Talk:Return to Snowy River
Ori, you say in your comment summary, "Shortened to suitable length." You don't propose that all minor movies should be of this length, do you? What is a suitable length? More generally, how do you make decisions about what data is important and what data isn't? This is something we must be able to agree upon, and thus which we must take care to articulate. If we can't articulate it at all, we're in trouble. --Larry Sanger 19:48, 14 November 2006 (CST)
Larry, if you look at the pre-edit article here you'll see that what I did here was:
- Removed one-line of plot description: "Jim Craig returns to marry Jessica, but finds further problems and opposition from her father."
- List of songs in Soundtrack.
- List of "See also".
- Added relevant content.
The original contained three sentences, all three dealing mainly with the names of the film in the American and British distributions. The text dealing with the film itself included the following (citing in full): "1988 Australian sequel to the 1982 film "The Man From Snowy River""
I'm not suggesting that any film article should be this short, of course, which is why I tried to add something to the content. I agree with you that we need to formulate some orderly manner by which we deal with such films. There should be a minimum "onus" when creating or editing such articles: name, year, director, main cast, and main plot setting.
For example: The Bread and Butter Company is a 1999 film by director Karl Marks, also known as the director of the Docomentary film Das Kapital. The film stars Friedrich Engles as the rude but kind hearted manager of the Water and Pipes department in his hometown of Berlin. The film won the Uncritical Orange Dove (second prize) for 2000.
Of course, if we have more to tell, we should. Ori Redler 10:35, 17 November 2006 (CST)
All right. Well, unless you think that no complete, satisfactory article on this topic would ever have the information that you removed, then the only reason you could have for removing that information now is something like the following. You think that articles should follow only a specific path of development; and at every point in their path of development, they should "make sense." There should not be an imbalance of types of information, and the main body of the article should always, no matter what, be the largest part of the article.
Does that sound about right?
--Larry Sanger 12:42, 17 November 2006 (CST)
I don't think that there should be strict rules as to how an article should develop. Such rules are never really applied, so it's a waste of time formulating them as a perquisite. It's the role of authors and editors to be aware of the fact that there is such a thing as "proper structure" of an article and to try and bring an article to that point.
As to the proportion between the main body of the article and "boxes" (references, see also, additional information, etc.) -- there shouldn't be any strict rules, but we should strive to achieve a situation where the extras lead readers not simply to more information but to relevant and interesting information. If possible, this information should be incorporated in the main text and be non-redundant (e.g., referring to something in the text and in the "see also" section). For example, if the soundtrack is an important aspect in this film, it should be mentioned and perhaps there should be a mention of one particular song that became a hit, and so on. Just listing the tracks adds nothing to the reader and anything that does not add, detracts. Ori Redler 17:19, 17 November 2006 (CST)