Should X article actually have a subpage?

[Robert_W_King]

Now that subpages are here, and it could be just me, but I'm not so sure that every article that's created requires a subpage group.  Does anyone agree or disagree?  Is it the intent to put every article in a subpage cluster? 

I just want to be sure I didn't miss out on a part of the initiative.

[Chris Day]

Now that subpages are here, and it could be just me, but I'm not so sure that every article that's created requires a subpage group.  Does anyone agree or disagree?  Is it the intent to put every article in a subpage cluster? 

I just want to be sure I didn't miss out on a part of the initiative.

As far as i am aware the idea is that every article will have the potential for a subpage structure. Clearly this has to be the case due to the approval subpage and the draft subpage. I believe what you are really asking here is does every article need default subpages; presently External Links, Related Articles and Bibliography.

[Larry Sanger]

I'm sure you could find a counterexample for one of those three defaults.

But isn't it possible to turn the defaults off?  If not, it will be...eventually.

[Chris Day]

I'm sure you could find a counterexample for one of those three defaults.

But isn't it possible to turn the defaults off?  If not, it will be...eventually.

Yes we can switch off the defaults by toggling a switch on the subpage list. Like wise it is easy to add a subpage just by adding it to that list.

[Joe Quick]

I'm sure you could find a counterexample for one of those three defaults.

But isn't it possible to turn the defaults off?  If not, it will be...eventually.

Yes we can switch off the defaults by toggling a switch on the subpage list. Like wise it is easy to add a subpage just by adding it to that list.

That's for all articles at once, isn't it?  I think Robert is asking about individual articles.

[Chris Day]

That's for all articles at once, isn't it?  I think Robert is asking about individual articles.

Yes, that is true, but if they are all optional then they can be individualised. There is no reason that we must have default pages.  One option might be to have the three defaults created by a script every time a new page is started (along with the unused and approval subpage). Then, if they don't get used, they can be speedy deleted and they'll disappear. 

Alternatively, it would also be possible to have a 'switch' (metadata field) to toggle between "use defaults" or "all subpages optional".  Such a 'switch' could be used to customise any article that does not need the default tabs. 

[Aleta Curry]

As far as i am aware the idea is that every article will have the potential for a subpage structure. Clearly this has to be the case due to the approval subpage and the draft subpage. I believe what you are really asking here is does every article need default subpages; presently External Links, Related Articles and Bibliography.

Well, I could see where a subject might be so new/minor/short that it wouldn't need a bibliography supbpage, but surely every subject would have at least one or two related articles?

Robert, are you just saying that if a stub is very short, can you simply put the default info at the bottom of the articles, because that is common sense?

[Larry Sanger]

I posit that we should create as little work as possible.  So, if there are no books or articles to cite on a topic (for example), we might have a switch that we can add to the metadata template: Bibliography off = yes (and similarly for the others).  But I wouldn't include this in the default blank template.  Anyway, if the switch is on (=yes), then the bibliography link doesn't appear.

[Robert_W_King]

I should have been more specific, but I wanted to see what the replies said first.

I am assuming that it "makes sense" for articles like Communism, or Microbiology to have subpages.  Realistically there is simply too much information for it to be all compiled on one page.

But what about, say, Bananas, or Marbles.  Or Paint.  Or Wood.  Do these articles really need that much indepth coverage?  In some cases it seems like it would be using a Steamroller to crack a Peanut.

[Aleta Curry]

I am assuming that it "makes sense" for articles like Communism, or Microbiology to have subpages.  Realistically there is simply too much information for it to be all compiled on one page.

But what about, say, Bananas, or Marbles.  Or Paint.  Or Wood.  Do these articles really need that much indepth coverage?  In some cases it seems like it would be using a Steamroller to crack a Peanut.

Maybe--stop being so narrow-minded, you!  Sure, bananas don't seem to rate mega-subpages at first glance...but what if bananas were your livelihood--as they are for scores of banana farmers?

Maybe no one has yet written Bananas for Fun and Profit, but I'll hazard a guess that there's Cooking with Bananas, The Govt of Queensland XYZ Banana Studies, 19XX, Campaign to eradicate the Banana Weevil, 200X, Growing Ornamental Bananas, Bananas are Good for You, &c.

Not to mention dozens of individual chapters on bananas in other works. 

Same for paint and wood.  I mean, there're all kinds of paint used for houses, and the stuff used for art, and the stuff used in cave paintings--lots to talk about, I would think.

Marbles...well, I gave them up (lost mine?) years ago, but...?

[Andrew Su]

To chime in my two cents...  I agree with Robert's sentiment (or my interpretation of it anyway), that having a subpage cluster for every single article is overkill.  In fact, I'd vote that the default behavior should be no subpages, and it's only when someone thinks that the main page is overloaded that subpages are applied.  That would mean that early drafts of substantial topics may be non-subpaged, and lighter topics may never be subpaged...  More than just overkill, I think fractioning the information unnecessarily actually hurts the user experience.  It creates lots of unnecessary clicking, all for a problem that doesn't necessarily exist for that particular page. 

There's an axiom in computer science (which I'll now proceed to butcher) that says that the complexity of the solution has to match the complexity of the problem.  WP only has the simple solution and applies it to both simple and complex articles (bad).  But for CZ to uniformly apply a complex solution to both simple and complex articles would be similarly bad.

-andrew

[Larry Sanger]

I believe both Robert and Andrew aren't quite understanding the purpose of subpages.

Subpages are not places to shunt off extra information, when there is a lot of information on a topic, as Robert seems to think.  If that were the case, then it would make sense to have them only for "big" topics, as Andrew suggests.

But subpages are not, or not primarily, places for extra information of the sort that might go in the article itself.  More paragraphs of prose beyond some vague limit actually belong not on subpages but in other articles, which might be marked as "subtopics" (on Related Articles pages).

Subpages are, rather, different types of information, types of information that might not even be included in an ordinary encyclopedia.  By including subpages, we expand our reference information offerings, to include (ultimately) things like image galleries, timelines, almanac-type tables, and in time, summaries of news articles and of debates.

[Robert_W_King]

I believe both Robert and Andrew aren't quite understanding the purpose of subpages.

Subpages are not places to shunt off extra information, when there is a lot of information on a topic, as Robert seems to think.  If that were the case, then it would make sense to have them only for "big" topics, as Andrew suggests.

But subpages are not, or not primarily, places for extra information of the sort that might go in the article itself.  More paragraphs of prose beyond some vague limit actually belong not on subpages but in other articles, which might be marked as "subtopics" (on Related Articles pages).

Subpages are, rather, different types of information, types of information that might not even be included in an ordinary encyclopedia.  By including subpages, we expand our reference information offerings, to include (ultimately) things like image galleries, timelines, almanac-type tables, and in time, summaries of news articles and of debates.

That makes sense now.  I was thinking that they were like an addendum but I guess they're more like a bibliography.