Article introductions, ~or~ just exactly how stupid are wikipedia admins Options

[TungstenCarbide]

What is so magical about the first sentence of articles that they must contain every spelling, pronunciation, translation, transliteration and etymology known? Why must it be there and no where else?

More specifically, why does everything in red have to be in the first sentance?

Kyrgyzstan (pronounced /ˈkɝːɡɪstæn/; KƏR-gis-tahn; Kyrgyz: Кыргызстан [qɯrʀɯzˈstɑn]; Russian: Киргизия [kirˈɡizija] or Киргизстан [ˈkirɡistan] or Кыргызстан [ˈkˠɨrɡˠɨzstan], variously transliterated, also Kirgizia or Kirghizia), officially the Kyrgyz Republic, is a country in Central Asia. Landlocked and mountainous, it is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and China to the east. The ethnonym "Kyrgyz", after which the country is named, is thought to originally mean either "forty girls" or "forty tribes", presumably referring to the epic hero Manas who, as legend has it, unified forty tribes against the Mongols.[citation needed] According to popular interpretations, the 40-ray sun on the flag of Kyrgyzstan symbolizes the forty tribes of Manas.


See here http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=269348830
there are even more hidious examples at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_tal...ages_in_opening and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_tal...ing_clusterfuck

I made some notes on my user page but it was spitefully deleted after I was banned. Is there an administrator without their head up their ass who can undelete my page? thanks.

This post has been edited by TungstenCarbide: Sat 14th March 2009, 3:57pm

[zvook]

This objection comes up from time to time on the talk page of the wikipedia manual of style page dealing with lead sections.

The initial drive for including information in brackets after the initial subject mention came from from looking at dictionary practice, where of course there are no leads.

So different parts of the MOS came to be maintained by different groups each with regard to their particular piece of name info in the opening sentence.

A particular article as Wikipedia is now may have English, Arabic, French, and Berber. Another may have English, simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, pinyin and Wade-Giles. In theory, I guess all could have etymology and IPA guides beside each.

Some encyclopedias use no parenthetical information at all after the initial mention of the subject, some use IPA, yet some others use wade-giles, some use footnotes, and so on, but finding an encyclopedia which uses more than two instances of parenthetical information is difficult.

A footnote when these things are not brief is the obvious solution, though Jeandré du Toit dumped some stuff in a box here, having procured SlimVirgin's blessing on a MoS talk page.

Back when I used to edit (and care), I put some looooong strings of info of this type I came across in footnotes, but they were all reverted pretty quickly.

As an afterthought, I thought it had been recognized in recent times on wikipedia that stuff people say while responding to being blocked should no longer be used against them, it being understood that a heated response is quite a normal and forgivable reaction.

I guess not.

This post has been edited by zvook: Sun 15th March 2009, 1:59am

[Milton Roe]

This objection comes up from time to time on the talk page of the wikipedia manual of style page dealing with lead sections.

The initial drive for including information in brackets after the initial subject mention came from from looking at dictionary practice, where of course there are no leads.

So different parts of the MOS came to be maintained by different groups each with regard to their particular piece of name info in the opening sentence.

A particular article as Wikipedia is now may have English, Arabic, French, and Berber. Another may have English, simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, pinyin and Wade-Giles. In theory, I guess all could have etymology and IPA guides beside each.

The appropriate place for most of this etymological stuff, IMHO, is in the article section just after the LEAD, which is usually the history of the term, and has the dictionary stuff in it. In the LEAD, the IPA and one other most common foreign language alphabet spelling (if that's appropriate) is about all the reader can be expected to take.

Some encyclopedias use no parenthetical information at all after the initial mention of the subject, some use IPA, yet some others use wade-giles, some use footnotes, and so on, but finding an encyclopedia which uses more than two instances of parenthetical information is difficult.

A footnote when these things are not brief is the obvious solution, though Jeandré du Toit dumped some stuff in a box here, having procured SlimVirgin's blessing on a MoS talk page.

Oooohhh the blessing of the Sacred Virgin! This is almost as as good as a Get Out of Jail Free Card in Monopoly. Which is sort of what Wikipedia is (Jimbo already has the hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place, sorry). Or, since we're into the Roman church metaphor, perhaps a gift-card which has a magnetic strip showing you have X $ worth of a pre-paid plenary indulgences. Handy for those really, really warm nights in purgatory. Which there is a version of, on WP. Just ask Science Apologist. He's doing a 3 month-er on nothing but bread and 200c occillococcinum, the poor bastard.

Back when I used to edit (and care), I put some looooong strings of info of this type I came across in footnotes, but they were all reverted pretty quickly.

That's where section II comes in handy.

As an afterthought, I thought it had been recognized in recent times on wikipedia that stuff people say while responding to being blocked should no longer be used against them, it being understood that a heated response is quite a normal and forgivable reaction.

I guess not.

No, the answer is: it depends. If you have WIKIPOWER points, your being angry may serve as a good excuse for outrageous remarks. If you don't, you're expected to just take it, and politely say "Sir, may I have anohter, sir"? It's all in your status.

[zvook]

There have been more good ideas and discussion at this thread than my whole experience at wikipedia.

Hopefully this is a good indication to you that you are well out of it. It is a disgusting environment in so many ways, most of which are unconnected with your experience, but which you can acquaint yourself with by clicking round here a bit. The entire culture there is fucked.

I did find your experience amusing though. You posed a good question which required editors reverting you to think and research. It's worth noting that, nominally, long-standing editors are well-placed to do some of the research necessary, since they know the MoS exists and has particular parts dealing with different areas, with archives that show how they developed.

So they had to think, do I agree that this kind of thing disrupts or makes less readable the lead?* That done, they had to think, why do we do this? That done, they had to go into the archives and find that it came, inexplicably, from looking at dictionaries. Then they could find it instructive to go to a bookshelf or library (WR regulars are saying "Yeah right" at this point) and look at what encyclopedias do. Then they could formulate a new practice and propose it at MoS, with your support, so that the MoS changes and something different is done to avoid lengthy and disruptive parenthetical info in the opening sentence.

Whereas a case of what actually happened was, you asked for a response to your good question:

Hey Otebig, any chance you can participate in the discussions at Talk:Kyrgyzstan and Wikipedia talk:Lead section rather than just blindly reverting?

And got told:

If you're looking for simple intros, I suggest you help edit the Simple English Wikipedia.

At which point you told him to go jump, at which point you were "reported" to the "etiquette alert" thingie, at which point you told them to go jump, at which point an admin was attracted and you were blocked, at which point you told him to go jump, at which point you were banninated, and so it goes.

You may think it's simply incompetence that leads to your incivility being dealt with while the substantive issue regarding article content (and how the editors you were incivil to responded to that issue) is ignored, but as Noroton points out, from the wikipedia point of view it's not incompetence at all.

*Actually the best you could hope for is probably "Does this contradict WP:LEAD?" since many long-standing editors, by dint of being long-standing editors, can no longer think without recourse to a wikipedia shortcut. But just as likely is that asking an editor to think about an edit is taken as a declaration of nerdwar, and the editor sets about winning it. Your tone ("Headache inducing clusterfuck" "All that pronunciation, transliteration and translation shit need to be shoveled off to the side somehow") gave the first indication of how such a nerdwar could be won, but it's likely to have been taken as a declaration of nerdwar no matter what your tone was.

[TungstenCarbide]

<snip>

You may think it's simply incompetence that leads to your incivility being dealt with while the substantive issue regarding article content (and how the editors you were incivil to responded to that issue) is ignored, but as Noroton points out, from the wikipedia point of view it's not incompetence at all.

*Actually the best you could hope for is probably "Does this contradict WP:LEAD?" since many long-standing editors, by dint of being long-standing editors, can no longer think without recourse to a wikipedia shortcut. But just as likely is that asking an editor to think about an edit is taken as a declaration of nerdwar, and the editor sets about winning it. Your tone ("Headache inducing clusterfuck" "All that pronunciation, transliteration and translation shit need to be shoveled off to the side somehow") gave the first indication of how such a nerdwar could be won, but it's likely to have been taken as a declaration of nerdwar no matter what your tone was.

The admins and long time editors I ran into will take the easy path over the critical thinking/hard work path, every time. They'll slip in sideways insults while simultaneously bludgeoning you 'civility' rules. They'll frantically cling to a piss poor intro that any child can see is fucked because 'that's the way we do it here'.

These people need to be told that they are incompetent idiots.