Template:Over-explained/doc

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{{Over-explained}} is a template used to identify claims which feature an over-explanation. It produces a superscripted notation like the following:

Bill Clinton was born in a delivery room at Julia Chester Hospital on either South Main or South Walnut Street in the city and state of Hope, Arkansas in the country of the United States of America on the planet Earth of the Solar System in the Local Interstellar Cloud within the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy within the Local Group within the Virgo Supercluster in the observable portion of the Universe, according to some theories part of a larger multiverse.[over-explained]

Usage

You may append a date to the template in the following format:

{{Over-explained|date=November 2024}}

Notes:

  • Do not substitute this template.
  • If you don't add a date parameter, a bot will date your entry with the month and year at a later time.
  • The date parameter consists of the name of the current month and the year only, no dates. The names of the months are capitalised in English.
    Any deviation from these two rules will result in an "invalid date parameter" error.

You are also recommended to also add the (non-displayed) |reason= parameter to leave a better record for future editors. For example, the following usage might be appropriate to the claim that "Bill Clinton was born in the city and state of Hope, Arkansas in the country of the United States of America on the planet Earth of the Solar System in the Local Interstellar Cloud within the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy within the Local Group within the Virgo Supercluster in the Observable universe.":

{{Over-explained|reason=isn't this article about the requirements for presidency in the US, not astronomy?}}

Adding this template to an article places the article into Category:Articles needing cleanup or a dated subcategory thereof.

Please remove the template when you address the amount of explanation for a statement.

When not to use this template

Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons should be removed immediately. Do not tag it: immediately remove it. For more information, see the section on poorly sourced contentious material in the Biography of Living Persons policy.

Material which is doubtful and harmful may be removed immediately, rather than tagged. See Burden of evidence. Claims that you think are wrong may alternatively be tagged with {{Dubious}}.

Any editor may add this template to any over-explained passage for any reason, but many editors object to what they perceive as overuse of this tag, particularly in what is known as "drive-by" tagging, which is applying the tag without attempting to address the issues at all. Consider whether adding this tag in an article is the best approach before using it, and use it judiciously.

Per WP:NOTGUIDE it is not the responsibility of Wikipedia to be an instruction manual. However, Wikipedia does have an obligation to make technical articles accessible for its readers.

This template is intended for specific passages that are may be over-explained but which you, as an editor, are not qualified to address. Since the amount of explanation depends on context a selection which over-explains its claim on article or section may not over-explain the same claim on another page. Over-explanation also is a red flag to many editors indicating an attempt to either lengthen the article or make the subject appear more notable than it actually is.

Reasons why you would not be able to handle over-explanation include a lack of context in the article, an abundance of explanation in the rest of the article, or lack of knowledge regarding the general topic.

The selection:

Bill Clinton was born in the city and state of Hope, Arkansas in the country of the United States of America on the planet Earth of the Solar System in the Local Interstellar Cloud within the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy within the Local Group within the Virgo Supercluster in the Observable universe.

would be over-explanation on an article about Bill Clinton or about the requirements for presidency in the US. It may not be over-explanation as an example within a section about the Earth's location within the galaxy.

How to respond to this tag

The addition of this tag is a request for less explanation to support the tagged statement. If you are able to provide a more appropriate explanation to support the claim, then please do so, and if possible move the information provided in the explanation to a more appropriate location.

There is no specific deadline for trimming explanations. Please do not delete information that you believe is correct simply because an editor has tagged it as an over-explanation and no other editor has moved it to a better location.

However, what often makes an explanation of a claim an over-explanation is that the information either does not belong anywhere or is already duplicated. As with the example above:

  • Bill Clinton was born in the city and state of Hope, Arkansas in the country of the United States of America on the planet Earth of the Solar System in the Local Interstellar Cloud within the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy within the Local Group within the Virgo Supercluster in the observable universe.

most of the information may be deleted and safely assumed to already be elsewhere. The "Hope, Arkansas" article describes Hope as a city in Arkansas and Arkansas as a state in the US, and so on, requiring none of the excess information to be relocated.

Thus, unless it was an example of the Earth's location within the universe, the text could be rewritten as:

both on the less safe assumption that a general audience will be familiar with Bill Clinton as a former president of the US and its location (thus it is unnecessary to describe) and the much safer truth that Bill Clinton and Hope, Arkansas and subsequent links will provide one with all that information.

See also

Inline templates: Content

Article message box templates


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