CZ Talk:Article mechanics

Bold titles and introductions

Perhaps Citizendium could cut down on the practice of starting articles with "An article title is a ...". Starting an article with a definition ("A dog is an animal that barks.") is fine, but it only makes sense for the kind of topic you would find in the dictionary. Somewhere along the line, Wikipedians got the idea that all articles must start with a definition, so now there are pages that begin like

A list of widgets is a Wikipedia page that lists different widgets. Below ...

or

The 2006 terrorist bombing of Timbuktu was a terrorist bombing in Timbuktu that took place in 2006 and caused ...

Sometimes an editor realizes how redundant this is, and changes it into something like

In 2006, terrorists detonated a bomb in Timbuktu ...

as if no word in the article title were allowed to escape. In short, this convention causes redundancy and often makes article introductions awkward, sometimes almost unreadable.

But there's more: the convention also leads to the introduction of neologisms. When every article must start with a definition, one must come up with a definite term for every topic, even when no standard name exists. To take the subject area I'm most familiar with, math, there are plenty of mathematical results that are perfectly worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia but which are unfortunately "anonymous". Of course, some title is required for the article page, but this is not the same thing as endorsing a definition. If someone named Smith has proved a notable theorem on geometric progressions, it is perfectly fine to write an article with the title "Smith's theorem on geometric progressions". But it can be misleading to start the article with

In mathematics, Smith's theorem on geometric progressions says that ...

with that particular formatting. This is an inconsistency on Wikipedia since Wikipedia claims not to be prescriptive, but it is perhaps not a problem for Citizendium. Since Citizendium is expert-edited, it perhaps has the authority to be prescriptive about definitions. (Note, however, that I'm only talking about introducing names for obscure topics; definitions for controversial words like "terrorism" are a separate problem.) Fredrik Johansson 15:42, 6 February 2007 (CST)

Excellent points, Fredrik. Clearly, we must be careful about how we formulate this particular rule. Feel free to try your hand at it. --Larry Sanger 12:01, 8 February 2007 (CST)