Re: wikipedia: "GNU Lilypond" article

[Tom Cloyd]

Well, the alternative is more verbiage about how things work - or excise
the example and leave it all rather terse. To me this is a clear case of
"a picture is worth a thousand words". Only it's an illustration, not a
picture, as it were. Too short to teach, but long enough to illustrate.
As for the text on the page, I rather thought it might be usefully
expanded, which would help solve the relative proportion problem.

Bertalan Fodor (LilyPondTool) wrote:
> Actually I agree with the advisory. The example is way too large for 
> an example.
> Most programming languages have only "Hello, world".
> So should Lilypond.
Well, we can disagree about this, certainly. Personally, I don't think
"hello world" examples have much use. An absolute minimum, conveying
very little. Look at the article on "Ruby (programming language)" -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_(programming_language) - which has
quite a number of code examples, not all of which are small. THAT is
helpful, for someone truly interested in the subject. And there's no
objection raised to this. I find the objection in the GNU Lilypond
article to be arbitrary, in comparison.

Perhaps a little consideration of the purpose, or value, of the article
might be in order. Terse brevity might not be the best means to the end,
if that end be a decent overview of what Lilypond does, as I rather
think it should be.

For what it's worth.

Thanks for responding.

t.
> Bert
>
> sdfgsdhdshd wrote:
> > No wonder: the example is 3/4 of the page!
> >
> >
> >
> > Tom Cloyd-2 wrote:
> >   
> > > In the Wikipedia article on "GNU Lilypond", some ignorant editor had 
> > > entered a non-removable advisory which reads -
> > >
> > > "This article or section contains instructions, advice, or how-to content.
> > > The purpose of Wikipedia is to present facts, not to teach subject 
> > > matter. Please help improve this article by removing or rewriting the 
> > > how-to content, which may qualify for a move to Wikiversity, 
> > > http://www.wikihow.com/, or http://howto.wikia.com/.";
> > >
> > > In the Discussion section for the article I have lodged a protest 
> > > against this advisory, and justified it by reference to code examples 
> > > given in other programing language articles in Wikipedia, which I think 
> > > is a sound basis for the protest.
> > >
> > > I personally find the code example in the article an decent illustration 
> > > of what Lilypond looks like and does, and thus both informative and 
> > > useful. I'm concerned that it NOT be excised, due to its relevance. 
> > > Readers truly interested in the content of article will likely want to 
> > > see some Lilypond code, and the example in the article meets this need.
> > >
> > > Given the high profile nature of Wikipedia articles, I thought it might 
> > > be worthwhile to call attention to this issue, in case someone on this 
> > > list who is more involved in that particular article than I am wants to 
> > > do some followup.
> > >
> > > At this point in my learning of Lilypond, this is about a hefty a 
> > > contribution as I'm likely to make to "the cause". For what it's worth...
> > >
> > >     
> >
> >   
>
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>
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>   


--

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Tom Cloyd, MS MA, LMHC - Private practice Psychotherapist
Bellingham, Washington, U.S.A: (360) 920-1226
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