Wikipedia:Roadmaps for article titles

See also: Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation

Technical and scientific articles fall naturally into a pattern determined by the dependency of one article's subject on another. For example, Squaring the circle depends on both Compass and straightedge and Pi. Or, less technically, Jazz fusion depends on Jazz and Rock music. It is extremely difficult to grasp even the general nature of highly advanced articles without some kind of Roadmap. This should put any article in proper context by showing which other articles it depends upon and which articles depend on it. (For our purposes, each page is taken as synonymous with its subject.) In theory, every factual article on Wikipedia should be linked into a single Roadmap. In practice, it may be a very long time before subject-area-specific Roadmaps are completely joined. Such small Roadmaps can still be highly useful to the reader who browses outside of his own field of expertise.

Terms and notations

page

preferred term, for brevity; = article, topic, subject, &c.

area

preferred term, for brevity; = field, broad subject area, Portal, WikiProject; for example, Mathematics or Music

leaf

Page upon which no other page appears to depend

branch

Narrow subject area; a straightforward series of dependencies

trunk

Any page upon which many pages depend

root

The theoretical basis of all other pages; undefined

map

Any portion of the entire Roadmap; also, the source page upon which it is contained

A, B, C, D

Standard metasyntactic variables representing arbitrary pages

J, K

Standard metasyntactic variables representing arbitrary areas

M, N

Standard metasyntactic variables representing arbitrary maps

P, Q

Standard metasyntactic variables representing arbitrary maps assumed to be larger in scope than M, N

U

The single, unified Roadmap, including all maps; ultimate goal

A depends on B

Some knowledge of B useful to understanding A

A stems from B

Alternate statement of same relationship

B leads to A

Alternate statement of same relationship

B > A

Shorthand for B leads to A

B >> A

Some knowledge of B essential to understanding A

B ] A

A is a subtopic or subpage of B

B + A

A and B are closely related and dependency is unspecified

B = A

A and B are merge candidates

J ) A

J is an area that includes A

M - A

A is linked into M

P ) M

M a subset of P

M + N

M and N are joined in some way and dependency is unspecified

Symbolic notations are useful in discussion as a shorthand for expressing on talk the relationships among pages, areas, and maps; they are not required and must never be displayed in articlespace. Standard set and graph theory notation is not used (a) in favor of more easily-typed symbols and (b) to distance this essentially social effort from a purely abstract one. Note that attempts to reverse some notations, such as A < B, are perilous due to conflicts with the parser.

Principles

• Many areas display densely linked navigation boxes on included pages. Roadmap does not duplicate these.
• Category and list pages include exhaustive collections of pages. Roadmap does not duplicate these.
• Roadmap covers all areas. It is assumed that editors in an area have a deep understanding of that area; this must be respected.
• Every factual article falls within the scope of Roadmaps.
• We transclude M - A discreetly, with respect for the overall look-and-feel of the page. Transcluded M must be kept short and highly pertinent; readers who wish to go beyond immediate scope can follow a link to P.
• We do not transclude M - A profusely. While we may attempt to U - for every A, we do not need to display M on every A. The purpose of Roadmap is to lead the reader through technical thickets; elementary, basic, introductory articles need no such help. If a page is immediately comprehensible, we do not obsessively display our powers of abstraction in order to make it incomprehensible.
• Pages do not naturally form a tree structure; instead, they form a dense, ambiguous network of relationships. We attempt to simplify this to a directed, weighted graph with a small number of cross-links. This simplification is the entire object of our effort. The costs and benefits of each map link must be balanced before addition. When in doubt, do not link. Rely instead on local navigation boxes and body links.
• One more time: Roadmap is the highway, an express route from advanced pages leading to trunks from which the intelligent layman can school himself back up to the point at which he first became confused. We do not duplicate the local road system.

Method

This concept is new. We do not yet know how to go about it. Certainly, we must leverage the power of the community, particularly of the participants in technical areas. Method is the first order of business on talk.