User:Viriditas/Avoid grab bag prose

Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information but you wouldn't know it from reading many of our good and featured articles. Proper context is important, and whenever possible, loosely connected statistics and historical data points should be set apart from the body of text into the appropriate infoboxes, tables, and stand-alone lists, with topical sections reserved for encyclopedic prose that both informs the reader and maintains interest. Do write about the topic and illustrate it with relevant facts that directly supports the subject and keeps the reader engaged. Don't clutter the prose with obscure jargon, lists of data, statistics, and trivial items that forces the audience to take their attention away from the subject. Always think of your reader, who may not know the topic, but is willing to walk the well-lit path that you set before them. The goal of the editor is not to try to cram as many facts as possible into a subsection, but whether one succeeds in allowing the reader to come away with a better understanding of the topic than before they arrived. Nothing else matters.

Research and new articles

Before creating a new article, an editor will collect facts about a topic. These facts will then be uploaded in the form of a small stub or short article. As these articles grow longer with expansion, sections will eventually be added, and some of these facts may no longer support the body of the article or remain relevant. The reader begins to wonder what connection these miscellaneous items have to each other, and whether the editor had randomly pulled these facts from a "grab bag". In many instances, this can be prevented by consciously avoiding trivia, and only adding important, significant, or relevant items. Sometimes, the content may be important to the topic, but might not belong in the body. This is especially true for long lists of data and statistics. Consider moving these items to a table, stand-alone list, or even an infobox.

L. M. Boyd

L. M. Boyd, was a syndicated newspaper columnist known for collecting miscellaneous trivia and amusing facts and publishing them under the title of "The Grab Bag", "Checking Up", "Draw Up a Chair", and "Fact or Fancy", depending on the newspaper. Posthumously, Boyd's column are often described as an early form of the World Wide Web, because one could browse from topic to topic as if they were links. A typical entry might read, "Renoir was nearsighted. Rembrandt was farsighted. Van Gogh had glaucoma. Monet had cataracts." Boyd's stand-alone, "grab bag" prose style worked well for his column of random and not-so-random novelties, but doesn't work as effectively for encyclopedia articles, where facts should connect to other facts as evidence for larger, well thought out topics.

Ordo ab chao

Random facts drawn from a topical grab bag can also lead to novel interpretations. Using Boyd's example above for illustration, one could conceivably argue that "great art is often the result of ophthalmological problems". This line of reasoning would appear out of place in encyclopedia articles about human eye diseases and disorders, and it would be tough to support such an extraordinary claim about art without good sources. Related and unrelated facts can sometimes confuse the reader, unintentionally leading to original research due to synthesis. The best way to avoid this problem is to check that every fact, claim, argument, and conclusion represents significant viewpoints published by reliable sources. It's helpful to remember that the more problematic a claim appears, the more unreliable a source may be, but this depends on evaluating sources in the appropriate context. We can represent notable fringe claims, provided there are reliable and independent secondary sources.

References

• Turabian, Kate L.; Booth, Wayne C.; Colomb, Gregory G.; Williams, Joseph M. (2007). A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 7. ISBN ISBN 0-226-82337-7. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)