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"Lede"

Per WP:BRD, I was bold and was reverted (as expected), so now on to discussion. :-)

I propose removing mention of the term "lede" in this guideline. It is journalism jargon. WP is not journalism. Ledes are hook (teaser) paragraphs. WP leads are abstracts (summaries). WP leads simply are not ledes (unless improperly written and destined for a cleanup tag on them). That both are the first paragraphs in their respective works is irrelevant. Some WP editors use "lede" incorrectly only because of this guideline's error, them not having been exposed to "lede" or other journojargon before; this is a strong argument against retaining "lede" here. There's no reason for our own guidelines to perpetuate and encourage the confusion. Some editors preferring it because of their own journalism background isn't a strong argument for retaining "lede" here, either, since it implies to them that there isn't actually any difference and that they should write WP leads like journalistic ledes. If this were some kind of WP:ENGVAR matter, it would be a non-issue, but the difference between the homophones is important. For a similar example see provenance and provenience, which are related and often confused, but quite distinct in meaning (a single item may have a radically different provenance and provenience). The closest thing on Wikipedia to ledes are WP:DYK and WP:ITN entries. Anyway, I'm not here to pee in any journalists' pots, and probably won't even respond further here unless someone reminds me to. I'm just making a simple case which people can accept or reject as they will. — <big ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 07:58, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm no journalist, ijustlikeit. I don't think there's much danger of confusing the nature of a Wikipedia "lede" and a journalism "lede". I simply think we've repurposed the word to be synonymous with "content in the lead section", and I think it's useful to have a shorthand way of saying that.--Father Goose (talk) 08:30, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
Like Father Goose I'm not a journalist either, and I agree with him that "lede" is an appropriate term for Wikipedia. In journalism the lede is the opening summary of an article--for a news article it summarizes the story; for entertainment or feature stories the lede is a "teaser" (like the TV announcer who teases us by saying there is "BIG NEWS at 6", but does not say what it is.) Wiki is like a news story rather than an entertainment. We have to keep our readers in mind, and many just look at the opening part of an article to get the nugget of info they want (or to decide the article is not what they want and stop reading it). The problem with the term "lead" is that it has dozens of meanings and connotations, while "lede" is much more specific and useful. To SMcCandlish that makes it "jargon"--well yes, jargon is the inside language used by editors among themselves, and not meant for the general readership. Exactly what we need as editors for the talk page, which is a meta-discussion about the structure and style of the article.Rjensen (talk) 13:06, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
We already have a shorthand way of saying "content in the lead section": "lead". And the usage of "lede" is simply incorrect. It's like saying "henceforth let's called wikilinks 'downloads', just to be different". — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 11:00, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
I don't care that much, but I do see the term "lede" as being completely pointless complication. Everyone knows what "lead" is, and even if they didn't it would be pretty darn obvious what it means. "lede" looks like a typo to the uninitiated. Is there any benefit what-so-ever to using the term "lede"? As far as I can tell, "lead" would do just as well. So we're just confusing people to no benefit at all. Why? —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 15:13, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
People who write for Wikipedia will want to stretch their language a bit. Rjensen (talk) 15:29, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
As DragonHawk said, ""lede" looks like a typo to the uninitiated ... So we're just confusing people to no benefit at all." --Philcha (talk) 16:08, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
I was uninitiated. But I came to understand what it meant on Wikipedia, and came to prefer it to "lead", as it carried an extra technical specificity. "Lead" to me can still mean lead paragraph, lead section (not the content in said section, just the section itself), or something even vaguer.--Father Goose (talk) 16:37, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
It doesn't have "extra specificity", technical or otherwise, simply confusing ambiguity, since the term actually means something we are not referring to (teasers), meanwhile "lead" isn't actually used ambiguously on WP at all, but uniformly in the sense of "the lead section". Show me any case anywhere here of anyone using "lead" to mean the "lead paragraph of an article or section but not the lead section itself". I dare ya. I really don't care at all of Father Goose and other people here and there want to misuse the term "lede" to mean "lead sectoin". All I'm saying is that our own Manual of Style (!!!) should not advocate this sort of blatant style (in the Fowler sense) violation. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 11:06, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
You do realize I've already more or less conceded the issue, right? [1]--Father Goose (talk) 20:47, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
Frankly, all the above justifications sound like elitism to me. I'm not saying that's what anyone intended, but that's how it comes across. It sounds like saying "lede" is cool because it's something others don't know and won't understand, a badge of honor for an insider's club. Jargon is useful if it serves a purpose by saving works or being specific. This is none of that. I've changed my position: I think the term should be deprecated. Before I didn't care. Now I think it's an active detriment to clear communication, used only because it's obscure. Ick. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:57, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
Oh well. I'll miss it.--Father Goose (talk) 04:32, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
Initially, I was confused and thought "lede" was a British spelling like kerb or gaol. Now that I understand it, I see no reason to prefer it over "lead", which is perfectly fine and does not cause any confusion. Ecphora (talk) 05:10, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
...and I was assuming it was US English. Off with its head! Ben MacDui 16:23, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
I also don't like "lede." There's historically a reason journalists use it, and there isn't for us. Also, what journalists call a lede is not what we call a lead anyway. For most readers, it will just look like a spelling mistake. SlimVirgin TALK contribs 05:15, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

OK. It looks like most editors do not like "the lede". But this discussion started when one editor removed "the lede" from the first sentence, which read "The lead section (also known as the introduction, the lead and sometimes 'the lede')". The next editor added it back in. It seems to me that there should be some reference in the article to "the lede" because it appears in many places and readers will want to understand what it means and will look for that here. But given the apparent dislike of the term, should the first sentence read something like-

"The lead section (also known as the introduction, the lead and sometimes (disfavored) 'the lede.')"?

Ecphora (talk) 15:31, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Meh. The best way to disfavor its use is to not mention it at all.--Father Goose (talk) 19:17, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
End of an era. :) SlimVirgin TALK contribs 21:03, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
My dictionaries give lede as an altered spelling of the noun lead (defined as a short summary serving as an introduction to a news story, article, or other copy), introduced to avoid confusion with the metal, without giving a distinction in meaning. Are there sources that explicitly state that lede is not just an alteration in spelling, but also in meaning?  --Lambiam 06:37, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Mainspace shortcuts

Some {{shortcut}} tags were removed recently, with edit summaries like "removed mainspace shortcut". Wikipedia:Cross-namespace redirects states, in part, "pseudo-namespace redirects (CAT:, P:, MOS:, etc) may be used freely." I see the "MOS:" shortcuts used all the time, and I've taken to using them myself. Is there a reason to be removing these I'm not aware of? Objections to their restoration? —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 04:56, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Anyone? If there are no objections, I'll put them back. I find them useful. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 05:27, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Bolding variants of titles

Currently, Wikipedia:Lead section#Abbreviations and synonyms says "if the subject of the page has a common abbreviation or more than one name, the abbreviation (in parentheses) and each additional name should be in boldface on its first appearance." At Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/Shortlist Music Prize/archive1 there is confusion over whether the old names for the Shortlist Music Prize should be in bold (e.g. "Shortlist Prize for Artistic Achievement in Music"). They are not abbreviations, and technically are not synonyms, but wouldn't it make sense to bold them. as readers may refer to the prize by its old name? Dabomb87 (talk) 23:31, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Btw, I am the one who started the issue at the FLC, and I am okay with anything decided here. I'm just confused on the guideline.--Truco 503 23:40, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
I would think it would make sense to bold them, especially if there are redirects from those names. I see the purpose of the boldface as letting the reader know what the article is about, and to clue in how they got to that page (redirects, search results can both lead to pages not of the same name). —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 02:47, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
I think they should be bolded only if they are exact or very near synonyms of the title. Often there are redirects from topics that are treated in the target article, but that mean something fairly different from the target article's title. Often I see these bolded — I generally down-emphasize them to italics. --Trovatore (talk) 03:17, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Oh — old names for the same thing? Yeah, I think that's close enough. It's a judgment call. --Trovatore (talk) 03:25, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Form of first sentence.

There are articles which start with things like "A one-way street is a street on which vehicles should only move in one direction." I might write "On a one-way street, vehicles should only move in one direction."

It's not a big deal, but this came up at covered bridge where an editor claimed it was actually the Wikipedia standard! --99.245.206.188 (talk) 17:28, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

The first sentence you give has more of an encyclopedic tone, whereas the second is something you might see in a driving manual. Aside from issues of tone, WP:OBVIOUS is what we like to see, especially in the lead sentence. It may seem pedantic sometimes but that is kind of the purpose of an encyclopedia.--Father Goose (talk) 23:09, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I take your point about tone. But "an X Y is a Y that is X" is beyond pedantry. Even WP:OBVIOUS says repetition is unnecessary. --99.245.206.188 (talk) 23:54, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
The second form could be taken as not defining what a one-way street is, only noting a feature of a one-way street. You're supposed to be defining it, not noting features.- Wolfkeeper 00:09, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Well, to take the covered bridge as an example, it's good to note that it's a bridge-type-bridge, as it's not inconceivable that a "covered bridge" could be some kind of dental device.
Separately, I grant that the one-way street article is a bit Dick and Jane in its current form. It could use a copyedit.--Father Goose (talk) 02:10, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Experimenting with a cool new template

I created a cool new template, {{down arrow}}. It is lets you indicate when material in the lead will get greater coverage in the body. I've tested it at Morse v. Frederick and Callisto. Let me know what you think. Andrew Gradman talk/WP:Hornbook 06:13, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

It's an intriguing idea, but visually, it's awful. Arrows, underlining and italicizing seriously interrupt the visual flow of the text, making it less readable. I grant that just using a regular blue link would create confusion over whether a link was to an article about "orbital radii" or to a subsection specifically about "Callisto's orbital radius". You'll need a way to distinguish between same-article and other-article links that is subtle enough to not break up the text flow but still clearly marks that it is an intra-article link.
If you don't mind, I'll experiment with it a little to see how possible that is.--Father Goose (talk) 07:54, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Yes, please experiment. I'm glad you pointed out what I left unspoken -- namely, there is a chronic problem that using a regular blue link can created confusion over whether the link is to another article or a section within the article. That is ultimately what I'm trying to solve. Andrew Gradman talk/WP:Hornbook 07:57, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
I'd also recommend you undo its use in the articles you put it in -- two of them are featured articles, and FAs should not be treated as a testbed for style or template experiments. I'm wary of experimenting with the template more because any errors I make will show up in those high-visibility articles.--Father Goose (talk) 08:05, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
You could always make it another slightly different shade of blue, as is already done for external vs. internal links. --Cybercobra (talk) 08:26, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Good thought, Cybercobra. FYI I'm now trying to gather the conversation at [pump (misc)]. Andrew Gradman talk/WP:Hornbook 08:33, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Transclusions

I moved the “Link to subarticle” section into the “Elements”, since it precedes the Lead paragraph. I also made “Lead sentence format” a subsection of “Lead sentence”.

Obviously, the transclusion scheme interferes with such edits which are not restricted to a single transcluded section. Sorry. A bit of clean-up is still required. I suggest that these guidelines specific to the lead section be linked from elsewhere, instead of appearing in two places. If you must transclude two adjacent sections, then put them in a single page, so at least they can be edited together. -- Michael (Z.) 22:08, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Consolidation?

Please note that this page has been nominated to be consolidated with the primary Manual of Style page. Please join the discussion at the MOS talk page in order to discus the possibility of merging this page with the MOS. Thank you.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 20:57, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Comment The Consolidation? discussion was moved to the archives, and the "Discuss" link is therefore rotted. If the discussion is taking place elsewhere, I'm not able to find it (easily). Someone who is familiar with the discussion should remove the merge template or update the "discuss" link. – Kerαunoςcopia◁galaxies 18:50, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
This pursuit seems to have petered out. The last comment in the only evident discussion was a month ago. Consequently, I am removing the merge tag. ENeville (talk) 17:44, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Length

The length recommendation doesn't provide meaningful guidance on the appropriate length for short articles. For example, I've recently found an editor who insists that an article of only five short paragraphs must have a two-paragraph lead, summarizing the other paragraphs by repeating the same information in almost as much detail. For an article that short, that level of repetition reads really badly. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 21:43, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

MoS naming style

There is currently an ongoing discussion about the future of this and others MoS naming style. Please consider the issues raised in the discussion and vote if you wish GnevinAWB (talk) 20:53, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

This is a list of X

WP:Lead section#First sentence says "If the page is a list, do not introduce the list as 'This is a list of X'". But according to this, over 400,000 Wikipedia lists do exactly that (the first Google search page isn't typical of what comes afterwards). Do you really want to rewrite that many list pages, and is there an opening phrase you think is better? Art LaPella (talk) 21:25, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

That just means 400,000 articles need work. :) There is no one better phrase (robots rarely write brilliant prose); it's better to just briefly introduce the background and summarize the list and its scope. That depends on the subject.
(Yes, the above message is 18 days old. It shouldn't have been pigeonholed Congress-style, though, and was well worth a response.) --an odd name 20:36, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
This indicates the 400,000 lists have a definition, and proabably do not have any form of external validation. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:12, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Changes

An IP is changing the "Format of the first sentence" section to his personally-approved version. The original version has been around since atleast January. Grsz11 19:28, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for a new template and /Sum summary pages

The purpose of this proposal is to promote consistency of information across articles.

As I understand it, the lead needs to both briefly define the topic and summarize the article. I propose (i) that these summaries be kept in a subpage ~/Sum and (ii) that a (to-be-written) template transcludes the summary into (a) the lead after the first paragraph and (b) any other article that needs to summarize the article.

I am aware that subpages are currently not supported in article-space, but I would like to point out that this is to discourage hierarchical structures and that keeping summaries in a subpage does not constitute such a hierarchy. I do not know whether it will be easy to make an exception for summary pages, but I believe it would be well worth the effort.

Note that comparable proposals have been discussed at Wikipedia_talk:Transclude_text and Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_115#Post_"core_concept"_trial:_time_to_revisit_Hans_Adler's_"core_concept"?. Clearly, a common solution would be preferable.

What I envisage is (i) a summary without any subheadings and to be transcluded as-is, (ii) the summary in the lead enclosed in a box, (iii) the summary in other articles referring the reader/editor to the main page, both for more information and for editing and (iv) the summary in the lead showing an edit-link (inside the box) to the subpage.

I have done some experimentation based on the {{documentation}} template, but I found the way the code is embedded in the wiki-system too complicated for me. However, the results I got showed that the scheme is feasible.

Hpvpp (talk) 08:00, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

  • I can understand the motivation of trying to make summaries easier to reuse, but this idea would make ledes too much harder to edit. To be done properly, it would need support by MediaWiki so that no explicit subpages would be exposed to the user, and there is no such functionality currently. --Cybercobra (talk) 08:14, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Some quick thoughts:
  • Pro: I think this could be done without changes to the underlying software. We already have templates with an edit link that takes you directly to the text in the template.
  • Contra: Most leads are not ready for consumption by an article that might want to use them, and we shouldn't have to rewrite the leads so that they are. There may be a way around this with text that varies depending on whether it is included in the article or elsewhere, but that's too complicated.
  • Contra: When you edit the article itself as a whole, you need two browser windows to move things around between the article and the lead. In contentious articles the lead typically has footnotes, which are often named footnotes shared with the rest of the article. If you rename one of them in the body by searching for it, you will miss the lead. (There is a bot for fixing such mistakes, and I guess it could be updated to know about this use of transclusion.)
  • This would encourage more inter-article consistency even in minor points such as spelling and choice of words. We must be aware that this would also create a new type of friction, as it could open a massive debate about WP:ENGVAR.
  • In uncontentious articles the lead should not normally have footnotes. However, in an article re-using the lead the transcluded text needs them because it needs to be verifiable. We could change our practice and use footnotes in the lead in such cases, but that means that even the footnoting/citation styles need to be consistent between related articles. Hans Adler 10:02, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose. While it's technically possible, the lead needs to be just as available for exactly the same group of editors who watch the article. It will need tweaking when significant changes are made to the article, and with controversial articles there will be debate over both the body and the lead. This would mean watchlisting four articles (including talk pages), not just two. No, keep things the way they are. This has been tried before with other parts as well and hasn't received support. -- Brangifer (talk) 13:57, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
  • This seems like a solution in search of a problem. The lead section should summarize the article that it appears on. It is therefore not particularly useful to have the lead separated from that article. Also, there are not all that many sets of articles that need to recycle portions of a lead. Internal links are a better way to refer to concepts across articles, rather than duplicating stretches of text. Furthermore, as Cybercobra and others suggest, use of a subpage or a template makes it more difficult to edit the lead, for example when changes in the rest of the article need to be reflected in the lead. I don't see an important problem that this change would solve, but do see it introducing additional complexities. Something like style sheets or guidelines developed by various WikiProjects seems like a much better way to encourage consistency. Cnilep (talk) 14:21, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose. An unneccessarily complicated system that would make it exceedingly difficult for experienced editors to coherently edit articles, let alone for newbies, undermining the "anyone can edit" ethos of Wikipedia. Just a bad idea. oknazevad (talk) 16:12, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Response to criticisms

The balance of the response so far is negative, but I fear that some of them were made in haste. Three issues I see as follows.

(i) The phrase “anyone can edit” is a slogan rather than a truth. Only admins can edit protected pages, only registered editors can edit semi-protected pages. What this shows is a clear distinction between ‘capacity’ and ‘ability’. Certainly, anyone has, in principle, the capacity to edit anything, but not anyone is able to do so properly, i.e. take into account the contextual requirements. And the reality of this is shown by, for example, the existence of the {{expert-subject}} tag. The implication is that summaries (and leads generally) should only be edited by editors who know what they are doing. And this is even more true for summaries that are included in other pages. To be sure, the style of a ‘calling’ page might clash with the style of the ‘main’ page, but wikipedia as a whole can only improve by the consequent promoting of “inter-article consistency” and any WP:ENGVAR debates will probably only serve to promote more tolerance and NPOV amongst editors.

(ii) The complaint that having transcluded summaries makes it harder for editors to maintain pages is misguided. The supporting software will make it completely transparent. Certainly, editing both an article and its summary requires keeping open two windows, but any editor worth his salt should know how to drive his pc.

(iii) Leads should have no footnotes simply because they need to be able to stand on their own. Verificational material will be in the main body of the article, available for the interested reader. Likewise, summaries should have no footnotes and this would be especially true for summaries on other pages. Readers wishing to verify the claims made in such a summary can do so by referring to the main article.

The main point, however, is that the use of transcluded summaries is optional and only really appropriate in cases where a set of articles has a well-defined structure. That can be the result both of design and of splitting off subpages where article have grown too big. Note that such sets of articles tend to be maintained as a group such that the style of the various articles is likely to be at least compatible. Note also that the various project groups within Wikipedia are inherently interested in promoting inter-article consistency and can be expected to rewrite leads if that improves the overall quality of the articles in their charge.

Please, reconsider.

Hpvpp (talk) 04:47, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't see that you've argued why this is actually necessary yet. It still looks like, as Cnilep succinctly put it above, a solution in need of a problem. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:15, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree that it is a solution in search of a problem. Furthermore, what is actually needed in the other articles may be quite different: one might have a section with a {{Main|Cancer}} in Chemotherapy that needs primarily a summary of cancer treatments, whereas the same link in a section at articles like Disease or Types of cancer might need almost nothing about treatment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:24, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposal withdrawn, discussion closed.

Hpvpp (talk) 22:27, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

"Abbreviations and synonyms" section

The example given here is poor as it contains several links to other articles in the bold text (egreciously, a run-on link between "sodium" and "hydroxide" without even a space, and then a bold link to lye which has a different meaning). Editing the given example would make it more complicated (it's basically just not a good example); a more straightforward case should be chosen. I'll try to find a good one myself. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 15:14, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

I've sorted both the example and the article it was drawn from. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:42, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Geographical context

Could this part of the manual have some specific guidance on placing articles in geographical context? I tend to add a city and country to intro paragraphs of articles, but on several occasions editors go in and remove this reference. For example, I believe an article on a building in London should say at the start that it is located in London, UK, to disambiguate it from London in Canada, East London in South Africa, or any other Londons that may exist. Some argue that a reader may be able to infer the location by deeper reading or clicking on links, but I feel that rather misses the point. I can't find any clear guidance on this but it seems clearly sensible to include a short and very basic statement of geography. There is a cleanup message template which addresses this issue, so are there any MOS notes on this? Cnbrb (talk) 11:13, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Citations in the lead

I challenge the need for in-line citations in the lead when the lead is accurately summarizing a part of the article. I believe this is bad for the aim of Wikipedia as an encyclopaedia. What I would much prefer for the lead in such circumstances is a template saying it is not accurately summarizing. The bit it is summarizing should of course be well cited and developed from a neutral point of view.

There are a number of problems with the current scheme.

  • It divorces the lead from the article in as much as instead of describing a part of the article it is describing what is in a source instead.
  • Citations get duplicated meaning people must learn about named citations or have a mess at the end.
  • The leader tends to have a long list of citations after individual statements since they summarize a number of sources.
  • It makes the leader stilted and less approachable instead of being an easy introduction into the article.

These problems are exacerbated by the number of drive-by editors going round sticking {{cn}} on every statement that doesn't have a citation without doing even minor reality checks like looking at the content list and seeing if the statement is describing a well supported section of the article. Since the lead is the first thing they see they stick them in there.

My own feeling about it is that the article body itself should be the main citation for the lead rather than requiring separate citations. The major requirement of the lead should be that firstly it describes what the topic is for notability, and secondly it should give an easy summary of the article. It should not just be a collection of cited snippets with no decent summary at the top. Dmcq (talk) 10:35, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

  • Oppose, both as this contravenes policy and is not best practise. My experience at the article Accountancy suggests that the lead paragraphs of most articles that don't have citations will end up being written and rewritten ad nauseum, with hundreds of tiny but unattributed changes made. This "goldfish editing", in which many insubstantial changes ("nibbling") are made without any memory to what went before, will continue until such time as incline citations are provided. It is far better to "nail down" the lead paragraphs with inline citations rather than leave an article open to the additon of trivia or original research. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:57, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm saying the current policy is bad for the encyclopaedia. Perhaps a marker like a citation referencing the section of the article that is being summarized could be used to fix the problem you see. That way one would still have citations but for summary statements the citation is a section of the article. This could be used on summary statements before a number of subsections for instance as well as in the leader. Having a template for inaccurate or unreasonable summary would also make it easier to mark such statements. Dmcq (talk) 11:09, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
I just had a look at the Accountancy article and it is a clear example of the first problem - the lead and the article body going their separate ways. They are practically two different articles with things discussed in the lead and never mentioned in the body. Dmcq (talk) 11:20, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
  • I quite agree with Dmcq. There should be no citations in the lead section of a mature article, or in any other section that summarizes some other article. The lead should result from the text - it's entirely wrong-headed to "nail down" things in the lead as Gavin suggests by including citations; we should nail them down once in the text, and then restate them as appropriate in the lead. There will of course be disputes about what information is important enough to go in the lead, but that's editorial judgment, and nothing to do with the ability to cite sources. The idea that this is somehow against policy is ridiculous - policy requires that statements be verifiable, and they are if citations are given for those statements where they appear in the body of the article.--Kotniski (talk) 11:12, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure one could get away not having citations if you summarize a different article entirely. The articles are developed independently of one another and anything could happen to the other article so the summary becomes inaccurate, never mind people disputing the material in the other article. At least in a single article an editor has some duty to make the single article reasonable in itself. But it would be nice to be able to easily mark the summary as inaccurate. Dmcq (talk) 11:27, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry I thought I'd put a note here that the discussion had been centralized at Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability#Citations_in_the_lead. Anyway the discussion has moved on there to further sections and yes I'd like any further discussion to be in that Verifiability talk page please. Dmcq (talk) 19:09, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

  • Support. Citations in the lead are a bad thing, making the lead unreadable. The lead should be verifiable against the article itself, without need for any additional citations. We should not allow the lead to contain any information not present in the article itself, and therefore citations in the lead will always be redundant. Marokwitz (talk) 10:43, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
  • The present situation is not good, since today if you add uncited facts to the lead, especially in controversial issues, they will be immediately reverted, despite being covered in the article. So de-facto you need to add citations to every sentence in the lead. This is bad. Marokwitz (talk) 06:41, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
  • Keep existing standard of WP:LEADCITE. It does not require the lead to have citations, and encourages them to be moved to the body. However if there are facts that are subject to be challenged in the lead, it would not prevent editors from citing them again. --Teancum (talk) 12:10, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose change. First, attaching citations to facts is a critical practice in the development of verifiable articles and we certainly shouldn't be prohibiting the practice. Replacing a specific citation to a source with an implied citation to a potentially very long article body, where the text may or may not actually be supported, is a step backward. Second, this is not practical for articles whose leads contain controversial or disputed wording. The current wording is fine. Christopher Parham (talk) 03:31, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Order of Foreign character warning boxes in lead?

As per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lead section) "The lead section may contain optional elements presented in the following order: disambiguation links (dablinks), maintenance tags, infoboxes, images, navigational boxes (navigational templates), introductory text, and table of contents, moving to the heading of the first section."

What about templates such as {{chinesetext}}? Where do they fall in this order? We've got a holdup at FAC because of a dispute over placement. One editor saying it should come first, as it will tell editors why they are seeing question marks or boxes, while another editor thinks it should come after the infobox, because if it comes first, it is "butt ugly." I'd like the counsel of the learned watchers of this page. ɳorɑfʈ Talk! 06:25, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

If in doubt, run in circ... copy. The FAs Economy of the Han Dynasty and Flag of Hong Kong place it after the infobox or first-image. I'd recommend that. If the infobox in the article you're discussing is more than a fullscreen long, then perhaps the warning could be placed first, but I'd be hesitant to ever recommend that. HTH. (Whichever you decide on, the article Flag of Japan needs one of those warnings :) -- Quiddity (talk) 19:01, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
It is more than a fullscreen long, but what you're saying makes sense. If the infobox is short enough that the warning box can be seen after the infobox without scrolling, then putting it after means the reader can still ascertain right away why some characters do not display correctly. ɳorɑfʈ Talk! 23:32, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
That's what I was trying to say :)
For the guideline itself (which you and Kotniski have been tweaking, and I'll leave up to you), I'd suggest something along the lines of: "Foreign character warning boxes, if required, should come adjacent to, or near, any text that has the foreign characters in question, such that scrolling is not required to see the box."
I'd be opposed to a requirement that the warning box be before the infobox (as it currently says). It clearly works well after the infobox at Flag of Hong Kong. -- Quiddity (talk) 01:10, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
I like that! Will insert it as written. ɳorɑfʈ Talk! 01:14, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
There was also an accessibility-related discussion about this issue at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (accessibility). To expand on my comment there that it doesn't matter to me as a screen reader user, it's easy to tell from the context that an article is about a topic where special characters will be used (e.g. a Chinese, Japanese or Russian topic). It is true that screen readers read pages linearly according to the placement of wiki-markup, so putting a foreign characters warning above the infobox *might* be less confusing for some novice users. However many screen reader users skim-read through pages, and it's entirely possible that they could miss the notice no matter where it is placed. I just don't want people to make an article look "butt ugly" just because of a very minor accessibility concern. The issue is made even more insignificant because Wikipedia does (or should) provide transliterations for all non-Latin terms, or puts them in brackets where they can be easily distinguished by screen reader users. Graham87 14:19, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
I was asked to comment here, but I see it's been dealt with. In general I'd say this is the sort of thing that main writers of FAs should decide. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 22:59, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Quoting one specific source for a lead definition?

Is it appropriate to define a subject matter in the first sentence of the lead by using language from one specific source? See example here:

What about when the subject matter is very mainstream but the language chosen from one source is a bit different than most other similar sources? See example here;

My inclination is to say that the definition of a subject matter should never be quoted word for word from one source, but maybe I'm wrong. In the second example, almost every other tertiary source simply states something like "Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people", but some editors who do not think this is adequate found one tertiary source that says more than this and have insisted on that source defining the subject in the lead (see extensive talk page discussion, perhaps some in the archives). I can't see anything specifically addressing the quotation issue in the current style page which is why I'm posting the question here. Thanks.Griswaldo (talk) 14:15, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

I would have thought this was more than a style issue - it's a question of core principles of neutrality/verifiability. We can't just pick one source we like out of many, knowing that other sources don't back the statement up. We have to reflect the totality of the sources.--Kotniski (talk) 18:24, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

redundancy

Added avoid redundancy in 1st sentence. This is a problem in many Diplomatic relationship articles, for example. BillMasen (talk) 11:26, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Placement of pronunciation data

Please visit Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (pronunciation)#Could we have a guideline on pronunciation placement? and weigh in on whether or not pronunciation data should be placed in the lede sentence. Thanks. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:00, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Guideline on native names

I'm not sure where the relevant page is, so just posting this here.

Many articles about foreign topics include a native-language name in the first sentence of the lede, in the infobox, or both. See, for example, Jay Chou and Zhang Yuqi. Sometimes the same information is duplicated across both places. (In my experience, biographies like the ones mentioned above often have the name stuff duplicated, whereas articles about placenames do less so—see for instance Weifang, Wuhan—since I think city infoboxes don't have parameters for that; for places with a lot of names, though, there is sometimes a dedicated box just for that, as in Ürümqi.) Most of my experience with this is in China-related articles, but I'm sure infoboxes related to other places also have this issue.

Anyway, I'm just wondering if there is a guideline about where language information should go in these cases. rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:17, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

WP:BOLDTITLE: foreign titles wording and italics

Recently, a few questions about WP:BOLDTITLE, specifically the "Foreign language" section, have come up. It'd be nice to get some more input on this as I don't think these issues were considered when the guideline was originally added.

1. "Do not boldface foreign names not normally used in English". Now, there are pretty obvious cases where foreign titles would not be bolded, but others, such as Super Famicom, seem a lot less apparent. The name is not normally used when talking about the console in an English-speaking country, but it will almost exclusively be used when discussing things such as Japan-only game releases. Bottom-line: Should "normally used in English" only refer to the article's subject as we would know and discuss it in English, or should this also apply to using the foreign title in English when discussing it in a foreign context? I am leaning towards the former.

2. Looking across articles on Wikipedia, there does seem to be some confusion on WP:BOLDTITLE, anyway. Even the second example, Inuk, is not italicized in the article as it is described in the guideline, though bolded instead: Later, the word Inuktitut appears italicized for the first appearance only, then given normally in subsequent uses – while Qaniujaaqpait is always italicized. It seems confusing to mention using italics for foreign language words in WP:BOLDTITLE, a lead-specific guideline, when italics should be used for such terms in the whole article anyway. Then, "Foreign names (including transcriptions) that use the Roman alphabet should be italicized if they are not bolded". There are again some problems with that: This might be okay for transcriptions/transliterations, but using italics for every non-boldface foreign term in the lead (but not later in the text) again seems confusing to me if those would not normally be italicized. The Super Famicom example comes to mind. But also other, more problematic cases, where WP:BOLDTITLE even contradicts the text formatting guidelines: See "The Three Linden Trees", for example. WP:BOLDTITLE would suggest to use italics for the foreign title "Drei Linden", while the other guideline says italics should not be used for short story titles. I would suggest to remove the sentence "Foreign names (including transcriptions) that use the Roman alphabet should be italicized if they are not bolded; those written in other alphabets (such as Cyrillic) should not." and to word it more like "However, some foreign names should be italicized. These cases are described in the Manual of Style for text formatting."

Prime Blue (talk) 22:40, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Archives

Does anyone know what has happened to the page archives, and how we can get them to list in the archive box? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 15:28, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

They got left behind in the move.  Fixed –xenotalk 15:35, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
That's brilliant, thank you! SlimVirgin talk|contribs 16:30, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Clarification of order of items in the lead section

I am looking for some clarification on the order of items for the lead section of an article. I have found were it states that templates for things like For, About, See also, Other, redirect and problems goes above the infobox but there doesn't seem to be any clear guidance beyong that. For example the instructions for the footers order states specifically that the order of items in the footer of an article should be See also, Notes/References, Further reading, External links, Navigation templates/link farms, then persondata, then defaultsort or the equivalent then categories etc. I am attempting to create logic for an AWB that will fix the order of items in an article. I already have a bunch of logic to fix things in the footer but the lede section order seems a bit more ambiguous. --Kumioko (talk) 13:42, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

IMO there's no chance of a standard order, because articles vary so much. For example I've written GAs about:
  • Phyla, where the lead may include both a short description and the critters impact on humans - mainly good for Arthropods, mainly bad for Flatworms
  • Computer games, where the lead may emphasise the reviews cited in the main text, as these reviews tell the reader whether the game is good.

First sentence

The lead of this guideline and the "First_sentence" section both say that the first sentence of an article should explain why the subject is notable. I disagree with this as a general rule, and it does not appear to be a commonly upheld policy either.

Looking at the first 6 featured articles, only one of them follows this policy and that is a biography. The example mentioned in the "first sentence" section also happens to come from a biography, while the example in the following section fails to explain why the electron is notable (also an FA, by the way, although I personally think it's a poor lead!). Before generalising from these findings, however, it should be noted that biographies do not all follow this rule, either. "Tom Cruise is an actor and producer" is a perfectly adequate first sentence but doesn't (and shouldn't) complicate things by trying to explain why he is a notable actor immediately - that is left to the next sentence. I think this is telling us something: it should be the exception rather than the rule to establish notability in the VERY FIRST sentence.

Where I think this first sentence policy is important is for subjects that are notable for only one reason and, even then, good prose is more important. My proposal is to lose mention of the notability in the first sentence but stress that it should be mentioned early on. So the start of the first sentence section should be changed to simply: "The article should begin with a declarative sentence telling the nonspecialist reader what (or who) is its subject". The following list can then include the clarification that, "for subjects notable for only one reason, this reason should usually be given in the first sentence".

I do agree that notability should be explained early on in an article and early on in a lead, however, so am not suggesting we lose this entirely from the guideline. I suggest modifying the Provide_an_accessible_overview section to compensate. Adding something along the lines of "The reason for the topic being noteworthy should be established early on in the lead", perhaps. This could be a new sentence in that section, just after the first sentence, or it could be tied in with the suggestion to create interest in the topic of the article.

I'm going to make an edit so people can see what I'm talking about more easily. GDallimore (Talk) 00:50, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Diff here. Had a couple more ideas while actually writing it. GDallimore (Talk) 00:53, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

"by default there is no edit link"

The new skin seems to have an edit link for the lead section by default, or at least, I get an edit link when I switch over to the new skin. Perhaps we don't need this section any more? I'm not sure how many monobook editors we have left who don't know this already. - Dank (push to talk) 18:17, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Précis?

Is the lead a Précis of the article? I think there should be something on the page about the lead being a Précis (or not, and what the differences are). Totnesmartin (talk) 21:51, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

RfC: "Prestigious" at Harvard University

There's a RfC regarding the use of "prestigious" in the lead of the Harvard University article. Given that whatever consensus emerges from this discussion (if any) could potentially set a precedent for the use of this/these term(s) at other university articles and in other contexts as well, I would like to solicit other editors' feedback on the issue. Please review the discussion and leave your feedback here. Madcoverboy (talk) 18:46, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Lede revisited

The lead/lede of this guideline, after a series of edits in the past few days, read:

The lead section (also known as the introduction, lead, or lede) of a Wikipedia article is the section before the table of contents and the first heading. The lead serves both as an introduction to the article and as a summary of its most important aspects.

Apparently there was a discussion in January on this talk page, when the term "lede" was deprecated by some; it was removed from the guideline's own lead at that time—and has been removed again now. Although I don't typically use that spelling myself, in my experience other editors very commonly do. There was not complete agreement in the earlier discussion, so I'm raising it again. It seems to me that the guideline should mention it in its lead as above. PL290 (talk) 08:22, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it really matters whether the term is in the first sentence of the MOS. Either way "lede" is the standard professional term, so plenty of people will use it (it's not as if removing it here causes people's vocabulary to change). The main argument I see for putting it here is to help people who may not recognize the spelling (note WP:LEDE redirects here). It seems like a very minor issue. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:40, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
As Carl said, it is used by editors. So it should be in the guideline, which is meant to be descriptive more than prescriptive. At the very least, it'll help prevent confusion for the new editors who stumble upon the term. oknazevad (talk) 12:52, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
It doesn't need to be in the guideline. [2] and Lead paragraph explain it's history and meaning better than could or even should be done here. As these links make clear, lede is journalistic jargon. Wikipedia is not journalism and should avoid unecessary jargon when there is no realistic chance of confusion - and even if there is, it's hardly a big deal. To the contrary, promoting this unusual word probably leads to more confusion than just omitting it entirely.
There was also a key argument made in Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(lead_section)/Archive_13#.22Lede.22 that lede is an innacurate word to use to describe the lead paragraphs of Wikipedia articles: "Ledes are hook (teaser) paragraphs. WP leads are abstracts (summaries)" GDallimore (Talk) 15:31, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
As I understand it, "lede" (spelt that way to distinguish it from lead type) isn't necessarily a "teaser"; I've always thought of it as that stand-alone bare-facts summary paragraph at the top of a story, such as "President Kennedy was shot and killed yesterday afternoon in Dallas, Texas." In standard journalistic practice, the lede paragraph gives enough information to stand alone even if the rest of the story is cut (e.g. in news summaries or republication elsewhere). This isn't true of teasers. "Burying the lede" is to hide the most salient fact deep in the story, such as beginning the story with "President and Mrs. Kennedy were greeted by enthusiastic crowds in this deeply-Republican Texas city yesterday afternoon. Mrs. Kennedy's pink suit shone in the midday sun, as the motorcade, which also carried Texas' Democratic Gov. John Connally, ..." —— Shakescene (talk) 15:59, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
"Lead section" and "Lede section" are the same thing. If it's incorrect to call our introductions "ledes", it's equally incorrect to call them "leads", because that's just a different spelling of the same word. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:44, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Keep lede. It's a synonym, and it's widely used by the sort of people who might be attracted to writing for Wikipedia. I've seen lede used a good bit by editors in talk pages, so having it listed here will probably make things less confusing for those who aren't familiar with the term. It costs nothing; why turn it into an issue? As for jargon, well, let he who has never thrown WP:BLAH links about, cast the first stone... We all use jargon here! // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 19:49, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
  • keep lede it's an appropriate word and it's taught in college-level journalism classes; I expect someday it will be taught in college level Wikipedia classes.Rjensen (talk) 22:41, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Keep lede It is an English language word variant. ɳorɑfʈ Talk! 00:04, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Keep lede for the same reasons described above. I understand some people don't like it, but the case that lede is "wrong" is not convincing. The way to handle that (for editors that deprecate it) is to simply not use it—not to try and impose your particular opinion on other editors. --Airborne84 (talk) 01:19, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
  • keep lede for the reasons best summarised by macwhiz above. In addition, the reason why it turned into an issue is - as is usually the case with aggressive stances towards certain words or spellings and calls for censorship - that it is an WP:ENGVAR issue. Incorrect claims to the contrary in previous discussions can be easily disproved by looking in a few dictionaries. See (surprisingly) universally missing entry for lede in UK dictionaries (Oxford Dictionaries Online, Cambridge, Longman, Macmillan, Chambers, Collins) vs. entry even without jargon label in US dictionaries. This is very surprising because UK dictionaries are usually good at reporting international usage (much better than U.S. dictionaries). It seems even online versions of commercial dictionaries still need an inordinate amount of time to react to changes as can be seen by the citations and notes in Wiktionary. Merriam-Webster has started an "open dictionary" because they apparently realise they're so slow that people will soon stop buying or have stopped buying commercial dictionaries. --Espoo (talk) 06:19, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Comment The irony was I came here to ask about why I've been seeing editors use the term "lede" recently... :P bahamut0013wordsdeeds 12:58, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Simple descriptions

I see that, in the MOS:BOLDTITLE section, article titles that constitute "simple descriptions" should be in boldface--an exception to the rule that (presumably "complex") descriptions should not be bold (itself an exception to the rule that article titles in general should be bold). But there's a clarification tag on the "simple descriptions" part. How does one determine whether or not an article title is "simple" or non-simple? I think I've figured out the resolution to this problem. "History of the United States" and "Timeline of prehistoric Scotland" are provided as examples of simple descriptions, while "Electrical characteristics of dynamic loudspeakers" is given as a sample of a regular descriptive title. The difference between the simple descriptions and other descriptions is that the simple descriptions describe the article (History of the United States is a history of the United States, and Timeline of prehistoric Scotland is a timeline of prehistoric Scotland), whereas other descriptions describe semantic categories (the Electrical characteristics of dynamic loudspeakers article is not, itself, an electrical characteristic of dynamic loudspeakers, but its title does denote a way that certain entities can be grouped together in a reasonable way). "Simple" and "complex" denote actual distinctions in biology; yet, as the evolution of complexity article notes, even scientists have a hard time figuring out where this distinction actually lies. I would, therefore, try to avoid that type of delineation in the comparatively subjective effort of writing an encyclopedia. Or, rather, I would keep the general distinction, but would rename it so that more objective judgment can be put to use in the encyclopedic effort. Namely, I would change "simple descriptions" to "article descriptions" (which may appear in boldface), and would give the unnamed other descriptions the name of "categorical descriptions" (which should not be bold). Then we could get rid of that pesky clarification tag, allowing the MoS to come across as more sure of itself. How does this approach sound? Cosmic Latte (talk) 07:46, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

For an alternative approach, see [3]--a response to my comment regarding the article that Mann jess mentions. If we go with my approach, then the title of that article (Objections to evolution) would be a non-boldface categorical description (because the article is about objections to evolution, but does not actually constitute such an objection). If we go with Mann jess's approach, then the title of this article would be a boldface simple description, because the opening line contains the title verbatim. To be perfectly honest, I don't know whose approach is better (nor do I know what additional ideas may come to light), but I do know that, one way or another, the issue ought to be resolved, and the clarification tag ultimately removed. Cosmic Latte (talk) 18:55, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Overuse of {zh} template (and others)

The {{zh}} template – and others, such as {{lang-uk}} used as an example in the guideline – seems to be grossly overused. In some cases, overzealous editors acting in good faith unintentionally create an enormous amount of clutter using it in the lead section, populating all possible parameters. Chinese in particular poses a problem as there are two script variants, and multiple phonetic variants (dialects often supported by one or more romanisation protocols). This being English Wikipedia, sinogrammes and their different pronunciations are of secondary importance. I feel the use of such inline templates in the lead should be discouraged, with any such linguistic element being as far as possible be included in infoboxes such as {{Chinese}}, where they are less likely to cause visual interrupt to the reading experience (not to mention the editing experience). I would propose that the template include specific instructions for such templates not to be used inline in the lede section. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 03:08, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

"...are of secondary importance"... let's really not go there...
the sinogrammes ought to be included with the first mention of anything important. I propose that for the bulk of paragraphs, the following format is used: (简体/繁體 [if difference exists]). Only once in a while, and preferably at the head of a section or a large paragraph, should the full template be used. In any case, the "links=off" parameter ought to be utilised for all Chinese terms in a section except the first one; we ought to avoid overlinking.
Converting the names of many places in mainland China and Taiwan (where pinyin is primary, ofc) would help to reduce the usage of the pinyin parameter in the ZH template. I don't know why this is not implemented more extensively x.x --HXL 何献龙 04:37, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean by "converting the names", do you mean moving the pages? This would probably meet significant opposition for many places in Taiwan, for instance Taichung (no one spells it "Taizhong") and National Chung Cheng University (same deal). rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:49, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
sorry for the vagueness. by "converting", I intended to signify (and this is one of many examples) changes such as the following: when listing all the districts in Shanghai, writing "Hongkou" --> "Hóngkǒu" could save the essentially redundant English column, because the English name is based off the pinyin. And of course this is assuming that the reader will follow through that District --> "区" --> "qǖ". --HXL 何献龙 05:02, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
Personally I think this varies on a case-by-case basis. Certainly "populating all possible parameters" is clutter (the template should only show the parameters that are relevant for a given article—so, for instance, traditional characters and Wade-Giles romanizations shouldn't be included in articles about contemporary PRC personalities). But that is an issue that can be corrected by better instructing people how to use the template, not by telling them not to use it at all. Ideally, for your average article, an instance of {{zh}} in the lede should have one set of hanzi, one romanization per relevant language (for example, for a Hong Kong singer who does both Mandarin and Cantonese, such as Karen Mok or Eason Chan, it would make sense to have traditional characters, a Cantonese romanization such as Jyutping, and Hanyu Pinyin), and a literal translation (only if relevant and not redundant; for an article like Harvard Girl including a literal translation would be redundant, and for one like Kung fu it would be unhelpful). More detailed information should indeed be moved to a box such as {{Chinese}}.
As for whether or not this information is important on en-wiki, I guess we can agree to disagree; personally I think at the very least the lede should give the native name of the article subject—what makes things complicated for Chinese (and other languages that don't use our alphabet) is that that native name is inaccessible to people who aren't familiar with the language, which is why I think including one romanization is also appropriate. (Not to mention in cases where romanizations differ and a person searching under one romanization may be directed to a different one and then want something to assure them they're in the right place; for instance, a hapless user who searches for Mao Tse-tung without knowing the pinyin romanization might be surprised to end up at Mao Zedong, and he can't find any transliteration information whatsoever without scrolling down 3 pages [on my screen resolution].)
And, while I'm here, I might as well point out that this is not an issue with the template in particular, as people can add all that native language information without using a template (some articles still do). If anything, the template ought to have improved the situation by standardizing the format of this information. rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:47, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
  • I agree that it ought to be a question of judgement in each case, but it seems obvious to me that there ls a lack of balance (as well as a lack of education). I would dearly love to see no more than two parameters filled, but this is usually never the case. Add to that, we know that some operating system versions don't display the characters properly – as is the case of Bengali script for me, hence the need for {{Contains Chinese text}}, so the benefit only exists for those who can read Chinese and have systems which display Chinese; Karen Mok and Eason Chan have western names, so one should never need to have the Chinese name/script in the lede. Chinese text is useless to the Czech who wants to learn about Liu Xiaobo. I think we mustn't underestimate our average reader when it comes to possible differences in romanisation. They know that differences exist. I think one can overstate the case of the editor finding him/herself redirected to Mao Zedong when having typed Mao Tse Tung. It would be no more confusing than typing Hua Guofeng, and having to wade through three platefuls of spaghetti to work out one really hasn't landed on the wrong article after all; and then another three platefuls to learn about the essential facts about the man. Article lead sections are currently so cluttered with artefacts (in both read and edit mode) that we really have to do better than to stuff this sort of information in when the benefits are likely to be marginal to the average reader. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 05:59, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
I'll also take the opportunity to put in a plug for a related discussion I tried to start above months ago, to which no one responded. Also see this related discussion, which appears not to have yielded a clear consensus. rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:55, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
meh the intro to the 西安 article looks bad to me. what do you think? --HXL 何献龙 05:14, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Ohconfucious, the lede of Xi'an is indeed a mess...and note that most of it isn't even using the template. The messiest part is the stuff that was added outside the template. As for {{zh}} itself there, the literal translation doesn't need to be included (unimportant etymological information, not transparent to the current meaning), and the Wade-Giles probably shouldn't either (it's probably better to limit that to old names that appear mostly or exclusively in those romanizations). rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:06, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Yes, most of that stuff just doesn't belong, and there are plenty more articles just like that, which is why I wanted to discuss this issue. Although the problem in this instance was not caused by use of the template, it's clearly a related issue. I have now reworked the lead assuming we all want to keep a minimum of the linguistic stuff – although I'm still not convinced and would prefer for it to be removed outright. I think it reads better. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 13:43, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

If possible, the page title should be the subject of the first sentence

Titles like Religion in Finland are not merely descriptive but should be mentioned as examples that are best not used as the subject of the first sentence. --Espoo (talk) 19:45, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

KISS, free-standing, & Swoopable too.

KISS - KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID. (The KISS principle.)

Perhaps the weakest point of Wiki is poor leads, especially in technical articles, which often use too much jargon and too many specialized assumptions and so forth. While this is mentioned here, I believe it's under-emphasized because the problem seems to be growing. And in part because it seems that many authors confuse their own expertise with teaching or writing ability or seemingly just don't care about the average guy. (I sometimes complain that articles mostly sound like: "experts trying to impress experts.")

I believe a lead should be free-standing of the main article.

I also believe that the lead should make the article swoopable, — usable a bit like a dictionary, — the ability to swoop in and out of the article once the overview is grasped. That also implies minimizing hyperlinks which seem to be overused and used lazily in this context...which in fact defeats their purpose and degrades their function when a few words would probably be better because of the exact proper context.
Example of the hyperlink-overuse problem in leads:
Assuming that Wiki users often only desire the quick conceptual overview of the topic, —when hyperlinks are required to understand just the overview, —it's not uncommon to find a hyperlink required to understand that new definition too, ...and so on, etc, and so forth...possibly forever? Yet an encyclopedia's only required function is to provide overviews...we hope; with efficiency, elegance, and grace.

Doug Bashford--69.232.174.212 (talk) 02:29, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Citations in the lead vs. FAC

Just a note: It really doesn't reflect what is being expected at FAC right now. Generally, articles with citations in the lead get opposed, and even the vast majority of "controversial" passing FACs end up with none. I'm just the messenger on this, and noting because it is causing a bit of confusion. Ryan Norton 00:04, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

To explain in another way, FAC reviewers are referring WP:LEADCITE explaining that articles aren't to supposed to have cites in leads and the people comply as such, but WP:LEADCITE itself is really ambiguous and doesn't properly prepare potential FAC nominators for this and some are really blindsided. Ryan Norton 00:39, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

In general I oppose cites in the lead. But I use cites in the lead if the name or pronunciation is difficult, especially if not in English. --Philcha (talk)

Basically it just needs to say that text in the lead generally doesn't need to be cited because it should be worded as a overview of the article, and that contentious facts or figures should be merely overviewed in the lead rather then spelled out directly, thus needing a cite and leading the reader without proper context. Cites in the lead are almost always indicative of the following problems:

  1. Text in the lead that isn't in the body. (most common when building when a article or sticking some recent mention because the writers of the article were too lazy to put it in a proper place in the body of the article).
  2. Mentioning contentious facts or figures that really be in the body for the more context as mentioned above.
  3. Not properly wording the lead as an overview and instead simply repeating what is in the body word-for-word or similar.

Even a casual glance of the leads in the passed BLP FA's have had maybe 2 cites in them, and those were usually for extremely contentious points used to establish notability. It just needs to inform writers that text that is merely an overview doesn't need to cited, only text in the lead that is extremely contentious and can't be avoided needs to be cited (which is generally only BLPs, and even then there are often time-consuming ways to avoid it). The current wording in particular is making working with other, even long-time, editors unaware of recent FAC "standards" rather frustrating, because they interpret this guideline that everything needs to be citing just because of the first sentence about verifiability. It makes sense to those of us who are familiar with the goal of the guideline and who frequent FAC, but for those don't it is just misleading; it needs to be written for new writers or those unaware of current standards, not merely those of us who are wikipediholics. Ryan Norton 21:11, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm dubious about the initial statement here. My recently-promoted FA Royal Gold Cup is at note 10 by the end of the lead. One reviewer queried it, but accepted my explanation. Some are for quotations (something not mentioned above, but pretty common), others give basic info I decided there was no point in repeating lower down. I think FAC is more flexible than you imply. Johnbod (talk) 03:52, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
A well-researched and well-structured article does not need to have references in the lead, so FA should not have references in the lead. Most articles, however, are not well enough researched or structured, and in these cases, it is better to provide references in the lead, rather than to have unreferenced material in the text, either because it was not cited to begin with, or because a cite in the body text disappeared without taking care of the lead section.  Cs32en Talk to me  01:27, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
Cs32en's comment is all about the quality of the articles, and not about the quality of editors who will change anything not in accord with their ideology without even bothering to read the entire article. With certain articles, the only way to avoid an excessive level of incorrect changes without citations in the lead would be to permanently protect the article. Jc3s5h (talk) 01:55, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
Indeed, it would be a good idea to have all Featured articles protected, after all, the FA status is being perceived as some kind of endorsement of the article's content by the community.  Cs32en Talk to me  03:02, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
I was not referring to just featured articles; any article with uncited statements in the lead that bother people with certain viewpoints will either attract too many incorrect edits to deal with, or will need to be protected. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:51, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Correction: right clicking to edit lead section

The following setting does not allow lead section editing as the page suggests (unless I'm missing something obvious): "checkbox on Special:Preferences > Editing called "Enable section editing by right clicking on section titles" (requires JavaScript)"

I tried right clicking on the lead section as well as the title and everything around it, but it did not work. Other sections worked fine. – VisionHolder « talk » 01:01, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Pictures in the Lead

I have created a wikipedia page for Chateau Chantal. It is a gorgeous winery, sitting on the highest point between the two arms of the Grand Traverse Bays. I wanted a larger picture of the winery in the lead so that people could see the beauty of the winery its surroundings, pictures do speak a thousand words. I have ran into some problems becuase I am being told that a large picture is not allowed to be in the lead. Is that true? Is there anyway to get permission to do that for this article? For the time being I have made the picture a thumb and moved it to the right side of the lead. Thank you for your input! GRuskowski (talk) 14:37, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Conflict between WP:MTAA and WP:LEAD

There is a discussion underway about a possible conflict between WP:MTAA and WP:LEAD in which some editors have suggested modifying the requirement that the lead should summarize the article. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:06, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Lead bloat

It started as my remark to Flyer22 regarding Whitney Houston (WH) biogram lead - and Michael Jackson (MJ) too - but the real problem is much more common, so I paste my statement here to start the discussion about further explaining what the good lead should look like.

All important articles tend to have bloated lead, which I think is understandable, but still a flaw. People try to catch every important thing here, but - as we know it - in some cases you end up making neverending lists, because on some topics we have many facts to note, while on the others just a few. My feeling is the most important we want is comprehension in the lead, which means we have to be more picky and think more meta-level in some superimportant articles.

While MJ or WH can be 1000 times more rich in world-important details than the average singer, we should still keep the leads as 4 short, logical paragraphs, even if we lose some details here, because what we want is to gently introduce a reader, not forcing him/her to parse the text. Instead we have to summarize more tightly and have better generalized things. For example instead of writing here all achievements as a singer, actor and dancer, we should just say that he was important artist in all these areas, maybe with some most notable, one in each field. All details should go to the sections or even separate entries, if needed.

What I see in such cases most of the time is overloaded stories as a lead. The first paragraph should be the core definition on its own - then lead as a longer overview - and then sections for details. Reader can then always adjust any topic, no matter how big and important, to his personal time frame: fast skipping (few seconds, not even leaving the first para), overviewing (let's say less than a minute, but still skipable), then detail-picking in relevant, well planned sections.

When we make the lead "a story", we stop making summary and it tends to grow out of control. We lose clarity also - in MJ case we had too many para, but you could tell at once what they were about and skip those you're not interested into. Now our nutshell definition (first paragraph) suddenly ends not as what it should be - some general facts are connected with the beginning of his career, which is totally different level of abstraction. And this is when the reader gets puzzled and has to read all the story and can't skip paras, because a story in the lead is not logically split into paragraphs - we just try to have 4 paragraphs, not caring if they are still logically separate parts.

I think we have to think more what is the lead for and how it could be more useful for people, not just how much paragraphs it will take. I like killing too long leads very much (look at my page =} ), but I believe the first step to do it properly is to create logically separate paragraphs. Then you have some structure, which you can slim down by generalizing. This is why I prefer too many simple "one-aspect-at-the-time" paragraphs in MJ and a template claiming it is too long, than the proper amount of them, but with "a novel" approach, when you have to follow the writer from the beginnig to the end if you try to find something. It is hard to maintain in the long perspective, since the story is one big and not very clear construct.

That's why I think it's better to explicitely show why it is too long (too many separate topics gathered here, not well generalized) than simply hide this fact, making it even harder to manage. --kocio (talk) 14:07, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

I'll see your WH and raise you an EK. Mannafredo (talk) 15:02, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Math markup in lead

The lead section for Grandi's series seems rather unorthodox. Should the math markup be moved out of the lead, or is this OK? Kaldari (talk) 05:55, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Normally I agree that displayed math (that is, math that sits on a line by itself) should be avoided in the lede. But in that article, the displayed formula is one of the standard ways to write the series, and could be useful to a reader who is trying to figure out if he or she is at the correct article. It's essentially the mathematical name of the series. So I think that the displayed formula is OK there. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:19, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes. the project page associated with this talk page says, "Mathematical equations and formulas should not be used except in mathematics articles." Compare with Factorial, Gamma function, Zeta function, etc. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 00:44, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Alternative names

There is an ongoing discussion over at WP:NCGN about making sure that the guidelines found here and at that guideline's page are in sync and do not contradict each other [4] [5]. Some editors perceive that there is enough confusion between the two which causes edit war over naming. Since ensuring that the two guidelines do not confuse confusion or contradict themselves it may very well be that both need to be altered (however slightly). Therefore any input over there - or over here, though it may be a good idea to keep the discussion in one place - is much appreciated.Volunteer Marek (talk) 04:47, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

The Usage in first sentence section here contains a statement about alternate names that is not present in NCGN: ...this is not mandatory, and inclusion should reflect consensus. Some editors at NCGN oppose its addition there. If no consensus on needing consensus is reached, then for the sake of consistency among guidelines, this guideline could mention that places are treated differently.
There are two other criteria for alt-names-in-first-line that are unique to NCGN, on which it would be nice to get fresh eyes. Novickas (talk) 19:39, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Review of lead section requested

I'm having difficulties explaining to two editors what WP:LEAD requires. They are concerned that the lead of Cyrus Cylinder is "repetitive" because it summarises material that is covered in more detail later in the article. I have explained that this is in fact what the lead is meant to do. I would appreciate it if someone could provide some advice at Talk:Cyrus Cylinder#Arbitrary break on whether this understanding of the requirements of WP:LEAD is in fact correct, and if so whether the current lead (as of this diff) meets these requirements. Prioryman (talk) 01:56, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Consequences of Apture add-on

The Apture Add-on (e.g. here for Firefox) displays as much of a Wikipedia article as fits in the space available. This means that the lead must compete for space with any other sources of information. The implication is that not just the lead, but the first paragraph of the lead should be prioritized. Accordingly, I propose that the sentence "The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview of the article" should be altered to "The first paragraph of the lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview of the article". Alternatively, the MoS could altered to promote short leads, followed by an 'Overview' or 'Summary' section, instead. Or, alternatively, "The first paragraph of the lead should be able to stand alone as a concise definition of the article". Hpvpp (talk) 01:58, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Two weeks have past and nobody complained so I assumed it was alright to implement this modification (albeit slightly adjusted - see article). -- Hpvpp (talk) 23:19, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Possibly of interest

Editors at this page may be interested in my proposal at WT:Article titles#Proposal:_Add_section_to_define_.27article_title.27, to clear up some of the confusion between the "article title" and "key words in the first sentence" (which do not match for articles like Mercury (element)). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:58, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

No footnotes in lead?

Someone once told me that there were no footnotes in the lead paragraphs. This made sense to me since we aren't trying to confuse the reader and the material is supposed to summarize the rest of the article where there will be footnotes. Now I've been challenged on this and can't find anything to substantiate it! Is there actually something in writing that discourages (heaven forfend that a policy would say anything explicitly "forever"!) footnotes in the lead? Thanks. Student7 (talk) 18:25, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Student, there's no exception for leads in the Verifiability policy. If something is challenged or likely to be challenged, it needs a citation. However, some leads summarize only non-contentious issues in general terms, and may not need citations for that reason. It boils down to editorial judgment. But if someone is asking for a citation, it's usually best to supply one. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 20:27, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps it is mentioned somewhere, but it definitely should be mentioned here. Why don't you go ahead and fix it? -- Hpvpp (talk) 00:42, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
I agree, it should be mentioned here... or at WP:LEAD. The point of the lead is to summarize the content of the article. Ideally, that content is referenced in the body. – VisionHolder « talk » 02:06, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
er... the associated project page is WP:LEAD, right? If you change WP:CITELEAD, please make sure that the new content remains in conformance with WP:V. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 09:28, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
Yes WP:LEADCITE is what I was looking for. Like all policy statements there are so many caveats that it "sort of" discourages citations but not quite. Which is typical Wikipedia policy. Oh, well.
You don't really want it in two places, do you? I am too new to this policy to try to even think about amending it. I will leave that for wiser heads. Student7 (talk) 23:15, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
I have attempted to make that section clearer. Please let me know if it still seems inadequate or confusing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:11, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
I've restored Marskell's wording, which is an excellent piece of writing, and it perfectly captures the competing concerns.

The lead must conform to verifiability and other policies. The verifiability policy advises that material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, and quotations, should be cited. Because the lead will usually repeat information also in the body, editors should balance the desire to avoid redundant citations in the lead with the desire to aid readers in locating sources for challengeable material. Leads are usually written at a greater level of generality than the body, and information in the lead section of non-controversial subjects is less likely to be challenged and less likely to require a source; there is not, however, an exception to citation requirements specific to leads. The necessity for citations in a lead should be determined on a case-by-case basis by editorial consensus. Complex, current, or controversial subjects may require many citations; others, few or none. Contentious material about living persons must be cited every time, regardless of the level of generality.

SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 20:23, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
I agree that it is accurate, and beautiful writing. It does not, however, appear to be adequately clear, as evidenced by the confusion above.
As one example of insufficient clarity, it does not indicate that WP:V requires not merely "citations", but WP:INLINE citations. A bibliographic citation to a general reference is not sufficient for material including quotations, anything that has been challenged, anything likely to be challenged, or contentious matter about BLPs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:22, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
How about moving the final sentence of the paragraph requoted above into a new second paragraph which explains that point and other project-wide policy matters which cannot be overridden by editorial consensus on a per-article basis? Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 10:50, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
That's a good idea. I've made a start in that direction; perhaps someone else will havean idea about how to improve it further. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:56, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
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