Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section

I have one proposal

Enhancing level of quick knowledge by adding into names of articles about real persons their occupation in brackets;without any need to read an article to get an idea about who these people were-in cases when person has a little time or need the information about occupation of certain person(s) right now; without actually reading lines in that article that are saying it. Please consider the significance of this change and be ready to discuss it.

When dealing with infoboxes:you need to make sense of informations you read in infobox and orientate in it,so it may take up more amount of time than it would if there were occupations of people written in names of articles;if people needed to find quckly only that information.

Plus not all articles needing infobox(as they deal with historical person that lived in past centuries or are still living) do,in fact,have infobox. And infobox is lot harder to do than to write occupation in brackets. Plus infobox looks messy,if there are too many bits of information;so people cannot orientate as quickly as they need.

I am not saying we should get rid of infoboxes-I´m saying:"Enhancing names of articles with this information would be very beneficial to people searching through Wikipedia".

Not all articles needing infobox(as they deal with historical or contemporary persons)do,in fact,have infobox. For example: Mary Shelley,influential writer does not have an infobox,or should I ask:Is it not considered necessary to make infobox for her? Though there are lots of infoboxes being made everyday to B-class actors and actresses,she does not have infobox,because no one dare to bother. So viewers have a bad luck if they want to find out who she was in short amount of given time;they must read through her full name and lengthy dates of birth and death until they find information they so desperately needed. Another example is Günter Brus ,one of the most important figures of Viennese Actionism,creator of revolutionary book Irrwisch,coiner of "Bild-Dichtungen(Picture-poems) and first pioneer of Body painting-even beforeYves Klein.(And has such short article that it is such a shame to have the article on Wikipedia.) And so on... We definitely should include multiple occupations in brackets as long as it is in the name of article and written in thick font,so people can easily see it and it helps to orientate better as they know what kind of person is it about. We should write non-occupational information person is known for in brackets also,like in case of Charles Manson we should write [serial murderer] and so on. There should be no article about person who is not famous or notable for something. Remark about"Western cultural bias" is not on the right place,since I do not care whether we write Bill Gates [American business magnate, philanthropist, author and chairman of Microsoft] or Bill Gates [creator of Microsoft] as long as we will write the thing he is most notable for in the name of the article and in thick font for better visibility.

Pieceofpeper--D.M: 20:42, 13 June 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pieceofpeper (talk • contribs)

!SORRY FOR DUPLICATED SECTION-I FORGOT TO LOG IN AND I COULD NOT SAVE A PAGE,SO IT GOT SAVED TWICE! I DID NOT MEAN TO REMOVE SIGNATURE-I JUST WANTED TO REPLACE IT,BECAUSE IT SHOWED MY IP,AS I WAS NOT LOGGED-ACCIDENTALLY! Pieceofpeper0:14, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

We have a policy, Wikipedia:Article titles, on naming articles. In general, articles have the simplest name possible. If we have articles on more than one person with the same name, if one of them is significantly better known than the others, then that article has just the person's name as its title. Other articles about persons with the same name are then disambiguated by whatever works, i.e., occupation, title, residency, etc. Infoboxes are optional. Some editors add them, others don't care. Wikipedia is edited by individual volunteers. There are policies and guidelines established by consensus, but much remains at the discretion of individual editors. -- Donald Albury 13:11, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

What means that I must seek consensus? Or can I make some changes straight away? Pieceofpeper--D.M: 06:09, 16 June 2011 (UTC) --D.M: 06:17, 16 June 2011 (UTC) I had a discussion on WP:Article titles and after they decided that it has really nothing to do with WP:Article titles and directed me to WP:LEAD. And you tell me to see WP:Article titles... Pieceofpeper

RFC: restructuring of the Manual of Style

Editors may be interested in this RFC, along with the discussion of its implementation:

Should all subsidiary pages of the Manual of Style be made subpages of WP:MOS?

It's big; and it promises huge improvements. Great if everyone can be involved. Noetica^Tea? 00:43, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Surname clarification templates

A village pump post about the appearance of name-order hatnotes in the lead is here. Please take a look and comment. —Designate (talk) 21:35, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

verb tense in sentence that identifies subject

I can't believe I'm actually suggesting that the MoS prescribe something, but this is a little bit subtle and I wonder if some guidance is appropriate, worded in such a way as to allow for exceptions.

My sense is that the verb tense in the sentence identifying the subject of the article, ordinarily the first sentence, carries a bit more baggage than it would in ordinary discourse. Specifically, in most cases,

1. in biographies of living persons, the identifying sentence should be in the present tense
2. in biographies of deceased persons, the identifying sentence should be in the past tense
3. in articles about completed events in the past, the identifying sentence should be in the past tense

This came to my attention most recently in the bio of William Weld. Before I changed it, the article said that Weld was the 68th Governor of Massachusetts. Which of course is true — he was the 68th governor of Massachusetts, and the present tense would have been inappropriate in that sentence.

The problem is, when I read a bio and the sentence introducing me to the subject is in the past tense, my immediate reaction is "this guy is dead".

On point 3, I was involved some time ago in a minor dispute at the article on the Whitechapel murders, where the article had read [t]he Whitechapel murders are eleven unsolved murders of women..., which I thought was fairly bizarre. I do not wish to start a debate on the present existence of past events interested readers may consult the article on presentism (philosophy of time), but in fact I don't believe in presentism, so that wasn't my point; I say only that this is not my understanding of how the English language is best used.

(A well-respected but idiosyncratic contributor had objected to saying they were eleven unsolved murders, asking in that case, what are they now? My position is that, according to the English language even if not philosophically, they are not anything now, because they occurred in the past.) A solution was found that put the sentence in the past tense without taking a position on whether they currently exist.

What do people think? Is this something that should be mentioned somewhere in the MoS? (Or, perhaps, is it already, and I just haven't found it?) --Trovatore (talk) 08:01, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

On the biographies, your change of Weld's opening sentence to "is a former..." rather than "was a" is exactly what's recommended by Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)#Tense. DrKiernan (talk) 08:55, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Something like "is an American politician and attorney who served as the 68th Governor of Massachusetts" is also possible, since international readers have likely never heard of Massachusetts. It's not pretty but it works. —Designate (talk) 19:57, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Should we stress that lead should make no original claims?

I think we should stress in the article that lead should contain no original claims - as in, no information that is not repeated somewhere else in the article. I just had a discussion with an editor whose understanding of this policy differs, and who claims that that our current wording about lead summarizing the article and providing the overview does not prevent the lead from having unique claims. Using his rationale, that editors likes to merge small sections from the article into lead (sigh...). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 19:13, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

That sounds worth an additional sentence. Give it a whirl. One caveat. I must admit that I'm guilty of violating the "overview the body" principle. Sometimes I write introductory text in the lead, which tells a unifying fact about all the article's subtopics, which does not reappear elsewhere. For example, the first and third sentences of Definitions of mathematics. As much as I agree with keeping the body in the body and making the lead simply a lower-resolution version of the body, I hope we can have wording that allows the occasional use of the lead to say something important that really doesn't need to be repeated. There should be a special reason for it, though, like the use of extreme brevity for emphasis in Definitions of mathematics. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 20:36, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

I just found that my concern is already addressed superbly here: Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(lead_section)#Relative_emphasis. So, I drop my caveat. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 21:03, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

There are occasional exceptions to that rule. For example, if you include a direct quotation in the lead, it might well be silly to repeat it later. However, as a general rule, a well-developed article will not have information that appears only in the lead. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:06, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Clutter

I don't feel strongly about the inclusion or non-inclusion of the new "Clutter" section, but I want to say that the example given is a fantastic illustration of the potential problems. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:06, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

It's great IMO. —Designate (talk) 07:14, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, it was such a great example (and I simply copied it from the article without any fudging) that I thought it might be illustrative, and I was surprised that there was nothing here on clutter, given how often it's a complaint when editing the lede. BTW, I restored the dates, which had been removed; since as I understand it vital years are a minimal requirement in the lede for biographies, it would be misleading and unrealistic to give an example without them. — kwami (talk) 10:44, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Biographical lead sections

Following some recent discussions, I recently started a discussion on the lead sections in biographical articles to try and unify those aspects of the discussion, rather than have the discussions spread all over the place. Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (biographies)#Style of lead sections and comment there (where I've mentioned some of the parts of this guideline that cover biographies). Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 16:03, 29 August 2011 (UTC)