Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

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Archive 5

kB vs KB

I think the author of this is confusing 15K of bytes with 15K characters, which is substantially more than 15k bytes. -Stevertigo 20:31, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I agree, most Wiki references are to bytes instead of characters (e.g. Wikipedia:Page size) and a Wiki Search returns a byte count instead of a character count. I'll change characters to bytes Petersam 22:33, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Petersam, please read the article kilobyte, there's a difference between kB and KB.

Stevertigo, I intentionally used a character count because that doesn't require people to understand the difference between an upper and lower case letter. For our purposes, the difference is negligible (15,000 vs. 15,360 characters). Also don't confuse the concept of characters in typography with their meaning in computing - see character (computing).--Eloquence * 07:28, Sep 19, 2004 (UTC)

Proposal to consolidate advice on writing better articles

At present there are many articles in the Wikipedia namespace that seek to give guidance on how to write better articles. I propose consolidating these into a much smaller number. On User:Jongarrettuk/Better writing guide I propose how these could be consolidated. The proposal is not to change advice, just to consolidate it. If I have inadvertently moved what you consider to be good advice that is currently in the Wikipedia namespace, please re-add it. I'm hope that the proposal to merge all these articles, in principle, will be welcomed. Of course, it may be preferred to have 2, 3 or 4 inter-connected articles than just one and would welcome advice on how this could be done. (In particular, perhaps all the guidance on layout should be spun off into one consolidated article on layout.) I'm also aware that putting lots of different bits of advice together may throw up anomalies or bits that people now disagree with (including bits that I myself disagree with:) ). I ask for support for the consolidation. Once the consolidation has happened, the advice can be changed in the normal way. Please feel free to improve on the current draft consolidation, but don't remove or add advice that is not currently on the Wikipedia namespace. If all goes well, I'll add a new Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles page on the 19th, though maybe some bits of the new article will need to be phased in over a longer period. I'll also take care to preserve all the archived discussion in one place. jguk 19:47, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

History of ... and similar article titles

Moved here from the policy page.

In pages with the title "History of ..." and similar article titles it is often not necessary to define the topic of the article. (Example: It is hard to imagine that a reader of History of the United States needs a definition for what is meant by this title.) A lead section that quickly summarizes the history is still needed.

The following table contains some examples for different lead sections of such articles. Empty cells mean "No". Cells with entries other than “No” mean “Yes” – sometimes different entries are used as a reminder of a special feature of that article.

History of ...	Featured	Contains Lead	Main term defined	article title defined	References	Abstracts	Comment
Buddhism	Yes	Yes				Yes	abstract focusses on essentials, rather than timeline
Greenland	Yes	Yes	implicit	intent		Yes	elegant implicit definition
post-Soviet Russia	Yes	Yes				Yes
Russia	Yes	Yes		implicit		Yes
Netherlands	Yes	Yes		implicit		Yes
Scotland	Yes	Yes				Yes
Germany	Yes	Yes		at end		Yes	focusses on specific, complicated conditions
Yosemite area	Yes	Yes		implicit		Yes
American Civil War	Yes	Yes				Yes
computing hardware	Yes	Yes		at end	related
Peerage	Yes	Yes	Yes			Yes
United States	No	No
Hungary	No	Yes		This is	See also
Military	No	Yes	Includes	first sent.	Differs from
Ireland	No	Yes	brief			Yes
Japan	No	No
Austria	No	Yes		This is	See also

I have moved this here because this page is meant to give recommendations, it is not meant to be a survey of articles on Wikipedia. The above information is useful and can be used to develop recommendations, but it will also date quickly. I therefore suggest that those who seek to improve the lead section policy debate the matter on the talk page.--Eloquence * 02:18, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

Avoid "barren leads", use "dense Leads"

I would appreciate your comments on the following, and hopefully some support to bring this idea more fully in WP Writing Guides. Please give me your thoughts at the bottom of this section:

I am seeing more and more negative examples that affirm why we should strive to densely pack the most significant facts about a subject into the first one or two paragraphs, what I call writing "dense leads." A dense lead includes the defining features of the subject, in such a way that if readers read no futher, they will understand the subject in a meaningful and even complete way, but will also be interested in reading more.

Visitors need to get a lot of information fast. They get bored fast. We can help them with a good lead. A "barren lead" only inspires them to start reading something else.

What we should not do is lead with a short, barren opening "stub"-sentence, and then jump right into a dry section like Origin or History.

We should also not create long dry leads, paragraphs that concentrate on the mundane and dry details which do not help tell a compelling story. A dense lead is not only long, it packs a punch. It is interesting.

The Table of Contents box makes this more of a problem. With a stub lead, you get a short sentence, a TOC box with a lot of white space next to it, and down below all this, a dry first section. (I solve this by wrapping the TOC whenever I can. Using very short section headings makes this easier.)

Let me illustrate with a "how not to" and then a "how to," based on an article I've written about the New York's Village Halloween Parade.

For readability, I dewikified the article; I also included the TOC to help illustrate how it interferes with reading by creating an abrupt chasm. (This will be the end of my comments.)

HOW NOT TO: THE BARREN LEAD

The NYC Village Halloween Parade is an annual pageant that takes place each October 31 in Manhattan's Greenwich Village.

Contents [hide]

1 Origin

2 Annual theme

3 Wildy creative

4 Parade route

5 Trivia

6 External links

ORIGIN

In 1973, mask maker and puppeteer Ralph Lee staged a small house-to-house wandering puppet event to entertain his friends, family and neighbors in the Village. After the second year, an organization called Theater for New York stepped forward to present the parade on a larger scale, as part of its City in the Streets program. By year eight, word of mouth attracted an audience of 100,000.

HOW TO: THE DENSE LEAD

The NYC Village Halloween Parade is an annual holiday parade and street pageant that takes place every Halloween night (October 31) in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Stretching more than a mile, this cultural attraction draws two million live spectators, fifty thousand costumed participants, dancers, artists and other performers, dozens of floats bearing live bands and other musical and performing acts, and a world-wide television audience.

The parade has two signature features: Giant stick puppets animated by teams of puppeteers, and open participation by the tens of thousands to anyone in a costume who wishes to join in. It is the largest public Halloween event in the United States, and the country's only major night parade. It has been featured in many of the most widely read national magazines and travel guides, and has been a subject of study of leading cultural anthopologists.

Contents [hide]

1 Origin

2 Annual theme

3 Wildy creative

4 Parade route

5 Trivia

6 External links

ORIGIN

In 1973, mask maker and puppeteer Ralph Lee staged a small house-to-house wandering puppet event to entertain his friends, family and neighbors in the Village. After the second year, an organization called Theater for New York stepped forward to present the parade on a larger scale, as part of its City in the Streets program. By year eight, word of mouth attracted an audience of 100,000.

FURTHER HOW NOT TO: THE LONG DRY LEAD

The NYC Village Halloween Parade is an annual pageant that takes place each October 31 in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. It begins at 7 p.m. and runs north up 6th Avenue, also known as The Avenue of the Americas. Spectators line the streets behind police barricades, from Spring Street to 23rd Street.

"Introductions" guideline

I have redirected the Wikipedia:Introductions article here. The information is almost identical. In case I missed anything, I'm copying the text here - please cherry-pick any crucial points into the main article. Stevage 01:25, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Unless a Wikipedia article is very short, it should begin with an introduction comprising one or more paragraphs. This should not be explicitly entitled "Introduction", but it should concisely describe the article's topic and prepare the reader for further detail.

The subject of the article should be mentioned in bold face at the first natural place that it occurs in the prose, preferably in first sentence, almost always before the close of the first paragraph. The name of the subject is normally identical to the page title, although it may appear in a slightly different form from that used as the title, and it may include variations. For example, "'The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (usually shortened to the United Kingdom or the UK) is a country off the north-western ...".

The length, contents and order of presentation of material in introductions will vary according to the subject matter and the overall length of the article. Typically, the first paragraph explains the subject sufficiently to prepare the reader for the greater level of detail to follow. The first paragraph also normally establishes the context in which the topic of the article is being considered; for example Introduction (essay) begins "In an essay or article, an introduction..." while Introduction (music) begins "In music, the introduction..." If further introductory material is needed, or if that material needs to address more than one aspect of the topic, additional introductory paragraphs can be added. Introductions to biographical articles commonly double as summaries, listing the best-known achievements of the subject.

In general, specialized terminology should be avoided in an introduction. Where uncommon terms are essential to describing the subject, they should be succintly defined within the introduction.

Where an article has titled sections, the introductory section is followed by an automatically-generated table of contents which lists the section headings to follow. Users have the option of making tables of contents invisible in their browsers, so it is not appropriate to use that table to present key introductory matter.

I added the important parts, I believe: The bolding of titles, establishing context, writing for lay folks. Hyacinth 09:18, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Lead heading

EVERY section should be present in the table of contents (that's technical writing 101), and in order for that to happen, the first section MUST have a section header. I generally call this first section "Overview". Please change the Wikipedia policy to reflect proper technical writing practice: if there is more than one section, and if any of those sections have headings, then every section, including the first one, should have a heading. -- BBlackmoor ^(talk), 2006-02-1 T 16:40 Z

Adding a section heading like "Overview" at the very start looks awful as it means the article starts with a double header (the title being the first header). When writing a book you would have a section header for the introduction, because a book is very long, in a format such as this it is totally unnecessary, unless you think readers really need to be pointed to the start of the article. Things like this are house style, certainly not "technical writing 101". Martin 20:17, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Bluemoose about requiring every article to title its first section, "Overview". That sucks. But it is important that editors understand the need for sections and subsections and how a table of contents depends on the first section using == section title == Terryeo 05:48, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk: Lead section

Why isn't this talk there? Hyacinth 19:59, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Changing max size of lead sections

The 3 para max guideline came from the rule of thumb that every 10KB of prose needed to have a paragraph in the lead that summarized the article's most vital points. But when I first wrote the size guideline for this page the strict 30KB max size of articles guideline was still in force. Thus the 3 para max rule. The idea all along was that lead sections should be able to stand on their own as concise encyclopedia articles. Absent the strict technical limit on page size, we have come to the realization that it is sometimes acceptable, and even preferable, that some topics are expansive enough to need more space (up to 50KB of prose and almost never more than that ; see Wikipedia:Summary style).

So I'd like to change the criteria back to the original rule of thumb it is based on ; one paragraph for every 10KB of readable prose, but making sure the article itself is in Summary style. Thus, practically speaking, making a maximum range of 3 to 5 paragraphs with possible exceptions for the very few articles that need to go above 50KB of prose (cites/refs, lists, tables, and markup excluded). Let's face it; a lead section on World War II would be a sucky concise encyclopedia article if it were limited to 3 paragraphs. What say you? --mav 13:49, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I would like to avoid pushing the TOC too far to the bottom; that would be very bad both from a layout and usability point of view. I think the "Lead section as concise article" model really breaks down for complex subjects like WW II. I would prefer to have separate, structured articles with something like 5000-10000 characters length as maximum for such topics. Perhaps this could be accomplished by combining the leads of multiple articles into one.--Eloquence * 20:50, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Simple - just add a jump link to the TOC from the top left of the lead. Problem solved. Technical things like that should not prevent us from serving those who only need a concise article. The 5000 to 10000 word length idea is already covered by Wikipedia:Summary style. --mav 22:14, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not very fond of such special layouts, but as long as we keep the overall number of articles exceeding 30K in size low, it doesn't bother me too much.--Eloquence * 00:35, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I was just going to use the WWII article as an example of why you're right. Obviously, I'm not in favor of alot of long lead sections, but it seems rather unnecessary to require that extremely long articles be limited to 3 paragraphs. —Spangineer^[es] (háblame) 05:31, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Definition vs. description

This project page says that the first sentence in the lead section should be "a concise definition of the topic...." To increase the distinction between Wikipedia and Wikipedia, should this page instead recommend that the first sentence in the lead section be "a concise ~~definition~~ description of the topic..."? The Rod (☎ Smith) 20:19, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean between Wiktionary and Wikipedia? Just because something has a definition doesn't make it a dictionary entry and, as many people will tell you, a description is not necessarily a definition. Hyacinth 10:04, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

This page lacks a good lead paragraph

This article could have a better WP:LEAD - as well as describing where a lead paragraph is, it should have a sentence or two on what a lead paragraph does. Andjam 13:57, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

It's not an article, so it doesn't need to follow all the same rules. Apparently one of the rationales for the "summary"-style lead section is that a paper WP can then be made from all the lead sections. Personally I'm not very convinced by that project, but it does still seem to be informing the discussion. You can see that pages in Wikipedia space would be unlikely to be included.

(Even so, it couldn't hurt to have the page lead by example, I'd think.) --Trovatore 15:08, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Length

There is a limit on the maximum length of lead sections. Is there a minimum? Hyacinth 10:05, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

I think not a minimum length per se, but accomplishing everything the section is supposed to accomplish will impose a minimum in practice. --Trovatore 15:30, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Infoboxes considered harmful

Some folks apparently like to fill the lead section with infoboxes, galleries, series boxes, and other cruft before the real lead text and ToC. If it's floating right (align="right" working with all visual browsers, not CSS) together with the lead section and ToC it might be acceptable, but if it pushes the ToC out of sight (without scrolling) it's bad. Any objections to add this? For an example see the Brooklyn Bridge diff. A counterexample with a nice infobox is Sealand, getting it right with width=" small " align="right" took some time. -- Omniplex 19:16, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with the assertion that they are harmful. Especially on IPv4. Cburnett 22:42, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I've removed Template:IPstack from some known application layer protocols and PPP, for IPv4 and IPv6 I put it below lead section and ToC. For Template:Security protocol I fixed the bogus info claiming that SPF e.a. are security protocols, added PGP, removed it from S/MIME (its only usage), and finally submitted it as unhelpful garbage to Tfd.

When I come to an article like S/MIME the first thing I want to know is if that's really what I'm looking for, answered by the lead section and ToC. Only after that I might be interested to find other articles like UDP or ICMP. Seriously, who jumps between completely unrelated protocols in different layers, and even if (s)he does this, why should the navigation box mutilate each and every protocol article, instead of one simple "see also" link to a list? That list can have the format of the IPstack template (subst'ed), adding the box everywhere is spam. -- Omniplex 23:14, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

The fact that someone put it there leads me to believe they find it useful. I find it useful. The people I've seen edit it must find it useful.

Spam? Wow. Um. Yeah. That was disturbing enough to read and then to find your user page has you describing it as a rant...well, I don't recall WP being a place for rants. This isn't a blogger. Cburnett 00:52, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Maybe you've seen that I have special links to "my" (= whoever uses it) watchlist there, because I like ten days hiding "my" edits better than the default, and I also need the similar Meta watchlist link. In theory I could now add these links to each and every article in its lead section because I think it's a cute feature, and many editors might like it. Do you see the little hole in that reasoning? Navigation is the job of the general layout, combined with personalized CSS skins. It doesn't belong into articles (near the end in an "See Also" section is fine), let alone in their lead section. -- Omniplex 03:06, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

The little hole...meaning...putting your watchlist link on articles pages? The only hole I see is in your analogy/logic. Cburnett 04:49, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

The link isn't really "my" watchlist, if you use it you get your watchlist without your edits for the last ten days. A nice feature, let's add it to Browsebar, and then add this template at the top of all articles. Do you have by chance a bot for this task? -- Omniplex 05:44, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Is this where I say your custon watchlist isn't relevant and you point out that the box isn't either? Or was that just the setup you keep pushing for? Like I said, I find the box useful and so do others, so you can stop pushing your irrelevant point. Cburnett 14:13, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Printable / audible / visible with any browser and the lead section aren't irrelevant, and transcluding the same mostly unrelated infobox in many articles instead of linking to an overview article is a valid design question. -- Omniplex 21:12, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree that infoboxes can be potentially misused and thereby degrade overall page design. See also these current/ongoing discussions, which i think may be very relevant. I don't know much about the code/webstandards aspects of wikicode yet, or hence have any suggestions, but my webdesigner senses are tingling... --Quiddity 00:23, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Seems a bit rich to point to your own essay as support for this deletion. As a matter of fact you are entirely wrong about SPF not being a security protocol, on the contrary it is a mechanism for authenticating emails by means of path validation. It is not a cryotographic security protocol but that does not mean it is not a security protocol. The alternative was to have folk continue to fill the front half of the S/MIME article with misinformed claims about its relationship to PGP.

There are now five email message security protocols that are either IETF standards or soon to be IETF standards. In addition there is the STARTTLS option in SMTP and the possibility of using IPSEC for transport security and even DNSSEC. The relationship between the different standards is quite complicated and there is a considerable degree of overlap. For example S/MIME makes extensive use of PKIX. It is also possible to make use of PKIX with PGP. Rather than have all the articles contain recapitulations of each other it is much cleaner to see how the cryptographic protocol stack works together. --Gorgonzilla 03:02, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Off topic reply moved to Internet security protocols. -- Omniplex 20:51, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

i see you have removed the ipstack template from a whole load of articles now; can i ask why when on most of them the toc either wasn't pushed any further down than it is now (i.e. HyperText Transfer Protocol) or was easily viewable without scrolling before anyway (i.e. Point-to-Point Protocol). i feel that the template is a useful addition to the articles it relates to and helps give readers an idea of where the subject of the article they are reading relates to in respect to similar protocols on the same layer and where it fits in the stack itself. --MilkMiruku 03:16, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

See also above, here are links to two screenshots of http before and after the removal of Template:IPstack(edit talk links history). The vertical scroll bar at the right shows that this is a complete browser window (I scrolled some lines in the classic skin roughly starting with the title). There's no chance in hell that anybody interested in http might wish to jump to say ICMP or UDP before reading a single line of the http article. If you love the box maybe put it below the lead section after a __TOC__, for an example where I tried this approach see IPv4. -- Omniplex 04:23, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Your example is pretty skewed, IMO. Under an 800x600 window (apparently a bit smaller than what you have in those example pics) with the classic skin, my window doesn't look much like your http-1 image. The top is a bit cramped but I still see actual text along side the box. Perhaps instead of crusading around with your rants and deleting things, you might propose narrowing the nav box. (Never mind it's one edit and much less controversial and quicker to do.) Having just done that, the box takes up less than half the width of the article text (excludes left nav) under either default or classic skin.

Like I said, I think your example is skewed but you haven't provided any details to let anyone else do anything beyond guessing. Considering the nav box in the screenshots you provided doesn't have a border, no background, and doesn't apparently understand em widths...there's a lot to be told. Cburnett 04:49, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I didn't do anything special, your CSS fix has no effect for browsers not supporting inline CSS - in some cases intentionally because the implementation is broken, e.g. Netscape 4.x, for my mozilla 3 by design, it's a HTML 3.2 browser, the predecessor of HTML 4. For the Sealand table and a derived tempate I found a solution working with any browser (not for 80*25 text browsers, but at least old visual browsers). XHTML Basic used by mobile devices and XHTML Print (as of 2006 a W3C standard or draft)) don't support inline CSS at all, and I've no idea what havoc these infoboxes cause with speech browsers for the blind. See above for width=" small " align="right", I think that it's possible to have a legacy width="30%" plus CSS style="width: 15em" with CSS taking precedence for modern visual browsers. What matches 15em best as % ? There can't be a 1:1 correspondence, but both are relative, em depends on the font, % on the screen width. -- Omniplex 05:22, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Fine, then fix the box and stop disrupting things to make your point. Cburnett 14:13, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Done, but I've no idea if that solved the general problem of big infoboxes before WP:LEAD and ToC for other browsers/media. -- Omniplex 21:01, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Just a quick comment: neither {{IPstack}} nor {{Security protocol}} actually are Infoboxes. They would probably be more pertinent as footers. Circeus 17:04, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

No category, hard to tell if the table starts with class="infobox". For Infobox Micronation I hope it's correct, but it's not yet in the list of infoboxes (Gareth split the huge Infobox list, great), or I missed it. -- Omniplex 18:59, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Support Many of the infoboxes are much too large and seriously degrade page design. The London locality box is a good example, especially as several of the pieces of information are the same for almost every locality. Piccadilly 18:12, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Dummy section

I've not the faintest idea what the following statement is supposed to mean:

An inappropriate section, such as one which is too short, should not be created to create a lead section of an appropriate length.

Isolated I'd guess that it says "don't create a dummy section only to justify another paragraph in the lead section", a bad case of WP:LAWYER.

But there's no rule wrt the number of sections, only something about the number of characters. I've removed this obscure statement for now. -- Omniplex 22:00, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the point is that some very short articles don't really need any sectioning; they're all lead section. But then their lead section, which is the entire article, is too long, according to the table. Such articles should not have material artificially split off into non-lead sections just to satisfy the length requirement.

I agree with this observation. But only, as I say, for very short articles. --Trovatore 22:07, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Okay, what you say makes sense, if there's no "real" lead section, because the whole article is essentially one section, maybe ignoring technical sections like references or "see also", then the length guideline for "real" lead sections isn't applicable. Maybe insert your version somewhere, it's clearer. -- Omniplex 22:30, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Rephrased. How's that? Hyacinth 22:50, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid I can't see the point of this, so I tried to rephrase but then removed it again. Can you give an actual example that you have seen? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:57, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

If it was something like:

Lead = John Smith is a professor of psychology, best known for his best-selling novels on serial killers.

New section called "Background" = Smith was born in Yorkshire to a close-knit Jewish family.

That's not ideal, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it, bearing in mind the point of a stub is to expand it. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 23:00, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not necessarily talking about stubs. I think there are a fair number of three-four paragraph articles around that will never get longer, but are nevertheless useful. There's no need to uglify them by giving them an artificial lead section. --Trovatore 23:40, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Idea: Could we say that the complete guideline affects only articles with four or more sections, in other words only articles with an ordinary (= no FORCETOC and NOTOC tricks) ToC? -- Omniplex 00:52, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Should references appear in the lead-in?

I am of the opinion that they clutter up the lead-in, and after all, if your lead-in is making statements not supported by the body of the article, you're in pretty deep trouble. Can this be added to the article with no objections? joshbuddy^talk 21:10, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I'd imagine there'd be strong objections to this. Citations "clutter" the article wherever they are included, however they are necessary to back up potentially controversial assertions. This is no less so in the lead than anywhere else. Christopher Parham (talk) 21:24, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

The goals of the lead-in are to provide an overview and to be concise. I do not consider citations "clutter", just that for the purposes of the lead-in, they would not be needed. joshbuddy^talk 21:42, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree that as the lead should only include information that is substantiated later, citations are unnecessary in the lead. I know a similar practice is followed in MNRAS and other scientific journals. Worldtraveller 23:41, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I see no harm in having a citation in the lead paragraph. Also, this shouldn't be added until there is a consensus to do so. Pepsidrinka 03:12, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Its not a question of harm so much as a question of style. Stylistically, lead-ins without references flow better, and are easier to read. At the very least, lead-ins should not contain references the body of the article does not contain. joshbuddy^talk 03:55, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

The lead is supposed to be a summary of the text that follows, and thus should not contain anything that is not in that text. That text is all supposed to be sourced, therefore there is no requirement to source the lead. I think the guideline should be changed to reflect this. Alan Pascoe 08:54, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. Furthermore, it should be made clearer that nothing should appear in the lead that does not appear in the main article. Rather than being described as an "introduction", it should be described as an "overview" or "executive summary". Carcharoth 10:57, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand... WP:V, WP:CITE make any unreferenced statement subject to removal or constant sparking of a revert war. For most articles, this is not a problem. However, coming from the two month Jesus second paragraph battle, citation allowed a measure of peace to descend. It's the only way I know of to deal with folks who are ... passionate ... about certain issues. --CTSWyneken 15:16, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

To this I would say, if people are edit warring over the lead-in, the intent of the lead-in has been completely lost on them. Edit warring over the lead in would appear to be bad. Perhaps articles need a way to forego a lead-in while they are in the midst of a major re-work. joshbuddy^talk 15:49, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Change to guideline - please discuss

Based on the above discussion, I made the following changes: [1]. Please discuss here before reverting. Carcharoth 11:03, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

This is good with me. joshbuddy^talk 15:49, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I have been active in getting two articles and one list featured in the past 2-3 months, and all three of them have had references in the lead section, and I don't recall one objection to any of the nominations that called for the references in the lead section to be removed. This alone leads me to believe that there is no consensus to removing references to the lead section. Pepsidrinka 23:37, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, the template at the top of the page (the project page, not this talk page) explains that the page is from the opinions of a consensus of editors. Thus far, I only see 7 editors weighing in on this issue - far from a substantial number considering the number of active editors we have on Wikipedia. Pepsidrinka 23:39, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

If you feel that there is not yet enough consensus, please feel free to revert my changes. Could I also ask that this be more widely advertised to obtain a broader consensus? Carcharoth 10:48, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I have now raised this at the Village Pump here. Also, I am not advocating removing references from the lead section, just putting them in the main body of the article where they belong, rather than duplicating them twice. Can you give links to the examples you mention? Thanks. Carcharoth 11:48, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Seems to be consensus. However, the sentences could be better organized, without quite so many commas. I'll take a stab at that.

--William Allen Simpson 16:56, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Pakistan, 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, and 2005 NFL Draft are the articles I was referring to in my previous post. Pepsidrinka 23:56, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with this, mainly because in a short article, the intro may be the only place where certain information is mentioned or discussed. Deco 18:03, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

According to WP:LS, "The lead section should provide an overview of the main points the article will make". How can the lead-in make points the article doesn't contain? joshbuddy^talk 18:05, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

If it's the only section, for one thing. WP:LS describes an ideal, not the actual state of every article. Deco 20:04, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I could go with the change in principle, except I fear constant challenges in some articles, such as Jesus. There the citations were needed to keep critics of the scholarly majority from deleting or modifying well-established views. The references there have saved a lot grief.--CTSWyneken 20:42, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I would say these are guidelines, and reflect an ideal, not a hard and fast rule. Let me look at Jesus though and see what exactly the situation there is. joshbuddy^talk 20:51, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Jesus ... hm. I see some immediate issues here. The reference for tomb is only in the lead-in, is not verified in the article itself. In fact, all the lead-in references appear only in the lead-in, and not in the article itself. This is a problem from my point of view. joshbuddy^talk 20:53, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

You are, of course, welcome to share that concern in the hornet's nest -- I mean -- talk page. ;-)There's an improvement drive going on.--CTSWyneken 21:04, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Minor quibble: do you intend this to apply to alternate names for the topic of the article (e.g. "Foo, also known as Foobar, is a ...")? They're generally given only in the lead section, unless there's something particularly meaningful to say about them. Kirill Lokshin 02:51, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Typically when alternate names are given in the lead-in, more often than not, those alternate names are used through-out the article itself. Also, the current guidelines allow for alternate names and also specify that the lead-in be a summary of points, so if the current guidelines see no inherit contradiction, then I think thats good enough. joshbuddy^talk 03:00, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I really don't like this change at all. Summaries may need separate sources from differently-worded specifics later in the article. Furthermore, if a reader sees a fact they want to quote in the lead (which is surely very common, since the lead contains most of the critical info), they shouldn't have to hunt through a pages-long article to dig up the reference; it should be right there. Factual assertions should always be accompanied by references. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 07:57, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Qualified support. In the vast majority of cases the lead section should be reference free. However, there may be a small number of cases where it is less awkward to put some references in the introduction, so the prohibition should be qualified. Piccadilly 18:09, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. Though, perhaps since these are guidelines already, such qualification implicitly exists. joshbuddy^talk 21:43, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

An overview?, An executive summary? What exactly is an "executive summary", anyway? What we want are good, informative, readable articles. Articles will vary from 2 or 3 paragraphs about an upcoming rock band to large, extensive histories. I don't believe we can demand "executive summaries" at all, such summaries are directed to the executives who are going to read them and not to the common reader. An overview, well possibly, but I don't like that either because too often an overview forces the reader to read all about what he is going to read, when what he really wants to do is read an interesting, informative article. If Wikipedia wanted nutshell summaries, we would lose a great deal of our article's color. Many editors contributing to articles give Wikipedia articles a coloration which isn't present in other encylopedias. Let's not "summarize", let's make enjoyable reading. Terryeo 16:17, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Are the two mutually exclusive? joshbuddy, talk 17:34, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Can't say, dunno what an "executive summary" is. But why don't we indicate that a summerization might be used to introduce an article. You know, give editors one more potential tool in the tool box to use. Rather than insisting on it ? Terryeo 18:50, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not really sure what an "executive summary" is, but the current guideline states: "The lede should be capable of standing alone as a concise overview of the article" This is a summarization, and the question of if the lead should be a summary isn't really up for discussion. The discussion was more around if a summary needed citations apart from what the article itself provides. I argued that if you allow citations in the lead-in, it can easily (and demonstrably does) start to contain points not found in the article itself. This is bad. joshbuddy, talk 19:57, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Lede

Apparently the "lede" (never heard of this before) of WP:LEAD is too long by its own standard. The last paragraph could be a part of the body, but it's somewhat redundant, and it doesn't directly fit into the body structure. -- Omniplex 04:15, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

You make a good point about "lede" - where does that come from? Chambers dictionary doesn't have it, neither does dictionary.com. Wiktionary and wikipedia both do, but neither cites a source. Is someone having us on? --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 09:36, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Not sure, the first Google hit Word of the Day could be serious, and if it's related to "lead" (metal) it's also technically plausible. There's no similar German word... ;-) I'd prefer "abstract" instead of "lede", maybe a matter of taste. -- Omniplex 13:33, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

"Lede" is a well-known technical term in the English-language journalism, writing, and typesetting fields. Google for more.

--William Allen Simpson 13:56, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

"Abstract" is ok - I prefer "lead section" myself. I think lede is a needlessly obscure term - it might be accurate, but for the sake of accessibility to as wide a selection of people as possible, can we go with "lead section"? --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 22:44, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

We already call this article "Lead section". "Lede" isn't obscure, there are over 10,200 Google references to just the phrase "Bury the lede" (as well as our own article). Really, there is an expectation of some level of competency and expertise for writing an encyclopedia, and following its writing guidelines.

--William Allen Simpson 02:47, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

In professional documents the "thing" at the top that could stand alone is an abstract. Thinking about it, German Schlagzeile could be a technical equivalent of lede. For that I find "head line", "caption", "catch line". Somewhat unrelated to a lead section with one or more paragraphs, the whole guideline is about the length in paragraphs. -- Omniplex 07:58, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Do we really really need to introduce editors to yet one more specialized word? Lede is a perfectly fine term, but what use to introduce editors to it? "Lead section" and "Introductory section" are more recognizable terms for the subject being discussed. And there is a missing element in the first 5 things. The topic in bold: Topic of article is not spelled out and should be included in the "lede". Terryeo 05:54, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I've limited it now to three, (1) WP:LEDE, (2) lead paragraph also known as lede with link, (3) wikt:lede in the "see also". -- Omniplex 16:36, 1 July 2006 (UTC)