User talk:24.53.145.170

TV show article episode numbers

I'm afraid I've rolled back the last three edits to Star Trek: The Original Series made by an editor using this IP address. (Since IP addresses are not owned by users, even "fixed" ones that are leased to them by their ISPs, we highly recommend registering a user name for editors who plan to make substantial contributions. User IDs are more anonymous than IP addresses and also provide more meaningful credit to users for their contributions.) I did the reversion for two reasons:

1. To change the MemoryAlpha links back to Wikipedia links, following the usual Wikiquote practice for encyclopedic links to go to Wikipedia, not a third-party reference. (But see below about heading links.)
2. Actual policy on TV show article formatting is in flux, as are most policies on Wikiquote, largely due to the lack of interested participants. But the main purpose of the templates is to provide a starting point for articles. We have yet to formally address the issue of format changes when the article lists all episodes from a finished series, but standard practice has been to remove the episode numbers after all episodes have been given headings in the correct order and a custom table of contents has been created to establish that order.

There are many contradictory policies, draft policies, and practices at Wikiquote. (One example is that it is against long-standing policy across Wikimedia projects to avoid links in section headings, which ST:TOS violates extremely. But there are arguably good reasons for doing this in some cases currently in practice.) These contradictions cannot be easily reconciled without substantial participation from the community, and very few of our thousands of users (on the order of 10 or so) are interested in and available for doing the long, hard work to establish formal policies that accomodate the many needs of different kinds of quote articles. Thus we live with the inconsistency and informal practices. I hope that your interest in the Star Trek articles will ultimately lead you to a more general participation in Wikiquote and possibly even into working on these weighty issues with us. But if not, whatever contributions you wish to make are very welcome, too! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:32, 29 May 2006 (UTC)