Wikipedia talk:Summary style

Summary section names

When a section is written in summary style, should it's name closely reflect the title of the article? This was the subject of a dispute (here) over a summary-style section in the article Embassy of the United States, Mogadishu about its evacuation, for which the main article is Operation Eastern Exit, and whether the section title should be the operation name or a descriptive term such as "Closure and evacuation". There isn't explicit guidance for the section name of a summary-style section on this page, MOS:LAYOUT#Section templates and summary style, or WP:HAT and I think something should be added to this page about that. But before proposing any specific phrase, what should be the position on this issue? How close should the section name be to the name of the main article? AHeneen (talk) 21:23, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

What to do with citations while summarising

Take the case when I want to summarise an article A in my article B. A is very well sourced but I do not have access to its sources; do I have to right to summarise it and/or use its inline cites? WP:CWW comes to mind but I doubt it applies here, and I remember WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT. Shouldn't this be mentioned in this page too? Ugog Nizdast (talk) 17:32, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

How do I do this?

I have an unusual situation and can't figure out where to ask.

I asked what to do about World oil market chronology from 2003‎ getting too long. It appears the recommended action is to take most of the details out and put them in smaller articles covering shorter time periods. Each smaller article would have to refer back to the parent article, which would seem to be a use for the main template. At the same time, the brief summaries of each group of years would seem to need a link to the longer detailed information, which seems also to be a use for the main template. — Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:15, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Suggestion for Synchronization section

The terminology used throughout the guideline changes in the Synchronization section, making it confusing and open to misinterpretation. I'd like to modify it to continue the parent/child article pattern of the rest of the guideline, as follows (bold for additions, strikethrough for removal):

Sometimes editors will add details to a summary section parent article without adding those facts to the more detailed child article. To keep articles synchronized, editors should first add any new material to the appropriate places in the detailed child article, and, if appropriate, summarize the material in the summary section parent article. If the detailed child article changes considerably without updating the parent article, the summary section of the child article in the parent article will need to be rewritten to do it justice.

Below, I've collapsed the relevant "story" from the lead to the sync section, to show the language used up to that point, then how it changes in SYNC.

Lengthy quotes from the guideline page

(from lead) A fuller treatment of any major subtopic should go in a separate article of its own. Each subtopic or child article is a complete encyclopedic article in its own right and contains its own lead section that is quite similar to the summary in its parent article. It also contains a link back to the parent article and enough information about the broader parent subject to place the subject in context for the reader, even if this produces some duplication between the parent and child articles. The original article should contain a section with a summary of the subtopic's article as well as a link to it. (...) It is advisable to develop new material in a subtopic article before summarizing it in the parent article. (from Levels of detail) The parent article should have general summary information, and child articles should expand in more detail on subtopics summarized in the parent article. (from Technique) Longer articles are split into sections, each usually several good-sized paragraphs long. Subsectioning can increase this amount. Ideally, many of these sections will eventually provide summaries of separate articles on the subtopics covered in those sections. Each subtopic article is a complete encyclopedic article in its own right and contains its own lead section that is quite similar to the summary in the parent article. It also contains a link back to the parent article, and enough information about the broader parent subject to place the subject in context for the reader, even if this produces some duplication between the parent and child articles. (from Synchronization) Sometimes editors will add details to a summary section without adding those facts to the more detailed article. To keep articles synchronized, editors should first add any new material to the appropriate places in the detailed article, and, if appropriate, summarize the material in the summary section. If the detailed article changes considerably without updating the parent article, the summary section will need to be rewritten to do it justice.

Thoughts? Disagreements? Schazjmd (talk) 00:51, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Schazjmd, Support, provides clarity.   // Timothy :: talk  03:06, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm going to make the change. Schazjmd (talk) 00:32, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

WP:SUMMARY vs wp:summary... also disambiguation page

Ok, so this is confusing. WP:SUMMARY redirects to this page. wp:summary (lowercase) redirects to a disambiguation page at Wikipedia:Summary. And the disambiguation page has like 12 things on it.

What should we do with wp:summary? Should we redirect it to here? Also, should we delete the disambiguation page at Wikipedia:Summary? Should we do both? –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:17, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

I agree. I don't think shortcuts that differ only by capitalization should ever have different targets. My suggestion would be to have both names target Wikipedia:Summary style and move the content at WP:Summary to WP:Summary (disambiguation) (or WP:SUMMARY (disambiguation)?) linked to from this page via hatnote. It looks like there is some precedent for such Wikipedia namespace dabs, e.g. WP:DR redirects to Wikipedia:Dispute resolution, which has a hatnote to Wikipedia:DR (disambiguation). Colin M (talk) 15:36, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

 Done in the absence of any objections after a few weeks. Colin M (talk) 01:35, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

size

In agreement with earlier discussion , I changed the obsolete 40 kB recommendation to 100 kB. DGG ( talk ) 15:39, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

I can't figure out what discussion this is pointing too. However, I have put back the 40 kB, which is in line with the Wikipedia:Article size guideline and matches common use within GAN and FAC. CMD (talk) 05:59, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

When to choose 'Main' and when to choose 'Further'

In my opinion, the choice of when to choose 'Main' vs. 'Further' links in the top-of-section link depends on the "relatedness" of the child article topic to the parent topic. More specifically, if there is a meronymic connection, it should be {{Main}}, and if it's a more diffuse relationship it should be {{Further}} (or {{See also}}).

There is an ongoing discussion at Talk:Transgender history that relates to this question, and your feedback would be appreciated. Mathglot (talk) 02:27, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

clarify on WWII example, are citations needed or not?

I'm having a discussion with other editors about, basically: does a blurb in a table row in a list-article, which summarizes a linked article, have to include one, some, or all of the inline references in the linked article? I have turned to wp:SUMMARY, seeking a flat statement giving guidance and some great examples. However, the leading example, on how the World War II article uses summary style, maybe doesn't work as it should, in that it doesn't convey that it is really okay to summarize (perhaps a la Executive summary), rather than "restate separate assertions from within". And it does not clearly show that sometimes/often no citations at all are needed, which is what I would prefer to see.

The first example gives, for the summary of Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), under Pre-war events, with "main"-type link to Spanish Civil War, the following text:

Germany and Italy lent support to the Nationalist insurrection led by general Francisco Franco in Spain ....

Call that the instructive example text. That reads great to me, and shows no citation, as far as it goes. But the actual text in current World War II article is quite different:

When civil war broke out in Spain, Hitler and Mussolini lent military support to the Nationalist rebels, led by General Francisco Franco. Italy supported the Nationalists to a greater extent than the Nazis did: altogether Mussolini sent to Spain more than 70,000 ground troops and 6,000 aviation personnel, as well as about 720 aircraft. The Soviet Union supported the existing government of the Spanish Republic. More than 30,000 foreign volunteers, known as the International Brigades, also fought against the Nationalists. Both Germany and the Soviet Union used this proxy war as an opportunity to test in combat their most advanced weapons and tactics. The Nationalists won the civil war in April 1939; Franco, now dictator, remained officially neutral during World War II but generally favoured the Axis. His greatest collaboration with Germany was the sending of volunteers to fight on the Eastern Front.

References

Here, each sentence is followed by an inline citation, it feels like. Or at least it is apparent that each sentence is supported by the next one coming of the passage's multiple (three) inline citations. Frankly, I do not like this "actual text": it seems choppy, as a general reader I am irritated by the inline citations (only some specialist would want to see them, and the material for them is in the subarticle instead); and it appears to be just a selection of several facts from several of the article's sources, rather than a proper synthesis of what's known on the topic. (And as if none of the article's sources is a history book general enough to cover these several statements!) It would surely be better to cite one or a few general treatments of the SCW in one cluster at the end of the actual summary, which I think would suggest that each of them more or less supports all of the statements.

And, it would be better still to include no citations, rather than selecting (and somewhat promoting) just a few, suggesting that the text is supported by the full weight of SCW's many many sources. And to suggest that Wikipedia as author has properly summarized/synthesized what's relevant, without being artificially restricted by exactly what's covered in a certain few.

In contrast, the "instructive example text" is easy to read so far, and I am on board believing that the Spanish Civil War article will be nicely summarized for its purpose in the WWII article.

I really believe the summary in the WWII article should be like the lead of the Spanish Civil War article, which, by WP:LEDE, "should be written in a clear, accessible style", standing "on its own as a concise overview of the article's topic". WP:LEDE states that "significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article", which I believe basically means that, if an assertion in the intro requires an inline citation there, then it shouldn't be there. Either the assertion should be dropped from the lead, or the assertion should be stated with inline citation somewhere in the body of the article and only summarized in the lead, without citation. Likewise, I honestly believe there should be no inline citations at all in the actual summary, because Wikipedia's article on the Spanish Civil War must surely include adequately support for the big takeaways relevant for the WWII article's summary (and in fact the SCW article includes 473 inline citations to something like 100 sources). And IMHO it would probably be inappropriate in the WWII article to be making any unusual, likely-to-be-doubted assertion about the SCW that would in fact require a citation.

Is the current WP:SUMMARY adequate in conveying that a summary can really be a summary, rather than a selection of a few assertions? I think not. By my reading, WP:SUMMARY does suggest that an article summary might simply be a transclusion of the lead of a sub-article ("it can be convenient to use the subarticle's lead as the content in the summary section"). And by my reading, WP:LEDE suggests that a lead should usually not include citations. And no examples that I see in WP:SUMMARY include citations. BUT, there is no explicit statement that a summary need not include citations, and there are no examples given making this point (i.e. no pointer to any Featured or other real article with good summaries not encumbered by citations).

About citations, this wp:SUMMARY states the following:

Each article on Wikipedia must be able to stand alone as a self-contained unit (exceptions noted herein). For example, every article must follow the verifiability policy, which requires that all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed to a reliable, published source in the form of an inline citation. This applies whether in a parent article or in a summary-style subarticle.

I personally read that to mean that it is okay for a summary to include no citations (as long as it does not include a quotation or a likely-to-be-challenged assertion). However, I think that the overwhelming suggestion for many readers, though, will be the following, instead: that, with scant exceptions, every Wikipedia article must be able to stand alone. Which means that all passages (although perhaps not the lead), including summary sections, must be supported by references to reliable sources. I further think that is a view widely held among editors, and it is perhaps why the editors at WWII have made it into a poorly written article, IMHO.

And it has been a problem for me previously and again now, that I can't find explicit statement that a list-article in which items are summaries of linked articles, does not need to have a hedgehog of citations. In practice, I think that in list-articles where one source has been inserted for each table row, say, that no one is checking whether everything in each table row is exactly supported by the one source appearing. Rather, I think that an editor has dutifully pasted in one corresponding source for each, to fend off dogmatic others who insist upon it. And it would be more honest to show no source, thereby implying all of the subarticles' sources.

THEREFORE, I suggest:

1) adding an explicit statement that a summary in an article does not necessarily require any of the inline citations of the linked sub-article,

2) stating that even if one or a few citations representative of the sources in the subarticle are included, that the summary need not be limited to only what is treated in those few (i.e., editors revising a summary do not need to be unduly concerned about repeatedly returning to a hypothetical single editor who holds copies of all the sources in the subarticle, to get approval of statements that are well-established in the subarticle),

3) that pointers to good examples of such summaries in mainspace Wikipedia articles be provided, and

4) that someone (not me) be deputized to go improve use of summary style in the WWII article!

--Doncram (talk,contribs) 21:14, 7 January 2023 (UTC)