Forums: Helping Hand > Beginning articles with quotations
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I kind of wanted to gather general opinion on this. An example of an article that begins with a quotation is
Winski Perorate, for reference.
Wikipedia maintains that the article should be introduced by a paragraph of summary text, and that quotations should be in their own section, or live outside of the article. Something like Han Solo over on Wookiepedia has a quotation. The style of that wiki does tend to be more tongue in cheek.
What do you think? Should we be introducing articles about individuals with a quote from that individual, or should we be staying factual?
Fw190a8 21:59, January 24, 2012 (UTC)
I think they are good, but the quotes should be short, one liners. I dont think it works on the Winski Perorate page for example as it is too long. A quote that length should be in its own section.
The Han solo line is perfect, it summarises his personality in a few short words. I appreciate that there is far less dialogue for us to choose from for Forgotten Realms characters, but if there is not an appropriate quote we should just not put one, rather than putting a quote that's not really appropriate.
SUMMARY: Good idea, but only for short quotes, no more than a sentence.
FW, I am biased... I like the quotes, such as
Conyberry and
Old Night... it's like introducing a character or place though their words or someone elses words about them, and you get to read everything. A nice introduction! I agree with Thom, though... short. Of course... I can and will change these pages if the vote goes the other way :)
I'm of the opinion that, if the quote
encompasses the character's general outlook, it's fine, but that (as Thomaslove92 mentioned above), it should be short. I'm working my way through
Shadowbane right now, and in it there's a voidsoul genasi named
Sithe. In the novel, she says (and this really isn't a spoiler, so no worries): "I am not a shadow. I am the nothing that the darkness hides - the void that the darkness cannot fill." That quote pretty much tells you exactly what Sithe is.
Cronje is right... reading the books becomes even more fun, because great quotes just jump out at you... plus, it adds a sense of research as you enjoy the novel!
I like quotes but I think they should go at the end of an article, like the "flavor text" at the bottom of a Magic:The Gathering card, keeping disambiguation, definition, and info boxes at the top (the
Winski Perorate quote displaces the info box a lot). That way there can be more than one quote and they can be as long as you want. A ==Quotes== heading can be added so people can jump to the quotes if that is what they want to read. Just my $0.02.
I just wanted to bring this one up as I'm pushing for not allowing quotes at the top of articles for a very good reason! The first sentence or so of the article is what comes up in Google when you get a FR-wiki search result. If the first sentence in the article is a quote, it diminishes the search result. The text on the search result really should be a sentence explaining what the article is about, which is what the first sentence of the regular article text does.
Therefore, I'd like to put a bit of pressure on not having quotes at the very beginning of articles!
Fw190a8 14:46, October 5, 2012 (UTC)
Further to this I've added {{fq}} which is a "floating quote" template. This will make it easier to embed quotes into articles without having to have a separate quotes section, so they can still be near-ish to the top if desired.
There is an example of this in use at
Artemis Entreri. Feedback welcome!
Fw190a8 15:05, October 5, 2012 (UTC)
FW, okay... check out
Tower of Twilight... I have taken Movie's idea of having the quote at the end of the article... not sure I like it there... maybe right after the intro line might better, but I definitely see your point about the google search... I just want to solidify where you/we think quotes should go :) Actually, it looks okay before the gallery section... hmmm Man, FW... you're fast... I'm still posting this, because I worked long and hard on a response... but I like the floating quotes :)
At the bottom was just an idea for when there are a lot of random quotes. If you have a specific quote that goes with a particular section or illustration, then by all means put it with the associated material. Check out
Elemental Plane of Air for example.
I like using quotes in my articles, where I find them, as they're very stylish. I prefer sayings and lines from poems and songs, as they illustrate the culture or the poem or song best, particularly those that Ed Greenwood throws out in novels and sourcebooks. For example, I have a few in
Procampur.
I wasn't aware of a problem when they show in a Google search. In fact, I'm still not. I tried a Google search for "Procampur" + "wikia" and get the first proper line of the article. What am I missing?
Hmm I think BadCatMan is right. I think that if the quote is written directly into the article, it will be used as text in a search result. However, if it is implemented with the {{
quote}} template, the wiki knows not to use it, as it's not a proper start to the article.
This would make my "Google should have the introduction to the article as its summary" case invalid, provided the {{quote}} template is used. However, I am still going to lean towards using floating templates because I do think these look better. I'm quite aware of my bias towards unflavoured, encyclopedic presentation of the source material though, so others might think differently!
Fw190a8 22:58, October 7, 2012 (UTC)
