CZ Talk:Definitions

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Links within definitions

Question: should we either encourage or disallow links within definition templates? Links might be distracting; but they also might be useful. I don't know what to think... --Larry Sanger 22:59, 19 July 2007 (CDT)

On the above: see United Kingdom/Related where there are liberal amounts of linking. The links make the definitions very hard to read; and they also seem to be distracting from the main attraction, which are the articles linked to. I'm inclined to think we shouldn't be linking within definitions. What do you think? --Larry Sanger 08:49, 22 July 2007 (CDT)

Some of the links to the same article (e.g. to United Kingdom on United Kingdom/Related) certainly look distracting, but they might not on other Related Articles pages. But we obviously can't have it both ways, unless the definitions are written twice on the wiki, once on the actual Related Articles page, and again on a template. Arrggh... if we get a decision on this I'll fix them for the UK site. John Stephenson 08:56, 22 July 2007 (CDT)
Further to this, I have also created Scotland/Related using some of the same definitions. Don't want to do any more in case I need to de-link the definitions, but the two pages can be compared to view the same definitions in different articles. John Stephenson 09:17, 22 July 2007 (CDT)

Why not try removing the links from the definitions on one page? We can see what it looks like and invite comment. I suspect the links within definitions will be of limited value. --Larry Sanger 10:37, 22 July 2007 (CDT)

Try Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom/Related versus United Kingdom/Related. I think it looks better without. John Stephenson 21:54, 23 July 2007 (CDT)

mulitple definitions on a subpage?

if an article could use mutiple things defined, is that ok?

So say you have a medical article: Yes, you have intra-wiki links to other medical articles which will help the user read more about a subject,

but what if the defintions page, allowed the reader to look up quickly any "hard medical word" in that article? You could open the definitions tab in a new firefox tab, and then go back and forth if you wanted merely the quick definition of a difficult word in the article, but didn't want to open a whole other article.

Thoughts? Tom Kelly 19:00, 14 May 2008 (CDT)

I'd say that the related articles page probably already serves that purpose. It collects all the relevant terms with the definitions using the {{R}} template. The alternative would be a glossary subpage. Chris Day 12:51, 16 May 2008 (CDT)

Links in definitions

I hope my question is different from the one above. I am no quite sure what the discussion above is about. So here is my question: What about links in definitions? I would like to define Leipzig as "Capital of the German state Saxony.", i.e. "Capital of the German state [[Saxony]]". Is that OK? -- Alexander Wiebel 12:52, 16 May 2008 (CDT)

I'd say you need to think carefully about using links. I read a discussion here somewhere that argued it should not happen since on a good Related Articles subpages it would create redundancy. Take the home countries in the United Kingdom, one would expect to see them all appear on the Related Articles subpage for the UK. See below:
  • Scotland [r]: A country that forms the northernmost part of the United Kingdom; population about 5,200,000. [e]
  • Wales [r]: A country of the United Kingdom that historically was considered a principality; population about 3,000,000. [e]
  • England [r]: The largest and southernmost country in the United Kingdom, and location of the largest city and seat of government, London; population about 51,000,000. [e]
  • Northern Ireland [r]: Part of the United Kingdom comprising six of the nine counties of the Irish province of Ulster; population about 1,800,000. [e]
If the UK was linked for all of them it would be a bit annoying. On the other hand it would be useful on when the definition is used alone. So we must pick our poison. Since there primary use is on the CZ:Related Articles subpages I think it would probably be sensible to limit the number of links. Chris Day 13:01, 16 May 2008 (CDT)
Thank you for your explanations. Now I also understood the discussion above. I agree that using links may be annoying. Alexander Wiebel 13:05, 16 May 2008 (CDT)

Line breaks

It's worth noting that part of the reason for {{Def}}, in addition to being quicker to type, is that the standard format for the defintion page:

<noinc1ude>{{Subpages}}</noinc1ude>
Definition here.

has a line break before the "Definition". Simply transcluding it directly may therefore not always give the desired results. E.g.:

* {{:Euro/Definition}}

gives:

The official currency of the European Monetary Union.

which is probably not what was wanted. But note that:

"* {{:Euro/Definition}}"

gives:

"* The official currency of the European Monetary Union."

Very bizarre! J. Noel Chiappa 13:38, 16 May 2008 (CDT)

You have to be kidding?
"{{:Euro/Definition}}"
gives:
"

The official currency of the European Monetary Union."

i never would have guessed that would work. Chris Day 13:42, 16 May 2008 (CDT)
Edit conflict
Why not? The documentation on the transclusion operator says it will (you can transclude main namespace pages, provided you specify that namespace with a leading ":", since the transclusion operator defaults to Template:). Don't some of the subpage templates use that? Oh, I see, you meant the extra line break. Yeah, isn't markup (both Wiki, and HTML) wonderful? :-) J. Noel Chiappa 13:50, 16 May 2008 (CDT)

The Euro is the {{:Euro/Definition}} gives:

The Euro is the The official currency of the European Monetary Union.

I figured out why. The line break is still there but remember in the wiki-markup one line break is not enough in a paragraph you need two. So this would be expected, in retrospect. Chris Day 13:45, 16 May 2008 (CDT)

Yeah, leading '*' is special - any new line gets you out of that bulleted item. But when it's not the leading item (notice the '"*') it's just part of para text, and, as you point out, in Wiki/HTML markup a single line feed within a para gets eaten. What's really annoying about the whole leading * thing, and its interaction with newlines, is that something like:
  • Some comment text
Some more text in that comment
    • Reply to para'd comment
does the wrong thing (the new line in the middle terminates the bulleted list, hence the double bullet on the reply). I always despise that one; it makes nested comments using * a pain in the tuckus. You have to hand-indent to the right level with ":", then add a single "*". And of course # is hopelessly borked with that. J. Noel Chiappa 14:05, 16 May 2008 (CDT)

Pagename

Now that /Definition is a subpage, shouldn't this be moved to CZ:Definition? J. Noel Chiappa 13:52, 16 May 2008 (CDT)

Problem here is that this page is taking about definitions not a definition. Is there a strong need to move it? Chris Day 14:11, 16 May 2008 (CDT)

'Need def' does not seem to be updated as definitions are added

I've been writing a lot of definitions in the last hour or so, but 'Need def' does not reflect them. If a definition has been written, should the page still be in the category? Is this intended or a bug? --Tom Morris 14:48, 16 May 2008 (CDT)

Updating categories is dead last on the servers priority list (may be I exaggerate but it must be close to last). It often takes a full day or more. Chris Day 14:50, 16 May 2008 (CDT)
Hmmm, are the priorities different for different categories? The Speedy_Deletion_Requests category http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Category:Speedy_Deletion_Requests always gets updated very fast, while the 'Need def' still contains entries I fixed last week. Alexander Wiebel 07:07, 22 May 2008 (CDT)

Search w/definitions?

I am a frequent user of the CZ search function. Though I like being able to search for content on Citizendium, the garbled stuff that you get in reply is not particularly useful. Has anyone floated the idea of including article definitions in the search results? Is there some compelling reason we haven't done this already? Just curious...

Thanks, Brian P. Long 00:27, 8 August 2008 (CDT)

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