I tried to find some good advice on structuring articles in wikipedia namespaces. All I found were some pages in the Style and How-to Directory, some pages in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, and some links on template:FAPath. They mostly deal with the issue from a general stylistic and aesthetic viewpoint, and only touch on the underlying reasons for giving a logical and fairly standardized structure to encyclopedia articles.
I've therefore written up a draft guideline for writing articles in a "pyramid structure". Being mostly based on common sense, it is in part a description of what we already do, but its goal is also to explain why structuring articles in this way is good. Please feel free to improve and comment. Zocky 14:06, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Readers read encyclopedia articles for different reasons and in different ways. The level of detail which readers find interesting and useful will therefore vary. Wikipedia articles should allow the reader to choose the level of detail they are interested in without compromising completeness and NPOV.
A good article is built in a pyramid structure, with each layer summarising the one below and elaborating the one above, while preserving the NPOV. The reader (or processing software) can thus choose the level of detail they're interested and still get rounded, NPOV information. Levels of detail and the layers of the pyramid are:
- name: article title
- use the most commonly used English name
- for other names, provide redirects
- definition: first sentence
- a short and factual statement of what or who the article is about
- include the most important alternative names
- these are also useful for dissambiguation pages
- context: the rest of the first paragraph
- explain why the subject is notable and provide links to most important related articles
- provide other names
- provide at least this much in stubs
- explanation: the rest of intro
- provide a rounded, NPOV summary of the topic in flowing prose
- try to provide non-controversial statements about controversial views, leaving details to sections
- consider leaving non-crucial controversial issues entirely to sections
- a good intro not only introduces, but also summarises the sections
- detailed overview: the body of the article i.e. sections
- provide as much detail as needed
- where appropriate, apply the pyramid metaphor to sections and subsections
Apart from accomodating the reader, writing in this way provides several editorial benefits:
- well written first sentences can be directly used on dissambiguation pages
- well written first paragraphs can be used for section bodies in overview articles (main article: links)
- well written intros can remain stable even during heated editor disagreements about details covered in sections
- well written intros can also be used as blurbs for featured articles