Wikipedia:Parallelism
 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article or a Wikipedia policy, as it has not been reviewed by the community. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia's content should be consistent and balanced across related or analogous articles. |
Wikipedia is a vast network of interconnected articles. When a person comes to Wikipedia, their user experience is often not characterized by reading an article in full and then moving to another article and reading that one in full. Most articles are littered with hyperlinks, which take the reader to other articles on related topics. Readers will compare and contrast the information in prominent pieces of several related articles to synthesize an understanding of a topic area. As such, we as editors should strive to present consistency and balance between related and analogous topics across the encyclopedia. The oft-cited WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, a piece of the essay Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions, suggest that the content of a given article should be taken in isolation when considering not only its deletion in total, but also the deletion, inclusion, or modification of any piece of its body content. This principle can be a disservice to the reader's attempts to form a coherent understanding of a topic. Michigan Wolverines football should have a form similar to that found at Ohio State Buckeyes football, and there should be a consistency and balance between the material that overlaps the two articles. The same is true for another pair of analogs, Democratic Party (United States) and Republican Party (United States).