Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lists/Archive 1

message: ; Description : This project will encourage editors to write more lists. Lists are quite scarce now, and they're definitely needed to make Wikipedia as complete as possible. Compared to WP:WPGA. You can see a discussion on a "Today's Featured List" in the Main Page on this link.--Ed ¿Cómo estás? 02:33, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original proposal on [[WP:COUNCIL/P]] 

message: I think that we should add one bullet point to the goals. IMHO, we actually need to have more lists around WP in order to keep things in order, etc.--Ed ¿Cómo estás? 01:27, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Goals 

message: I would like to propose a quota that all WikiProject members would be encouraged to meet:
*One new list sent to DYK per month
*One list promoted to FL status per month
I think that implementing such a quote will encourage more edits towards lists, which IMHO are the most neglected parts of edits in the entire encyclopedia.--Ed ¿Cómo estás? 01:39, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure if this is a good idea. I don't think it will increase quality lists, I think it will just increase the number of pre-mature lists going to FL candidacy, and then failing. Nominate when a list is ready, and not by an arbitrary time cycle. Encouragement is good, but there's a lot of ways we can go about it. -- Ned Scott 04:31, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed,also in the interests of avoiding instruction creep and "missed deadlines" too. Let those who find quotas a useful self-motivator establish their own privately. --Quiddity 07:45, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quota 

message: Considering the nature of this WikiProject putting a WikiProject banner on ALL articles that are list articles is a bad idea. This is a scope of style and not a scope of article topic. -- Ned Scott 01:55, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What we should tag is the talk pages of list guidelines and list templates, which is what is done for other similar projects (such as WikiProject Fair use, WikiProject Infoboxes, etc). -- Ned Scott 02:09, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

text: *IMO, the Assessment scale ratings help contributors see the status of the list. If we want to improve stubs, how will we know specifically which are stubs, rather than going to each list page and say yep that's a stub...few more clicks...nope that's not a stub. Having an articles by Quality list would help contributors who want to make major additions/improvements to move lists up in rank. In making lists to be FL status, it would be much easier to work on an A-class list rather than a Stub or Start class list if people dont have time to work up stubs, then they can work up A-class. How would we organize this then? -AMK152(Talk • Contributions • Send message)  14:12, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

text: The reason I wanted the template on all articles is so that we could, while rating them , go through and delete the ones that did not meet inclusion status, why was it decided to change the purpose of the template? The Placebo Effect 14:41, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's one possible way to do things, yes, but we're talking about tagging over 58,000 articles (and growing fast), and in many cases over-lapping with other WikiProjects. What we should do is help other projects know what criteria they need to be setting for lists. It would be far more efficient to work via more direct projects, allowing them to do the bulk of the work. We're talking about an entire type of article, rather than a topic or location. We're not a normal WikiProject, and tagging articles directly really won't be practical or helpful. We can work with existing WikiProject banners to even keep track of lists statistics if we need to. -- Ned Scott 18:07, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Project banner 

message: To make lists successful in Wikipedia, we need  a strong foundation and in particular a good "criteria for inclusion" in WP:L. Many lists end up violating WP:V, WP:NOR, and WP:NPOV because it is more difficult to apply these to lists than to articles. See this essay for the rationale Wikipedia:Lists_in_Wikipedia. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 05:08, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  This is needed 

message: I think the List of notable organ transplant donors and recipients has potential to be a featured list, but it still needs some work.  I'm too busy right now to work on it right now, but I thought I would bring it to this the attention of this wikiproject. Remember 16:22, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  List with potential 

message: (Originally posted at Wikipedia talk:Featured lists#Idea for list and suggestion for featured list - is this place more active?)
*I recently jotted down a list of the known burial places of English monarchs. It doesn't feel like a real list, but is it the sort of thing that has potential or not? See the Reference Desk question (and answers) here for more details. Carcharoth 09:39, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Idea for list and suggestion for featured list 

message: There are several lists included at WP:WANTED that might be of interest to this project.  --Sapphic 16:42, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:WANTED|Most wanted articles]] 

message: There is discussion at the village pump about lists. 
See also the discussion at Wikipedia talk:External links. --Timeshifter 17:03, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Policy/guideline discussions about lists and charts. 

message: As I see there is a WP on Lists, what are your project's thoughts on assessment of List articles? I know there is a FL class, but do you normally then assess all lists as List class unless they are FL, or do you use the normal assessment scale: Stub, Start, B, GA, A, FL? Any insight would be great. Aboutmovies 19:33, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Similar question asked by me above, at the end of #Project banner, but unanswered. Needs a code guru I think, to either implement or explain why it's not possible. Perhaps, if you felt so inclined, you could summarize and ask for input at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council. I would, but I've got a headache coming on.. --Quiddity 20:04, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, this was discussed before, but we just didn't have the people to do the job.--Ed ¿Cómo estás? 20:07, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, a bot can go add the template; then those who work on the specific list can assess it. Assessing all these lists isn't going to happen over night. -AMK152(Talk • Contributions • Send message)  01:56, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  List assessment 

message: Most of this chart was deleted. See  this diff of the deletion.
Can some list and chart editors comment at Talk:Comparison of time tracking software.
It seems that almost 2 years of work was deleted for no particularly good reason. 
Here is the chart before the blanking:
*http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comparison_of_time_tracking_software&oldid=129342155
I think the main problem with the chart then was that the wikilinks were mixed up with the embedded citations. A minor problem was the inclusion of some specific prices in some cases.
The wikilinks should have been the only links with text labels. The embedded citation links should not have had text labels. They should just be numbered automatically by the wikipedia software. See WP:CITE and Wikipedia:Embedded citations.--Timeshifter 05:38, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Except that the links don't really constitute proper citations - as is being discussed in a new section of previously linked ongoing discussion. Nposs 05:57, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I see what you are saying. Many embedded citations on wikipedia do not have the additional info that should be in a references section. But that is no reason for deletion, though. And some spam fighters may not like the duplicate link in the references section. --Timeshifter 06:16, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Comparison of time tracking software]] 

message: Chart page destroyed by group blanking by editors parachuting in. 
Please see: 
Note the edit history, and the talk page. Ever since two-thirds of the chart was deleted by a blanking crew, the main editors of the chart seem to have left. What remains are mostly a few random attempts to add new entries by passersby, and some haphazard formatting attempts. 
Most of the new entry attempts get slapped down by the current guardian User:Mrzaius who I have seen in other discussions with the previously-mentioned blanking crew.
Here is the version of the chart before most of it was deleted:
*http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comparison_of_time_tracking_software&oldid=130227200
Think of the months and years of effort down the tubes. --Timeshifter 05:08, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comparison of time tracking software. Current status 

message: I've been getting hounded/harrassed by the powers that be regarding disambiguation and lists--even banned for a day because of it, and I tire of it. See Talk:Darker (disambiguation) (and the article I created based on it, List of titles with "Darker" in them), Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#disagreement about linking to dictionary DABs, and Talk:Mystery (disambiguation). Basically, all of this recent nonsense started over linking to DAB pages (at Talk:Discover Magazine (TV series)). It's just getting ridiculously out of hand and more support needs to be added in favor of disambiguation lists in Wikipedia. ∞ΣɛÞ² (τ|c) 15:30, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure I agree with you on this one. It's silly to add indices to DAB pages. I doubt many people look for lists of movies with the word "Darker" in the title. If you really need to, make seperate pages for the indices, or, better yet, categories. I'm open to discussion, though. --Birdman1 talk/contribs 16:23, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, that's just it; I tried to make a separate set index article for the "Darker" titled articles but it's also proposed for deletion. I don't think it's silly to add an index of related articles to a DAB page considering that's all they are in the first place--a list of articles about the title; I simply expanded the list to include a wider relationship. ∞ΣɛÞ² (τ|c) 18:47, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  help with list-related things 

message: I think this little essay summarizes many of the problems I see on list and chart pages. Feel free to copy or adapt this anywhere. Please see some relevant wikipedia guideline/policy quotes in a section near the top of my user page titled "Notability concerning lists and charts." See: User:Timeshifter.
There are conflicting guidelines on notability of items in lists and charts. But common sense allows article editors to reach a balance. It is obvious that some lists such as List of English writers could not include all writers. Wikipedia editors alone number in the millions! It is equally obvious to many that technology and software lists should include more than just the big corporate products. Some lists even have separate sections for freeware, shareware, and/or open source. 
All 3 of those forms of software are notable in themselves. The topic of the lists are notable. Basic WP:NPOV encyclopedic fairness requires some balancing by the article editors for any list.  There has to be a balance between corporate and non-corporate entries on lists. There have to be decisions made as to notability in the community of freeware/shareware/open-source -- versus notability in the corporate press where previous ad money often talks in getting press and reviews. Decisions need to be made as to the number of users using a program, product, or entry. Sometimes long lists may require limiting list/chart entries to certain thresholds of number of users for each category. Also, decisions as to whether an entry is fading into disuse, and therefore unworthy of taking up an entry slot if a list or chart is already long. 
So, editors should not just parachute into a talk page, make a few muddied wikipedia guideline/policy declarations, and then delete/blank large parts of the articles, entries, or sources/citations. All without participating in the long consensus process that preceded them on the talk page. There is no rush.--Timeshifter 03:45, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notability concerning lists and charts. 

message: I'm looking for comments on this template User:Nil_Einne/Template:NOTE-L. Do editors think it's clear & properly phrased? Properly designed? Do you feel it's helpful? If you wondering why I made it, continue reading...
I'm coming from Scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming which as you might guess has a large amount of debate about who shouldnt & shouldn't be on the list. A month or two back, we deleted all red links, to end the chaos of people adding every single name they could find and as per WP:NOTE requirement that only notable entries should be added. This has cause some controversy and for a while we were mentioning the noteability requirement in the prose including a self ref . After looking at a few featured lists a (Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of HIV-positive people, List of notable brain tumor patients and List of people with epilepsy) I decided it was definitely unacceptable to include a self ref and also unnecessary to mention the notability requirement since from what I can tell, the consensus is that this is implied. Therefore, I removed the self ref and mention of notability requirement as per above. However this leaves us with the problem with how to avoid the perhaps well-meaning attempts to add non-noteable people to this list. To this end, I've added a bunch of hidden comments (). However I also thought it might be helpful to mention the requirement on the talk page so designed the template Nil Einne 19:42, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I like the look of it.  I removed a comma already.  The first sentence might be juggled to indicate that lists and their entries are subject to the same Notability guidelines as any other article, but I didn't take a crack at that. -- JHunterJ 19:50, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  What do editors think of this template? 

message: Please see:
*Talk:List of mind mapping software#Request for Comment: List of mind mapping software 
The version with footnoted references that people are referring to is at this revision:
*http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_mind_mapping_software&oldid=136992148 --Timeshifter 06:39, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for Comment (RfC) at [[List of mind mapping software]] 

message: Since its merger, "List of Pokémon" has been unbelievably popular for the whole of 2007 with the viewing audience. In the rank tables, this list came: 4th in June, 4th in May, 4th in April, 8th in March and 14th in February. Consistently being the fourth most popular in an encyclopedia of  articles is an impressive feat. May I suggest that in the interest of public opinion, attentions be focused intensely on this page, in particular improving it to Featured List status? - 82.16.7.63 03:18, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phenomenal popularity of [[List of Pokémon]] 

message: See Template:makelist. It creates lists. What do people think? -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 03:21, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template:makelist 

message: This list is the largest article on Wikipedia (600k in size). To ensure centralised discussion on what to do with it, could any interested editors please discuss the issue over at the list's talk page. → AA (talk) — 16:30, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[List of former members of the United States House of Representatives]] 

message: Two new articles, Mountain peaks of the United States and Mountain peaks of North America seem to be excellent candidates for lists.  Responding to my suggestion, one of the authors said that they did not meet the criteria.  Maybe a reader here could weigh in one way or the other.  Thanks.--Appraiser 21:27, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two articles that could be lists 

message: Dear colleagues
WP's Manual of Style has been expanded to include a summary of the recently overhauled MOSNUM submanual. Featured List candidates are explicitly required to follow these guidelines, as are all WP articles. 
At issue are the new Sections 9–14:
*Non-breaking spaces
*Chronological items (Precise language, Times, Dates, Longer periods)
*Numbers
*Decimal points
*Percentages
*Units of measurement
*Currencies, and 
*Common mathematical symbols
More detailed information on these and other topics is at WP:MOSNUM. Tony 06:41, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New sections in the Manual of Style: dates, numbers, etc 

message: Quoting myself from Wikipedia talk:Lists#Question about categorical lists -
Are there any guidelines about categorized or hierarchical lists, specifically "Unsorted", "Miscellaneous" or "Other" headings? IMO this is far worse than a trivia section in an article, as the whole point of a categorized list is to organize by topic. For a specific example, I would like to point out List of vegetable oils (a featured list), with an "Other oils" section. This section will not be interesting for people to read. Just glancing at it, I see that further headings could be made for "Medicine", "Cosmetics" and "Insecticides".
These sections can make the article look unreliable (see:List_of_edible_seeds#Miscellaneous), and can also mean that the item does not meet the requirements of the list (see:List_of_fruits#Unsorted). I did put the Template:expert in those, which I know makes it look worse.
Could some guideline be made about this? I would love to have an unsorted template (like Template:Trivia) to put into such lists. My basic idea is this: if an item cannot be categorized then it probably does not belong on that categorical list. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 05:31, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm unsure if a guideline is necessary, but I'd say that such sections are definitely an indicator that more work needs to be put into an article. Maybe a template would be useful. Something like "This list contains items that are not sorted into useful   classifications. It is suggested that the structure of this list be changed to accommodate these items." --Monotonehell 06:35, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, a guideline is too far. I have added Wikipedia:Lists#Organization (although the wording could use some fine-tuning), just common sense stuff, but it would be useful for referencing. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 21:07, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Repeatedly unanswered question about categorical lists 

message: Please see a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Contents#Contents pages, and lists of lists concerning the Wikipedia:Contents subpages, and specifically on the namespace they belong in. Thanks. --Quiddity 17:15, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  RfC on Lists and Contents pages 

message: Given the confusion I've seen in AfD discussions, I'd like to add the following sentence to Wikipedia:Lists#Criteria for inclusion in lists: "Review Wikipedia:Lists (stand-alone lists) for further clarification (see also WP:NOT#DIR)." My reasonings are set out in full at User:Sidatio/Conversations/On_list_guidelines#Alternate_proposal:_clarification_and_alteration_of_up_to_three_policies.  I'm bringing it up here before implementing such a change to see if there are objections. :) (And also to ask anyone else interested in joining the conversation at User:Sidatio/Conversations/On_list_guidelines to please chime in. The conversation is flagging. :)) --Moonriddengirl 12:45, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed addition to [[Wikipedia:Lists]]; seeking feedback 

message: Hi folks, WP:FLC is an important process and is currently suffering from a lack of reviewers. If anyone would be interested in helping review some lists, it would be much appreciated. Thanks, Scorpion0422 18:05, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:FLC]] 

message: Is it alright to archive the discussion thread "Lists versus categories: a very particular case"? It only has archival values now. Thanks. Aditya(talk • contribs) 09:41, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for archiving