RulesToConsider/Establish Context

Almost every entry in the Wikipedia should begin with a line or two that establishes context. These opening lines should include the most basic facts about the subject.

An article on Charles Darwin should not begin with "Darwin created controversy with the publication of the Origin of Species...." It should begin with "Charles Darwin was a 19th century biologist who proposed the modern theory of evolution."

An article on Scotland should not begin with "Scotland retains its identity despite political dominance by the English..." It should begin by stating what Scotland is, where it is, etc.: "Scotland is part of the United Kingdom, located in the northern end of the British Isles..."

In other words, it is helpful, especially for long articles, to put a short description/definition at the beginning of the article.

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Note that this practice also facilitates uplinks--i.e., links to the more general topic of which the present page is a subtopic. For example, "Poker is a gambling card game based on..."

Disagreeing with this...as I sorta put into practice before noticing this line...but I put warnings and had no complaints and some encouragement. Doing this gives us uplinks, but it prevents us from making subpages when they really matter, and forces us to use the alternate brackets thing, destroying much hope of accidental linking (Daffodil vs Flower/Daffodil?, Anthophyta/Daffodil?, etc)

Elaborate, please, Josh, I don't understand. :-) -- Larry Sanger

I'm not sure I understand either, but I do very much agree with Joshua that we should watch out for excessive sub-paging making for difficult accidental linking. Of course, one answer is to very simply have lots and lots of REDIRECT pages. Daffodil can redirect to Flower/Daffodil?, so that accidental links work out o.k. --Jimbo Wales