User talk:Gareth Leng/Life/Student Level

Maybe a subpage?

OK, with a new approval for Life soon, I've imported the old version here and started to simplify. Just done the obvious things for now as a start.Gareth Leng 05:15, 7 March 2008 (CST)

This is an interesting and no doubt very helpful project (not easy for the rest of us to grapple with these concepts). But might it not be better as a subpage of Life? If someone types 'Life' into CZ they'll only get the grown-up version. :) Maybe you can also do an even simpler one for creationists? John Stephenson 05:30, 7 March 2008 (CST)

Gareth i was thinking exactly the same thing. This article is a tour deforce and a more succint version would be desirable. I too was thinking along the lines of the subpage Life/Student Level. Chris Day (talk) 06:49, 7 March 2008 (CST)

I too was kind of confused to see this as a new page. We'd had some discussion on the forum (e.g. here) about a very closely related topic (material for experts), and the consensus seemed to be that a sub-page to hold it was the way to go there. I would assume the same line of reasoning would hold for student-level material.

The other possibility (sort of alluded to in that thread) is to say that the 'student-level' material belongs on the main page - that that page shouldn't have content so abstruse that students can't handle it - and that any such material belongs on the 'expert' subpage. J. Noel Chiappa 10:26, 7 March 2008 (CST)

This would also represent an opportunity to test the scenario where the article itself is approved but some of the subpages are still embryonic. I'm not sure exactly how to indicate that such pages are not approved or are works in progress. Unless that is just a given and goes with the territory? Chris Day (talk) 06:52, 7 March 2008 (CST)

I'd always assumed that subpages (like Biblio, etc) would be approved as part of the whole article. Why would they not be? They are part of the article's content? J. Noel Chiappa 10:26, 7 March 2008 (CST)

They can be approved as part of the whole article, it is one option for the approving editor. One individual subpage can be approved or only the article can be approved. Such instances are tracked on the approval page. Why the complexity? If all the pages need to be approved it was thought that the subpages might slow down the process of approval for articles. For this reason being able to approve articles alone is desirable. Second, and I'm not sure this is actually resolved, we don't have draft pages for the subpages. So in practice versions of subpages can be approved and the version can be documented on the approval page but that approved version is not the one that will be seen in most cases. In the future the key will be how we use the approval page to track the approval os subpages. One potential solution is to have the tabs link to the approved versions rather than the real time version. Or better have a button on every subpage so that the approved version in the history can be referred to more easily. Chris Day (talk) 12:51, 7 March 2008 (CST)

I'm happy for it to be moved anywhere, yes a subpage would be right, but I just thought this needed kick-starting somewhere.Gareth Leng 11:52, 7 March 2008 (CST)

Writing for developmental levels is something I have considerable experience at; perhaps I can join in here. But what reading level are we aiming for here? this draft, the first three paragraphs, are about 7th grade level (can normally be comprehended the first time through by persons with 7 years of education). Stephen Ewen 14:03, 7 March 2008 (CST)

I just started to simplify - but I find it easier to do in stages. Please have a go Stephen (and everyone)- and I'd say take it down to the lowest level at which the essence can be preserved. I don't know what that is though. I guess I'd hope an intelligent 14 year old? If that's not an oxymoron. I didn't mean to set the agenda here in any way, just to kick start something.Gareth Leng 12:28, 8 March 2008 (CST)

Hi Gareth, you're doing a nice job here. I like the fact you went back to the iterative blue box. I think this is especially helpful to see the definition build logically through the article. Chris Day (talk) 10:18, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

There is a Student Level guidelines page in place but not developed. If Chris wanted to add the support for this type of subpage, that would be great. Then the article would live at Life/Student Level, it appears--although, this would be the time to revisit the name of the subpage type, if we wanted to! --Larry Sanger 10:35, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

We had discussed this a bit above but Gareth had already started here. It will be moved eventually. A good idea to revisit the name. I have even seen discussion as to whether the student level should been the main article and the subpage should be the advanced level. I think related to math articles. I'll start a discussion in the forums on the role and name for this type of subpage. Chris Day (talk) 10:41, 10 March 2008 (CDT)