User:Jorge Stolfi/DoW/Uniformity

The cost of uniformity

Too much edit-energy is currently spent in trying to make certain groups of articles conform to group-specific standards, such as order and title of sections, level of detail, style of figures and tables, mathematical notation, and so on.

Much of this effort has come to be associated with the Wikipedia 1.0 project and the many WikiProjects that were set up later. Many disputes betwen editors were apparently caused by conflicts between standards of overlapping Wikiprojects, or isolated editors disagreeing with the project standards, or by project standards that turn out to be inadequate for some articles.

The perceived need for uniformity is also responsible for a substantial slice of Wikipedia's complexity. It is one of the main reasons behind the absolutely ridiculous inflation of the Wikipedia style manuals and the creation of hundreds of project-specfic guidelines, as well as the invention of infoboxes, the {{cite...}} templates and dozens of other formatting templates, the Wikipedia table syntax, and much more.

Uniformity is a goal of the printed paper world

Uniformity as a marketing trick

The notion that uniformity is important is largely a legacy of the printed-paper world. When someone considers buying a paper encyclopedia or subscribing to a paper magazine, he will typically browse through the entire book or issue, and his decision to buy or not will be influenced to a large extent by the purely visual aesthetic quality of the object as a whole. He will hardly notice the quality of the information contained in individual articles. Even if each article, seen in isolation, is nicely and consistently formatted, the variation from article to article will make the whole thing seem ugly and shoddy.

Uniformity as proof of tight editorship

Moreover, uniformity of style and layout across the entire book or issue implies the existence of a tightly-managed editorial body with sufficient human and financial resources; and the buyer will unconsciously assume that the same strict oversight that is evident in the style of all articles was applied also to their content and accuracy.

Uniformity for extensive reading

Uniformity of style, layout, language and notation is also important large works which will be extensively read, either serially (e.g. novels, textbooks, chronicles) or randomly (e.g. dictionaries, manuals, travel guides, catalogs). Uniformity then helps the reader because he has to learn the section structure, notation and terminology only once; and helps the writer because he does not have to redefine terms and notation again in every chapter or section. A uniform layout also helps the reader to quickly find specific information in each section (dates, theorems, part numbers, open hours, etc.)

Wikipedia is not paper

However, Wikipedia is not sold in bookstores. It is not a paper encyclopedia, nor a magazine or scholarly journal; it is not a manual, catalog, textbook, travel guide, etc. etc.; nor a library of such things. Therefore, none of the above reasons apply to it.

Wikipedia readers do not browse before buying

Wikipedia does not have to "sell" itself, and readers never have to decide whether they should "buy" it. So Wikipedia does not need to try to look nice to casual browsers.

Most readers will come to Wikipedia in search of very specific information, and tehrefore will read only one or two articles; and those are the readers Wikipedia is being written for. Some readers may browse Wikipedia for pleasure or general curiosity, but these should not be our primary targets; and, anyway, these "surfers" are likely to jump haphazardly from dinosaur to Dyna-Soar to sore throat, so they will hardly notice whether Dyna-Soar and X15 have a uniform structure or not. Moreover Wikipedia does not have a tightly managed editorial team nor hired editors, and will never have; therefore it should not try to pretend that it has them.

Wikipedia is not meant to be read by topic

Wikipedia is also not a manual, catalog, textbook, travel guide, etc. etc.; nor a library of such things. It is unlikely that a reader will want to go through all Wikipedia articles on "racing cars" or "christianity" in a single session, much less in any specific order chosen by the editors. Readers who want general information on those topics should (and generally will) read the appropriate master or overview articles, and then perhaps they will read one or two of the subsidiary articles. But they are just as likely to jump instead to related but off-topic articles, such as "gasoline" or "Nero".

As for readers who want to learn calculus or convert to Buddhism, they will find that a Wikibook or a regular book is much more effective, and much more pleasant to read, than any collection of Wikipedia articles.

Wikipedia must discourage tribalism

Finally, the drive for uniformity across all articles of any given theme is both a symptom and a tool of "tribalism", the tendency to fragment the pool of editors into "tribes" of people with similar interests, backgrounds, tastes, etc..

Tribalism should be discouraged in Wikipedia, because it runs against the fundamental unity of knowledge, and hence of Wikipedia; and because is encourages biased points of view, and leads to a situation where the larger groups can impose their views on smaller groups and isolated editors by sheer numerical strength, than by the strength of arguments. These costs negate any advantages that the formation of tribes might have. But that problem is the topic of another essay.

Good uniformity

When is a standard useful to readers

A standard that aims to achieve uniformity across articles is important only to the extent that it might substantially help the bulk of Wikipedia readers. If most readers generally access wikipedia sporadiclly and randomly, as I believe, then the only standards worth enforcing are those that can be enforced for all articles, independently of topic; and which can be unconsciously learned by those casual readers after reading two or three random articles.

Examples of good standards

Very few style standards will pass the above criteria. Examples of good and important standards are the use of bold in the lead section only for the article's topic, and the rule that the first sentence must be a definition of that topic. These rules helps the reader have a clear idea of whether he got to the right page, and also give him the most important information about the topic. Examples of somewhat helpful but not so important rules are the consistent placement and contents of the "See also"/"References"/"External links" sections. These standards are generally desirable, but alternative layouts and section titles should be accepted if they are expected to be substantially more helpful to the readers of a particular article.

Examples of worthless standards

Examples of standards that should not be established, even among a small set of related articles, are the level of detail, table layout and colors, the number and arrangement of the other sections, names of variables, style of figures, etc. It would be nice if they were uniform, but the value of such uniformity to readers is insignificant compared to the cost of implementing that standard across 10-20 articles.