Wikipedia talk:Lists in Wikipedia/Archive 1

message: First, very rough draft, but I am sure you will get the "gist". I believe that it is an important subject based on my experience in dealng with lists related to controversial subjects. ≈ jossi  ≈ t • @ 23:27, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Rough draft

message: Notice, of course, that Peron was removed from the List of dictators precisely because his WP article did not support that characterization.  The idea of generally deferring to the judgement (and WP:V, WP:NOR, and all the rest) of the editors of a main article is exactly the right approach.  The dictators thing is, I believe, what largely prompted Jossi's interest in this guideline, though I'd like to broaden the focus to other lists.  There is not necessarily quite an identity between criteria stated in a list and what is most notable in an article, but if something cannot be supported in main articles, it certainly doesn't belong in a list.  But the correlary of that is that if it is WP:NPOV to call Idi Amin a "dictator" in his article, it doesn't suddenly become POV to include him in a list of dictators.  And the maintainers of the Amin article presumably are better subject area experts than are the list maintainers.  On the other hand, in this example, "dictator" is defined in a specific way on the list, and even though (as of this moment when I checked), the word "dictator" is not used in the article Idi Amin, clear support for both of the stated necessary criteria in List of dictators are contained in the former article.
Follow this further.  I could insert "GW Bush is a dictator" in his article, but it would stay there for all of 30 seconds before someone rolled it back.  On the other hand, the facts supporting the inclusion have been in the articles for Amin or Anastasio Somoza García (the latter using the word as well), in relatively stable form for months.  Deferring to WP content article editors takes a slight amount of common sense, but it's not mysterious.  An edit quickly rolled back or widely edit warred is not sufficiently evidentiary; stable long-standing descriptions are quite usable, and are even the best form of evidence to use.
Where I have encountered far more of an evidentiary standard personally is with the identitarian lists.  I personally worked on List of Jewish jurists and List of born-again Christian laypeople because of the terrible evidentiary standards.  Something like List of gay, lesbian or bisexual composers is very similar in concept, as are pretty much all the "Jewish whatever" lists (though a bunch of sockpuppets who had been the worst on these got banned recently).  In contrast to the dictators, where adding someone (even if measured against criteria) has a pejorative tone, the editors who add names to these lists do it out of a kind of self-affirmation.  To put it frankly, editors who are themselves, Jewish, born-again, or LGBT, feel comforted by adding a bunch of names of famous and respected people to their List of people like me.  And this makes for positively horrendous respect for WP:V.
A compounding problem with these identitarian lists is that the adjective term is not particularly cleanly defined.  Exactly what it means to be Jewish, born-again, or LGBT is very context dependent, and that context may often change over a person's lifetime.  If there is a List of African-born painters (I think there is not currently), it is not particularly subjective or dependent on self-identification.  Even if a given painter moves elsewhere during her life, her birth is non-contentious.  On the other hand, someone who becomes born-again Christian may change her mind religiously; someone with a Jewish ancestor may or may not identify as Jewish; someone with same-sex attractions or behaviors (for example, less than their opposite sex ones) may identify in various ways, and variously at points in their life.
What happens on these lists is that some very determined self-affirmation identitarians scoff at the notion that a listed person's article should need to support the identity claim (and likewise scoff at including any external citations, or any reliable and relatively non-partisan ones).  Having an official guideline that said "it better be supported by the individual's WP article would provide wonderfully unambiguous standards for names that might be added to identitarian lists (those without WP articles would need some external evidence, but hopefully they'll get articles over time as well).  I do not need to externally investigate whether each of a hundred painters are LGBT, Jewish, or born-again, as long as I can be relatively assured that the subject area experts in each of the hundred put that information on that content page (and put it there in a way accepted by other editors on the topic). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 04:42, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If only there were a technoical way to ensure that there was no sneaking someone onto a list without adding the "on the list" tag to to article itself.  This is one step away from the list becoming a category. - brenneman(t)(c) 12:39, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a good point... why to have such lists when you have categories? A better question is, what does a list do better than a category? ≈ jossi  ≈ t • @ 17:51, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: List and categories are complementary. Lists can be annotated, while categories cannot. So we can call an entry in a list "debatable", but an article is either in a category or not. Lists can include entries for which we don't have an article (yet). Additions and substractions from a list are easility monitored, but categories are hard to monitor, short of adding every single article to one's watchlist, and checking the category periodically. There are others, but those come to mind in this context. -Will Beback 22:46, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Lists also allow for reordering and better layout than categories. And they can be used when a single article contains two or more specific items in a particular category (e.g. a List of fruits could contain both oranges and nectarines, even if they were in the same article). Turnstep 20:18, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  WP content article and evidentiary standards 

message: Please read my sixteen point introduction at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Lists by religion-ethnicity and profession#Move to delete 99% of all Lists and Categories of Jews: Sixteen reasons why this should become a fixed Wikipedia policy and contribute to Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Lists by religion-ethnicity and profession#Proposed amendment: remove all Jewish-related lists. Thank you IZAK 10:34, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: IZAK's suggestion is far outside the scope of this particular guideline.  Whatever the merits of IZAK's idea, this page on evidentiary and POV issues is not specific to Jewish lists (though I used one I had worked on as an illustration, in parallel with another religious list, and one about sexual-identity).  The identitarian issues apply in pretty much the same way to anything ethinic, religious, sexual-identitarian, and probably to some concerning political opinions (e.g. I think there was a successfully deleted list about so-called "Pro-life politicians" which was probably a similar marker of "people like us"). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 18:27, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you elaborate on that?--Antispammer 21:17, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have noticed elsewhere that IZAK has recently expressed a desire to delete almost all Jewish lists under the idea that they might be used by anti-semites to identify (alleged) Jews.  FWIW, I am not particularly inclined to follow that sentiment.  AFAIK, SlimVirgin has taken a more nuanced position, similar to my own: keep some, delete others, depending on how much the ethnic/religious thing relates to the profession (but in all cases require more rigorous evidence than has typically been provided).  In any case, whatever the position of those various parties, it really is mostly outside scope of this particular proposed guideline. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 21:42, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed amendment: remove all Jewish-related lists 

message: I don't see much there about not creating lists of slang, or other open-ended lists of crud. There is a real problem with people adding random terms they heard once at a drunken party, or neologisms etc. Perhaps we should distinguish between lists which serve as indexes (ie, every item is a wiki link) and lists which contain terms (see Goth slang and Metasyntactic variables amongst others). On the whole, I think finite lists (works by Bach, world surfboarding champions) and semi-finite lists (brands of snowboard, railway gauges) are much more useful than potentially infinite lists (terms for "bottom", people who have met Pope John Paul II...).  Well, perhaps "infite" and "finite" aren't the right terms, but there should be a general limit to the number of potential items in the list, and the feasibility of checking the entries. Stevage 00:03, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Stevage's goal.  Care to propose some languages? Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 02:04, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "Lists must be adequately restrictive as to provide finite, defined results"?  That's a stab at it, but reads kind of high-falootin'. "Lists must not be so open-ended as to welcome infinite results or abuse" would be a more direct way of putting it, but isn't very elegant.  User:MattShepherd 15:04, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with the idea that we have many weird lists, but I think that we should avoid making a rule about what kind of lists are acceptable. That goes way beyond the original purpose of this proposal, to make sure that lists are NPOV. We should probably leave the decisions about what lists to have to the AfD process. -Will Beback 18:57, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Needs more on OR

message: The proposal correctly identifies that lists are used to push a point of view or to have a list of "people like me". Taking them to AfD is often hit or miss because some of the people are members or sympathizers of the group in question or are themselves pushing a point of view. In addition, non-involved parties reason, "We have this similar (POV or identitarian) list, so I don't see why we should delete this one." Having a policy might make it possible to consistently delete these kinds of lists on AfD or delete them all at once. It would be nice if repeatedly violating the policy would get the user a warning since some users produce an inordinate amount of these types of lists. -- Kjkolb 12:29, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Support 

message: By all means have a discussion page on this, but let's not have instruction creep - it should not be a formal guideline or policy.
All that really needs doing is to employ WP:NPOV and WP:V coupled with the principle that Wikipedia is an Encyclopaedia. Nothing more (which is why no separate guideline is necessary).
I'm surprised the discussion at present doesn't make clear what Verifiability means for lists. WP:Verifiability means that every snippet of information should be referenced, and if it is not, it can be removed (although often it may be best to ask for a source and only remove information if none is forthcoming). Applying this rigidly would help a lot - much of the problem with some lists is that they have no sources. For a list, every entry is a snippet of information - every entry requires a source, otherwise it should be removed. 
Put NPOV on top to eliminate lists that are inherently biased or campaigning in nature (or to eliminate the bias and campaigning in any lists that are at risk of becoming biased or campaigning nature) and you're pretty much on top of the issue.
In short - apply WP:NPOV and WP:V to lists rigidly and the problem will go away, jguk 20:20, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a really well-written page. Thank you to everyone who worked on it. Jguk, I agree that it's obvious WP:V applies to lists, but the list maintainers scream blue murder when you try to apply it. With a separate guideline spelling things out, there might be a chance of easier enforcement. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:48, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, SlimVirgin. As one that has "suffered" attempting to enforce policy on a few lists all I can say, I wish it was that simple. Fact is that right and left people are using lists innapropriately, thus this effort in providing some recommendations. Each one of the recommendations in this proposed guideline is based on real situations. I see not harm in providing some clarification on how to enforce WP:V, WP:NPOV, and WP:NOR in lists. ≈ jossi  ≈ t • @ 21:19, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have definitely "suffered" quite a bit trying to explain to list editors what WP:V means in a list context.  One of the worst, in my personal experience, was List of born-again Christian laypeople.  The problem was that the existing editors, who were pretty uniformly born-again themselves, felt that the fact that they had (allegedly) verified it to their own satisfaction was purported to constitute "verification".  So I got lots of retorts of "I checked it with Google".  Moreover, they tended to get up in arms with the idea that it was supposedly either an insult to a person whose name is removed, or an insult to the religious belief listed, to remove an unevidenced name.  Some of the Jewish lists have a very similar problem.  Probably others that I have not worked on too.  Being able to point to a guideline that is specific to lists would have helped enormously in getting editors to understand the underlying meaning of WP:V and WP:NOR. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 23:34, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Why not to have this as a guideline? Please clarify. Thanks. ≈ jossi  ≈ t • @ 21:59, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I see, thanks. I will think about it. As this is the first of such "discussions" I want to understand if these would help, or if these will just be dismissed by list editors with a "hey, these are not guidelines just discussions and have not been adopted by the community". ≈ jossi  ≈ t • @
===Examples of why we do need a guideline===
I would suggest that you go and check some of these lists, and maybe get a feeling of why we do need a guideline that is unambigous as it pertains specifically to lists:
* List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people (pay attention to the criteria: "This is a partial list of confirmed and debated famous people who were or are gay, lesbian or bisexual." (my emphasis)
* List of purported cults (Note the title of the list and the fact that use of the term "cult" is in itself disputed and has various and conficting definitions.) 
* List of transgendered people (No sources provided for more than 35% of the people in the list, and that include Milton Berle, comic who had a standard routine of dressing as a woman, but was not a transgender.)
≈ jossi  ≈ t • @ 23:13, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

text: How would this proposal affect these lists? Is there a problem with having a "debated" section in lists? It seems quite useful, as entries will often not be 100% agreed upon, and admitting that an entry is debated is NPOV. -Will Beback 23:17, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I'd add that the first two lists you mention have very clear criteria developed through lengthy discussions with many editors. The real problems, IMO, are with lists that have no clear criteria, such as List of political epithets. -Will Beback 23:21, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem with too much text is that people don't read it all, it risks becoming contradictory and is often ignored. Here, all you need to do in those cases is exert WP:NPOV and WP:V. The argument should be "These lists do not comply with WP:NPOV/WP:V in these respects...... If you don't believe me, then look at this discussion page where loads of Wikipedians agree with me that I am interpreting these policies correctly." My point is that the emphasis should be on complying with WP:NPOV and WP:V and stressing that these policies are mandatory to everything in the reader-facing namespaces, jguk 23:22, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Will, please explain how can you have "debated section" in lists and at the same time conform with WP:V? What you are saying is exactly the reason why do we need a policy for lists: You are asserting that because it is verifiable that there is a debate about person XYZ being gay, it is OK to include person XYZ in the list of gay people. Not so... you need to conform to WP:NPOV and WP:NOR as well. Lists are not the place to present competing views, leave that for main articles about the subjects in the list, as you will be making a huge assertion that they are gay by the simple fact that these are included in the list!. People don't read the "small print". That is why you cannot have a list with "debated criteria" if you follow the spirit of this guideline: Set clear, neutral and unambiguous criteria and Lists should generally only represent consensus opinion. ≈ jossi  ≈ t • @ 00:44, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

text: It should be an interpretation of existing policy, clearly linked and based on WP:NPOV and WP:V. It would be too confusing to add lots of new stuff which may conflict with that. Besides, I think all that is needed is a clearcut comment that WP:NPOV and WP:V apply to lists - and indeed meeting the requirements of WP:V can be difficult as every entry needs to have a reference to support the assertion that it meets the list inclusion criteria, jguk 23:57, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Like every other editor who has worked on this, I strongly and unambiguously disagree with your complete reinterpretation and destruction of our proposed guideline.  Please stop unilaterally mass deleting the content of the page! Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters
I have put forward a number of positive suggestions - in particular the need to tie this unambiguously into WP:NPOV and WP:V. The revised version still needs reworking, put was proposed here. I am eager that whatever happens, it is entirely compliant with WP:NPOV and WP:V, and even more important that it does not detract from them in any way.
It's a shame that David is more attached to his words than the concepts. Are they not as follows:
*WP:NPOV and WP:V effectively necessitate that list inclusion criteria are specified and clear-cut
*WP:V mandates that all information in a list (and that information includes for each entry that that entry meets the list inclusion criteria) is referenced with a reputable source.
Isn't that really what is needed? And if it is, shouldn't we be explicit in this? jguk 00:17, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  We don't need another guideline on this 

message: I would suggest that you go and check some of these lists, and maybe get a feeling of why we do need a guideline that is unambigous as it pertains specifically to lists:
* List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people (pay attention to the criteria: "This is a partial list of confirmed and debated famous people who were or are gay, lesbian or bisexual." (my emphasis)
* List of purported cults (Note the title of the list and the fact that use of the term "cult" is in itself disputed and has various and conficting definitions.) 
* List of transgendered people (No sources provided for more than 35% of the people in the list, and that include Milton Berle, comic who had a standard routine of dressing as a woman, but was not a transgender.)
≈ jossi  ≈ t • @ 23:13, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How would this proposal affect these lists? Is there a problem with having a "debated" section in lists? It seems quite useful, as entries will often not be 100% agreed upon, and admitting that an entry is debated is NPOV. -Will Beback 23:17, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I'd add that the first two lists you mention have very clear criteria developed through lengthy discussions with many editors. The real problems, IMO, are with lists that have no clear criteria, such as List of political epithets. -Will Beback 23:21, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem with too much text is that people don't read it all, it risks becoming contradictory and is often ignored. Here, all you need to do in those cases is exert WP:NPOV and WP:V. The argument should be "These lists do not comply with WP:NPOV/WP:V in these respects...... If you don't believe me, then look at this discussion page where loads of Wikipedians agree with me that I am interpreting these policies correctly." My point is that the emphasis should be on complying with WP:NPOV and WP:V and stressing that these policies are mandatory to everything in the reader-facing namespaces, jguk 23:22, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Will, please explain how can you have "debated section" in lists and at the same time conform with WP:V? What you are saying is exactly the reason why do we need a policy for lists: You are asserting that because it is verifiable that there is a debate about person XYZ being gay, it is OK to include person XYZ in the list of gay people. Not so... you need to conform to WP:NPOV and WP:NOR as well. Lists are not the place to present competing views, leave that for main articles about the subjects in the list, as you will be making a huge assertion that they are gay by the simple fact that these are included in the list!. People don't read the "small print". That is why you cannot have a list with "debated criteria" if you follow the spirit of this guideline: Set clear, neutral and unambiguous criteria and Lists should generally only represent consensus opinion. ≈ jossi  ≈ t • @ 00:44, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

text: It should be an interpretation of existing policy, clearly linked and based on WP:NPOV and WP:V. It would be too confusing to add lots of new stuff which may conflict with that. Besides, I think all that is needed is a clearcut comment that WP:NPOV and WP:V apply to lists - and indeed meeting the requirements of WP:V can be difficult as every entry needs to have a reference to support the assertion that it meets the list inclusion criteria, jguk 23:57, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Like every other editor who has worked on this, I strongly and unambiguously disagree with your complete reinterpretation and destruction of our proposed guideline.  Please stop unilaterally mass deleting the content of the page! Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters
I have put forward a number of positive suggestions - in particular the need to tie this unambiguously into WP:NPOV and WP:V. The revised version still needs reworking, put was proposed here. I am eager that whatever happens, it is entirely compliant with WP:NPOV and WP:V, and even more important that it does not detract from them in any way.
It's a shame that David is more attached to his words than the concepts. Are they not as follows:
*WP:NPOV and WP:V effectively necessitate that list inclusion criteria are specified and clear-cut
*WP:V mandates that all information in a list (and that information includes for each entry that that entry meets the list inclusion criteria) is referenced with a reputable source.
Isn't that really what is needed? And if it is, shouldn't we be explicit in this? jguk 00:17, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Examples of why we ''do'' need a guideline

message: Being a veteran of some of the "list wars", especially the identitarian issues, I've found an approach that seems to work moderately well.  I won't say you absolutely won't be subject to abuse for doing this, but it has seemed to work somewhat better than sticking a dispute tag on the whole page or demanding evidence as a general principle on the talk page.  The approach: attach a  tag to individual items that are improperly supported by the underlying article; make an edit history comment saying exactly this much: "So-and-so's WP article does not evidence that they are what this list describes".  If you want to do a bit more, raise the same issue on the talk page, but associated with a particular item.
Obviously, an item should not remain listed forever with a "citation needed" flag and no support.  But this is a more gentle way to give existing list editors an opportunity to cleanup specific problems.  Give this approach a chance for a few days (individually counting for each flagged item) before deleting the item altogether.  Even editors who might otherwise posture "How dare you claim so-and-so isn't <identity>?" will often get this nudge, and just provide a reasonable citation as the path of least resistance.
Not sure if something like this advise might belong on the guideline itself.  But this kind of approach is a way of assuming WP:FAITH in editors who may have previously failed to meet WP:V. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 07:10, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Practical advice 

message: I'm somewhat startled this guideline makes no reference to the wikipedia guideline that handles this up till now: wikipedia:categories, lists, and series boxes.
I agree with Lulu's points above, except that I'd rather ask external references in the list directly, than referring to wikipedia articles. This works fine, e.g. List of gay, lesbian or bisexual composers.
Also see Wikipedia talk:Categories, lists, and series boxes#Lists and references.
This "Lists in Wikipedia" guideline proposal does not do better than any of that, so I tend to oppose it, unless it shows to do something fundamentally better than wikipedia:categories, lists, and series boxes. Presently it's just more elaborate, contains a lot of detailed instructions I wouldn't agree to, etc... --Francis Schonken 09:51, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, Francis. I read Wikipedia:Lists and Wikipedia:categories, lists, and series boxes and I can see some basic info on layout and form, but nothing to address the concerns from which this proposal emerged. I would also argue that the loose language about permissibility in lists, is maybe the source of the problem. I mean While they need to meet the same standards of noteworthiness of any other Wikipedia article, these standards are, as always, fairly lax, is in contradiction with WP:V. I will raise the issue in the talk page of that guideline. ≈ jossi  ≈ t • @ 16:57, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  I think this is going the wrong way 

message: A wikipedia editor cannot use any List to justify adding material to any article
Lets stop this game of come and go persistence.  Obviously this whole debate, started with my comments on how I think Fidel Castro should be called a dictator since he was on the List of Dictators.  I started this now I can end it.  You can not use a List as a means to push your point of view.  Reword it how you like, but you get my point.--Antispammer 03:59, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You give yourself way too much credit. This proposal started out of a concern that goes back months ago relating to several lists. List of dictators is just one of many lists that need the assistance of a solid and clear guideline. ≈ jossi  ≈ t • @ 05:44, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I also think the Deletion Log goes widely unchecked, and I am usually against censorship on wikipedia, unless it is vandalism.  I think we need to be careful of what we delete and what policies we are pushing for.  Wikipedia is still too chaotic and administrative friendship circles can sometimes get away with deleting things according to their biased version of NPOV.  For example, Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_terrorists. Notice their lack of understanding for the word terrorist.  Also notice however state terrorism in which the United States is on there without any references.  This is due to the nature of wikipedia in which I feel is stuck in the middle ages, where association for political ideaology is almost inevitable, but disastrous.  The subculture of wikipedian adminstrators and editors surrounding the second pillar seems to have prevailed over the first pillar, especially dealing in the subjects of history, which should never be whitewashed.  However having said that, I do hold a very pessimistic and unique view, and I think we should all have good faith, and be bold together.--Antispammer 06:43, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  My Solution 

message: I'm concerned that this page does not highlight more explicitly that all we're really discussing here is how WP:NPOV and WP:V apply to lists. I have devised an alternative version on Wikipedia:Lists in Wikipedia/Alternative version, which I do not claim to be the last word, but which demonstrates the sort of formatting and style that I think this page should adopt. Comments would be welcome, jguk 13:48, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have removed your alternative version as this one has had all the comments andf the effort of most editors involved. Feel free to edit and make this one better. ≈ jossi  ≈ t • @ 23:49, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Lists in Wikipedia/Alternative version]] 

message: I would suggest that certain lists be treated as sensitive (with an appropriate template at the top), and all additions to the list be reverted on sight if they are not discussed first on the Talk page, with source. List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people would be one likely candidate. Rd232 talk 01:23, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sensitive lists