Lumper vs. Splitter: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''"It is good to have hair-splitters and lumpers." -[http://books.google.com/books?id{{=}}gHYTAAAAYAAJ&pg{{=}}PA105 Charles Darwin]''}} |
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When faced with five subtly different things, would you rather see one page with a general description of all five, or five pages precisely describing one entry each? If the first, you're a Lumper. If the second, you're a Splitter. |
When faced with five subtly different things, would you rather see one page with a general description of all five, or five pages precisely describing one entry each? If the first, you're a Lumper. If the second, you're a Splitter. |
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Revision as of 15:14, 7 August 2014
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"It is good to have hair-splitters and lumpers." -Charles Darwin |
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When faced with five subtly different things, would you rather see one page with a general description of all five, or five pages precisely describing one entry each? If the first, you're a Lumper. If the second, you're a Splitter.
For example: A Splitter is someone who thinks that this page should not exist. There should be separate pages for Lumper and Splitter.
A lumper also wants to get rid of this page, but by merging it with a bunch of other pages to create a new page called Common Wiki Wars.
The way Tropers handle this deep philosophical divide is for splitters to write finely-distinct entries and for lumpers to write overview entries that list the "splits". We call those lumper pieces "indexes" or Super Tropes, and each of the splits is a Sub-Trope.
The Other Wiki would not appreciate this. We must never tell them. The Other Wiki calls these "mergist" and "separatist" Which, you will note, is a split.