Wikipedia talk:Writing better articles

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This essay should stop equating paragraph count to lead size. That's ridiculous since paragraph lengths vary widely; six 90-word paragraphs would be shorter than four 140-word paragraphs (and 90 and 140 are both within acceptable range). Total word count is a more direct measure of lead size.

Don't give ammunition to editors who would resist splitting an overlong paragraph because "MOS recommends no more than four paragraphs." That is the opposite of helpful. ―Mandruss ☎ IMO. 10:12, 20 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing: It was called to my attention that you recently did some work in this area at MOS:LEAD. Maybe you can help here, too. ―Mandruss ☎ IMO. 20:03, 22 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Mandruss, I think you should just boldly re-write it. As this might be consulted more often by inexperienced editors, it might be helpful to focus on what's typically too long, rather than a minimum, such as "less than 400 words". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:25, 22 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'll think about it, but it's likely outside the scope of my semi-retirement. Even posting this thread was borderline.

It occurs to me that the focus might be on paragraph count partly because many editors don't know how to easily count words. Word counters are easily found by googling "word counter". I use https://wordcounter.net/. Perhaps this essay (and LEAD?) could mention that. ―Mandruss ☎ IMO. 22:40, 22 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. I've done it for you, and shortened a few other things while I was there. This kind of page tends to accumulate "just one more" piece of advice, so we need to weed it every now and then. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:35, 22 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I've done it for you - Not so much. It still contains "The appropriate length of the lead depends on that of the article, but should normally be no more than four paragraphs." That's exactly what I objected to. It also still contains the silly table here. ―Mandruss ☎ IMO. 01:09, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I've weeded two more instances out of this page now. One was transcluded through Wikipedia:Lead section TT text. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:48, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you immensely. The page no longer contains the word "four". ―Mandruss ☎ IMO. 02:31, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In section : "Build the web ..."   in the 2nd paragraph ... the link from "... refactoring." goes to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refactoring ... I think it should link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Refactoring_talk_pages

... 

Conovaloff (talk) 01:46, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It was correct, but I guess, easier words could have been used instead of an article on code refactoring. I have edited it accordingly. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 20:43, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just realized that this is linked under the newcomer task for expanding an article, was a bit surprised to not see any guidance on editors using AI tools here. Feels like we probably should.

I know we don't have a policy on AI ever yet, but then again this page isn't policy either. Gnomingstuff (talk) 15:40, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@FourNoddlers the new shortcut WP:Is a term was created just now, thus the argument that it is not used cannot be applied. Shortcuts are meant to be memorable and my head never remembers WP:REFERS, it always goes to "is a term". ᛒᛚᚮᚴᚴᚼᛆᛁ ᛭ 𝔅𝔩𝔬𝔠𝔨𝔥𝔞𝔧 01:06, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

WP:2SHORTCUTS says [template boxes] generally should list only the most common and easily remembered redirects. WP:Is a term is not a common redirect, so it doesn't belong in the template. FourNoddlers (talk) 01:26, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

WP:TOPIC doesn't handle two of the main uses of the word "topic" that are used on Wikipedia, both of which people could be searching for information about, namely primary topics when disambiguating articles (WP:PRIMARYTOPIC) and Featured Topics (WP:FEATUREDTOPIC). Could we add these uses to the WP:TOPIC section hatnote? --Jameboy (talk) 20:11, 19 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Done. You know you can make these changes yourself, right? Danbloch (talk) 22:56, 19 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]