electrical characteristics of dynamic loudspeakers referenced in WP:LEADSENTENCE, immediately preceding MOS:BOLDTITLE. If the title fits into a sentence and is bolded, by changing the title or the sentence, that's fine, but not required. ENeville (talk) 19:08, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Lists in leads: deprecated?

A while ago, I converted a clumsy (in my opinion) enumeration-in-a-sentence of 10 items, spanning some 140 words, into a bullet list. This enumeration happened to be in an article lead. Some months later, this was reverted with as edit comment "Lists deprecated in leads". I can't find that deprecation here, though. Is this a MOS rule? Cheers, —Oliphaunt (talk) 13:12, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Why don't you just ask Keith-264 directly? Ibadibam (talk) 20:30, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
I claim the honour of that edit. I can't remember where the deprecation is though. I think I checked with Australian Rupert if that's any help. RegardsKeith-264 (talk) 20:59, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
@Ibadibam: I'm asking here because if people agree, it should be on this MOS page, no?
@Keith-264: I have no idea what Australian Rupert is but I'll see if I can find out. —Oliphaunt (talk) 16:45, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
Greetings User talk:AustralianRupert is an editor who know things, I've asked him as I've forgotten who I queried the list with. RegardsKeith-264 (talk) 17:10, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Prose is generally prefeable to lists, unless specific circumstances make the list more readable. In leads the preference for prose is even clearer. I would also remove any bullet list I saw in the lead of an article.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 17:22, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
    • Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Embedded lists Australian Rupert offered this.Keith-264 (talk) 05:58, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
      • That doesn't really speak to use in the lead. What if we say that if material in the lead is better suited for list form, it's probably an indication that it's too much detail for the lead and should be moved into the article body? Ibadibam (talk) 19:19, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
        • Yes it does and items in the lead are in the body of the article, haven't you looked?Keith-264 (talk) 21:51, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
          • I don't understand what you mean by "yes it does". Yes WP:EMBED does speak to use in the lead, or yes it does work to say that list-worthy content is too much detail for the lead? Ibadibam (talk) 22:32, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
          • Ok, I'll just assume you meant the former. So if we apply the same standard to the lead as we do to the rest of the article, then lists in the lead are perfectly fine for the "appropriate uses" defined in WP:EMBED. But that doesn't seem to fit the consensus here, as both Keith-264 and Maunus object to lead lists categorically. Hence the compromise I proposed above, namely that list-worthy information should be moved to another section. A proposed guideline might read:

            Embedded lists normally shouldn't appear in the lead section. If a passage in the lead can be appropriately presented in list form, it's a good sign that it's too much detail for the general introductory text that the lead should provide, and should be moved to another section.

Does that more or less accomplish what everybody wants to accomplish? Ibadibam (talk) 23:06, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Readability

I understand the need to include alternatives etc., but many wikipedia articles start out with a whole bunch of visual disruption due to links and foreign alphabets that put the readability off the top of a readability scale, effectively masking the real point of the sentence. For example, we are trying to say Esarhaddon was a king of Assyria who conquered Egypt and rebuilt Babylon. But look how hard it is to get that information out of our lead as seen in presentation form, with distracting color, alphabets and etymology: "Esarhaddon (Akkadian: Aššur-ahhe-iddina "Ashur has given a brother to me"; Aramaic: ܐܵܫܘܿܪ ܐܵܗܐܹ ܐܝܼܕܝܼܢܵܐ; Hebrew: אֵסַר חַדֹּן‎;[1] Ancient Greek: Ασαραδδων;[2] Latin: Asor Haddan[2]), was a king of Assyria who reigned 681 – 669 BC" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.225.33.104 (talk) 23:58, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Standard lead paragraph length

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

With this edit (which I reverted) by Spinningspark, Spinningspark changed the longstanding part of the guideline that states "[the lead] should ideally contain no more than four paragraphs and be carefully sourced as appropriate." Spinningspark changed it to "length should be commensurate with the size of the article and be carefully sourced as appropriate." And below on the same page, Spinningspark changed "As a general guideline—but not absolute rule—the lead should usually be no longer than four paragraphs." to "For a long article the lead might typically be four paragraphs—but this is not an absolute rule." Spinningspark cited Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section/Archive 17#Four-paragraph lead for the changes.

Like I stated in the edit summary for my revert of Spinningspark's edit, I see no WP:Consensus that the page should have been changed in such a way. And I consider the changes problematic because this is a longstanding part of the guideline that most very experienced Wikipedians are familiar with, especially experienced WP:Good article and experienced WP:Featured article reviewers. Like Spinningspark stated in the above linked discussion, this portion of the guideline is practically set in stone. This to me means, because of its mass reach and the fact that most of the people familiar with it will not be aware of such changes made to it until much later, these changes should be something that the WP:Manual of Style editors in general decide on; in other words, a lot more people. I feel that the general WP:Manual of Style editors should be invited to this discussion. I also don't agree with the changes because I believe that we should have a standard length; the "ideally no more than four paragraphs" rule has remained strong because it usually does not take more than four paragraphs to summarize an article and we generally should not have articles that have leads exceeding that length; the last thing we need are people thinking that five or more paragraphs for the lead is generally a good thing. This portion of the guideline is not about "[f]or a long article the lead might typically be four paragraphs—but this is not an absolute rule"; it's about the lead likely being too big if it exceeds four paragraphs. Flyer22 (talk) 18:20, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed explanation Flyer22. Just because something has been established for a long time does not mean that it cannot be improved. Why do you think that more than four paragraphs is intrinsically bad? Would it be wrong to have five pargraphs in an article that was twice the length (60kB) of the largest entry in the table? Or five very short paragraphs? In the particular case that provoked this discussion an FA submission with five paragraphs was challenged in which the fifth paragraph expanded upon what was not in the article scope. This seemed to me a legitimate reason for lengthening the lead but was being prevented by an overly prescriptive guideline. As I indicated on your talk page, the original discussion was trailed at the Village Pump. Why do you think that that was inadequate? SpinningSpark 18:59, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
This is the discussion on my talk page that Spinningspark is referring to, where it is further indicated that there was no WP:Consensus for the aforementioned changes. I agree that "Just because something has been established for a long time does not mean that it cannot be improved." As for "Why do [I] think that more than four paragraphs is intrinsically bad?", I addressed that above: "it usually does not take more than four paragraphs to summarize an article," as I'm certain that the vast majority of WP:Good article and WP:Featured article reviewers would attest to. WP:Too long, didn't read (people not reading what they deem to be overly long text on Wikipedia) is a real issue, and we need to make sure that our Wikipedia leads are sufficient in length without potentially driving readers away because they are overly long. Why don't you consider why the "ideally no more than four paragraphs" rule was implemented in the first place -- that it has lasted as long as it has because it generally works for Wikipedia articles and should not be changed simply because of an encounter you had with a reviewer who interpreted the guideline too strictly? As was explained to you in the discussion I linked to in my first comment in this section, this guideline did not prevent you from the lead you desired; a reviewer who perhaps wrongly applied the guideline did. I don't believe that exceeding four paragraphs is always bad; for example, it's often needed for president articles, such as Barack Obama, and sometimes for other political articles, but even the Barack Obama WP:Featured article is currently four paragraphs. So an actual better political example exceeding four paragraphs is the WP:Good article Hillary Rodham Clinton, which is currently at five paragraphs (one could argue that five paragraphs are not needed there). But for Wikipedia articles to generally exceed four paragraphs? No, I'm not seeing it as needed. Nothing wrong with indicating in our guideline that more than four paragraphs generally is not needed.
Also, in my opinion, it generally is not good to make changes to guidelines like you did in this case and now here simply because of one bad experience you had and because you posted a complaint on the guideline's talk page and either didn't get any responses or got a few responses. You should always keep in mind that these guidelines affect the Wikipedia community as a whole and generally should have solid WP:Consensus before such significant changes are made to them. While no response can mean WP:Consensus, it often does not mean WP:Consensus; anyone who spends time at enough contentious Wikipedia articles knows that. If you wouldn't be making such changes to Wikipedia policies, I don't think you should be making them to Wikipedia guidelines either. Flyer22 (talk) 19:33, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
Well WP:BRD applies to policy and guideline pages just as much as it does to any other page. It is ridiculous to expect me to assume that there will not be a consensus because of those that did not participate in the discussion. I am not a mind reader. Your fundamental argument seems to be that a lead more than four paragraphs will make it too long. I disagree with this: firstly, splitting into more paragraphs often makes text more readable without changing the length, and secondly and consequently, number of paragraphs does not directly relate to text length. Insisting on four paragraphs could have the wholly undesirable effect of encouraging the combination of text into overly long and less digestible paragraphs; much more of a TLD case. You are wrong that I am merely "complaining" about one example. I have seen this problem before, but this time it directly affected me and I decided to do something about it.
Anyway, we clearly disagree. How do you propose we go about finding community consensus on the issue? SpinningSpark 22:56, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
I don't think that "[i]t is ridiculous to expect [you] to assume that there [is not a] consensus because of those that did not participate in the discussion" (it's not like you had good, as in sufficient, participation); it is not any more ridiculous than expecting that there is WP:Consensus simply because editors, such as myself, ignored your complaints. Per WP:Consensus, WP:Consensus versions should be adhered to until new WP:Consensus is achieved. And I don't see how it was at all adequate for you to assume that new WP:Consensus had been achieved in either of the instances above, especially the "ideally no more than four paragraphs" matter; I don't see how you felt that it was a great idea to change such a longstanding guideline -- the "ideally no more than four paragraphs" aspect, except because you like the idea of an article's lead exceeding four paragraphs. If it is applying WP:BRD (testing the waters), okay then, but I still don't believe that significant changes should be made to a guideline or policy without clear-cut WP:Consensus. The guideline is not insisting on four paragraphs; it's insisting on not exceeding four paragraphs, and for very good reasons. Reasons I've already noted above. I agree that a Wikipedia lead of five short paragraphs can be fine and look nice, but I have seen Wikipedia leads with five or more short paragraphs that look a mess, and Wikipedia leads of those lengths (especially surpassing five paragraphs) generally looking like messes...very much WP:Too long, didn't read messes. I don't see anything wrong with having a length standard for leads (a general cut-off point)...especially one that has been followed for years generally without any problems; just like MOS:PARAGRAPHS makes clear that paragraphs that are too big can inhibit flow, it makes clear that paragraphs that are too small can as well.
As for proceeding, your post to the WP:Village pump about this did not work out well. So like I suggested above, I will alert the editors of WP:Manual of Style to this discussion. Flyer22 (talk) 00:43, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
I have not said I like more than four paragraphs. Actually, I think four is a helpful guide. I just don't think that that should be a fixed as a maximum. You just said yourself that you think five can sometimes work. SpinningSpark 01:03, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
The lead being no more than four paragraphs is set as a helpful guide. As has already been stated, it is not mandatory; it's a part of a guideline, after all, not a policy. And I'd essentially already expressed that five paragraphs can work when I stated, "I don't believe that exceeding four paragraphs is always bad; for example, it's often needed for president articles, such as Barack Obama, and sometimes for other political articles, but even the Barack Obama WP:Featured article is currently four paragraphs. So an actual better political example exceeding four paragraphs is the WP:Good article Hillary Rodham Clinton, which is currently at five paragraphs (one could argue that five paragraphs are not needed there). But for Wikipedia articles to generally exceed four paragraphs? No, I'm not seeing it as needed." In other words, and as I've made clear more than once now, I generally don't think that a Wikipedia lead should exceed four paragraphs. I feel that we should stay with our (general) cut-off point of four paragraphs; I don't see that guideline as broke, and therefore I don't see it as needing fixing. Flyer22 (talk) 01:19, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Ok, if we start from "up to four paragraphs", how do we define "a paragraph"? I mean, what should be the maximum length of such a paragraph? Please, let's remember that the lead section should always be as concise as possible – that's what people read first, and decide whether to go deeper into the article or not. Also, things (including lead sections) can be messy regardles of their length. :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 01:09, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

  • I am less concerned with the MOS change, which essentially says the same thing using different prose, than I am with the notion of restricting the lead to four paragraphs; and then, I presume, dis-favoring long paragraphs that can easily be split. What matters is that the lead adequately summarizes the body and therefor that it be commensurate in size.—John Cline (talk) 01:14, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
John Cline, and it's often been that editors have not easily judged what is adequate lead size without applying the "ideally no more than four paragraphs" standard; that standard has consistently helped leads adequately summarize articles without the lead being too small or too big; never have I seen it present itself as a problem. I've seen it help in countless WP:Good and Featured article processes, and don't think it should be changed because Spinningspark had a bad experience with a reviewer who applied it. In fact, I'll go ahead and invite editors at WP:Good article, WP:Featured article and WP:Featured article candidates to weigh in on this discussion as well. Flyer22 (talk) 01:38, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
The subset of the reviewers at Good and Featured articles who blindly apply rules without considering how well they apply to individual cases are what causes this text to be problematic. I hope the ones you bring in to this discussion are the more thoughtful ones. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:44, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
Just to point out, I did not completely remove the suggested four paragraphs in my edit, that was left in the table of suggested lengths. It was just a change of emphasis to make it less of an instruction. SpinningSpark 02:13, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  • I would welcome an RFC on this. The fact that the rule is long-standing and well-known is irrelevant: if we applied such a criterion, Wikipedia would ossify. The rule seems arbitrary to me, and it gives rise to a temptation to cram too much into one paragraph. I see this too often. --Stfg (talk) 10:11, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
Then we should do a WP:RfC, and advertise it well because the fact that the rule is long-standing and well-known is not irrelevant to me; not any more irrelevant than the WP:3RR rule and the revert limit being set at three reverts. I don't ever think that it is a good idea to significantly tamper with a long-standing policy or guideline that has worked well for years (not that some editors don't argue against the WP:3RR rule). And Spinningspark's changes were significant because they eliminated that rule and applied it in a non-helpful general way (that long articles may have a four-paragraph lead, when the same can be stated of five paragraphs...and so on). Discarding the "ideally no more than four paragraphs" rule will give rise to the lead issues I noted above; I always see those issues, which are always well worked out once the "ideally no more than four paragraphs" rule, which again is not mandatory, is applied. It is a standard, and far less harmful (not harmful at all in my experience) than some of our other Wikipedia standards. Flyer22 (talk) 10:35, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
We could do a RFC if you insist, but I feel this would be too much of WP:BURO. Do we have to have a RFC on every minor detail in MoS? As far as I'm concerned, we're having this RFC right now, maybe in a less structured manner. That being said, I support the change, as I think that imposing too rigid rules (such as the old one of four paragraphs) is both an instruction creep and an invite to ruleslawyer (such as arbitrarily merging and breaking paragraphs), which is contrary to Wikipedian spirit. MoS should be describe best practices, not prescribe them. If this is just a guideline, it should be presented in softer terms, leaving the four paragraphs rule just as a rule of thumb, not as a commandment. No such user (talk) 11:04, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
For a longstanding and widely used guideline like this? Yes, a (well-advertised) WP:RfC is best, just as Stfg indicated. I fail to see how the "ideally no more than four paragraphs" aspect is a WP:CREEP violation (which would be a violation of an essay anyway) or any of the other things you mentioned, when this is a guideline instruction that works well and always, in my experience, when applied correctly, keeps leads from being an absolute mess. We now need to change this very good instruction because Spinningspark had a bad experience with a reviewer's interpretation of it? That's ridiculous to me. Editors often see policies and guidelines differently, even the WP:3RR rule. Does that mean that we should change those policies and guidelines each and every time, or at all, in such cases? No, as far as I'm concerned. Guidelines instruct. And so this guideline instructs that leads generally don't need to be any longer than four paragraphs; time and again this have proven true -- leads generally don't need to be more than four paragraphs. And Spinningspark stated above (at "01:03, 28 February 2014 (UTC)"), "Actually, I think four is a helpful guide." So I cannot at all see it as a good idea to eliminate this guideline. It does describe best practice. And it specifically states that it is not an absolute rule, but rather a general one. Flyer22 (talk) 11:22, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
Spinningspark did not eliminate the guideline [4], but instead replaced it with length should be commensurate with the size of the article (which I welcome) on one place, and rephrased the previous (rather awkward) wording on the other with For a long article the lead might typically be four paragraphs—but this is not an absolute rule., basically stating the same as before. Wording could be perhaps ironed out, but I don't think the four-paragraph rule should exist in the lead section (because, quote, "many only read the lead". No such user (talk) 11:46, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
Spinningspark did eliminate the guideline; like I stated above, "And Spinningspark's changes were significant because they eliminated that rule and applied it in a non-helpful general way (that long articles may have a four-paragraph lead, when the same can be stated of five paragraphs...and so on)." Not a helpful change in the least, in my opinion. Besides that, Spinningspark moved it out of the lead, where it needs to be as well. That readers often don't read past the lead (like WP:Lead states) applies to Wikipedia editors as well. And yet you don't think the four-paragraph rule should exist in the lead? That's not logic that I follow. Flyer22 (talk) 11:52, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
Thankyou for pointing out yet again that I did not remove all mention of four paragraphs, only changed the emphasis. It seems that Flyer22 will not be satisfied without a formal RFC so let's just do it already. SpinningSpark 12:07, 28 February 2014‎ (UTC)
I never stated that you removed all mention of it. But since you must not have seen my commentary about "well advertised" with regard to the WP:RfC, then I will alert various WikiProjects to this discussion. Flyer22 (talk) 12:18, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
I was in the process of trailing at the MOS talk page and VPB when you posted. By all means advertise at Wikiprojects as well although I would have thought we already have wide enough involvement. SpinningSpark 12:28, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
I was about to state "and possibly other outlets...such as the WP:Village pump," but you got the WP:Village pump (VPB) covered. Flyer22 (talk) 12:37, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Okay, for those who have not already looked at my latest contributions to see see what type of notification I was sending the WikiProjects, this is it. And below are all the WikiProjects I contacted; these are the aforementioned outlets I mentioned (I stuck with WikiProjects). At first, I was thinking of the big WikiProjects on my own...but then I started to look for WikiProjects based on WP:RfC's Issues by topic area categorization format. I would have contacted Wikipedia:WikiProject LGBT studies earlier, but I didn't think to do so until late in the run. And I initially overlooked Wikipedia:WikiProject Trade and Wikipedia:WikiProject Companies when following the WP:RfC categorization format. Here are all the WikiProjects I contacted, in order of contact (and, yes, I feel like I contacted all of Wikipedia; wish I had a bot to have done it for me):

RFC on four paragraph lead

There does not appear to be any consensus for changing the current wording of the guideline in either of the ways suggested. Number 57 17:16, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The guideline currently indicates that leads should generally be a maximum of four paragraphs. Do editors support softening the wording to make clear that this is not a firm rule? If editors do support such a change, do they support the (currently reverted) wording proposed by user Spinningspark? SpinningSpark 12:07, 28 February 2014‎ (UTC)

See the above discussion on the guideline talk page. Flyer22 (talk) 12:18, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Support Spinningspark's wording

  1. Support It is counterproductive to have such arbitrary rules. SpinningSpark 12:07, 28 February 2014‎ (UTC)
  2. Support. I have seen editors get around the rule by writing inappropriately long paragraphs in the lead. Such paragraphs actually hinder clarity for the reader and would be better off split into more paragraphs. Axl ¤ [Talk] 15:11, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  3. Support, as I said above. It is too rigid and opens the door for wikilawyering. No such user (talk) 15:16, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  4. Support an improvement, but could probably be even better worded.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:45, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  5. Support. If specific alternative softened wordings are proposed I would also likely support them, but I see Spinningspark's wording as a clear improvement over what we have now. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:07, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Oppose Spinningspark's wording

  1. Oppose I support softening, but those are the wrong words. The size of the lede should be related to the reader's experience (i.e. it should provide a good overview that isn't TL;DR). I don't see that this need be commensurate with the size of the article. --Stfg (talk) 12:44, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  2. Oppose - those are the wrong words. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 13:21, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  3. Oppose - those words are a step backwards. They make it seem like something like a 10% rule would apply to articles of any length. Even the oversized articles (60-100KB or more of readable prose) should generally try to stay within a 4 paragraph and 3000-3200ish character size.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 15:30, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  4. Oppose I think the four paragraph rule is a useful bright line. If it were upped, well, there would be few practical limitations on the length of the lede, and that would make things more difficult at the FAC process since the nominator could point to the rule when a reviewer opposed, and it would lead to more conflict. Any article really needing 5 paragraphs can be handled through IAR.--Wehwalt (talk) 17:46, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  5. Oppose. The existing wording says, in part: "As a general guideline—but not absolute rule". It seems to me that those words already achieve sufficient softening. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:45, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  6. Oppose. Four paragraphs seems pretty good to me. — Cirt (talk) 11:29, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
  7. Current wording is sufficiently soft. Binksternet (talk) 17:20, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
  8. Oppose, agree with Stfg. Zad68 06:26, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Support softening, not necessarily Spinningspark's text

  1. Support It is counterproductive to have such arbitrary rules. SpinningSpark 12:07, 28 February 2014‎ (UTC)
  2. Support The length of a paragraph is like the length of a piece of string. The 4-paragraph recommendation is arbitrary. We clearly need to give some guidance as to what makes a good overview, but this one poor, and one does sometimes see it insisted upon to strongly. (Something about word count might be OK, but I'm not attached to this). --Stfg (talk) 12:44, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  3. Comment I could support softening of the guideline, but only where it is clear that a lead being more than four paragraphs generally is not needed. For the time being, I am more so leaning toward opposing any softening of the guideline, as shown below. Flyer22 (talk) 12:53, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  4. Support Per Stfg. Generally too-short leads are far more of a problem, and in article text generally, too-short paragraphs. At least the current wording discourages over-short paras in the lead. Johnbod (talk) 14:43, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  5. Support, per Stfg. No such user (talk) 15:16, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  6. SupportUser:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:45, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  7. SUPPORT—John Cline (talk) 17:09, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  8. Support, comparing to featured articles is disingenuous, most articles will never get the attention of those articles. What a four paragraph rule does is encourage people to delete anything extra or force content into four paragraphs. Perhaps a one-rule-fits-millions of articles isn't best here. Sportfan5000 (talk) 20:05, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  9. Support The lead section should be long enough to properly summarize the rest of the article, whether that be just 1 paragraph or 6. Setting an arbitrary number for paragraph, even a recommended maximum number, does not always lead to a lead section that properly summarize the most important aspects in the article. That is because the lead section should be able to serve as a stand-alone article unto itself. The sub-sections that follow simply add details to what is covered by the lead. 24.149.117.220 (talk) 21:30, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  10. Support a move away from a "four paragraph" prescription but would rather see a recommendation (not a hard limit) based on a number of words, rather than a number of paragraphs. We have WP:SIZERULE based on the maximum amount of content a reader can be expected to consume in one sitting; I think the lead should be the important content a reader can be expected to consume while standing on one foot (or the like). Whether I as the copyeditor of a lead would like to split that up into three or four or five paragraphs should be my choice, driven by groupings of subject areas in the article I'm trying to summarize. Zad68 06:31, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
  11. Support I think it's worth establishing consensus of the need for change first and then crafting the change collaboratively. No objection in practice to the proposed words, I'd just like to take it a step at a time. --Dweller (talk) 10:41, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
  12. Support and provide some guidance, but not the arbitrary hard "4 paragraph" rule. The proposed change is a good start, but it doesn't provide enough guidance. The problem with 4 paragraphs as a guideline is that it can be met by people just eliminating carriage returns between paragraphs to get a completely arbitrary "4" breaks. Completely useless for providing guidance as to proper length. The lead should be of a length commensurate with the length of the article, but we should also provide some better guidance of how to do that. Not just an arbitrary length, but guidance on how to write a lead that is of the appropriate length. --Jayron32 11:58, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
  13. Support While many, probably a majority of articles can do with that limit, many of the longer ones will require longer ones. Circéus (talk) 01:52, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
  14. Support I agree with the discussions below about how each paragraph should represent a topic. Some articles may need more than four paragraphs to properly summarise the article. I think it would be wise to recommend that they try to keep the summary short, but not too short and use four paragraphs as a guideline, but there is no reason to make it a rule. Zell Faze (talk) 15:18, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
  15. Support I agree that the wording should be softened but it should be clear that some limit (i.e. a reasonable one) exists. APerson (talk!) 22:30, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
  16. Support (similar to Jayron32 & Zad68) The emphasis should be stressing that (a) the lead should be in proportion to the main article text, then (b) an upper word limit guideline. The current paragraph-based guideline is a poor proxy for these two guiding aspects. SFB 07:40, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
  17. Support It should be emphasised a little more that this is a soft rule. Also, we need to capture the fact that the length of paragraphs can vary and it maybe conducive to have 5+ small paragraphs rather than combining unrelated sentences. Zangar (talk) 23:11, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
  18. Support. Leads shouldn't be allowed to get out of hand, and I think that even a lot of short leads are longer than they should be, but "four paragraphs" is just too easy to get around (say, by simply squishing two paragraphs together). I wrote a (quite long—3668 B) five-paragraph lead for ukiyo-e, and somebody brought it up on the talk page (safe to read—no explosive arguing). I honestly don't know where I could drop an entire paragraph—it's all pretty basic to the topic. Curly Turkey (gobble) 02:03, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
  19. Support - A single paragraph should contain one idea. Strongly encouraging "no more than 4" just makes people write bad paragraphs by eliminating carriage returns. If a subject has 5 major topics, it should have 5 (short) paragraphs in the lead. If it has 3 major subjects, it should have 3, etc. --ThaddeusB (talk) 12:35, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Oppose any softening

  1. Oppose. Like I stated above: "[T]his is a [longstanding] guideline instruction that works well and always, in my experience, when applied correctly, keeps leads from being an absolute mess [ WP:Too long, didn't read, for example ]. We now need to change this very good instruction because Spinningspark had a bad experience with a reviewer's interpretation of it? That's ridiculous to me. Editors often see policies and guidelines differently, even the WP:3RR rule. Does that mean that we should change those policies and guidelines each and every time, or at all, in such cases? No, as far as I'm concerned. Guidelines instruct. And so this guideline instructs that leads generally don't need to be any longer than four paragraphs; time and again this have proven true -- leads generally don't need to be more than four paragraphs. And Spinningspark stated above (at '01:03, 28 February 2014 (UTC)'), 'Actually, I think four is a helpful guide.' So I cannot at all see it as a good idea to eliminate this guideline. It does describe best practice. And it specifically states that it is not an absolute rule, but rather a general one." Flyer22 (talk) 12:22, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  2. comment rewording or clarification is potentially an option, but "softening" because of one bad experience is a terrible idea. there is no evidence that there is a widespread problem that would be "fixed" and lots of potential for unforeseen bad side effects. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 13:28, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  3. Oppose. The length of the article has no bearing on the length of the lead. Eric Corbett 15:02, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  4. Oppose. Per what Flyer22 said. Four paragraphs (in complete moderate length) is fine and quite enough. If users feel the need to over-load the paragraphs, it should also be another editor's right to shorten them to the important information. Rarely do I see over-loaded introductory paragraphs. livelikemusic my talk page! 15:21, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  5. Oppose. I would prefer strengthening to suggest that going beyond 3000-3200 characters of readable prose is almost always counterproductive.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 15:31, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  6. Oppose per Tony and likelivemusic, and my comments above.--Wehwalt (talk) 17:47, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  7. Oppose. Four paragraphs is enough. We don't need to write an entire Start-class article in the lead. We're only talking about best practices here, and consensus can establish that four paragraphs is not enough; there isn't really a problem to be solved. I agree with the others that we should encourage simplicity and conciseness. Overloaded paragraphs can be (and are) trimmed down. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 18:01, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  8. Oppose. Ditto. See WP:LEADLENGTH and WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY. An overlong lead is a sign of poor writing and/or POV problems. Lightbreather (talk) 18:26, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  9. Oppose. Four paragraphs is plenty. Can we change it to three? Kaldari (talk) 18:39, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  10. Oppose Our guidelines are blunt because when it is clever people can WP:IAR. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:56, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  11. Oppose. I'm all in favor of WP:IAR about lead length, but I think the existing wording is flexible enough, while not becoming meaningless. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:46, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  12. Oppose The current wording isn't hard and fast at all: "it should ideally contain" and "As a general guideline—but not absolute rule". Adabow (talk) 00:23, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
    Based on previous conversations here, some people believe those two phrases are contradictory: "ideal" leads are always, without exception, no more than four paragraphs, but "bad" (or "non-ideal") leads are not absolutely prohibited for typical articles. I've seen people at GA reviews demand that the blank line between two short paragraphs be removed because (even though it's "not [an] absolute rule"), only four paragraphs can be accepted as GA per the earlier statement. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:33, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
    I'd be fine with changing "ideally" to "generally," which is an option I've been thinking about since yesterday (non-Wikipedia time, meaning since the 27th). Flyer22 (talk) 02:47, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
    Flyer22, I think that would be an improvement. It would resolve the apparent "contradiction" that some people find in the current wording. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:03, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
  13. Oppose Yes the lead should generally be 3 or 4 paragraphs IMO. If it is too long than it should be shortened. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:00, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
  14. Oppose. Am in favour of a hard limit. A lead more than four paragraphs is too long. --LT910001 (talk) 03:36, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
    LT910001 , the problem with a "hard limit" defined in paragraphs is that 18 sentences divided between four paragraphs and the same 18 sentences divided between five paragraphs is the same length. Adding a blank line in the middle of paragraph #4 does not actually make it any longer. The only real difference is that the five-paragraph version may be slightly better for reading comprehension (shorter paragraphs are more readable). Do you really support four very long paragraphs, or would you prefer some method of actually keeping the leads shorter (like a word count)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:59, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
  15. Oppose while granting that there may be some articles that need longer lead sections. (If they really do, that would be a case for common sense and WP:IAR.) I understand the difficulty of summarizing a long article in 4 paragraphs, but I believe it can be done in the vast majority of cases, which is why I think this rule should stay as is. Yes it's a bit arbitrary, but I don't think softening it will lead to an improvement for the encyclopedia. ~Adjwilley (talk) 05:52, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
  16. Oppose. I think four paragraphs is just fine for length of the intro sect. — Cirt (talk) 11:29, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
  17. Oppose: Four paragraphs is just fine. Too long lead sections cause them not to be digestable easily enough, what defeats the main reason behind the very existence of lead sections. Also, if we go to five paragraphs, then we'd later go to six and so on, what would make little sense. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 03:48, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
  18. Oppose: An article for which a lead summary requires more than 4 paragraphs likely should be split. • Astynax talk 05:45, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
  19. Oppose if you know all the rules you know the rules don't need to be softened. WP:IAR If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it. Use common sense. It can't get any softer than that. If it calls for more than four paeagraphs then it can be easily explained on the talk page.Serialjoepsycho (talk) 02:33, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
  20. Oppose per Flyer22. Chris Troutman (talk) 06:11, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
  21. Oppose, with comment It's already a soft rule, not a hard one; I don't think it needs softening further. If one is worried about inducing people to overpack the four paragraphs, I would not be averse to an addition to the "Elements of the lead" section explaining that (e.g.) "This guideline is more about overall length than the number of paragraphs per se. It should not be used to justify combining paragraphs which read better split." 71.41.210.146 (talk) 12:26, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
  22. Oppose. The guideline already allows for exceptions (bold added): "it should ideally contain no more than four paragraphs," "should normally be no more than four paragraphs," "should usually be no longer than four paragraphs." SlimVirgin (talk) 16:06, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
  23. Oppose I think the current wording of WP:LEADLENGTH allows enough flexibility for exceptional cases. Sasata (talk) 16:55, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
  24. Oppose pre m:CREEP. The lede should generally be four paras or fewer. This has always been so, nobody seems to have a problem understanding the guideline or with ignoring it when appropriate. Perhaps we should instead have a policy forbidding the rejection of good content based on applying guidance as if it were a rule. Guy (Help!) 23:00, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

  • Johnbod, above in the support softening section, you stated, "At least the current wording encourages over-short paras in the lead." I don't understand how "[the lead] should ideally contain no more than four paragraphs" encourages over-short paras in the lead. Care to explain? Flyer22 (talk) 14:59, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
I think that he meant "discourages", not "encourages". Axl ¤ [Talk] 15:48, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes, changed! Sorry. Johnbod (talk) 16:03, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Comment Lugnuts makes a very good point IMO. In giving an overview of the article, there may be more natural breaks in some articles than others, so a five paragraph lede could in effect be shorter than a three paragraph lede. Why not introduce a sensible word limit i.e. 100–1000 words? Having a lower bound may encourage avoidance of one sentence ledes. A lede is supposed to be a brief overview of the article, so key here is that it's brief, and the number of paragraphs isn't really the issue. Betty Logan (talk) 15:33, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

It's unclear to me whether the goal with this change is to support leads that have five (perhaps short) paragraphs, or to discourage long ones. I think it would be desirable to state that a good lead normally has more than one sentence, and I'm uncertain that the paragraph count is the best way to express the size.

Here are stats from some recent TFAs:

Size of leads from featured articles
words 368 206 348 200 313 283
paragraphs 3 3 3 3 3 3
characters 1917 977 1769 943 1635 1596

(The number of characters excludes spaces.) As you can see, all of them have the same number of paragraphs, but one has 67 words per paragraph and another has 123 words per paragraph, so it's nearly twice as long. A word count might be a better description: more than 50 words, less than 500? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:37, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Why? The existing system has worked well. Show me an article that really needs a fifth paragraph and we will talk. But a paragraph is more than just words. I'm not going to go back to junior high English, but there should be a structure there. I just don't see any reason why someone needs to do that five times.--Wehwalt (talk) 17:50, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
Precisely because of structure, and that junior-high concept that each paragraph should have a single main topic. For example, in writing about a disease, you might reasonably want these single topics to be addressed:
  1. What it is (e.g., it's a parasitic infection, what the pathogen is, how one is exposed to it)
  2. What the symptoms are (e.g., itchy eyes, allergic reactions)
  3. What the treatments are (e.g., drugs, vaccines)
  4. What the prognosis is (e.g., curable if treated soon enough, blindness if not)
  5. What the sociocultural history is (e.g., affects primarily poor rural people, causes economic damage)
That's five topics, and five topics could reasonably be organized into five short paragraphs. Some people (probably including your composition teachers) would even say that five paragraphs would proper, and that you cannot write a proper topic sentence or properly constructed paragraphs unless you split out each significant topic into its own paragraph. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:58, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Note: Regarding the latest "votes" on this matter, I have expressed that inappropriate WP:Canvassing may have taken place, and may still be taking place, regarding this WP:RfC. Flyer22 (talk) 23:16, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

More precisely, you accused Spinningspark of canvassing, without any direct evidence, and Spinningspark denied any knowledge of it. It seems plausible enough to me that the newer incoming contributors are instead coming from neutral sources such as the Signpost discussion report. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:04, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
No, I asked. And there was no better person to ask, since the WP:RfC is based on me and Spinningspark being at opposite ends of this topic, and Spinningspark is a WP:Administrator (like I noted on Spinningspark's talk page, there's been a recent wave of WP:Administrator "votes"). To me, asking Spinningspark that question is not an accusation. Does it imply that I think Spinningspark may have contacted multiple editors off-Wikipedia about this WP:RfC to influence the WP:RfC in Spinningspark's favor? Sure. But I kept an open mind about Spinningspark not having done that. Your commentary about the recent influx is plausible. Flyer22 (talk) 00:15, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
You asked, and he replied: "Nothing to do with me. I was trying to quietly ignore the whole issue." And then instead of taking his word for it you posted two diatribes in less than an hour, dripping with implied accusation, ending one with "But as it stands..." and the other with "but still..." -- those ellipses full of innuendo. Of course you were accusing him. You think that because some admins pitch up, that means they may have been canvassed? The Signpost theory seems much more "plausible" to me. --Stfg (talk) 00:50, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
And, predictably, just because an editor sternly addresses the matter of inappropriate WP:Canvassing, that editor is accused of being WP:Uncivil. Spinningspark having stated "I was trying to quietly ignore the whole issue." and then refraining from replying any further does not inspire confidence in me that he was/is not aware of any WP:Canvassing on this matter; to me, if that comment is about the recent influx instead of the WP:RfC as a whole, it implies that while he may not have been involved in any WP:Canvassing, he may have known it was taking place. It certainly implies that WP:Canvassing crossed his mind, just like it did mine, with regard to this recent influx. My view? I did not accuse Spinningspark of a thing with regard to WP:Canvassing, and I don't care how much you or anyone else here piles up stating that I did. When I see something that can quite clearly be interpreted as fishy/sketchy going on, I often mention it; that goes for Wikipedia as well. And I don't care how uncordial mentioning/questioning it may seem. Flyer22 (talk) 01:03, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
Full discussion here for documentation in this section. Flyer22 (talk) 02:08, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
Comments since The Signpost report have only been two-to-one in favor of a change. If anyone were canvassing, then he did a rather poor job of it. I don't think we need to worry about this.
I still think that we might do better to produce a guideline based on word count than on highly variable "paragraphs". What do you think of that idea? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
I would would rather stick with the four-paragraphs guideline as a general rule, per my and others' comments on that above. It's worked well for years. Like I stated, I don't believe in fixing things that are not broken, especially based on a single bad experience. Tweaking things? Sure. I definitely think that the guideline needs to be clear about not overpacking paragraphs just to fit the four-paragraphs rule; the guideline should also perhaps do a better job at letting editors know that not exceeding four paragraphs is not always ideal. Flyer22 (talk) 18:14, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
Note. Since March 10th, which is when The Signpost report seems to have been posted, comments have been more than two-to-one in favor of a change at this point (March 14th); because of APerson's support vote on March 11th, that also slightly applies to March 12th (when WhatamIdoing made the "two-to-one" comment above). There have only been three oppose votes since March 10th. APerson numbered the posts today to help keep count. Though WP:Consensus is not solely about voting, having the support and oppose comments numbered certainly makes the WP:Consensus process easier to assess; I'm not sure that the comments that are labeled "Comment" should count as a vote, but, given what they state, they seem to (that includes my comment for being open to softening the guideline). Flyer22 (talk) 13:27, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Giving priority in the lead to the native name

See the history of Adam's Peak (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) where I reverted the change in the caption of the lead picture back to the English common name. The response was to change revert me and to change the lead so that it gives the native name priority. Nice to see brand new editors using edit summaries, at least I know the reasoning. Dougweller (talk) 10:43, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

List title vs an actual sentence

In List of species endemic to Mendocino County, California, I believe that this MOS section tells us to have a proper sentence as the lead, while another editor insists on making the lead be a repetition of the title of the list without other text. Please see the history there. Additional opinions welcome. —David Eppstein (talk) 14:02, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, the old introductory sentence was much better than a simply restated bold title. It's also poor MOS to place a wikilink in the bolded title. CMD (talk) 14:32, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Example with no bolding

About the example given for rewriting the literal page title (WP:BOLDTITLE, 2011 Mississippi River floods). The example (of good) has no bolding. Is that intentional? -DePiep (talk) 10:27, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, because the title (or a paraphrase that could reasonably be used as a title) does not appear contiguously within the sentence. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:23, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
OK with me, but I expect that to be written/explained nearby. -DePiep (talk) 22:20, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
You don't think the three lines of explanatory text that already surround this ("If the article's title does not lend itself" ... "Instead" ... "do not apply the bold style") aren't exactly what you ask for? —David Eppstein (talk) 22:36, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

should lede simply duplicate information found in a short article?

[5] Is there any reason to repeat information found in the two sections following the lede? If not, then perhaps an addition to the guideline page is in order, saying with short articles a lede should avoid becoming unnecessary redundant. Dream Focus 18:44, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

List bold?

I can't find anything on this page that says what to do with bolding text for list articles. For instance, is: (1) "A foo is..." or (2) "A foo is..." correct on the theoretical article "List of foo"?

If that is allowed, should "Foo" be in bold in the following example: "Foo is a television series that..." (List of Foo episodes)

If lists are mentioned on the page and I've missed it, I apologise (although it might be an indication that the relevant text/links should be more prominent). Bilorv (Talk)(Contribs) 17:38, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

The page does mention lists, but it's not really relevant to your question. I looked at a few lists (2 that randomly popped into my head, 2 that are FLs, and one that popped into my head and then turned out to be an FL), and none of them have anything bolded in the lead:
By my interpretation, your example should read "Foo is a television series that..." (List of Foo episodes) —LucasThoms 03:26, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
On the other hand, some lists I picked out (fairly randomly) all contain bold:
It doesn't like there is an official policy for this - although some of my examples seem to break other rules (no links in bold; bold has to be for consecutive text). The bottom two lists even repeat the entire article name (including "list(s) of") verbatim. Since there are 156,080 lists and 1917 of them are featured, this seems like a massive gap in policy. "Foo" for "List of Foo episodes" seems fair enough but should "List of Foo", "Foo" or nothing be bolded in "List of Foo"? Bilorv (Talk)(Contribs) 08:29, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
While non-bolding of lead elements in lists is standard for the Featured List process, it's actually one I disagree with. I fundamentally disagree with the guideline "do not apply the bold style to related text that does appear". I would bold something like: "The Mississippi River floods in April and May 2011 were among the largest and most damaging recorded...". The purpose of bolding is to visually define the scope of the article/list to the reader. Avoiding bad wording/redundancy is good, but I don't think that means we should abandon this important, user-friendly facet just because there is another word in between the terms.
I don't understand how this kind of bolding to define the scope (e.g. "The Beatles' rise to prominence in the United States") represents a problem for, or a detriment to, our readers. When an article is a combination of terms or topics (e.g. Terapontidae) then we already happily bold the different elements separately. I propose we allow such bolding where the elements come naturally and close together within the wording of the lead sentence. SFB 09:11, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

MOS:BEGIN question. Should an organizations objective be written in the language 'stated objective is' or simply as 'objective is' (presumption: reliable source available).

This has a background/context but there is no intention of bringing the edit war here. The question is if there are SPS and secondary sources describing the Objectives of an organization then can we write it in the lead paragraph like "with an objective of..." like it is in UNICEF, AIDA International, ActionAid articles or we must write it like "with a stated objective of...". I know it sounds quite small matter but an editor is willing to accuse me of canvassing for that change. If the exact context of the discussion is needed I can provide it. Regards. --AmritasyaPutra✍ 08:27, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Citations in lede for medicine

WikiProject Medicine maintains its own manual of style at WP:MEDMOS, and at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#References in the lead there is currently a discussion about requiring citations to be used in the lede. This follows another WikiProject Medicine pseudo-policy which suggests that citations should be used after every sentence. I am sharing notice of this here because I feel that the policies developed by WikiProject Medicine tend to influence other parts of Wikipedia.

This discussion is being introduced because of WikiProject Medicine's efforts through the Translation Task Force to translate English language health articles into other languages. This translation starts with the ledes of articles, then does more if volunteers are available. Before translating any text that text must go through a review process, and since people are reviewing only the ledes for translation, people have found that sometimes information in the ledes is of lower quality due to lack of citations than text in the body of the article.

The Medical Manual of Style presents community consensus on health articles, but people who are not interested in health are welcome to comment there also. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:07, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

"WikiProject Medicine maintains its own manual of style" is not correct, nor is "the policies developed by WikiProject Medicine". WP:MED maintains no policies at all, and while it does maintain it's own Manual of Style sub-page, it is subordinate to the main one and to the general rules in the not-field-specific sub-pages like MOS:LEAD; it is not "its own manual of style" in distinction to MOS. This is a matter of policy, at WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. If WP:MED wants to do something notably divergent from the mainstream MOS, editors who participate in that project should seek consensus outside their topical camp, to change the broader guidelines (either to apply more generally what the wikiproject want to do specifically, because it's a better approach, or to account for what the wikiproject wants to do as an explicit exception to general practice, and why).

That said, WP:V policy trumps WP:MOS; any facts added to a WP article's lead (which is not a lede) have to have citations somewhere in the article. If the facts are not in the main body of the article and cited there, then they have to be cited in the lead. That also means rewriting is in order, because something in the lead should also be mentioned in the main body of the article, as the lead is just a summary.

There is no WP rule that citations should be used after every sentence. Universally, they should be used after every fact or string of facts that come from a single source. There's no problem adding more citations to the same source, if several discrete but contiguous sentences came from the same source, especially if they're discrete enough that someone might insert other material between them. But some sentences require multiple internal citations when facts in them come from separate sources. I.e., there is no relationship of any kind between "a sentence has ended" and "facts need citations".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:29, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

While common sense trumps all those per WP:IAR. Thankfully it is not needed in this case as explained at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Medicine-related_articles#References_in_the_lead so nicely by User:Seppi333. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:02, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

WP:BOLDTITLE - "Links should not be placed in the boldface reiteration of the title in the opening sentence of a lead"?

WP:BOLDTITLE says, "Links should not be placed in the boldface reiteration of the title in the opening sentence of a lead" In plant articles, the article title is usually of the form Genus species. The genus rarely occurs again either in the lead or in the body, yet is the most important link other than the link to the plant family, which is usually in the first sentence. Anyone who is a frequent Wikipedia plant article user knows to look for a link to the genus in the taxo-box, but what about casual users who don't? Discussion is here[6]. FloraWilde (talk) 23:57, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

collapse discussion moved here[7] per WP:RTP
Clicking the note at the end of that statement clarifies that the restriction presumes a circular redirect. When the link goes to another page, the circular redundancy doesn't exist. If the link only uses part of the reiterated title, it is splitting the boldface reiteration between two colors that is cautioned against. HTML gives us a possible solution using <span> tags. Consider this example where only the genus is linked: Bambusa oldhamii. Perhaps this approach could quell the concern raised when a term requires only a partial link.—John Cline (talk) 07:55, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
@John Cline, Is it OK if I move your comment over to the discussion at the talk page at Project plants], to keep all comments in a single section, per WP:RTP? FloraWilde (talk) 17:29, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
I am fine with your discretion.—John Cline (talk) 20:44, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
You comment was moved here[8]. FloraWilde (talk) 13:16, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

Repetition of content from article

Hi, Recently I have run into disputes with other editors who object to my addition of content from the article body into the lead. MOS:LEAD doesn't specifically say that you should not repeat sentences that appear later in the article. In some cases, there are excellent summary sentences in the article that are suitable for relocation into the lede (e.g., "After the loss in the battle of XXXX, the Roman Empire began to decline.") Taking a sentence from the article body like this sometimes seems desirable, especially if the wording is very good. I am wondering if I have to re-word an excellent summary sentence like this as follows: ("The Roman empire declined after the Roman Army's significant loss in the battle of XXXX"). It would be good if the MOS:LEAD could give some guidance on whether it is OK to include individual sentences that occur in the body of the article.OnBeyondZebrax (talk) 12:05, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Concerns have again been raised by editors after I re-used content from the article body in the article lead. It would be helpful if the MOS:LEAD could clearly say whether or not text from the article body can be re-used in the lede.OnBeyondZebrax (talk) 22:53, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
Yes, text from the article body can be reused in the lead; happens all the time since the lead is supposed to summarize the article body, though the lead might have a bit of different wording on the matter (and, in my opinion, it's best to shake up the wording a bit; have slightly different wording). Flyer22 (talk) 23:11, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
Agree with Flyer. One can use text in the body in the lead. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 07:30, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for your input. What do you think about my proposal to have this issue raised in the MOS:LEAD. It could say "The Lead section can repeat short excerpts of text from the article body. However, the cutting and pasting of entire paragraphs should not normally occur."OnBeyondZebrax (talk) 15:47, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
I'd be fine with that, but let's see if others have anything to state about it. Flyer22 (talk) 19:26, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
I have a sense that WP:BRD doesn't apply to policy pages. So I will wait patiently here until more editors comment : )OnBeyondZebrax (talk) 00:22, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
I just read the statement that "The attached page is subject to discretionary sanctions. Please edit carefully." OK. Wait patiently!OnBeyondZebrax (talk) 00:27, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
WP:BRD, which is an essay (not a guideline or policy), can apply to policy pages as well. But, yes, it's better to wait and see if anyone objects to your proposal. Not only have they not yet objected here on the talk page, they have not yet objected to the hidden note you added regarding it. Flyer22 (talk) 00:34, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

There's little more I can say about this proposal than "I agree". If sentences or clauses would work nicely in the lead and in the main body, why not have them in both? The only tiny suggestion I have is to add the words "where appropriate" or something to the end of the first sentence proposed ("the Lead section can repeat...") - just to put a little bit of emphasis on the fact that the copied text has to work well in a summary, and that repeated text in the lead/body shouldn't necessarily be a common thing. Bilorv (Talk)(Contribs) 17:22, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

It is the article's body which reiterates material that originates in the lead making it odd to describe text from the body as being repeated in the lead. Aside the dyslexic estrangement, yes, the points summarized in the lead not only can be repeated but in fact they should reoccur. Furthermore they should be expanded with more detail than the lead summary introduces. For example, where the lead might say in effect: "Article subject appeared in over thirty feature length films.", the body would expand that point, perhaps saying: "Article subject appeared in over thirty feature length films including film 1, film 2, and film 3."—John Cline (talk) 09:43, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
Agree Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:08, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
It might sound strange - I suppose it is - but I would say that text is being repeated in the lead. The lead is written based on the rest of the article, a summary presented first for the convenience of readers. From a reader's point of view, if they read both the sentence in the lead and then the sentence under the relevant section heading, the material is being repeated in the body. But really, the sentence is being taken from the body and used into the lead. Bilorv (Talk)(Contribs) 17:21, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
The reason I describe the lead as "taking text from the body" is because of the section WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY, which is an essay, not a policy, but it still raises the issue in the manner I described (the lead following the body). As well, when you are creating a lead for an article that only has a one sentence lead, you go to the body to find your material for the lead that you create. OnBeyondZebrax (talk) 13:09, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
Everyone, what is the "bar" for having a Talk page consensus to actually make a proposed change in the MOS:LEAD. Do we need a few more editors to add their comments, or do we have enough now. Secondly, if I make a WP:BRD Bold proposed change to the MOS:LEAD, am I risking administrative sanctions?OnBeyondZebrax (talk) 13:19, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
Here is the proposed text to add to the MOS:LEAD policy: "The Lead section can repeat short excerpts of text from the article body, where appropriate. However, the cutting and pasting of entire paragraphs from the body into the lead should not normally occur." OnBeyondZebrax (talk) 01:00, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
No, you are not risking administrative sanctions for being WP:Bold on this matter. To echo what I stated on my talk page to you about this: There is agreement above that material from the lower body of the article can be repeated in the lead, but I don't see that there is any WP:Consensus to add the text that you want to the guideline. Wait another day or two, and then, if no one objects on the talk page, WP:Be bold. Another person can obviously revert or tweak what you added. If a person reverts you on the matter, it would be ideal for that person to explain why on the guideline talk page. Flyer22 (talk) 01:10, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
Repeating short sections of text cannot be part of the recipe for WP:Featured articles, since that would necessarily involved clunky writing. The repeated information should be differently worded for best reading flow. Binksternet (talk) 03:07, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
Binksternet, we're referring to repeating things in a minor way, and this is done with WP:Featured articles in addition lower-class articles. I noted above, however, that I think having the lead wording be slightly different than the wording lower in the article is what is best (often at least). Flyer22 (talk) 03:20, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
I disagree with Binksternet - small amounts of repeated text (probably spaced quite far apart on a comprehensive [1b] featured article) don't necessarily involve "clunky writing". Sometimes, the information would flow best if phrased in the same way. Since the lead is a summary, a normal lead sentence should probably summarise several body sentences. But if you come across a great topic sentence or a well-phrased, concise sentence that would fit well in the lead (or write one yourself), why not repeat it? Bilorv (Talk)(Contribs) 07:02, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
I remain unswayed. I think that anything which stands out in the reading flow should not be repeated, ever, or the writing is then made clunky. If the repeated bits are common formulations then there is less worry about a repetition jumping out at the reader. Take a look the FA "We Can Do It!" on which I did most the work and you'll see virtually no repetition, except for the term "factory worker" which could not be avoided and is in any case very common. Another FA upon which I did most of the work is Santa María de Óvila; the lead section again has no significant repetition aside from common and unavoidable formulations such as "Spanish government", "private owner" and "Belgian-style beers". The phrase "some 10,000 stones" was used twice, once in the lead and once in the body. The phrase "old church portal" is used three times, once in the lead. The point is that there are no long strings of repeated text, that is, none longer than three words, and none which would seem unlikely.
An example of an FA containing clunky repetition is Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (Moscow). The following whole sentence repeats, with just a minor comma as the difference: "In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Provisional Government was overthrown by the Bolsheviks[,] and Russia became part of the newly formed Soviet Union." Note that I approved the article for FA during its FA candidacy but I should have caught the repetition.
So I am entirely unwilling to lower the bar by specifically allowing repetition between the lead section and the article body. The "small amounts" that I would happily allow are proper names, common terms, and other unavoidable constructs. I would never instruct the editor that "the lead can repeat short excerpts of text from the article body", since such an instruction will be misunderstood and misused by those who wish to defend their poor compositional technique. Instead I would instruct the editor that the "lead section should avoid awkward repetition of text" taken from the article body. In other words, I would insert the opposite instruction that you wish to place. Binksternet (talk) 23:33, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
Unfortunately it is not possible to make people into good writers by imposing arbitrary rules. An inflexible ban on repetition will predictably lead to the affectation of elegant variation, which is certainly no improvement.
I can agree with "avoid awkward repetition of text", though, leaving it up to editorial judgment as to whether a particular repetition is awkward. --Trovatore (talk) 00:03, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Lead length should be based on {chars/word} + {words/paragraph} not just raw characters

"Lead Length" should be based on {chars/word} + {words/paragraph} not just raw characters. Yes, it will vary based on article size but that is inevitable. This measurement concept holds equally true for Roman and Cyrillic texts, so this is about maintaining some semblance of a status quo for text readability.

However, the current character "Lead" size recommendations are overall too large and of no help to readability. The numbers seem to be derived out of thin air.

Here is my view on how the text should read. The text here really should have some text referring to word and sentence length. This is the most minimal modification to keep things sensible.

Revised version

Length

The appropriate length of the lead section depends on the total length of the article. As a general guideline—but not absolute rule—the lead should usually be no longer than four paragraphs.

The length of the lead should conform to readers' expectations of a short, but useful and complete, summary of the topic. A lead that is too short leaves the reader unsatisfied; a lead that is too long is difficult to read and may cause the reader to lose interest halfway.

The following suggestions about lead length may be useful ("article length" refers to readable prose size):

Article length Lead length
Fewer than 5000 characters One or two paragraphs
5000–10000 characters Two or three paragraphs
More than 10000 characters Three or four paragraphs

Note that 20,000 characters is about the length of a short story, based on 4.5 characters per word and 7.5 words per sentence. Paragraphs should contain between 2 and 11 sentences on average.

Lead sections that reflect or expand on sections in other articles are discussed at Summary style. Journalistic conventions for lead sections are discussed at News style.

Eyreland (talk) 01:27, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't object to changes of character/para recommendations, but I do object to the added text "Paragraphs should contain between 2 and 11 sentences on average." Show me an article with a lead paragraph of 11 sentences, that is neither too long and hard to read, nor too clunky and full of unnecessarily short, simple sentences. I would think 6 sentences to a paragraph is generous enough - even the lead of World War I doesn't go beyond that, and WWI needed two paragraphs beyond the recommended "no longer than four". Maybe the problem lies with "7.5 words per sentence"; sentences should be way longer than that. Bilorv (Talk)(Contribs) 09:02, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
I think that getting away from "character counts" would be a good idea. One problem with this is that people usually don't count characters anyway: when they claim to be looking at "characters", they are usually looking at the overall file size, which can be quite dramatically different. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:21, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Adhoc titles

I agree with the sentiments of Wikipedia:Superfluous bolding explained.

As a consequence, where the article title is just an adhoc description, and it happens to occur in the opening sentence:

  1. I think wikilinking components of the title in the lede should be allowed
  2. I am also not convinced the words should be in bold.

Looking at Featured articles with adhoc titles, there is not much consistency:

Article Opening Title is in opening? Opening in bold? elements wikilinked in opening? Are components linked, and comments
Draining and development of the Everglades The history of draining and development of the Everglades dates back to the 19th century. Yes Yes No does not wikilink Everglades till its second non-bold mention. No links for "draining" and "development".
Trade and use of saffron Saffron has been a key seasoning, fragrance, dye, and medicine for over three millennia. No Yes Yes "Trade" and "use" not linked.
1962 South Vietnamese Independence Palace bombing The 1962 South Vietnamese Independence Palace bombing in Saigon was an aerial attack on 27 February 1962 by two dissident Vietnam Air Force pilots, Second Lieutenant Nguyễn Văn Cử and First Lieutenant Phạm Phú Quốc. Yes Yes No. Is this the canonical name of this event? Independence Palace wikilinked later in lede. South Vietnam not linked. "aerial attack" is "bombing" link.
Medieval cuisine Medieval cuisine includes the foods, eating habits, and cooking methods of various European cultures during the Middle Ages, a period roughly dating from the 5th to the 15th century. Yes Yes Yes "Medieval" wikilink is Middle Ages
Construction of the World Trade Center The construction of the World Trade Center was conceived as an urban renewal project, spearheaded by David Rockefeller, to help revitalize Lower Manhattan. Yes No Yes This is my preferred format.
Polish culture during World War II Polish culture during World War II was suppressed by the occupying powers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, both of whom were hostile to Poland's people and cultural heritage. Yes Yes Yes "Polish culture" wikilink is "cultural heritage".
National emblem of Belarus The national emblem of Belarus ([Дзяржаўны герб Рэспублікі Беларусь, Dziaržaŭny gerb Respubliki Bielaruś] Error: {{Langx}}: text has italic markup (help), [Государственный герб Республики Беларусь, Gosudarstvennyĭ gerb Respubliki Belarusʹ] Error: {{Langx}}: text has italic markup (help)), which replaced the historic Pahonia arms in a 1995 referendum, features a ribbon in the colors of the national flag, a map of Belarus, wheat ears and a red star. Yes Yes Yes No link to national emblem in article. (Link to coat of arms in second sentence.)

If featured articles can ignore the rule I think it's not worth preserving. Disadvantages of the current requirements:

  • The test in bold is likely to be misinterpreted by many readers as indicating some degree of official or canonical status as a title rather than a description.
  • The prohibition on wikilinking the boldtext can make it hard to wikilink the components of the title in a natural manner without violating WP:REDUNDANT. "try to rephrase whenever possible" seems like a mandate for elegant variation.

Possible changes to the MOS:

MOS statement Proposed change Result
"Otherwise, include the title if it can be accommodated in normal English" Delete accomplishes #1 and #2 above
"Links should not be placed in the boldface reiteration of the title in the opening sentence of a lead" Add exception for adhoc titles Accomplishes #1, not #2

jnestorius(talk) 23:34, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

FYI, Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Lead_section/Archive_17#Links_in_boldface. I raised a similar issue, but the discussion strayed a bit off-topic, with WP:SBE offered as a solution. Which I agree with, theoretically, but your findings are worrisome. Should we enforce the rule, or document the current practice that "everything goes", even in FAs? I'm not sure... No such user (talk) 19:09, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Emphasise importance of clarity in lead sentence?

I Googled Claife Heights yesterday, and Google showed me the text from the start of Wikipedia's article (with no links): "Claife Heights is a Marilyn in the Lake District, near to Windermere in Cumbria, England". As a British hill-walker I know what a Marilyn is, but it's pretty obscure to most people including non-hillwalking Brits. (I've now changed this article, and others with the phrase "is a [[Marilyn ..." in the opening phrase.)

I offer this as an example of how important it is that our lead sentence explains what the topic is, in clear language and not dependent on following links to understand obscure terms. It doesn't seem to be stressed enough in the section on the first sentence. Could we emphasise the importance of that opening sentence, which is so often what readers are shown in a search hit list, and which also now appears as a sort of infobox provided by Google: it's flattering to Wikipedia that Google uses our content like this, but we should perhaps take greater care to make sure that the snippet of content given there is really clear and helpful for the reader. Any thoughts? PamD 21:54, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree with that. Jargon or highly specialist terms should be avoided in the lead unless absolutely unavoidable (e.g. Fraïssé's theorem). This should be obvious, but some specialist editors do obfuscate at times. SFB 00:18, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Proposal: remove parenthetical information from lead (RfC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
I'm closing per a request at WP:AN. There aren't enough votes here and in the linked Village Pump thread to even give me a guess at what the larger consensus would be, but there's a strong sentiment that guidance is needed that we don't currently have; that suggests a larger poll is needed. Some of you have been editing this guideline (WP:LEAD), and that makes sense as a first step, but it's not clear whether there are enough eyes on this guideline for those edits to constitute instant consensus on the questions. I hope you guys will keep talking about how you might solicit more discussion and what kinds of data would be helpful. - Dank (push to talk) 05:16, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm posting this here as follow-up to this discussion at the Village Pump (now archived) regarding the use of parenthetical information in leads of articles on geographic places. There was a strong consensus there that parenthetical pronunciations and alternative names overload the lead and seriously hinder the readability of these articles, and that we should revise our guidance such that we recommend against including this information in the lead section (recommendations and examples were discussed in the original thread, please see there for more info). There was not a strong consensus, however, about where the information should be moved; either an infobox or an "alternative names" section of the article were discussed.

I propose that the Village Pump proposal be extended to apply to all articles, not just those on geographic places. As a recommendation, only certain specific information should be included in parentheses, such as:

  • a person's date of birth & death, if known, not their age
  • one English translation, if the article title is in a foreign language and there is a notable English name (e.g. Las Meninas), or include an English translations section if there are more than one notable translations
  • an organism's scientific name, or its common name if the article title is the scientific name and there is only one, otherwise include a common names section

Otherwise, in the interest of readability, other relevant information is better off included elsewhere. In particular, pronunciations should not be included in prose at all - they would be better off in an infobox where readers could access them without breaking up the readability of the lead. I like the idea of foreign language names being listed in the main infobox, but they could be moved to an alternative names or foreign language names section just as easily, improving the lead.

Here are some examples in my userspace (I will G7 them when this closes): User:Ivanvector/Hebron (compare), User:Ivanvector/Chernivtsi Oblast (compare), User:Ivanvector/Inuit (compare), User:Ivanvector/Coup d'état (compare)

I am aware that the choice of place names and article titles can be controversial, and I expect that disputes regarding naming will be settled by local consensus or our other processes. I also expect that the choice between infobox or separate section will be on a case-by-case basis, and there may be other appropriate solutions in some cases. With this proposal I am interested only in decluttering the lead, not in taking sides in any active disputes. I look forward to your comments. Ivanvector (talk) 19:39, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

I like the idea, but recommend the guide specify either the infobox, or the text, for consistency. I would suggest the text. If the etymology or translation is very short (as in the Chernivtsi example above), I would list them in the second sentence of the article, as in "In Ukrainian it is known as blah and in Romanian Bluh." For longer cases, you would have a separate section called "Name" (which is strongly prefer to the needlessly verbose "Etymology") to give translations, origins, and explanations, including a summary of any controversy. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 20:36, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
We shouldn't ban this content from the lead section entirely, just from the lead sentence. It's often useful to list alternative names in a secondary sentence somewhere in the lead section. See hair-cutting scissors for example. I agree with Oiyarbepsy, though, that if it becomes complicated, it should be moved to a separate section. Regardless, it definitely needs to be removed from the lead sentences (many of which are nearly unreadable now), so I support the general proposal. Kaldari (talk) 21:03, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
Also we should probably clarify that a person's place of birth and place of death don't belong in parentheses, as I've seen these included quite often these days. Kaldari (talk) 21:10, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose: Use of parentheticals for the lead, including the lead sentence, can be perfectly acceptable. As has been mentioned above, it's commonly used for WP:Alternative titles. They don't have to be used in those cases, however. And regarding whether or not WP:Alternative titles should have their own section, the WP:Alternative title policy states, "significant alternative names for the topic should be mentioned in the article, usually in the first sentence or paragraph. If there are at least three alternative names, or there is something notable about the names themselves, a separate name section is recommended (see Lead section)." I don't want to see people creating a section for alternative titles just for the sake of doing so. There should actually be material discussing the names, instead of having a small section that lists the names. Same goes for any other parenthetical material that is moved to its own section. Flyer22 (talk) 21:28, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
I'm not sure if you meant to change the name of this section, and I don't oppose the change in principle, but I have restored the word "parenthetical" in the section header because I used it as an anchor in several places, and the change breaks the links. You are probably right that the proposal amounts to removing information from the lead, although really I'm only saying it should be put somewhere else, not removed.
As for alternative titles, I tried to create some examples in the original thread of how these could be dealt with in easy-to-read plain sentences rather than with parentheses. I think that follows the spirit of WP:Alternative titles while also increasing readability for non-native English readers, and probably screen readers but I don't have one so I can't say for certain. For birth/death dates, parentheses are of course standard, but current age, place of birth/death and other vital info are too much information to be dropped in parentheses in the middle of the opening sentence. Ivanvector (talk) 22:09, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
My removal of "parenthetical" from the heading of this discussion was an accident. I had copied and pasted "parenthetical" from your heading because I didn't feel like spelling it out each time I used it, and I accidentally deleted it from your heading in the process. I apologize for that. I had meant to make sure that my post had fixed anything I'd accidentally deleted. Flyer22 (talk) 23:02, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose. These things should be left to consensus on a case-by-case basis. There are cases of overkill that need to be trimmed; there are cases where any parentheticals are gratuitous; and there are cases where the parenthetical is exactly what readers will be expecting. I don't think we need any more than advice not to get carried away with parentheticals—the interpretation of which should be settled on the articles' talk pages. I'm doubly opposed to the idea of prohibiting parenthetical pronunciation information, except where it's obviously gratuitous. I'm further opposed to requiring any information to be shunted into an infobox—infoboxes are controversial, and ideally should be summing up information in the article. Readers should not be made to jump from the lead to the infobox and back to figure out how to pronounce the most important word in the article—talk about messing with the reading experience! Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 23:24, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

A specific proposal

  1. (this would go as a bullet under the subheading First sentence) The first sentence needs to be uncluttered and easily readable, especially for topics with many possible names. Don't provide too many names for the topic in the first sentence. For most articles, the first sentence should only include the most common name used in English, but there are exceptions.
  2. (this would go as a bullet under the subheading Abbreviations and synonyms) If there are more than two possible abbreviations and synonyms, either list them in a second sentence, or in a separate Name section.
  3. (this would go as a bullet under the subheading Foreign Language) The first sentence should include a translation into a single foreign language, the one most relevant to the topic. If there are multiple possible translations, either list them in a second sentence, or in a separate Name section.
  4. (this would go as a bullet under the subheading Pronunciation) Only give the pronunciation of the most common English term in the first sentence, and only if actually necessary. If many pronunciations are required, place them either in a second sentence, or in a separate Name section.

Now we have something more concrete to discuss. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 22:54, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

I like the idea, but we're going to need at least two other exceptions (tho I am not suggesting the actual wording):
  • For names in a non-Latin script, the name in that script and its transliteration (if different from the chosen title) should be given in the first sentence. If the situation is complicated, it might have to be given just as a summary or one alternative, with the details later.
  • For people, where there are two well known alternative forms (typically a birth name and the working name of a musician or writer), since only one can be chosen as the title although both may be almost equally well known, they should both be given in the lede sentence--if discussion or something more elaborate is needed is needed, it can come later. (This can ideally be done without parenthesis) e.g. John Smith, who writes under the name of J Smith, ...
As a suggestion, the place for pronunciation might be as a footnote. I think some other WPs do that.
Some of this should probably apply to the infobox also, which should also be uncluttered. DGG ( talk ) 01:44, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
I'd say native scripts follow under the umbrella of foreign languages, but I wouldn't be oppose to a re-word to make that clear. For persons with psuedonyms, I propose no change, keep the text that's already in the biography manual of style the same. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 02:35, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
I've used footnotes and also subtitles in the adjacent infobox (if any is desired) as a means of appeasing those who add the foreign scripts, which mean nothing to most of our readers, probably. See Nikita Khrushchev, Muhammed Ali Jinnah.--Wehwalt (talk) 03:33, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
Well, ain't that great—the MoS gives you the leeway to choose what you think serves readers best. In the case of Krushchev, you decided a pronunciation guide was trivial but the Old Style dating of the birthday was essential enough to add a parenthetical within the parenthesis to the lead. As a reader I'd've preferred the opposite, reflected in the choices made in articles I've contributed to such as ukiyo-e and Departures (film). We could argue about these things until we're blue in the face, or we can simply not load up the MoS with more rules and leave editorial judgement to editors. If Hebron is broken, it needs to be fixed—we don't need to "fix" an unbroken ukiyo-e. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 04:24, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
I support the aim of reducing these brackets separating "<Placename>" and "is a..." particularly with regard to pronunciation guides. While some readers will certainly want to find out about pronunciation, many others will know it or not require to know it and just want to get to the facts. Often they have to wade through IPA symbols (for how many readers are these useful?) and loudspeaker icons, in addition to non-Latin scripts. If there is no need for a Name section, then moving pronunciations to an infobox would seem the best option; with all respect to the comment a little way above Readers should not be made to jump from the lead to the infobox and back, you cannot please everyone and many will just want to jump to the end of the parenthesis without delay: Noyster (talk), 12:33, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
  • I changed the bullets in the proposal so I can address them specifically. I like 1-2 although I might tighten up the wording. For #3, the first sentence should include a translation to English from a foreign language only if the foreign name is official or important information (e.g. like Germany from Deutschland) but not just because it has a foreign name. #4 goes against the spirit of the original proposal - pronunciations should not break up the first sentence. There must be a better way to handle that info - footnotes are an interesting idea, or maybe some other code that we need to come up with, for example that would produce the loudspeaker icon in superscript and pop-up the pronunciation. I think that DGG's additional points are good and easily worked into the guide - we already do include a birth name and "known as" name for persons, quite often. Ivanvector (talk) 17:04, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
  • I made a bold edit to clarify when foreign equivalents are appropriate to include in the lead sentence. Feel free to revert or discuss further. Kaldari (talk) 23:51, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

RfC: WP:SAWW Lead vs Body

Given that MOS:LEAD tells us that the lead is a summary of the body, and WP:SAWW tells us that Muhammad should only be described as "the Islamic prophet" once in an article, does this mean that any mention of Muhammad as "the Islamic prophet" in the lead precludes describing him so anywhere in the body? Please contribute to the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Islam-related articles#RfC: WP:SAWW Lead vs Body. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 15:04, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Blue

Discuss how big the lead should be and what should be in it at Talk:Blue#How_big_should_the_lead_section_be_and_what_should_be_in_it.3F - cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 11:04, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Bolding of quote marks around a nickname

Regarding this:

If a person has a commonly known nickname, used in lieu of a given name, it is presented between quote marks following the last given name or initial, as for John F. Kennedy, which has John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy. The quotation marks are not put in bold.

My question is: What is the harm of bolding the quote marks? It seems to me that not bolding them causes actual harm in the form of apparently unnecessary complexity of the formatting that certainly casual editors won't be able to wrap their heads around. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 23:46, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

My guess would be that the material in bold is meant to be an exact representation of the subject, while its surrounding punctuation doesn't belong to the subject. So while John Fitzgerald Kennedy is the proper noun representing that person, and Jack Kennedy would be an alternative, and John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy would be a way to represent those alternatives, John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy would imply that the quotation marks are actually part of his name, which obviously they aren't, since quotation marks never belong in a name in English. That's my guess at least.  DiscantX 07:35, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. That reads like a reasonable guess. It would be useful if there was some kind of explanation on the manual page, though. At any rate, while I realize that quotation marks are not part of anyone's name, by the same token, I'm not entirely sure that term bolding was meant to only apply to parts that comprise the person's name, but to the subject of the article. So, it depends ultimately if Wikipedia decides that the quotation marks are part of the subject, where we are saying, in quotes, what the person's usual name or nickname is/was. Stuff to ponder. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 10:20, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
Looks like that bit was introduced in a 2010 edit by Lambiam. Maybe he/she can provide some insight into the policy?  DiscantX 11:44, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
When I put that bit in I basically tried to codify what already appeared to be common practice. I think – but this is merely a putative reconstruction of the underlying implicit collective reasoning process – that both John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Jack Kennedy are reasonable search terms or page titles (in fact, the first is the actual title and the second redirects to it), and so it makes sense to make the corresponding parts in the first sentence bold, whereas the quote signs have no part in this. The "nuisance" of having to limit the scope of the boldifying markup is hardly onerous, considering that this surely amounts to less than one tenth of a percent of all keystrokes a regular editor enters.  --Lambiam 14:57, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
Egads, it's not about an editor's workload. It's about being something that the casual editor won't be able to wrap his mind around; it looks needlessly complex. And if search can't work around words surrounded by quotation marks, there's a serious technical issue in search. Give me a better reason to keep this styling. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 15:24, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
I was not trying to give a reason for keeping the non-bold quote signs but merely for the presence of the rule (existing practice), but if you want to hear one: unless you don't care about stylistic consistency across articles, there are already some 50,000 articles that use non-bold quotes around nicknames. The point I referred to about the search term was simply that John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy is an implausible search term to be entered by users. For the rest, quote signs in search terms tend to already have a special significance in search engines; whether that does or does not interfere with entering quotes in a search term that are meant as part of the search-term content has no bearing on the quality of the search method.  --Lambiam 19:27, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Location of tag

There is a dispute (and brewing edit war) regarding the proper location at which to place the refimprove maintenance/cleanup template/tag. Input of others would be helpful.

Discussion is here. --Epeefleche (talk) 22:24, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

addition to first sentence section

In Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section#First sentence a text can be added such as:

While a commonly recognisable form of name will be used as the title of biographical articles, more full forms of name may be used in the introduction to the lead. For instance, in the article Paul McCartney, the text of the lead begins: "Sir James Paul McCartney ...".

GregKaye 04:59, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

TOC placement rules and "dead space"

This image sums up the problem.

The difference in that particular article saw the version depicted at the top of the image reverted to the lower one. Aside from directing me here, the reverting editor also maintained that screen readers wouldn't display the TOC. (I am unable to verify this, but even if true, would quibble as to whether or not it's Wikipedia's problem if third-party apps employed by a very small minority of users don't parse its layout correctly.)

Anyway, I'm looking for workable solutions to avoid these huge dead spaces. (The pics are screenclips from a 15" laptop; on a 27" monitor, the dead space is gargantuan.)--Раціональне анархіст (talk) 06:35, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Part of the problem, IMO, is the over-zealous sectioning of articles using "==", "===", "====" and so on which creates these long TOCs. If Editors would simple use a semicolon instead, it would simplify things greatly. If a section link is needed, then an anchor can be created. --Scalhotrod (Talk) ☮ღ☺ 01:38, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
Semicolons should not be used to make pseudo-headings; see WP:ACCESS#Headings. It is Wikipedia's problem if screen readers cannot properly render a page. Johnuniq (talk) 02:24, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
Point of note: I did not use semi-colons, and use of semi-colons won't jury-rig text to flow in the dead space anyway. As far as screen-readers go, are they really having problems decrypting Wikipedia pages with a "descended" TOC (i.e., made to display farther down the page than default)? I want to verify that that actually happens (as it was partial basis for reverting my "aesthetic" edit).--Раціональне анархіст (talk) 07:46, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
  • If the ToC is getting to long because of too many "===" or greater sub-subsections, the solution is {{TOC limit}}, not unsemantic markup (incorrect use of the semicolon) or futzing with the ToC's positioning (which causes sandwiching with the lead image). Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 00:49, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Translations in Lead, literal or not?

Hi Folks, with regard to titles that are based on foreign (non-english) languages (Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Lead_section#Foreign_language), should the English translation be direct (literal) or is it OK for it to be another phrase that is commonly used in a specific context? I have an example in mind, but I'd like to know what the thoughts are on this first. --Scalhotrod (Talk) ☮ღ☺ 22:27, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

It's hard to be specific without more context. But our articles are for the most part about things or concepts or people, not about the foreign-language phrase used to name those things or concepts or people. So per WP:COMMONNAME the English name that appears in the lead should be the common or idiomatic English name for that thing or concept or person, not necessarily a direct literal translation of what that thing or concept or person is called in some other language. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:02, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
OK, so I'll be specific. In the StG 44 article about a rifle that was created during WW2, its fully designation is "Sturmgewehr 44" which translates to "Storm rifle 44". It is literally the firearm that every firearm that can be referred to as an "assault rifle" can trace its design lineage to and there's no dispute about this. But the term simply did not exist until this firearm came into existence and even then the tern "assault rifle" translated or otherwise, was not in common use until many years later.
So with regard to my question, I simply edited first line of the article to say, "The StG 44 (abbreviation of Sturmgewehr 44, "storm rifle 44") is a German selective fire rifle developed during World War II that was the first of its kind to see major deployment and is considered by many historians to be the first modern assault rifle."[9] But it was reverted to "The StG 44 (abbreviation of Sturmgewehr 44, "assault rifle 44") is a German assault rifle developed..."[10] with the claim that "assault rifle" is the "common translation". --Scalhotrod (Talk) ☮ღ☺ 01:17, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
Ok, so my knowledge of German is not good enough to answer this. Is the "Sturm" in this name a literal storm (i.e. a type of weather) or it is the same meaning of "storm" as in the English phrase "have fun storming the castle"? Because if it's the latter, it's so close to the meaning of "assault" that I think you are unnecessarily quibbling and that "assault rifle" may be a perfectly good close-to-literal translation. On the other hand, if "Sturm" means only the weather, you may have a point. This is less about leads than about translation, but: the closest cognate English word is not always the most accurate and idiomatic translation, because meanings can shift or (as in this case) because the grammar of modifying "rifle" in this way in English requires a noun and the "assault" sense of "storm" can only be used as a verb. And in fact if "Sturm" means an attack in German, then your translation is wrong, because in the phrase "storm rifle" storm must be a noun, and can only refer to the weather. Or, to put it more briefly: translations must have the same meaning, not just use cognate words in the same order. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:23, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
  • Assuming Sturmgewehr is the German word for "assault rifle", then "assault rifle" is the correct translation, just as you would translate Handschuh as "glove" and absolutely not as "hand-shoe". Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 00:55, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Invitation to comment on VP proposal: Establish WT:MoS as the official site for style Q&A on Wikipedia

There is now a proposal at the Village Pump that WT:MoS be established as Wikipedia's official page for style Q&A. This would involve actively guiding editors with style questions to WT:MoS and away from other pages, which may include this one. The goal is to centralize discussion and make help easier to find without increasing opportunities for forum shopping. Participation is welcome, especially from editors who have fielded questions of this kind. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:13, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Integrating examples into flow of the guideline

This guideline is sharply diverging from the rest of MOS (and other such pages), by burying its examples in footnotes most editors will never read. I propose that the example material (vs. explanatory notes) be worked into the main flow of the document the way it normally is in policies and guidelines.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:20, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Example needs replacement

The example of:

Instead of:

  • The Oxford English Dictionary [...] is a comprehensive dictionary of the English language.

consider:

  • The Oxford English Dictionary [...] is the premier dictionary of the English language.

Both contain some redundancy, but the second is better because it tells us that the OED is the world's most respected dictionary of English.

needs to be replaced. First, it's wrong in calling the second one "better", because it's an obvious WP:NPOV policy violation to include a value judgement like that in Wikipedia's voice. Second, the present article text at Oxford English Dictionary looks nothing like this at all.

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:38, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Official Minority Names-additional advice needed

Recently I put one RfC at article Talk:Minority language#Minority languages ​​in geographical articles if we should add settlement name in minority language in lead section and info-box if that language have official status in that settlement. I was initiated by practice in many European countries that use European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages and argued that it is beneficial for reader to be able to find info that some language is official and version of name in that language since she/he will find those names in all official local documents (village schools/statutes/plates/documents/books...)... Editor agree with that almost unanimously, and only two were against but both were blocked in the meantime (one because of disruptive editing and one because he was sockpuppet of the first one). Also I was told how to add minority name in info-box HERE. One editor express his concern how it will affect India case but it turned out that editors run different RfC and produced their consensus for this specific case. His concern was that we didn't have formal closure of RfC (I don't know if we have to close it formally?) and advised me to ask you for additional comments. I would really like to have neutral opinion (as with RfC) since I myself am member of minority group so I might not be completely neutral in my reasoning. If you have any advice I would highly appreciate them and they might be of help for editors. Have a nice day/night.--MirkoS18 (talk) 05:14, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Lead_section/Archive_17&oldid=1253837847"