Yet Another Subpage Question

[Hayford Peirce]

I am about to write a brief, but (hopefully) definitive article about a mystery short story called "The Headmaster" featuring the fictional British counterspies Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens (see http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Mr._Calder_and_Mr._Behrens for my article about them), created by the late Michael Gilbert (http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Michael_Gilbert). It's not a particularly good Calder and Behrens story but I read it a few nights ago and would like to do an article while it's still fresh in my memory but yet I've had time to mull it over. There are twenty or so Calder and Behrens stories extant and they are held in the very highest regard by those who like spy fiction; my intention would be to do a single article about each of them.

Here's the question: What do we do with this article once it's written? Is it a stand-alone, called simply [[The Headmaster]], or maybe [[The Headmaster (short story]], or some such? If so, is it then put under the Related Articles tab on both the Michael Gilbert page and the Calder and Behrens page? Or does some guru create another Tab called "Stories" or some such?

The Calder and Behrens article has a bibliography at the end in which all of the collected stories are listed and there will, of course, be a link for this particular story to the new article, but I'm wondering what else should be done.

The same question, of course, can, or should, arise with the case of the writer Donald Hamilton, his counteragent, Matt Helm, the article about one of his novels, The Interlopers, all of which have existed for some time now. As other people start doing similar articles about writers, protagonists, and individual stories/novels, I think we ought to have a policy in place.

Please don't tell me to create a Proposal about this!  Just tell me what to do! Thanks....

Hayford

[Derek Harkness]

I think part of this question has been asked before.
See: When is a book a subpage?
Having read your article, I say it stands alone as a full article.

[J. Noel Chiappa]

What do we do with this article once it's written? Is it a stand-alone, called simply [[The Headmaster]], or maybe [[The Headmaster (short story]], or some such? If so, is it then put under the Related Articles tab on both the Michael Gilbert page and the Calder and Behrens page? Or does some guru create another Tab called "Stories" or some such?

Hmmm. How much text are we talking about? 5 lines? 500? If it's not much, I would say consolidate them all into a single page.

I think your idea of a subpage of the Calder and Behrens article for the short stories is a really good one. I hadn't thought of that, but it's a perfect example of a good use for subpages. If the contents on each short story are long enough to merit separate (sub)pages, that might be a bit tricky- would there be a separate subpage for each story.... no, actually, now that I think of it - a subsubpage of /Stories for each one sounds right.

As to whether we should have a system-wide standard "/Stories" subpage, or whether you should just use an article-specific subpage of that name... hmmm. How many articles would use such a subpage?

there will, of course, be a link for this particular story to the new article, but I'm wondering what else should be done.

That seems adequate to me.

The same question, of course, can, or should, arise with the case of the writer Donald Hamilton, his counteragent, Matt Helm, the article about one of his novels, The Interlopers, all of which have existed for some time now. As other people start doing similar articles about writers, protagonists, and individual stories/novels, I think we ought to have a policy in place.
Please don't tell me to create a Proposal about this!

I agree with your implied criticism that the project may be a little too formal for its own good, but.... I agree with you totally that it would be nice to have a system in place, but how do you think it's going to happen if you don't do it? Some nice little elves are going to come along and do it for you? :-)

(If I'm a bit cranky, it's because I've not had much time to work on all the articles I want to work on, because I've been doing a lot of maintainence/etc stuff. Not that I particularly mind doing a lot of that, a lot of it is meta-information work, which is my professional speciality anyway, but I think y'all need to accept that doing a certain amount of the non-content drudgery is inevitable when one works on a project like this in its early stages.)

But I do think we should make it as easy as possible for you to accomplish that. I suggest you bounce it around a bit here, so people can informally identify a good basic concept, then write it up as a proposal, which should mostly consist of cut-and-paste from here (the way the [[CZ:Article structure]] page was cut-and-paste from the thread here). That will also hopefully i) not need a lot of discussion, and ii) the EC can rubber-stamp by acclamation, since the community has already debugged it.

I don't think this will be a controversial one, where the community simply doesn't see eye-to-eye (like article titles, sigh). Those are the ones where the EC will have to do some heavy lifting, sigh.

Noel

[J. Noel Chiappa]

I think part of this question has been asked before.

Hmm. I get the sense that the discussion didn't really reach closure. Sigh, so much for my contention that this couldn't possibly be that difficult! :-) :-(

Having read your article, I say it stands alone as a full article.

This is similar to Larry's stance in the other thread:

The purpose of subpages is not to group any encyclopedia articles at all.  It is to group an encyclopedia article on a given topic with other types of information about that topic.

I understand that argument, but.. where does it end? Does each Dorothy Parker poem we write about deserve a separate cluster?

The problem with Larry's take is that one person's "other type of information about [the] topic" is someone else's 'separate topic'. For instance, for me, details about short stories by a particular author in a particular story-universe (as with Hayford's example) were a perfect example of "other types of information about that topic", where topic is 'that particular story-universe'. Sigh.

But I do see the point about "not to group .. articles" ... "other types of information about that topic". The question become 'where exactly is that line'....

Noel

[Derek Harkness]

I understand that argument, but.. where does it end? Does each Dorothy Parker poem we write about deserve a separate cluster?

That falls under the question of maintainability. If you are able to write an encyclopaedic article about each poem then they should go on separate articles and may develop their own clusters.

Clusters are for things on the same, identical, topic. The are not for thing on similar topics. Articles on similar topics are grouped by category and workgroup.

[Hayford Peirce]

Clusters are for things on the same, identical, topic. The are not for thing on similar topics. Articles on similar topics are grouped by category and workgroup.

This sounds awfully talmudic to me. If clusters are for the "same, identical, topic", by definition, then, those topics don't differ from each other and only *one* article would be needed. "Similar topics" would, I presume, include the Calder-Behrens short stories, the Nick Adams short stories written by Hemingway in his youth, and, most famous of all, the Sherlock Holmes stories, all 56 of them, since all of them are about the same protagonist(s), have roughly similar stuctures, and roughly similar developments. But, of course, each story is meant to be read separately.

So, to plow ahead, I presume we will eventually have an article about Shakespeare. Then a separate article about each of his plays. An article about his sonnets. But then: articles about *each* individual sonnet by a retired Oxbridgian prof. whose specialty for 50 years was these very sonnets? Are there subpages for *any* of these subarticles? For the Hemingway Nick Adams shorts?

Sorry to be dense, but this whole thing is just a tangled mess to me....

Hayford

[Hayford Peirce]

Hmmm. How much text are we talking about? 5 lines? 500? If it's not much, I would say consolidate them all into a single page.

Oh, I can envision about 500 words per story, that would be about 50 lines, I imagine. Some of the info in each article would be repetitive, ie, author, background of the series, where published, etc.

Please don't tell me to create a Proposal about this!

I agree with your implied criticism that the project may be a little too formal for its own good, but.... I agree with you totally that it would be nice to have a system in place, but how do you think it's going to happen if you don't do it? Some nice little elves are going to come along and do it for you? :-)

It's not that I'm cranky about this, or that I don't appreciate the truly enormous amount of work and expertise that you and others such as Chris and Robert put into all of these problems, it's just that there's nothing at all I can do to help you people on a technical level -- and a lot of the CZ infrastructure, even when it's once in place, seems confusing and intimidating to the neophyte user. It certainly took me, and others, a lot of time to figure out the photo uploading, labeling, subpaging, etc. etc. And take a look at the table for Great Tennis Players, for instance. I defy an absolute Wiki-neophyte who's interested in tennis to come in here, see the table, mutter, "Great! I just *gotta* contribute to this!" and then figure out what he does next.

The same way, for me, for all of this subpage discussion that has been going on in numerous forums (I had already tried to find the old one that you referenced and couldn't -- the difficulty of browsing the Forums is another aggravation that I believe other people share with me): I just don't get it! Maybe some day the whole thing will be lucid and easy to understand and no one will ever make a mistake in using subpages, but, until then, I just need to be told what to do.

In the next day or so I'll actually write the article about "The Headmaster". CZ will then have three separate articles:

Michael Gilbert

Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens

The Headmaster (short story)

There will be numerous links to each article within the three articles. And I will leave it up to others to decide what to do about subpages. If subpages are created, and the short story put within it, then, in the future, any further articles I do on Calder-Behrens will be treated in the same manner (by me, if I can figure out how to do it....)

Hayford

[J. Noel Chiappa]

This sounds awfully talmudic to me.

My reaction exactly! I found Larry's formulation a little easier to grasp:

The purpose of subpages is not to group any encyclopedia articles at all.  It is to group an encyclopedia article on a given topic with other types of information about that topic.

The "other types of information about that topic", is, I think, a little more descriptive of what should be on a subpage, versus what deserves an article of its own (although it's still not a perfect bright line).

Noel

[J. Noel Chiappa]

I can envision about 500 words per story, that would be about 50 lines, I imagine. Some of the info in each story would be repetitive, ie, author, background of the series, where published, etc.

So, each story, if they were on a subpage, might be about 40 lines? That's probably too long to put them all on a single page. So the choices are either: i) subsubpages of a /Stories subpage, or ii) separate articles.

Trying to apply Larry's "other types of information about that topic" formulation, I guess an annotated listing of stories in the Calder and Behrens series would be "other information about the series", but longer things about each story - I dunno, could go either way. (Sorry I'm not being very decisive there. It just seems close to the borderline he laid out.)

it's just that there's nothing at all I can do to help you people on a technical level

Right, but drawing up a guideline on how, structurally, to handle material about works by an author ('should it be a separate article, or subpages of the main article') doesn't really have any technical content.

a lot of the CZ infrastructure, even when it's once in place, seems confusing and intimidating to the neophyte user. It certainly took me, and others, a lot of time to figure out the photo uploading, labeling, subpaging, etc. etc. And take a look at the table for Great Tennis Players, for instance.

Sigh, the technical stuff is... complex - and complex almost always means intimidating. Particularly as computers are so dumb, and literal - it's not like another human, where if you're a little confused, they are smart enough to work that out, and help you. Computers just give an error message, and sit there in mute, dumb, obstinacy...

How to make such complex things easy to use, when they aren't smart enough to help you - it's something new humans are grappling with, and although we're making progress, it's clearly still not great...

I think the best thing we can do is tell people 'don't worry if it doesn't look nice - just get the words down, someone else can come along later and make it look nice'.

The same way, for me, for all of this subpage discussion that has been going on in numerous forums (I had already tried to find the old one that you referenced and couldn't -- the difficulty of browsing the Forums is another aggravation that I believe other people share with me)

If it's any consolation, when I want to link to an old discussion, sometimes it's hard for me to locate a thread, too; I have often use considerable amounts of time doing so. I often have to use some trick like 'I remember posting in that thread', and then look back through all my old posts to find it, or something like that.

Which subpages discussion were you wanting to find, BTW? I'll see if I can turn it up for you.

In the next day or so I'll actually write the article about "The Headmaster". CZ will then have three separate articles:
...
I will leave it up to others to decide what to do about subpages.

I think that's the best plan; it's a variant on my 'get the words down, and someone else can make them look pretty' plan (above). In this case, it's 'get the words down, and we'll work out exactly how we want to organize this content later'. It's not large granite blocks; electrons are pretty malleable.

Noel

[Hayford Peirce]

This sounds awfully talmudic to me.

My reaction exactly! I found Larry's formulation a little easier to grasp:

The purpose of subpages is not to group any encyclopedia articles at all.  It is to group an encyclopedia article on a given topic with other types of information about that topic.

The "other types of information about that topic", is, I think, a little more descriptive of what should be on a subpage, versus what deserves an article of its own (although it's still not a perfect bright line).

Okay, let's see if I can relate to that. Continuing my example of above, we will shortly have the following articles:


Michael Gilbert

Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens

The Headmaster (short story)

If I understand Larry correctly, then the article about the individual short story "The Headmaster" will not be eligible for subpage status. If, however, I were to write (and trust me, I won't), articles about Tradecraft, use of in Intelligence work; Government-sponsored assassination; Middle-aged cuthroats, and, oh, Abyssian wolfhounds in fiction, all of those articles, because they are in some way related to this particular short story and to all of the Calder-Behrens stories in general, would then be susceptible to being moved to subpage status.

Have I grasped this correctly?

Hayford

[Hayford Peirce]

Thanks for the long reply, which crossed mine. Right now I'm not looking for any particular Forum thread -- but I sure have done (as the Brits say), and it can be a very time-consuming practice. For this particular thread about subpages, which I clearly remembered contributing to, I finally just gave up and started the new one. And I see that other people have adapted the same strategy. Ideally, a Search service would exist, into which I could type: +subpage +hayford +"what do we do about" etc. etc. And that would at least pop up a couple of places....

Hayford

[Joe Quick]

Okay, let's see if I can relate to that. Continuing my example of above, we will shortly have the following articles:


Michael Gilbert

Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens

The Headmaster (short story)

If I understand Larry correctly, then the article about the individual short story "The Headmaster" will not be eligible for subpage status. If, however, I were to write (and trust me, I won't), articles about Tradecraft, use of in Intelligence work; Government-sponsored assassination; Middle-aged cuthroats, and, oh, Abyssian wolfhounds in fiction, all of those articles, because they are in some way related to this particular short story and to all of the Calder-Behrens stories in general, would then be susceptible to being moved to subpage status.

Have I grasped this correctly?

I think each of those would remain individual articles according to Larry's formulation.  They are topics that are related to "The Headmaster" but they aren't really different types of information about the same topic.

Think about the standard subpages that we already have.  Photo galleries might be the best example.  One would present a narrative introduction to subject X in article [[X]].  Then on the gallery subpage, one would include photos of X.  And on a catalog subpage, one would include an annotated list of types of X.

So a brief catalog of Calder and Behrens stories would naturally be a subpage of the Calder and Behrens article.  A full article about any one particular story would be a separate article because it is no longer about the series as a whole but rather discusses the article as a topic that stands on its own.

[J. Noel Chiappa]

Ideally, a Search service would exist, into which I could type: +subpage +hayford +"what do we do about" etc. etc. And that would at least pop up a couple of places....

Umm, you mean like what you get here?

Except that that doesn't seem to bring them all up... (If you want to do it on something else, go to http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en, fill in the "site or domain" field with "forum.citizendium.org", and other fields as appropriate, and away you go.)

You can also try using the Search box here; go to the Home page here (warning: do this inside a thread, and it will only search within the thread, I think) and type away. Better might be using the 'Search' page here (a link's at the top of every page), where you can e.g. select only posts by yourself, etc.

For this particular thread about subpages, which I clearly remembered contributing to, I finally just gave up and started the new one.

Could have been this post, which I found looking through your history? Oddly enough, when I looked for this with the built-in search function, I noticed that the search function returns threads, not messages; i.e. it didn't return this particular message, but it did return another message in this thread.

Search functions, sigh....

Noel

[Hayford Peirce]

Think about the standard subpages that we already have.  Photo galleries might be the best example.  One would present a narrative introduction to subject X in article [[X]].  Then on the gallery subpage, one would include photos of X.  And on a catalog subpage, one would include an annotated list of types of X.

So a brief catalog of Calder and Behrens stories would naturally be a subpage of the Calder and Behrens article.  A full article about any one particular story would be a separate article because it is no longer about the series as a whole but rather discusses the article as a topic that stands on its own.

Okay, that seems like a clear explanation that even I can grasp. Thanks! What it means to me in practice, I would say, is that I absolutely don't have to worry about subpages anymore.  Just do my stuff and if someone else thinks that there's a subpage involved somewhere, he or she can do the necessary.  A load off my mind!

Now that I'm mulling this over, in direct contemplation of "The Headmaster", which of course, you haven't read, if, by magic, I could accumulate half a dozen photographs of, say, an Abyssian wolfhound, the exterior of and the dining room of a gentleman's club in London, a liveried butler, and a secret recording device, all of these photos could be gathered into a gallery that would illustrate certain elements of the story in question. Or so you seem to be saying....

I wonder what other subpages might in theory be created to go with an article such as "The Headmaster"? A map of England showing where various parts of this story (or of all the Calder/Behrens stories) took place?  Larry seems to think that subpages are a very, very, very important part of the project. If so, then a whole bunch of subpage subjects ought to spring quickly to mind.

Or maybe not....

Hayford

[Joe Quick]

Now that I'm mulling this over, in direct contemplation of "The Headmaster", which of course, you haven't read, if, by magic, I could accumulate half a dozen photographs of, say, an Abyssian wolfhound, the exterior of and the dining room of a gentleman's club in London, a liveried butler, and a secret recording device, all of these photos could be gathered into a gallery that would illustrate certain elements of the story in question. Or so you seem to be saying....

Yes, I think you've got the idea.  Or at least you're now thinking about subpages the same way I do.

I wonder what other subpages might in theory be created to go with an article such as "The Headmaster"? A map of England showing where various parts of this story (or of all the Calder/Behrens stories) took place?  Larry seems to think that subpages are a very, very, very important part of the project. If so, then a whole bunch of subpage subjects ought to spring quickly to mind.

Or maybe not....

Hayford

I think a catalog providing character synopses would be appropriate for most works of fiction. 

I'm not coming up with anything else off the top of my head but to be honest,  I don't think every article needs twelve different  subpages.  If you have ideas about information that would be useful to someone who is looking up the subject that you're writing about but that information doesn't fit comfortably into the flow of the main article, then it probably belongs in a subpage.  But if everything fits into the main article without making the article cluttered or unreadable, then I'd say it's best to avoid creating subpages just for the sake of creating them.