Talk:1517 in art

Lead section

The lead section is more than adequate in the context of the standardised [Year] in art format. Camboxer (talk) 16:39, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

No. WP:LEAD. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 21:54, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I read WP:LEAD, and the section that seems most pertinent is Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Stand-alone_lists#Lead. The current lead includes a link to "art", in short the visual arts, and the year for the relevant event, work, birth, or death. Those are the only established criteria for inclusion to the art (as well as the similar poetry, architecture, literature, etc) list articles. I know the lead sentence to this article is very simple, but I do not agree that it is missing information that would help clarify the subject or inclusion criteria. I honestly cannot think of anything that could be added that would further clarify. I agree with Camboxer that think it is sufficient as is, but maybe I'm too close to the issue to be objective. Suggestions? Keithh (talk) 22:52, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Stand-alone_lists#Lead says a list article's lead should summarize its contents. This article's current lead (and probably those of thousands of other "x in y" articles) doesn't summarize the article, it describes it. By way of comparison, our article on Michael Jackson doesn't begin "This is an article about Michael Jackson"; instead, it summarizes the article, telling us something about its subject. Similarly, these articles' leads should be informative rather than descriptive; as it stands they tell us nothing that we don't already know from the title. To return to WP:LEAD, that page's own lead says the lead should be a summary of an article's "most important aspects": in this case we should, I think, be looking for sources that say (for example) that Lotto's Susanna and the Elders was the most important work of 1517, or that Baldung's return to Strasbourg was the most important event. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 00:13, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

If you insist on tagging this, please ensure that you tag every other year in topic article for consistency. Deb (talk) 12:43, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

No. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 15:04, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

All settled now. Never was keen on that introduction anyway - only put it in because someone had tagged it for not having one. Year in Art articles are now completely consistent. Deb (talk) 18:06, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Why do you value consistency over the manual of style? – Arms & Hearts (talk) 18:39, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Because there is a Years wikiproject and a well-established layour which the articles already conform to. Deb (talk) 21:39, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

The Years Wikiproject seems to be concerned with articles such as 1517 rather than the various "1517 in..." articles. The existence of an established layout doesn't mean very much when the established layout is a contravention of the manual of style. I'm not going to go through histories to check, but it seems like the problem here is the result of these articles having mostly been created before the MoS and other policies and guidelines were applied as stringently as they are today (this also explains why so many of these articles are completely unreferenced). This is magnified by the number of articles and the amount of work required to bring them all up to date, but I'd argue it's probably better to slowly improve the articles than to deny that they have problems. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 19:34, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

There does not appear to be any consensus that a problem exists. Initially, references were considered inappropriate precisely because the year (including year in topic) articles consist mostly of links to other articles, which already contain the necessary references. As the project has expanded, this argument has been less clear-cut. Deb (talk) 15:00, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

"Any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation that directly supports the material" is fairly clear-cut, as is "the lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article." I'm not convinced prior consensus is required to act in accordance with policies and guidelines. Still, an RfC is probably the best way to proceed at this point, though I'm not sure what its scope would be. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 23:25, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

You think the contents are "likely to be challenged" even though they consist of links to articles that are fully referenced? Deb (talk) 13:41, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

1. The articles are rarely if ever fully referenced. Looking at the first few articles linked from this one, Hans Baldung has no footnotes, Sebastiano del Piombo has four, The Raising of Lazarus (Sebastiano del Piombo) has none, Pietro Perugino has one and Pontormo has four. Only Raphael, one of the best-known artists of his period and of all time, merits a comprehensively-referenced article. I suspect I could continue to assess the rest of the article with much the same results, but I don't think that'd be a good use of my time.
2. Consider the above evidence that, whether the material is "likely to be challenged" or not, it "has been challenged".
3. Our articles don't and can't require their readers to have read other articles. When a statement is made, it should be immediately referenced; we shouldn't expect readers to compare this article with others to tell if it's correct or not. The fact that a statement is referenced somewhere in the encyclopedia doesn't exempt it from WP:V elsewhere.
4. I don't think we're going to arrive at a consensus anytime soon, your thoughts on the scope of a possible RfC are very welcome. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 19:45, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

You must do what you think is appropriate. I always prefer to spend time on expanding and improving articles rather than just tagging them, unless the case is very clear-cut. I would also think that the need for improvements in referencing would be better highlighted within the articles on the artists themselves rather than in the Year in Topic articles. I find it a little odd that you think this issue so important that you want to discuss it at length on the Talk page for a single year article, yet you decline to tag the rest of the year articles and seem not to want to raise it in the context of the Years project. Deb (talk) 15:07, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm not really sure what raising it in the context of the years project would achieve – perhaps we'd establish that WP:V and WP:MOS apply to these articles, but that's already objectively the case because policies and guidelines apply to all articles. Still, a clearly laid out set of standards might not be such a bad thing. As far as the importance of this issue, I agree, why are we still discussing it? I hope we can agree that the best approach is for each of us to continue to improve these articles as we see fit, unhindered as far as possible by one another. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 06:39, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I assume you are including User:Camboxer and User:Keithh in that last statement. Deb (talk) 11:34, 31 January 2013 (UTC)