Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Archive 1

message: People whom I believe to be internationally and historically less significant—Sitting Bull, for example—appear on this list. At the same time, important individuals in history and current affairs—such as Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Pope John Paul II—do not appear. -- Emsworth 00:44, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah. That's cos this is the list from simple:, not the supposedly canonical list which is the one at meta. Clarified. (Unless you feel it would be more productive to have the same argument in three places, not just one.) - David Gerard 11:23, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Glaring omissions

message: I like the principle of this list but it does seem overly focused on the US. Shouldn't a 'core list' of articles be more neutral with respect to systemic bias? Radiant_>|< 13:02, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
:I agree Tosha 06:10, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It is also very biased towards the Western view in general. For example, it has Silvio Berlusconi, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schröder and Tony Blair. It also has Manmohan Singh but no Hu Jintao, Pervez Musharraf or Junichiro Koizumi. Are the 4 European leaders really more significant then the 2 Asian leaders I have mentioned? I would argue no. From an Asian perspective, I would say even Roh Moo-hyun, John Howard and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono are more important then Silvio Berlusconi and perhaps Jacques Chirac and the chancelor of Germany... Unfortunately here in lies the problem. What about Esperanto (or even Italian). More important then Korean or Cantonese? Is lion more important than tiger? When it comes to history, a lot of mention of European wars, very little on anything in Asia or Africa. Cheese but no sugar/sugar cane or cocoa? While the theory may sound nice, I'm sceptical we can come up with a list of 1000 articles. There are just too many and it depends a lot on your perspective. As for American football and Martin Luther King... Nil Einne 04:05, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:CSB]] 

message: Can I just go ahead & add articles on this list that are very important?; Such as the Eiffel Tower, AIDS, Titanic, the Middle Ages? If I think of good topics for this list, do I just add them on, add them on after consulting here, not add them on or discuss this somewhere else, (which seems stupid). Thanks.... Spawn Man 02:15, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question: 

message: This page claims that "The supposedly canonical list is the one at meta — changes should be made there.", but clearly that isn't happening—changes are constantly being made to this list here that aren't being made there. There are also numerous items missing from our list that are on that list (like the "cricket" entry that was recently removed by someone who apparently doesn't consider cricket internationally important, unlike baseball, basketball, etc.), and some that are on our list but not theirs. So, while this is taken into account by a line near the top of our list saying that the MediaWiki version is somewhat expanded, I'd still very much like to know why it's expanded. Why are these entries there, but not here? And vice versa? It seems too inconsistent for a list that by its very nature is supposed to be universal to all Wikipedias. Moreover, it seems to be incredibly inconsistent. We have Tolkien and Orwell on our list, but not Mark Twain or Edgar Allan Poe or countless others? Goethe and Smith, but not Descartes? Steve Jobs and Richard Stallman, but not Copernicus, Freud, Curie, Tesla, or Pasteur? The Beatles, but not Chopin or Wagner? Amundsen, Cartier, Hiller, and Raleigh, but not Ericsson or Cook? No artists at all, including van Gogh, Michelangelo, Picasso, Rembrandt and Monet? Just about every conceivable person from World War II (including Hirohito and even Franz Ferdindand), but not George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or Thomas Jefferson? Gavril Princip, but not Osama bin Laden?
If the reason they're excluded from this list is that they're on a second tier from the rest, important to include on all Wikis but not as important, then couldn't we denote that through some other way than excluding them from the list altogether, like by italicizing them? This way we'd also know when one of them is featured here. And more importantly, we'd know if any of them are missing, though I highly doubt any are. (After finishing the below list, I've found one so far that we seem to be missing, unless the names are just wildly off-base on Mediawiki (many were until I fixed them): Rafael Sancho.)
===Biography differences===
Figures on the MediaWiki list and not on the Wikipedia one:
*Composers: Frédéric Chopin, Antonín Dvořák, Gustav Mahler, Claudio Monteverdi, Richard Wagner
*Explorers: Willem Barents, Vitus Bering, James Cook, Leif Ericson, Tenzing Norgay, Abel Tasman, Zheng He
*Inventors and scientists: Archimedes, John Logie Baird, Alexander Graham Bell, Karl Benz, Niels Bohr, Tycho Brahe, Rachel Carson, Nicolaus Copernicus, Marie Curie, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, Alexander Fleming, Sigmund Freud, Buckminster Fuller, Casimir Funk, Christiaan Huygens, Edward Jenner, Johannes Kepler, John Maynard Keynes, Carolus Linnaeus, Ignacy Łukasiewicz, James Clerk Maxwell, Alfred Nobel, Hans Christian Ørsted, Louis Pasteur, Ole Rømer, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, Nikola Tesla
*Mathematicians: Leonhard Euler, Joseph Fourier, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Kurt Gödel, David Hilbert, Hypatia of Alexandria, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Gottfried Leibniz, Bernhard Riemann, Thales, Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Musa al-Khwarizmi
*Social scientists/"thinkers": Averroes, Augustine of Hippo, Matsuo Bashō, Simone de Beauvoir, René Descartes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edward Gibbon, Emma Goldman, Germaine Greer, Li Bai, Søren Kierkegaard, Nagarjuna, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Paine, Sima Qian, Bertrand Russell, Du Fu
*Authors, playwrights and poets: Hans Christian Andersen, Aristophanes, Isaac Asimov, Jane Austen, Bertolt Brecht, George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, Miguel de Cervantes, Anton Chekhov, Emily Dickinson, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Arthur Conan Doyle, Alexandre Dumas, père, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Brothers Grimm, Dashiell Hammett, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, Hildegard of Bingen, Langston Hughes, Henrik Ibsen, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Astrid Lindgren, Thomas Mann, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Arthur Miller, Pablo Neruda, Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe, Marcel Proust, Aleksandr Pushkin, Rainer Maria Rilke, Carl Sandburg, Sappho, Jean-Paul Sartre, George Bernard Shaw, Mary Shelley, Murasaki Shikibu, Sophocles, Robert Louis Stevenson, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, Zeami Motokiyo
*Artists: Michelangelo, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Hokusai, Claude Monet, Georgia O'Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Nicolas Poussin, Rembrandt van Rijn, Auguste Rodin, Rafael Sancho (Luis Rafael Sanchez???), Andy Warhol
*Past politicians and leaders (and activists and aristocrats (is a new section merited?)): Kemal Atatürk, Lucrezia Borgia, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Catherine II of Russia, Empress Dowager Cixi, Constantine I (emperor), Diana, Princess of Wales, Elizabeth I of England, Indira Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Che Guevara, Hammurabi, Hannibal, Thomas Jefferson, Joan of Arc, Mother Jones, Kaahumanu, Liliuokalani, Mary I of Scotland, Nefertiti, Pope John Paul II, Abraham Lincoln, Catherine de' Medici, Golda Meir, Florence Nightingale, Rosa Parks, Eva Perón, Józef Piłsudski, Emilia Plater, Gavrilo Princip, Eleanor Roosevelt, Semiramis, Queen of Sheba, Mother Teresa, Margaret Thatcher, Maria Theresa of Austria, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, George Washington, Wilhelm II of Germany, Qin Shi Huang, Hastings Banda
*Modern politicians and leaders (and activists): Pope Benedict XVI, Fidel Castro, Osama bin Laden, Vladimir Putin, Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Lech Wałęsa, Lee Kuan Yew, Mahathir bin Mohamad
*Computers and Internet: Tim Berners-Lee, Donald Knuth, Dennis Ritchie, Linus Torvalds, Alan Turing
Figures on the Wikipedia list and not on the MediaWiki one:
*Explorers: Walter Raleigh
*Writers and thinkers: George Orwell
*Modern politicians and leaders: Manmohan Singh
Other differences:
*MediaWiki list has "Composers" for the top section, ours has "Musicians". They previously had "Composers and musicians", but I noticed that they actually have musicians listed elsewhere in the article instead and changed it; probably ours should be the same, and move "The Beatles" back to elsewhere—though it confuses me that we and MediaWiki don't have people like "The Beatles" and "Elvis" in the biographies section (under "Entertainers" perhaps), instead of the music section.
*We don't have a "Mathematicians, not listed elsewhere" section. Not entirely a bad thing, since that's a pretty awkward section, no doubt resulting from most mathematicians also being scientists, etc. Plus a lot of them could still have been listed in other categories, like putting Leibniz and Thales under "philosophers". Not the most well-planned system.
*We have a "Writers and thinkers" section (with all the amusing implications of "thinkers" that anyone not categorized there doesn't think, which we could easily solve by switching to "Writers and philosophers"), they have the somewhat clunkier but more comprehensive "Social scientists (philosophers, economists, historians and thinkers)" and a distinct "Authors, Playwrights and Poets" section. Actually, remove the overlong parenthetical clause and that's probably a superior method.
*"Martin Luther King, Jr." is in the extremely unhelpful "Others" section on our page, whereas MediaWiki cleverly has him under "Social scientists".
*On a related note, "Nelson Mandela" is under "Modern political leaders" here, on MediaWiki he's in "Past political leaders" (because he recently retired). Which is it? Also, what's the gap between "Modern" and "Past"? It seems to be quite recent on MediaWiki, where "Pope John Paul II" is already listeda s "Past"; I'd assumed it would at least continue to include any major leaders in the last 5-10 years, even if they were no longer living or active. Otherwise the "Modern" list will change too rapidly, don't you think?
*They have an incredibly misogynistic "women in history" section, which is actually quite useful because there are comparatively so few of them. And it's better than not having any women at all (we only have a single one).
*We have no "Artists" section.
*We have no "Computers and Internet" section. As a result, "Bill Gates" is in the useless "Others" section. Of course, if we really wanted to be consistent, we could merge "Computers and Internet" into "Inventors and Scientists" and list Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc. there for both pages.
I'd also contend that Freud was no more of a scientist than Aristotle was, and fits better under "Thinkers". But that's a separate issue, one matter at a time. I'll list the differences for the other sections as soon as I finish recovering from the above (and editing both articles as I went through them for alphabeization, typos, and redundancies). -Silence 04:02, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Differences with the Mediawiki version 

message: Figures on the MediaWiki list and not on the Wikipedia one:
*Composers: Frédéric Chopin, Antonín Dvořák, Gustav Mahler, Claudio Monteverdi, Richard Wagner
*Explorers: Willem Barents, Vitus Bering, James Cook, Leif Ericson, Tenzing Norgay, Abel Tasman, Zheng He
*Inventors and scientists: Archimedes, John Logie Baird, Alexander Graham Bell, Karl Benz, Niels Bohr, Tycho Brahe, Rachel Carson, Nicolaus Copernicus, Marie Curie, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, Alexander Fleming, Sigmund Freud, Buckminster Fuller, Casimir Funk, Christiaan Huygens, Edward Jenner, Johannes Kepler, John Maynard Keynes, Carolus Linnaeus, Ignacy Łukasiewicz, James Clerk Maxwell, Alfred Nobel, Hans Christian Ørsted, Louis Pasteur, Ole Rømer, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, Nikola Tesla
*Mathematicians: Leonhard Euler, Joseph Fourier, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Kurt Gödel, David Hilbert, Hypatia of Alexandria, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Gottfried Leibniz, Bernhard Riemann, Thales, Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Musa al-Khwarizmi
*Social scientists/"thinkers": Averroes, Augustine of Hippo, Matsuo Bashō, Simone de Beauvoir, René Descartes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edward Gibbon, Emma Goldman, Germaine Greer, Li Bai, Søren Kierkegaard, Nagarjuna, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Paine, Sima Qian, Bertrand Russell, Du Fu
*Authors, playwrights and poets: Hans Christian Andersen, Aristophanes, Isaac Asimov, Jane Austen, Bertolt Brecht, George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, Miguel de Cervantes, Anton Chekhov, Emily Dickinson, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Arthur Conan Doyle, Alexandre Dumas, père, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Brothers Grimm, Dashiell Hammett, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, Hildegard of Bingen, Langston Hughes, Henrik Ibsen, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Astrid Lindgren, Thomas Mann, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Arthur Miller, Pablo Neruda, Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe, Marcel Proust, Aleksandr Pushkin, Rainer Maria Rilke, Carl Sandburg, Sappho, Jean-Paul Sartre, George Bernard Shaw, Mary Shelley, Murasaki Shikibu, Sophocles, Robert Louis Stevenson, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, Zeami Motokiyo
*Artists: Michelangelo, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Hokusai, Claude Monet, Georgia O'Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Nicolas Poussin, Rembrandt van Rijn, Auguste Rodin, Rafael Sancho (Luis Rafael Sanchez???), Andy Warhol
*Past politicians and leaders (and activists and aristocrats (is a new section merited?)): Kemal Atatürk, Lucrezia Borgia, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Catherine II of Russia, Empress Dowager Cixi, Constantine I (emperor), Diana, Princess of Wales, Elizabeth I of England, Indira Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Che Guevara, Hammurabi, Hannibal, Thomas Jefferson, Joan of Arc, Mother Jones, Kaahumanu, Liliuokalani, Mary I of Scotland, Nefertiti, Pope John Paul II, Abraham Lincoln, Catherine de' Medici, Golda Meir, Florence Nightingale, Rosa Parks, Eva Perón, Józef Piłsudski, Emilia Plater, Gavrilo Princip, Eleanor Roosevelt, Semiramis, Queen of Sheba, Mother Teresa, Margaret Thatcher, Maria Theresa of Austria, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, George Washington, Wilhelm II of Germany, Qin Shi Huang, Hastings Banda
*Modern politicians and leaders (and activists): Pope Benedict XVI, Fidel Castro, Osama bin Laden, Vladimir Putin, Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Lech Wałęsa, Lee Kuan Yew, Mahathir bin Mohamad
*Computers and Internet: Tim Berners-Lee, Donald Knuth, Dennis Ritchie, Linus Torvalds, Alan Turing
Figures on the Wikipedia list and not on the MediaWiki one:
*Explorers: Walter Raleigh
*Writers and thinkers: George Orwell
*Modern politicians and leaders: Manmohan Singh
Other differences:
*MediaWiki list has "Composers" for the top section, ours has "Musicians". They previously had "Composers and musicians", but I noticed that they actually have musicians listed elsewhere in the article instead and changed it; probably ours should be the same, and move "The Beatles" back to elsewhere—though it confuses me that we and MediaWiki don't have people like "The Beatles" and "Elvis" in the biographies section (under "Entertainers" perhaps), instead of the music section.
*We don't have a "Mathematicians, not listed elsewhere" section. Not entirely a bad thing, since that's a pretty awkward section, no doubt resulting from most mathematicians also being scientists, etc. Plus a lot of them could still have been listed in other categories, like putting Leibniz and Thales under "philosophers". Not the most well-planned system.
*We have a "Writers and thinkers" section (with all the amusing implications of "thinkers" that anyone not categorized there doesn't think, which we could easily solve by switching to "Writers and philosophers"), they have the somewhat clunkier but more comprehensive "Social scientists (philosophers, economists, historians and thinkers)" and a distinct "Authors, Playwrights and Poets" section. Actually, remove the overlong parenthetical clause and that's probably a superior method.
*"Martin Luther King, Jr." is in the extremely unhelpful "Others" section on our page, whereas MediaWiki cleverly has him under "Social scientists".
*On a related note, "Nelson Mandela" is under "Modern political leaders" here, on MediaWiki he's in "Past political leaders" (because he recently retired). Which is it? Also, what's the gap between "Modern" and "Past"? It seems to be quite recent on MediaWiki, where "Pope John Paul II" is already listeda s "Past"; I'd assumed it would at least continue to include any major leaders in the last 5-10 years, even if they were no longer living or active. Otherwise the "Modern" list will change too rapidly, don't you think?
*They have an incredibly misogynistic "women in history" section, which is actually quite useful because there are comparatively so few of them. And it's better than not having any women at all (we only have a single one).
*We have no "Artists" section.
*We have no "Computers and Internet" section. As a result, "Bill Gates" is in the useless "Others" section. Of course, if we really wanted to be consistent, we could merge "Computers and Internet" into "Inventors and Scientists" and list Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc. there for both pages.
I'd also contend that Freud was no more of a scientist than Aristotle was, and fits better under "Thinkers". But that's a separate issue, one matter at a time. I'll list the differences for the other sections as soon as I finish recovering from the above (and editing both articles as I went through them for alphabeization, typos, and redundancies). -Silence 04:02, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Biography differences

message: Items on the MediaWiki list and not on the Wikipedia one:
*Domestics: Agriculture, Chocolate, Honey, Apple, Banana, Grape, Lemon, Orange (fruit), Potato, Sugar
*Beverages: Cola, Milk
Items on the Wikipedia list and not on the MediaWiki one:
*Beverages: Coca Cola
Note that I am making this list not only to help add entries to Wikipedia that clearly should be here and are on MediaWiki (and in the process to remove less than top-rung articles that are listed on our page, unless we're going to lower our standards greatly and include just about everything on the Mediawiki list.. which might actually be a fantastic idea), but also to point out MediaWiki entries which make absolutely no sense, so we can change those and combat what I perceive as a major set of biases that are currently corrupting that list and rendering it unusably bad. Or at least really really disorganized. -Silence 04:36, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Foods and drinks

message: I have removed the following articles because they are not on the MediaWiki list:
* Denis Diderot
* Joseph Haydn
* John F. Kennedy
* George Orwell
* Jean Racine
* Walter Raleigh
* Manmohan Singh
* Coca Cola
* Chicago, Illinois
* Constantinople
* Tenochtitlan
* Analytic philosophy
* Continental philosophy
If they belong here, they should be discussed and added there too. .. Have I mentioned how terribly this concept is currently being handled? I do like the recent format changes to compact the list better, but when are we going to get to work on actually making some attempt at consistency so that this list will be useful? -Silence 08:39, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Removals

message: Nobody was at that IRC Channel, and "ownership" of any wiki stuff outside of user pages is taboo anyway, just edit this page and scroll down to the bottom -- any content you might put in outside of talk or user pages may be "edited...by others". karmafist 21:14, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Changing This

message: Why the excessively long, convoluted article name? I always have to struggle to remember how to get here (I usually take the easy way out and just go to Bill Gates for the clean-up link there :)), and the name doesn't make much sense; we already "have" those articles, they just aren't featured, and the original intent of this project wasn't specfically to know what articles to feature next, but to know what articles are vitally important on Wikipedia so we can focus on cleaning up and improving them. In light of that, I think we should rename this page to something no longer than two or three words in length, like Wikipedia:Vital articles (WP:VA) or Wikipedia:Essential topics (WP:EST) or something. -Silence 07:27, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed name change

message: I noticed there's no mention of any corporations. What about McDonalds or maybe even Microsoft? I'm sure there are others. Gflores Talk 18:18, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  significant corporations? 

message: Three major categories that were on the m:List_of_articles_all_languages_should_have  list were left out of this list. The Human (social) sciences category from the m: list was not included here. The Economics and Currency categories were not included either. I am including all three categories.
For these omitted categories, I am creating the main category Society and Social Sciences. This seems the best way to include the above, rather than the m: scheme of including economics under politics. Economics is a social science. Political science/government is also very clearly a social science. I am including Econ and Politics as well under the new society and social science category. (However, Geography and History are entrenched as top level categories on Wikipedia so those are perhaps best left as main categories.) Further, I am adding "Archeology" to the Social sciences category. Further, I am adding "Political Science" to the Social sciences category as it was not included anywhere in the list before. Further, I renamed "Human issues" (previously under the Politics category) to "Social issues," as the serious problems in that category are generally called social problems or social issues. 
Note: "Social Sciences" is the correct English term. Human sciences is from the term in French for something in between what we in English call the Humanities and the Social Sciences. The category as it stands in m: contains mostly (with Education tossed in) what in English we call "Social Sciences."  
I hope this resolves this omission in a helpful and well organized way. Vir 05:54, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Social sciences and Economics from [[m:List_of_articles_all_languages_should_have]] 

message: I compiled a list of the 50 most popular articles that have versions in at least 20 languages without an FA in any language.  The list is available at User:Durova/List of most needed featured articles. Durova 18:06, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another list for your consideration 

message: For any users who are interested, there's currently an ongoing discussion on the WikiMedia version of this list as to whether the topic of homosexuality should be banned from the list. User:Blockinblox is currently the chief opponent of the idea that we should tolerate listing homosexuality as one of the important articles for encyclopedias to have, and the person the above paraphrase is from. I'd love to hear more user's opinions on this issue. -Silence 05:46, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No need to wait...see this.--The ikiroid (talk/parler/hablar/paroli/说/話) 18:07, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Blockinblox's statement has brought me to an interesting idea, I posted this proposal at the village pump, so now I'll post it here: if this is going to affect the other language wikipedias, perhaps we should discuss the proposals in places like the Chatsubo, the Guestbook for non-chinese speakers, and Bistro for non-french speakers so that everything's peachy all across the board, and so it doesn't become an english-dominated project.--The ikiroid (talk/parler/hablar/paroli/说/話) 21:18, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds like a good idea, but I don't think we should start posting the project all over the place (any more than it already is posted, unfortunately) until it's at a decent level of quality already. No point sending off the project for numerous languages' review when even we aren't anywhere close to satisfied with it. I and some other editors have recently been working together to make some major edits to the list, including reorganizing all the sections, adding and removing dozens of entries, and splitting up the list into two (one heavily-shortened list for Wikipedias that are just getting started, and one expanded list for more advanced projects); when that's done, certainly we will want to get the list reviewed by as many experts in various fields and peoples of various cultural (and interest-based too!) backgrounds, so that the list can conform more to a global, NPOV view and thus be more valuable to different Wikipedia languages—though, obviously, we can never be 100% compatible with all cultures, which is why each language's Wikipedia will make its own list based on the origin, and that list will probably differ in a number of ways from the original, depending on the different priorities and practices of that Wikipedia; that's perfectly normal, and already happens regularly. What our goal should be is to make the best possible list to start from, not to make the list overly bloated (for example, we shouldn't list every single country or capital city in the world, even though to people living in those countries, all of those places are highly noteworthy; cultural, linguistic, and geographic relativity/neutrality should only go so far before it becomes a burden). However, what I would like is to invite more people who come from a variety of backgrounds (including non-native English speakers, though we'll probably need a translator if we're to communicate with people who don't know English at all, unfortunately) to work with us on the MediaWiki page, m:List of articles all languages should have, which is currently the most advanced and comprehensive list and thus the best one to start from. We need more diverse perspectives, and more activity in general, to progress that page further so that it's in a good and stable enough form for us to start sending it off for in-depth review by other-language communities (at which point it should then be tinkered with further). In other words, at least at this stage in the process, I think it would be more valuable to advertise m:Talk:List of articles all languages should have and ask people to join in on the discussion with suggestions and comments, than to send the list itself to those different languages, or start separate, entirely new discussions in unrelated places, and cause the discussion's unity to be broken up, all while the page is still undergoing major changes. Advertise the existing talk page in various foreign-language Wikipedias rather than making a dozen new talk pages for the exact same topic. -Silence 21:46, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

text: OK, Should I tell the people to come here or to the meta-page?--The ikiroid (talk/parler/hablar/paroli/说/話) 22:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The meta-page; if we ask them to come here, it will seem like we're being biased towards the English Wikipedia, whereas the meta-ground can be considered "neutral territory" (even though it's also in the English language, as is Simple English Wikipedia, where this list originated), since it's not part of any Wikipedia per se. Plus, as I said, the meta-page is much more comprehensive, and thus a better starting point, than the en page (though the articles themselves on English Wikipedia are an excellent starting point for translations into other languages, which is why the MediaWiki list links to individual English Wikipedia articles). Hopefully plenty of people from the English Wikipedia will be willing to join in the discussion too, though! -Silence 01:54, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Homosexuality shouldn't be on this list because it's viewed as a deviancy around the world" 

message: Not a single painter? Piet 09:19, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This list is largely inconsistent and out-of-date. Please see the expanded list at m:List of articles all languages should have (which also has its share of faults, but at least has a fair share of artists). -Silence 21:47, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So, based on your comment here and the comment just above: Do you think the Meta list is the place to do list editorial discussion and work and have this VA list be some sort of mirror? --Vir 02:54, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm open to either, considering that the Meta's been dismally inactive lately. I mainly supported using the Meta as a "neutral ground". Also, the Meta page is a greatly-expanded version of this page, and more up-to-date in several ways. However, if there was support for it, we could certainly transfer that whole thing to Wikipedia, perhaps at Wikipedia:Vital articles (expanded) or something... -Silence 04:15, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My first impression is perhaps it is best to do the editing work on one English Wikipedia VA list, based on regular reconciling with the expanded and expanding Meta list. The only criteria need be a general article in a field of knowledge or experience or phenomena, yes? (Though, perhaps there would be some English-specific general articles? Marked as such?) Then, we could have two symbols or icons marking subsets of selected articles: most general/core (top 200 or 300 or however many) and general (top 1000 or however many) or whatever. A computer script could then generate subset lists automatically. This idea for the multiple uses of a computer script grows on me more and more.  --Vir 17:13, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Painters 

message: The bolding and italicizing of featured / cleanup articles is not up-to-date. Could this be done automatically? Piet 09:22, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see how it could be done automatically, but the list is short enough that it isn't too difficult to update. I'll go do it myself right now. -Silence 16:31, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not a programer, but I wonder if article display could be automated by a perl script. There is a script for the Good article project that performs various operations according to presence of the GA template. I wonder if the presence of a Featured article template (and even GA template) could be used to automate the text display here (also adding GA status). That would improve usefulness of the list and might save time in long run. --Vir 02:51, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Automated updates to the list would be a cool idea, especially if this page expands significantly in the future, though I don't think this would be possibly for certain aspects of keeping the list updated. Also, I think that at this point, adding GA icons to the list would be premature at best. First, GA is not currently a policy or guideline endorsed by any sort of consensus, unlike FA. Second, GA does not have counterparts on other Foreign-Language Wikipedias, unlike FA. Third, because of the vast number of GAs out there, it would clutter the page up quite a bit, making it harder to navigate and to find other bits of information. (This also makes GA a less useful distinction; many non-GAs are much better than many GAs.) However, if you think that knowing which articles are considered "good" by that project would be beneficial, I could easily gather the information myself and give you a complete list. We may want to establish a more stable and complete list first, though, since I expect a lot of removal and addition to this list in the near future, especially if we can get more users involved so discussion of the specific articles can resume. -Silence 04:15, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That is a kind offer of you to gather the GA information. However, it sounds like a good bit of work to do regularly. Perhaps first to consider: If there was a program to update FA status, then perhaps it could generate a separate page of GA & FA ratings. The 1.0 release group would find that list very helpful. I may ask the fellow who wrote the GA update script for the GA page how difficult it would be to create one for this VA list and if he can suggest anyone. --Vir 17:04, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not up-to-date 

message: Folks here may be interested in the fact that we are putting together the infrastructure for compiling Wikipedia:Version 0.5 (a test version of an offline Wikipedia), which we hope to release in fall 2006.  We will be working on Version 1.0 in tandem with this. If you look at Wikipedia:Version 0.5 Nominations you'll see that I've listed WP:VA as a source of articles for the release.  I would like to include all of the articles that you think are important enough to be on there, as long as these are high quality articles (FA or A-Class).  Articles that are B-Class or GA will be automatically nominated for inclusion, but may get rejected if there a serious flaw is noted. I plan to upload these into WP:V0.5 in the next couple of weeks or so.  Can you provide a list of FA/A-Class VAs, and another list of GA/B-Class VAs?
I noticed the discussion in the previous section on updating lists.  You may be interested in the bot we are testing designed to do exactly that.  If this group would like to prepare a project template like  that includes a place for assessments, then the bot can automatically crawl through the assessment categories and produce a list like this and a log like this.  It updates daily and records the date of any change in the table and the log.  Soon it will also be able to record the version of the article it found on the day of the assessment change, and also record the topic importance (the latter is currently done manually).  The plan is to use the bot right across all of the WikiProjects.  Would this project be interested in using the bot? Walkerma 00:51, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Folks, please tag these articles with  on their Talk pages. Any way of doing this with a 'bot ? Wizzy…☎ 11:54, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia 0.5 

message: I scanned the talk page for this, and I suppose I could just go with the "well, do whatever, just know someone else will edit it" theory that tends to come up often, but... what is the policy/procedure for editing this list? There are a few things that should be added (like, Richard Feynman), while a few things are not very notable, or at least not very notable compared to the other things in the list. For example, George W. Bush, while somewhat important, is pretty temporal, and not as influencial in the long term as many of the other people in the category "leaders and politicians." Same with Blair. I think that determining the notability of people should wait at least a few years after they've "left the stage," so to speak. While Blair is quite influencial and important right now, I'm not sure he'll be remembered as much as Bush in a decade or two, and even then the two of them could become rather... forgotten. 
Anyway, that got long. Point is, is there a procedure for editing this thing, or is it just "edit, then wait for someone else to revert it"? zachol 22:26, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Generally, the procedure is "if the change seems obvious, make it; if it seems controversial, bring it up for discussion on the talk page, then make it". It has been preferable to make most major changes to the Meta or Wikipedia:Vital articles/Expanded page first, since that's the much more comprehensive list and thus is more expected to not be missing necessary entries (but should still be held to very high standards of importance). But if you prefer discussing the changes here first, that's fine too. I disagree with you on a "left the stage" requirement, since part of the purpose of this list is to determine what's most important now, from a practical standpoint (although I agree that the vast majority of our entries should be non-modern, and we should avoid too much of a temporal bias, within reason). I agree with you, though, that Bush is a much more necessary asset to this list than Blair; if you want to make a trim to some of the recent politicians, go for it. Likewise for any other changes you want to make, as long as you can justify them. I personally think there's a very large numbre of articles that should be removed from this list, and a very large number of articles that should be added; the only reason they haven't already is a lack of user interest, not a lack of necessity. -Silence 13:03, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, makes sense. I was thinking in terms of the 'hard copy' wikipedia, so I was assuming that atemporal stuff would be prefered, instead of something that would seem somewhat... small in a few years, but you're right, this is dynamic. zachol 05:20, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Procedure?  

message: There is Wikipedia:Vital articles which has some 650 articles, then there is Wikipedia:Vital articles/Expanded which has roughly 1000 articles. In the same progression could there be lists of the 10,000 articles that are necessary in an encyclopedia and continuing with the 100,000 articles list. Or, if it so exists, could you please point toward that direction. That would be greatly appreciated by the WP:FA, WP:GA, WP:V0.5 and Wikipedia:WikiProject projects. Lincher 17:48, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Also see Wikipedia:Concise and the :Category:Wikipedia core topics. Maurreen 12:58, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vital and necessary articles and more... 

message: Every component of the solar system is mentioned as a vital article, but "solar system" itself is not. I mention this because I would appreciate the push to get this article, which I have been editing more or less alone, up to feature quality. Thank you. Serendipodous 16:05, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I added it, and rearranged the astronomy section to make more sense to me. —Keenan Pepper 16:27, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Solar system should be included

message: I have an idea to build on WP:VA with sets of various levels of some defined size (to be discussed). If you're interested, please see the 1.0 team talk page. Maurreen 15:32, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Designating importance more widely

message: There are plenty of buildings and structures that could be listed here.  I am going to start a section, if anyone wants to add on to it or discuss it go ahead. Dafoeberezin3494 17:10, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Architecture? 

message: It seems like the article travel and other related articles would be good for this list.  After all, humans have always travelled a lot.  However, I'm not sure where to put it.  Is it a behavior? A geographical concept? Oh well, until we figure out if, and where, it should go on this list, I'll just improve the travel article.--Danaman5 04:04, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Travel? 

message: Someone just removed Pluto. I think it should stay: just because it's not technically a "planet" doesn't mean it's not important. Who's with me? —Keenan Pepper 04:58, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree! Skizzik 11:58, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pluto 

message: Neither Sine nor Cosine have their own article. Should we remove them from the list and add Trigonometric function? Some P. Erson 20:53, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sine/Cosine 

message: Why exactly is Woody Allen more important than the likes of Spielberg, Hitchcock, Lucas, Coppola, Ford, Kurosawa, Lean, Jackson etc? Wiki-newbie 18:28, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Entertainers 

message: I'm reluctant to remove bold markup from articles on the list that ostensibly no longer meet the criteria ("Articles that are currently stubs or have cleanup tags on them and thus need to be improved as soon as possible are marked in bold.") until I can get a better idea of the specifics here. 
What really constitutes a "cleanup tag"? My first inclination is this: besides stubs, only articles tagged with  are "sullied" enough to deserve the dreaded bold status. However, just seven of the bold articles actually have this tag (I couldn't find anything tagged as a stub):
*Pierre de Fermat
*Continent
*Slavery
*Shinto
*Nuclear technology
*Hydropower
*Printing press
Why, then, are so many "vital articles" still bolded? I don't think a deficit of editorial diligence in maintaining the list is the cause; I suspect that janitors, when reviewing these articles, come up with various personal definitions for "cleanup tags" and decide to leave several articles in bold as a result, even if they don't contain the  tag. Some of the tags I spotted in bolded articles that could be construed as "cleanup" or "maintenance" related are ,  (deprecated?), and . Others, like , aren't really cleanup-related and, I think, can just as easily afflict long-established, structurally sound articles (including some FAs and GAs) as articles with a lot of editing ahead of them.
We should agree to a working definition of "cleanup tags" and replace the phrase with a more precise statement, like "articles marked with ". But is this actually a good criterion for whether a list item should be bolded? I can think of plenty of other reasons, besides  and , to keep a list item in bold and thus divert editors' attention to it. So, I won't touch the list until someone can at least offer me a second opinion on the matter. Chris Roy 10:20, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Definition of "cleanup tags"?

message: I find it odd that Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and many other US Presidents are not listed in the biographies of politicians section, but George W. Bush is. Although Bush is the subject of much discussion now, his contributions compared to other presidents are not notable in the slightest, and I doubt he will remembered as being nearly as import as a number of other presidents who are not listed. Unless other notable presidents are included, which would be rather Amero-centric, he should be removed. -- Cielomobile minor7♭5 05:12, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia:Recentism  Borisblue 05:33, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Then we should remove it from the list, since keeping him would qualify as Recentism. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 00:26, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

text: If Bush shouldn't be included, neither should Blair, Putin, or especially Kofi Annan -- or for that matter virtually any living person.  A.J.A. 04:57, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps they shouldn't be included, then. I think Boris Yeltsin is a far more important figure than Putin; he was afterall the first President of post-Communist Russia. Blair definitely doesn't deserve a spot on the list. Kofi Annan, I would argue, deserves a spot on the list more than any of those other figures, but U Thant probably had a larger impact as Secretary-General than Annan. I would actually support both figures being put on the list, but perhaps I am being recentist by wanting Annan on the list. He is, however, the closest thing we've ever had to leader of the world, and next to Thant, he was probably the best Secretary-General the UN has had. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 05:49, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure by which measure a Secretary-General of the UN can be said to be more important than a President of the US.  A.J.A. 19:48, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps to Americans, that may be the case, but the US isn't the center of the world. U Thant played a central role in handling the Cuban missile crisis, and I don't mean to be POV here, but the fact is, Bush has not done anything nearly as notable. He will not stand out as one of the greatest Presidents twenty years from now, but there are Presidents not on the list who are quite memorable. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 03:19, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The fact that a past Secretary General was involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the current President wasn't means the Secretary General matters more?  A.J.A. 04:15, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: He wasn't just "involved" in the Missile Crisis, he is credited with being one of the most important figures in working through the crisis. What has Bush done that is so notable, other than being in office? If we were to add all important modern world leaders, then why not add Clinton, Reagan, Chirac, Kim Jong-Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and any one of a number of other leaders? We can't hold Amerocentric double standards. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 05:40, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you missed my point. The proper comparison to U Thant's role would be Kennedy's role.  A.J.A. 19:02, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

text: I think it would be great to include some excellent articles about important contemporary figures, just to demonstrate one of wikipedia's strengths: our current events coverage. Blair I'm pretty OK with, partly due to its featured status. Borisblue 21:18, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think Blair has done anything all that notable, though. The Iraq War is really quite a minor conflict when compared to wars like Vietnam and Korea. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 03:19, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

text: It's difficult/impossible to judge the historical notability of contemporary figures or events. Say that the Iraq War lasts another 30 years. This would certainly qualify it as more notable than Vietnam or Korea- and the historical significance of the Bush and Blair administrations would increase as a result.Borisblue 06:16, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps, but Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, and consequently, we should not label vital articles on the prospect that they may be important in the future. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 06:45, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Then  neither should we exclude them because we don't think they'll be considered important in the future. They're important right now.  A.J.A. 19:07, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia is not Wikinews. There is no doubt that the articles of Bush, Blair, etc. are all very important, but to consider those articles to be more important than those of Lincoln and other timeless figures is absurd. They may be the flavors of the moment, but the list is not meant to be changed as figures fall in and out of importance. Bush will be out of office in two years, and his importance will rapidly fall. Why list a person whose importance is only temporary? No one is calling for Clinton to be on the list, and he was just as important as Bush during his term. I feel very strongly that current politicians should not be listed. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 05:16, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you misunderstand the purpose of this list. It's not a list of the most inherently important topics viewed from some timeless perspective. It's a list of articles that should be feature-quality right now. And yes, I'm perfectly prepared to say that it's vitally important that the bio of the sitting U.S. President be of the highest quality, regardless of who that person happens to be. In Wiki-time, four or eight years is a very slow cycle.  A.J.A. 05:35, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough. However, I still feel that Lincoln and other such figures should be included in the list. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 06:03, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In, my opinion, if Bush and Blair are to remain on this list, then people like Jacques Chirac and Angela Merkel should be added as it seems silly just to have the articles about leaders in English speaking countries and not outside. Atomic1609 15:47, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This list is supposed to reflect the canonical list at the Meta site, and Merkel in on that list. So yes, she should be included.  A.J.A. 16:38, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why is George W. Bush on the list? 

message: Why is Sydney on the list of cities, and not Canberra? I appreciate that Canberra is a pretty boring place, but it is the capital city - and since most of the other cities on the list seem to be capitals, why is there an exception for Australia? What's the rationale for those cities anyway - capital of a country of a certain size, city of a certain size? Why Hong Kong and not Seoul? Why New York and not Los Angeles? GeorgeBills 10:09, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why Sydney and not Canberra? 

message: The list of philosophers and social scientists is rather seriously inadequate IMO. At a minimum, David Hume, Francis Bacon, John Locke, Bertrand Russell, Willard Van Orman Quine, Marquis de Condorcet and Isaiah Berlin ought to be added for philosophers; Goethe should be moved to "Authors" (he made few lasting contributions to philosophy). For social scientists, I suggest we add, at a minimum, Emile Durkheim, Samuel Huntington (despite being controversial, he's the 20th century's most influential political scientist), Hans Morgenthau, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, Seymour Martin Lipset and Ivan Pavlov. Also, Rosa Luxemburg isn't nb enough IMO; we should replace her with Antonio Gramsci. (Note: As I hate po-mo I couldn't bring myself to include Jacques Derrida or Michel Foucault but, in terms of sheer influence, they ought probably also to be added). Mikker (...) 17:42, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of "Philosophers and social scientists" woefully incomplete... 

message: This page has recently been expanded, possibly beyond its original intent as a list of basic topics for Wikipedia.  Many of these additions could be considered POV, and with good reason: this page has no real criteria as to what is and is not "vital".  However I was thinking, since the lead section to this page says it is a "guide for featured articles", perhaps we should move this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject Vital articles and actually get some collaboration on articles that really need attention.  I think that would be more useful than an arbitrary list.  Any thoughts? Dafoeberezin3494 01:20, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've recently been expanding the Science section. I find it can sometimes be hard to judge whether an article is "vital" or not, so a more robust set of criteria may be worthwhile. I like the wikiproject idea but I don't think moving the page is required for that. Just create the project page and pick one or more articles from the list to collaborate on. —dv82matt 02:35, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV/purpose of page/possible solution 

message: The Astronomy section currently includes the article Cosmology. But the Cosmology article also includes the philosophical and religious aspects of cosmology. My alternative suggestion is to list Physical cosmology under Astronomy and (possibly) move Cosmology to the Philosophy section. — RJH (talk) 21:56, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I see your point, simply replacing 'Cosmology' with 'Physical cosmology' (without adding cosmology to the philosophy section) might be the best bet. Just my two cents. —dv82matt 08:06, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cosmology & Physical cosmology