Wikipedia talk:Summary style

Restore previous name

This editing guide was renamed as a MoS guide last year on an understanding that an agreement had been made during a discussion on this page. As this has always been an editing guide, and the advice here is still about making an editing decision rather than a style or formatting one, I feel it should be returned to an editing guide, and the previous name of WP:Summary style restored. The discussion linked above referenced this guideline in order to make editing decisions during the MoS consolidation drive, but there was no discussion regarding bringing the guideline itself into the MoS. I have informed the editor who made the move. Views are encouraged. SilkTork *^YES! 12:35, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Contentless sections

A problem I note with a lot of articles (for example, Milton Keynes Dons F.C.) is that when articles are split, people just cut-and-paste sections into new articles and leave the parent articles devoid of information. Obviously, this fails the spirit of WP:SUMMARY, as "summary style" means that a main article should give a summary and give links to "main articles" if it makes an article too unwieldy to combine all the information, but it seems not to be an important part of the policy. Should this be rectified or not? Sceptre ^(talk) 23:44, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

There is never any reason to have a section with no content at all. or a section other than the EL section at the end that has nothing but links. So I would say yes, it should be rectified. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:41, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Notability

Notability guidelines only outline how suitable a topic is for its own article or list. They do not limit the content of an article or list. As a longtime fan of the summary guideline, I have read this N quote as affirming that a breakout is "part of" its main article for N purposes. That is, we recognize that List of minor planets: 200001-201000, Later life of Isaac Newton, and List of centenarians (educators, school administrators, social scientists and linguists) are not notable in themselves, and yet they are clearly not deletable at AFD for N reasons, since their main topics (List of minor planets, Isaac Newton, Lists of centenarians) are notable. This N exception seems to be a natural corollary of the COMMONNAMES exception that breakouts enjoy.

In a content dispute, it has been raised by some that this might count as a backdoor to inherent notability, because it does "the same thing" as inherence. It makes all consensus breakouts "inherently article-worthy" (which sounds a lot like "inherently notable"). Clearly someone who did not understand the summary structure might easily raise a good-faith AFD, rightly arguing the topic is nonnotable but is being treated as if it were inherently notable solely because its notable main topic is sufficiently long. This happens particularly with lists. It would seem there would be a standardized method of communicating the structure to notability checkers. (Incidentally, I guarantee that if you look up the particular content dispute in my history, you will face a topic maelstrom largely irrelevant to these present sitewide questions; but feel free.)

Q1: Since WP:LISTs are articles, does this guideline apply equally to lists as it does to other articles, though lists are not mentioned herein? JJB 21:15, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Q2: What is the best way to handle the tension between the rightness of breakout articles vs. the objection, frequently met, that the breakout's title is nonnotable as a topic? (I see that N failures are not "encouraged" per AVOIDSPLIT, but this is accommodating language because the above demonstrates that sometimes there is no notable split and yet split is still indicated due to size.) JJB 21:15, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Q3: In particular, in a comprehensive list combining notable and nonnotable topics, I have observed the tendency for the notable ones to be broken out with short summaries and the nonnotable ones to accumulate long entries (especially if primary sources are involved), which seems to lean against guidance here for main-page balance. Is this guideline leaning more toward balanced breakouts, or is it toward imbalance (so as to indicate varying notability), or is this a local question? JJB 21:15, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Q4: Since breakout method itself should be decided locally, should choice of breakout method include consideration of whether individual breakout candidates "look notable" or "look nonnotable" if they are considered without reference to being broken out? (My answer is it doesn't seem that this should be a consideration.) JJB 21:15, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Q5: Should local method determination rely primarily on anticipation of the detail levels that various user cases would typically look for? JJB 21:15, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Q6: Since the guideline affirms breakouts must be able to stand alone, but only contextualizes this for V purposes, should we conclude that breakouts must stand alone for N (which would fail many articles like the above), or that they need not (which would indicate a clarification to the guideline)? JJB 21:15, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Q7: What are the best style methods of communicating in-article that an article is a breakout, to transcend argumentation over N? (Obviously I start with the "Main article:" link at top, the navtemplate(s) indicating a place in a series, and sufficient sourcing and weighting; "Previous article:" and "Next article:" come to mind; anything else?) JJB 21:15, 19 May 2012 (UTC)