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With recent events, like Personal life of Jennifer Lopez and Ashton Kutcher on Twitter, I wonder if there is something wrong with this guideline. If not, then shall this guideline need an expansion, like a mention of content about a living person? --George Ho (talk) 02:43, 6 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Axis occupation of Vojvodina#RfC:Is this article subject notable, and if so, is it an acceptable fork of existing articles?. Peacemaker67 (talk) 10:16, 12 August 2012 (UTC)Template:Z48[reply]

Recently, User:Flyer22 has asked me to revert several article transclusions that I have made, and has described my edits as an unacceptable type of content forking, despite the fact that transclusion is not mentioned in this article at all. Is it acceptable to transclude parts of one article into other articles, as long as no content is directly copied and pasted from one article to another? (As I understand it, "content forking" refers to the creation of multiple versions of the same page, whereas transclusion creates a single version of an article and automatically mirrors that version across multiple articles). Jarble (talk) 22:12, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See here for the main discussion I had with Jarble about this. To summarize my objections with regard to this matter, he was copying articles in their entirety in sections of other articles, using "Main article" or "See also" in those sections to point readers to those articles as though they offer anything different than what the sections do, and he was achieving this copying by using articles as templates. He doesn't consider this inappropriate WP:Content forking because he was not directly copying the content into articles. It's clearly the type of transclusion he was doing that was the problem. Flyer22 (talk) 22:22, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And I didn't ask Jarble to revert; he offered to do so, and did so (for example, here and here), because even he (as shown in those edit summaries) seemed to realize that he had created massive redundancy and presumably didn't want to cause any more trouble for himself or for others. Flyer22 (talk) 22:29, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Flyer22: and @Jarble: It's an idea that has crossed many editors' minds, and has been experimented with before, over the years.

The problems are very briefly mentioned at WP:SYNC (part of the WP:Summary style guideline), but it gets more complicated and problematic than that. TL;DR: It's best to write each article so that it can stand-alone, and write a separate brief synopsis topped with a {{main}} or {{See also}} tag for any article that needs a summary. Transcluding whole articles is more trouble than it's worth, particularly causing difficulty in tracking diffs or discovering changes, and confusing neweditors. HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 22:37, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for weighing in, Quiddity. At the time of your reply, I had just got through stating that, given the low activity of this talk page (and its main page), we weren't likely to get any replies about this here...or at least any time soon here. I was obviously wrong. Flyer22 (talk) 22:44, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Under article spinouts: "so it is more appropriate to break that section out as a separate section and just have a summary in the main article."

It says "separate section" but then refers to Summary Style, which would suggest a separate article. Anyone know which it's suppose to be? Separate section or article? CorporateM (Talk) 12:22, 30 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Some examples, could be hypothetical, of improper content forking would be useful. I'm still not sure when an article could be considered a legitimate spin-off piece and when this is to be avoided. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 15:36, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is an apparently obligatory thread requested via revert to my edit by Flyer22 (talk · contribs). Does anyone object/agree with my edit, and if so, please explain why. --slakr^\ talk / 10:15, 18 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]