Wikipedia talk:The perfect article

Rewrititionization?

I have completely rewritten the list. One of the things was to put it into a single sentence; this sounded like a good idea at first, but some; sentences; now; read; rather; awkwardly. Another was to condense and reorder several scattered but related points in rough order of importance, but now each point seems too verbose and any ordering I devise is fair game for contention.

Er, in fact, I don't quite like my new version at all, come to think of it. If y'all feel the same way too, I guess the only thing to do is to revert the article to another wrong version. ~ Jafet _{Speaker of many words} 16:08, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Given that open invitation, I reverted :) This page is a general style guideline, meaning that a lot of people read this page (it's the first link in one of the welcome messages), and I don't mean to lecture, but this subject comes up from time to time so I want to be clear, at least about how I feel about it. Radical change in guidelines happens sometimes, and new ideas are welcome any time, but there's a price to pay. If we change the whole thing without any confidence that the new version is substantially better, it creates a certain amount of uncertainty and discomfort (because people rely on their memory of approximately what it says), it requires a lot of people-hours of relearning, and it may not even work. That is, even if we change the page, people may like the version in their heads better, so that leads to multiple guidelines (in effect), and eventually a change back to something like the way it was. Also, the people who rely on the guidelines the most are the people who spend a lot of time reviewing articles, and making the job of article reviewers harder is a Bad Thing™. So, small changes, one at a time, are preferable to tossing guidelines out the window and starting over. [end lecture]

So: can you pick out a few sentences you'd like to change, and let's discuss it first? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:35, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

This page is a general style guideline

Oops. Excuse my insolence.

My gripe is mostly with the presentation and language of the article. For example, important points are scattered across the list instead of being placed at the top, and related points are not grouped: citations, a core Wikipedia policy, finds itself in the mid-end section, and the points on categorization and inter-wiki links should be grouped with the two hyperlink points.

A minor issue is that if the article is going to be The Perfect General Style Guideline it should point out various important content policies on Wikipedia and highlight them; I tried at some improvement in this area. The current version, for example, seems to not mention WP:NOTABLE, WP:OR and WP:V, policies I find essential.

Bureaucracy is indisputably necessary to make sure such an effort is properly directed, but I don't think I really have the strength of will to unravel the red tape around such an apparently important article. I've tossed out my diff and my motivations here; may they be found useful.

If you could go over the diff and above issues and comment on them that would be stimulating. I don't mind the article as it is, though, to be honest. Nothing is perfect. ~ Jafet _{Speaker of many words} 16:50, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

PS: I'm not sure if individual sentences would cut it, since one aim was to overhaul the ordering and breakdown of the list itself. ~ Jafet _{Speaker of many words} 16:53, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I hadn't seen WP:PPP before; that essay reflects my beliefs very nicely, thanks for pointing it out. If you hadn't said that you weren't happy with what you did, I wouldn't have reverted, I would have asked the standard question when someone changes a style guidelines page wholesale: "Where is the discussion that lead to that change?". You're making some very good points. It's a judgment call how much of the rest of Wikipedia we want to pull into this article; I don't think it was meant as a summary. I think it was meant as a list of things that can be read quickly that, in the experience of article reviews and writers, people don't think about often enough, so it might not need core-content policy stuff that most people already have firmly in their brains. I'll ask for advice at WT:GA. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:26, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the call for editors. I'll refrain from any nontrivial edits until we get some consensus on what can, what cannot, and what should be changed. ~ Jafet _{Speaker of many words} 06:05, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Apparently I had meant to link to WP:PII instead of WP:PPP. Maybe a WP:TME is in order... ~ Jafet _{Speaker of many words} 11:32, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Accessibility + HTML standards

[moved form my talk page - Andy Mabbett ]

I reverted this edit:

• is accessible (ideally following Web Content Accessibility Guidelines recommendations).
• is technically sound (with lists marked up as such, foreign-language text labelled with {{lang}} or equivalent, etc.)

I see the logic in the approach of treating certain goals as ideals for the perfect article, but I see potential problems here: 1. Per WP:Policy, for policy pages and probably this guideline too, changes like this have to be discussed on the talk page and gain consensus first, and I'm not aware of any discussion, here or at WT:ACCESS#WCAG 2.0 ... is the discussion somewhere else? 2. We never incorporate other manuals into the Wikipedian guidelines "by reference", we discuss the sentences we want to import from another manual, one by one. 3. I don't know what "technically sound" means. I wouldn't have guessed that it referred to list bullets or {{lang}}. 4. We've never used WP:Perfect before as kind of a "backup" page for ideas that might be good but haven't gained consensus in other guidelines yet. If we did start using the page that way, I'd suggest removing it from CAT:GEN. 5. And most important: the first 3 recommendations I see at the link given at WT:ACCESS#WCAG 2.0 aren't appropriate for Wikipedia:

• "Text Alternatives: Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need, such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language." - Getting people to put a descriptive label on images, video and audio is hard enough; making it sound like a requirement for a featured article that they have to transcribe and describe every fact contained in or implied by the media that isn't already described by text is going to alienate good contributors.
• "Time-based Media: Provide alternatives for time-based media." - Same thing.
• "1.3 Adaptable: Create content that can be presented in different ways (for example simpler layout ) without losing information or structure." - Agreed that we want pages to look good on smaller screens, but we have to keep the recommendations specific.

- Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 21:13, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

This is a checklist, not a policy. WP procedure is edit-revert-discuss; prior discussion is not a requirement.

I'm disappointed that you have removed these points - which have been present, uncontested, for a month - rather than discussing or proposing improving them, while leaving them in place.

This is not an attempt to "include other documents by reference" (though I note that several other documents are referenced by linking), nor a back-up for non-consensual ideas. It is part of a description of what makes a perfect article.

I don't see - and challenge anyone to show - how an article can be described as "perfect" if some of our visitors cannot read it because it fails to adhere to common accessibility guidelines; nor how it can be described as "perfect" if its mark-up is techncially or semantically broken.

Specifically - if the information in a media item is already in the article text, then the requirement which you cite has been met; likewise time-based media. The third recommendation is met by the fact that we offer different sins, and a layout which degrades gracefully when CSS is disabled; if an individual article over-rides, that, then it cannot be said to be "perfect".

I am happy to discuss these matters, and look forward to the restoration, qualified if neccesary, of these two key considerations to the project page. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:45, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

To field the question about the process first (your addition, my revert): on style guidelines pages, it means absolutely nothing if a change stays in til the end of the month when I do the UPDATE, if no one has looked at the page in the meantime, and this page isn't looked at often. It used to mean nothing if they stayed in for months, if everybody claimed not to have noticed the change ... at least I've got it down to a 1 month window. (Btw, I'm sympathetic ... I asked back in May I think on WP:VPP if we could please put some kind of disclaimer at the top of guidelines pages letting people know that they could only be guaranteed to be seen by anyone about once a month, and the proposal got shot down; maybe it's time to bring it up in some other context, I don't know.) Regarding "WP procedure is edit-revert-discuss; prior discussion is not a requirement": that used to be true, but WP:Policy changed in October. See Wikipedia:Policy#Changes to guideline and policy pages. Regarding "This is not an attempt to include other documents by reference": okay, show me a policy or guidelines page that says that editors should attempt to follow stylebook X or manual Y. It's not the way we do things on Wikipedia. Regarding: "common accessibility guidelines": I can't read your mind, you'll have to spell them out (at least before the statement is suitable for a guidelines page; I do the best I can with that kind of statement on talk pages.) - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 21:48, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Other than you and I, this article has been edited by four other people during that period; and no doubt read by more. As to waiting for you to do an update, perhaps WP:OWN pertains? I reiterate: this is not a policy page; therefore [{WP:POLICY]] does not apply, and in any case does not mandate what you seem to think it does. The "common accessibility guidelines" are the ones "spelt out" in the link removed by you from these guidelines, and included by you above. Surely you read the linked page before doing so? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:00, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

How about stating that the perfect article follows the current recommendations in WP:ACCESS? Accessibility is basic to the web, and all the more important for an open project like en.Wikipedia. It would seem rather imperfect to ignore it. —Michael Z. 2009-01-03 22:05 z

That's one possibility; but while we should be working to move WP:ACCESS towards full WCAG compliance, it's far from there yet; and I would expcect the benchmark for perfect articles to be set higher then for general articles. I've opened a specific section for discussion, below. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 18:35, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

• No kidding. The Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle has changed? What is being argued about here anyway? I confess that I try to keep up with the updates that Dank55 kindly provides. But I operate on a more instinctive level and have to have everything spelled out to me. What is the contention here? (Happy to add my opinion if I knew more clearly what was being disputed.) —Mattisse (Talk) 03:07, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Also, if Wikipedia:Policy#Changes to guideline and policy pages has changed, I must confess it reads just as ambiguously as ever. (My opinion and I am no police/guideline wonk.) —Mattisse (Talk) 03:14, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

The part of WP:Policies and guidelines#Changes to guideline and policy pages that has me worried is "... announced on the appropriate talk page first. The change may be implemented if no objection is made to it ..." I can just see a dispute resolution ruling: "You didn't object for 2 weeks, so now the guideline is changed, and you'll have to get consensus to change it back." If that's how it is, I'll just have to do the updates once a week. But I'm hoping people will be reasonable and let me do them once a month, and I'm really hoping someone other than me will read the style guidelines updates (no problem with the policy updates, there's a big audience for those), and challenge things that look wrong, otherwise I'm going to have a major OWNership burden in any content dispute.

Anyway, thanks for showing up and for listening, Matisse. Andy, please feel free to frame the issue however you like; I'm very open to things being added to the page, but I don't want to change the guidelines that are required at FAC to say that images and videos have to follow WCAG 2.0, which seems to say that we'd need text descriptions of everything discernable in the images and videos. We've got image backlogs without this new burden. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 03:36, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

P.S. To answer the question: yep, Matisse, BRD changed, and I wish someone had told me, I just found out last month (by looking it up myself). WP:BRD itself is an essay that points to the guideline WP:BOLD. Grutness changed BOLD in June so that it didn't apply to other people jumping into Wikiprojects and boldly changing their stuff around, and Geni extended that logic in July to policy pages; I don't have any strong feeling about that, but the logic makes a certain sense. WP:Policy changed in October to follow suit, and maybe it's too soon to know what everyone thinks of that; I've asked at WP:VPP to add WP:Policy and WP:Consensus to the update list, so that people will be more aware of these and other changes. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 03:42, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, there are pros and cons to these policies (and whatever changes). We want to encourage an editor who sees (perceives) something drastically wrong to go ahead and change it. When talk pages become so complex that I (a vastly overly educated individual) do not have the patience or ability to understand what is being discussed, then I start to see the point of the WP:BRD. I truly appreciate what you are doing, Dank55, in attempting to follow these changes and inform the community. But I flounder along without having the time to follow these (to me subtle and unfathomable) changes being made to all these pages. Maybe there should be ONE page of understandable policy regarding this issue. (I am still unclear what the issue is here, regarding this page.) —Mattisse (Talk) 03:57, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Andy? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 04:03, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I'd really rather spend time discussing the wording of the article (below). Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 18:35, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Accessibility

What should the wording on accessibility be? The recently- removed text says:

• is accessible (ideally following Web Content Accessibility Guidelines recommendations).

How can it be improved, or should it be reinstated as is? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 18:35, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

At the very least, it should be reinstated, as is. Wording can always be improved upon later. WP needs to be accessible to those using screen readers, those who are color-blind, etc. --Funandtrvl (talk) 20:43, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I'd be in favour of just “is accessible.” We haven't yet agreed on any assessment criteria, but we do have a basic guide. And trusting the judgment of an editor who decides to make things accessible is far better than omitting any mention of accessibility. —Michael Z. 2009-01-07 06:48 z

Mark-up

What should the wording on adherence to valid and semantically-meaningful mark-up be? The recently- removed text says:

• is technically sound (with lists marked up as such, foreign-language text labelled with {{lang}} or equivalent, etc.)

How can it be improved, or should it be reinstated as is? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 18:35, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Should be reinstated, especially for language links, "technically" may not be the right word, however. --Funandtrvl (talk) 21:14, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I think “is accessible” implies that this requirement is met, but it would be nice to mention it explicitly. How about “is semantically sound”? —Michael Z. 2009-01-07 06:50 z

How about "is correctly marked up…" ? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 23:20, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

That seems kind of vague. We should define what we mean in detail, even if the guideline is kept very brief. Do we mean “is marked up with Wikitext, templates, or HTML code to generate appropriate semantic HTML for all elements of the article”? —Michael Z. 2009-01-08 06:16 z

Additions to your list

1. Shows a clear structure to aid comprehension, not a "laundry list". (note present article does not follow this).

A. Groups like with like.

B. Does not duplicate content in different parts of the article.

C. Orders information to aid the reader (largest to smallest, chronological, alphabetical, etc.), preferably in whichever manner most supports understanding.

D. Has a heirarchy of categoriations.

2. Has scholarship:

A. Reflects non-Internet ("library") research, as most subjects are not yet well covered by good sources on the net.

B. Has been reviewed by a genuine subject matter expert in the field.

72.82.33.250 (talk) 10:03, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Artworks

Artworks, seriously? Why don't we just change it to the conventional artwork and try to ignore the fact that English plurals are not consistent. (Maybe I'm just ignorant.) PatheticCopyEditor (talk) 08:33, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Alright, apparently artwork is technically "uncountable". I looked in several online dictionaries and found no mention of plural form of artwork. Wiktionary does list it though. PatheticCopyEditor (talk) 05:10, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

About media content

Concerning this passage:

Includes informative, relevant images—including maps, portraits, artwork, and photographs—that add to a reader's interest or understanding of the text, but not so many as to detract from it. Each image should have an explanatory caption and ALT text.

I believe that it would better reflect "perfection" if it also mentioned other sorts of media content:

Includes informative, relevant media content—including maps, portraits, artwork, photographs, audio tracks (recorded voice, speeches etc), video tracks (silent films and animations etc), and audiovisual media—that add to a reader's interest or understanding of the text, but not so many as to detract from it. Each media should have an explanatory caption and ALT text.

I've already read What Wikipedia is not and to me it's clear that it's not forbidden to make these articles have a more "multimedia" look & feel: actually, it should be stimulated, since it tends to catch more of the reader's attention. We just need to be careful not to call too much of the reader's attention, since it can make the reader stop reading (getting distracted by the audio, visual, and audiovisual contents) and never resume reading the rest of the article. That aside, other media contents can provide information that sometimes can't be so efficiently or completely (or shortly) explained by spelled words (typed or written text).

PS: I had previously removed the word "portraits", since a human-made portrait is always a form of artwork (more frequently, a photograph, but can also be a painting or a drawing. Actually, using the word "artwork" sort of encompasses all forms of humam-made portraits and photographs). However, we can't say the same when it comes to non-human-made artwork, like those made by machines: machines can also take photos and portraits (e.g. surveillance cameras and photobooths). That's why I ended up not removing the word "portraits", neither "photographs", on my proposed text above.►Sampayu 16:17, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

NPOV

The original paragraph reads:

Is completely neutral and unbiased; it has a neutral point of view, presenting competing views on controversies logically and fairly, and pointing out all sides without favoring particular viewpoints. The most factual and accepted views are emphasized, and minority views are given a lower priority; sufficient information and references are provided so that readers can learn more about particular views.

At first glance, "Is completely neutral and unbiased [...] pointing out all sides without favoring particular viewpoints" seems contradictory with "The most factual and accepted views are emphasized", but that has always been a difficult issue to express without more context, and which is commonly misinterpreted. My impression is that reading more on the context of "neutral point of view", and the inclusion of WP:NOTABLE helps greatly to understand what "neutral and unbiased", "all sides", "emphasized" and "lower priority" really mean. I will not modify this article myself without first getting approval, as my interpretation could be erroneous, but would suggest something like:

Is neutral and unbiased; it has a neutral point of view, presenting competing views on controversies logically and fairly, and pointing out all notable sides without favoring particular viewpoints. The most factual and accepted views are emphasized, and minority views are given a lower priority; sufficient information and references to reliable sources are provided so that readers can learn more about particular views.

The "neutral", "unbiased" and "pointing out all sides", without a mention of notability and reliable source, or without understanding NPOV (especially in the context of scientific topics), is otherwise often interpreted as encouraging the collection of trivia and fringe ideas (recent example). I guess, however, that the perfect sentence also May not be attainable :) Thanks, PaleoNeonate (talk) 07:19, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Readers first

This would be good to merge with essay WP:Readers first. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:42, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

...of appropriate length

I suggest that the appropriate length for every encyclopedic article aim for 1 printed page (say 12pt). If it is longer than that, you probably haven't architected the article well, or are not sufficiently adept on the topic in order to understand how it (the knowledge you're trying to convey) breaks down into parseable nuggets. Most of these wikipedia pages, while nicely formatted with headers, don't give the reader a sense of authority because they're so strung out. User:Dreamer — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.39.112.9 (talk) 22:14, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:TPA" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Wikipedia:TPA. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 January 8#Wikipedia:TPA until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 19:25, 8 January 2021 (UTC)