Wikipedia:Long stories made short
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Welcome to "Long stories made short", a project for shortening long talk page posts.
Long stories are better short
[edit]- Often, expressing one's thoughts in many words takes less time than writing a condensed version.
- If one writer spends a short time to write a long post, then many readers spend a long time to read it. Otherwise, they likely may skip it. (WP:TLDR)
- If one writer spends a long time to write a brief post, then many readers are able to spend less time to read it. Be careful not to mischaracterize a rationale.
- If one story-shortener spends a long time to shorten a long post, then many readers are able to read a short post in a short time.
- Editors may choose to shorten stories, using their own thresholds for acceptable shortening. They might use a maximum number of characters, a percentage of the original size, etc.
- For various reasons, a long story might be collapsed, or even removed in certain circumstances. (WP:REFACTOR)
- Otherwise, the story-shortener leaves the long post unchanged, but (optionally) adds below it a condensed version, with a copy of the original signature and time stamp, followed by a comma and the words "shortened by" and their own signature and time stamp.
- The story-shortener uses personal pronouns in the same way in the shortened version as they were used in the long version, as if the writer of the long version were supplementing their own post with a shortened version of it.
- For example, a long post and its shortened version might appear as follows.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah.—User:Wordy (talk) 01:00, 1 July, 2015 (UTC)
WP:LSMS: Blah blah blah.—User:Wordy (talk) 01:00, 1 July, 2015 (UTC), shortened by User:Terse (talk) 02:00, 1 July, 2015 (UTC)
- A post can be shortened and sweetened simultaneously.
Blah blah insult blah blah profanity blah blah.—User:Wordy (talk) 01:00, 1 July, 2015 (UTC)
WP:LSMS and WP:BSMS: Blah blah blah.—User:Wordy (talk) 01:00, 1 July, 2015 (UTC), shortened and sweetened by User:Terse (talk) 02:00, 1 July, 2015 (UTC)