Wikipedia talk:Make omissions explicit

Supporters of this rule include:

• AxelBoldt
• Mark Christensen
• BF
• Toby Bartels: The valid point that the old rule had is that a Wikipedia article will always be undone -- keeping that unavoidable fact in mind is the way to apply the new rule.

Opponents of this rule include:

• [your name here]

Always leave something undone

After discussion, this rule was largely rejected. While there was some initial support when proposed, support slowly dwindled over time. However, it makes for an interesting debating point.

Supporters of the rule "Always leave something undone" include:

• Larry Sanger,
• TimShell,
• Invictus,
• LinusTolke[?] - "best if it is done in a manner that does not totally destroy the entry or article itself"
• Pinkunicorn,
• sjc (all knowledge is necessarily incomplete, it also discourages that smug feeling of ownership),
• Janet Davis,
• Mike Dill,
• GWO

Opponents of the rule "Always leave something undone" include:

• tbc (I could support this if it was titled, "Try to leave something undone." But, then, I dream of the day when Wikipedia 1.0 is released on DVD. It will never be finished, but we should aim for milestones[?], IMHO.)
• clasqm
• Eclecticology (I oppose rules which human nature would render redundant)
• NetEsq - I am not convinced that the purported purpose of the rule has any rational relationship to the intended means of achieving that purpose, and I suspect that the rule would create all sorts of perverse and unintended consequences.
• ManningBartlett: this rule does not incite me to do the best I can.
• Eean I agree with the above. But make omissions explicit
• AxelBoldt: A casual visitor to Wikipedia will get the impression that this is an incomplete amateur project in flux. Always write as professional and comprehensive as possible.
• the_ansible: This is kinda silly, Wikipedia will always have things that aren't finished.
• Belltower: If Wikipedia is ever to be useful to people, extant articles should be in a reasonably complete state at all times.
• Geronimo Jones: Newcomers are creating stuff so fast, some of it good, some dubious, that there is a huge amount of stuff that needs fixing. No need to deliberately create more.
• MRC: We should not be in the business of intentionally going around making holes where the need not be! If the rule was, "Point out where the article could be expanded," I'd certainly support that.
• Martin: Yes, make any omissions explicit, but there's no point deliberately creating omissions - rely instead on one's natural fallibility.
• RjLesch: more useful as a description of the way things are than as a rule to be followed.
• Rotem Dan: As a reader, looking at pages with a comment in the article like "Can someone fill this in?", gives me a sense of inconfidence about Wikipedia's completeness (and accuracy), I am strongly against this.
• Kaihsu
• AhmadH: cf "Write buggy code to encourage other people to participate in the development effort of our open source software"
• Dante Alighieri: This is just silly. It's clearly absurd, I just wonder if it's absurdist.
• Patrick: There is enough to do anyway, no need to leave things undone on purpose.
• Tannin: What Patrick said.
• anon: no Wikipedia article exists in a final form
• anon: Each article should always be in publishable state at all time.
• Toby Bartels: The valid point that the old rule had is that a Wikipedia article will always be undone -- keeping that unavoidable fact in mind is the way to apply the new rule.

Further Discussion

I have to say, I was very surprised to see the rule, and I was not surprised at all that there was more opposition against it than support in favour of it.

Isn't this the kind of thing the Talk pages are ideal for? If you think you left something important out, why place an irritating and annoying note on the actual article when you can note it on the Talk page for contributors to see? In fact, perhaps the top of each Talk page should have a bullet-list of things that are missing from the article, so people can pick something to write about or fill in. I did it this way on Talk:Vulcan (Star Trek), for example. -- Timwi 19:12 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I agree with Timwi that the Talk page is a better place for remarks about what would be useful to add ("make omissions explicit"), except in special cases. E.g., if a list of the provinces of a country is not complete, I would mention that on the page itself. In such case incompleteness would otherwise be close to incorrectness. - Patrick 23:19 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I'm slightly confused about which rule both of you are talking about... and whether you're talking about the same rule! :) Martin

I've refactored appropriately (I've always been meaning to, but it wasn't a high priority...). Watcha think? Martin 20:17 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Looks better than before, though I'm still a little worried because the rule doesn't state what kind of ommissions to make explicit, and what exactly entails completeness. Is my rewritten Vulcan (Star Trek) article incomplete because it doesn't mention the time of the Great Awakening? I don't think so. On the other hand, a list of French départements would, of course, be incomplete if it didn't list all 100.

The key difference between the two is that if the list of départements were to list less than 100, it would imply there are less than 100, which is incorrect. However, ommitting the exact time of a historical event (fictional or not) does not imply that it never occurred ;-) -- Timwi 23:13 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)