User:Stevertigo/Conceptualization

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Conceptualization or abstraction, in the context of editing and writing Wikipedia articles, is a modality of editorial thought, in which articles are regarded more for their ability to represent concepts rather than specific objects, such that articles can be explanatory in a general and abstract way, rather than be overly concerned with particular ideas and localized terms. Concept articles are written with abstractions first in mind, while the particular terminologies come second.

Conceptualism is in contrast with the specialistic nomenclature (cf. taxonomy) of specialization, in which articles tend to represent distinct localized concepts, and little attention is paid to how these concepts relate to one another. For example, ATW, the authors of veganism fail to mention vegetarianism in their lede - a necessary distinction to make in the lede of any article where the concepts are too similar to assume no ambiguity exists, or where the failure to make the distinction is itself made for only polemic reasons. (See also Wikipedia:Concept cloud).

The basic goals of this modality, as applied to Wikipedia, are:

1. All distinct concepts should be represented as distinct articles.
2. Within a topic, the higher concept article should be the most developed.
3. If there is a valid conceptual abstraction of a concept or topic..
   1. ..for which there is no article: Create one.
   2. ..for which there are many disparate articles: Create one, list all of the relevant ones (Ex: divine presence), and link to the higher concept from each.
   3. ..for which there is no canonical term: Create one, using multiple common terms: (ex: "sugar water" "Iraq disarmament crisis")
4. Create topic boxes liberally, and use them as an editorial tool to organize related topics, and to develop the articles within (cf. template:needs box and template:standard).
5. Focus on the leads of the higher concept articles until they are as good as you can make them. The details follow.