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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

Proposed: Splitting the List of 2017 albums into two articles

The List of 2017 albums has reached its template limit size for the number of references that can use the reflist template. I posted this issue at Template talk:Reflist#Template size limit?, and was told the issue was the limitations of templates, Template Limits.

There are a few listings that have two or more citations, sometimes to prove additional information on listings with no album wiki-article, sometimes to prove notability on listings with no band or album wiki-article. We can free up some space by purging some less-than-notable albums, and reducing citations to one per listing, but we are only two-thirds through the year, and the list will keep expanding. I am not happy with splitting the list, but I think it is the best alternative to pruning entries or limiting citations, which in turn would limit the details that could be listed for some entries. The List of 2009 albums was split into 4 articles for many years, so there is precedent for splitting the list.

I open this issue up for discussion. What do other users think? Mburrell (talk) 05:22, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

I think it's a fair call that it should be split, but my question would then be: what would we title the two articles? It will decrease load time for the page(s), and I don't think many users will/would agree with cutting some albums out, as if either the artist or album has an article, they're usually included on the list. Naturally some don't warrant inclusion, but for those that do, as you've said, the list will keep expanding and it's not even September. Ss112 05:26, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose. List pages are meant to be long, and separating articles of the same topic will make it difficult for readers to see what they want at the same page (it'll be messy and untidy with several pages at different titles). It's already August, since most of the albums (even until December) are already added, the likeliness of significant expansion is little. If it does happen in the near future, it can be discussed then but for now 526kb isn't that bad. However, I highly recommend the trimming of references and maybe the removal of entries with no Wiki article. I also suggest the references to be moved to the talk page and have a small note linking them from the list (in an effort to reduce the page size and/or ref count). I also noticed the 2009 list has been combined again from four articles. Since none of the other album-by-year lists are split out into multiple articles, consistency should be upheld by keeping this one together. — Zawl 06:32, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
User jd22292 tagged the List of 2017 albums as Too Long. It is a very long list, showing up in Wikipedia database Wikipedia:Database reports/Long pages and in Wikipedia:Database reports/Articles by size where it is listed as the 37th largest article in Wikipedia. However, this is an annual list, and splitting it up would seem to make it more difficult to be accessible. Per the "Too Long" database, the absolute technical limit for an article size is 2,098,175 bytes, and per the information page for this article it is 527,499 bytes large, so it is barely a quarter of the technical size limit.
I disagree with the "Too Long" tag, and am glad that Ss112 chose to remove it, and I appreciate the reasons he provided, but I would like other users to weigh in on the issue. Should the article be split? Should a category such as producers or label be removed? Does it offend users that the "Too Long" tag was removed? I looked at the "Too Long" article, and there is no mechanism for removing the tag, so we can do so by just doing it, or by putting it to a user vote. What do other people want to do with the article or with the tag? Mburrell (talk) 05:50, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Redux

This page is currently 544,354 bytes long; that's far too big. It needs to be split, and into more than just two parts. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:57, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

As I see it, there is no requirement in Wikipedia's rules that require breaking up this list. They have rules on article size, but the rules differentiate lists from articles. I am not asking for one opinion versus another, I am asking for administrative reason why the list should be broken up. This list is part of a series that goes from 2005 to 2019, and is in the same format and presentation as the other lists in the series. It is the largest article by character usage, due to these lists properly requiring citations, when many other lists and articles inadequately are cited, but as albums are phasing out of the music industry, the 2018 list is smaller, and 2019 will probably be smaller again. With no administrative reason for breaking up the list, I don't see a reason to do so. Mburrell (talk) 23:05, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
I thought I would expand on reasons to leave the list as it is. When Zawl made his comments, in August 2017, the year 2017 was only 2/3 done, so of course a list of 2017 albums would be expected to grow at that point. It was never Zawl's or anyone else's thoughts that the list would hold steady in size from August 2017 to December 2017. Because of listing albums before they were released, so future albums were already on the list, the list was probably at 3/4 of the size it would be by the end of the year, and if it kept growing at the rate it was growing, it could be expected to reach about 700kb in size. However, steps were taken to reduce the size of the list and slow down some of the growth, so that by the end of the year, the list had only reached 529kb. The list was not locked down, and other albums were added to the list throughout 2018, but then other albums were added to many of the album lists for different years, and the list did grow by 15kb in the last year. If you compare this list to other supersized listings (Wikipedia:Database reports/Articles by size), you will see that many of them are not for just one year, but are indefinite lists that keep growing. The List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States has no limitation, and keeps growing by about 40 lines per year with no stops. Some of the other lists have no reasonable limitations and will just keep getting larger, if no steps are taken. On the other hand, the List of 2017 albums is for one defined period, and has grown to encompass most of the albums that are going to be listed. It does not mean more won't be added, but the rate has slowed down dramatically, and not much more will be added. In other words, the list is not static, but is lethargic now. However, if anyone wants to reduce the size of the list, I fully encourage someone going in and removing the producers and label columns from this list, and all the lists from 2005 to 2019 and more in the future. I have no use for those columns myself and think they just take up space. In my opinion, splitting the list is just a lazy solution, leaving it alone is a good solution, and dumping the producer column is a lot of work but a good solution for those who hate large lists. Mburrell (talk) 05:12, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
Splitting (or shortening) this article is really inevitable at this point. This is now one of the five largest Wikipedia articles. To summarise the reasons why articles of this size are to be split or shortened, it's about making it easier for the reader to read and easier for the editors to edit. The article about law clerks that you've mentioned is one that has been split into about ten different articles. All the other remaining articles on the largest articles list are also ones that are and will be split or shortened. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:16, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
I don't see the splitting as inevitable, as there is no current administrative rule that sets a size limit on the article so it is just a desire to keep articles below a vague but undefined size limit, but if it is split, I do look forward to see what work you will be doing to split it, as I won't be the one splitting it. If it is split badly, I will be the one patching it together again, so I encourage you to think how you are going to split it, and propose the options so it can be voted on or selected. Also, factually as of January 8, it is the seventh largest article, not the fifth largest. The top 13 largest articles are all lists, which do not have size limits at this time, except for the maximum character size, which is four times larger than any of the current lists. Mburrell (talk) 08:07, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
WP:ARTICLESIZE WP:SPLITLIST are the guidelines, and Special:LongPages show this article is the fifth largest. Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:16, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
Sorry, I was using Wikipedia:Database reports/Articles by size, which was last updated on January 7. Shows how fast the article sizes are changing. As for WP:ARTICLESIZE, that applies to articles and not lists. It states that in section 1.2, WP:ARTICLESIZE#Lists, tables and summaries. So therefore that rule does not apply to this list or any other. In fact, when I look at your other guideline, I find that WP:SPLITLIST is the same thing I quoted. Let me print out the statement for that paragraph/section. "Lists, tables, and other material that is already in summary form may not be appropriate for reducing or summarizing further by the summary style method. If there is no "natural" way to split or reduce a long list or table, it may be best to leave it intact, and a decision made to either keep it embedded in the main article or split it off into a stand-alone page. Regardless, a list or table should be kept as short as is feasible for its purpose and scope. Too much statistical data is against policy." As you can read, lists may not be appropriate for reducing, and if there is no natural way to split it, it can be left alone. The goal is to keep the list as short as possible for it's purpose and scope. We have certainly done that. When we hit 1284 references, the entire reference list blew up, and we discovered a technical limitation. We got more rigorous about policing notable albums, and kept only one citation per album when the album was already defined by a wiki-article. There are some things that can be done to shrink the list still. I personally think that the producer column and the record label column are useless to the list, and if we can get a consensus on that, we could delete those columns for all the lists from 2005 to 2019. I do encourage you to start a poll of the readers and users of this series of lists, probably best to do it on the talk page of List of 2019 albums as the one most currently viewed by active users, and see what others are willing to do to reduce the list size per your desire. Another way to reduce the list is that I was not so rigorous with citations for foreign albums, and there are several Norwegian jazz albums that are supported by record label citations instead of news citations. I did this to give the list a more balanced global coverage, but per your desire for shorter lists, I suppose we could delete them. I am opposed to splitting the list into two halves of the year just to please your wants, before a discussion is held to determine what the album list community wants, and if the album list community would accept other proposals such as eliminating columns. Mburrell (talk) 04:16, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
What is your goal? What is the maximum allowed article size you wish to have remain on Wikipedia? Do you want all articles to be under 500,000 characters? Is 450,000 characters too big? Can this size be defined so that it can be discussed somewhere? Is there already a discussion on article size? By article, in this case I mean Wikipedia page, and not a subject article as opposed to lists. Mburrell (talk) 05:17, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
A list article is still an article, and the reasons why some articles are too long and need to be split or shortened are the same reasons as for lists. It doesn't really make sense this distinction where lists somehow aren't articles. Of course they are articles, they are just a certain type of article that have some distinct considerations than other articles do.
There is clearly a natural way to split this list, in fact there are twelve natural ways. The article is already sectioned into twelve smaller lists, so it would clearly not be unreasonable to split the list into either by month or in half. There could potentially be other ways to split the list, but they wouldn't be as simple, like by country.
It may be the case that this article was even larger than it is currently, but it's still plainly too large. At this size it is hard for editors to edit the article and for readers to read the article. Any splits of this article doesn't mean that other articles like it have to be split, every article is different.
I don't think anything should be removed simply for the sake of making the article smaller. Larger articles are more likely to have excessive, unnecessary or inappropriate information which should be removed though, and that would potentially be solving two problems at once. So there might be columns which are unnecessary to display here, but there's no good reason to remove entries which are reliably sourced just for the sake of size. If the shortening of the article is not significant enough, all that would do is postpone the urgency for a split.
My goal is for this article to be more accessible for readers and editors. I don't have any particular "wants" and it's not about any other article or about Wikipedia in general. The guideline for articles is that 100,000 bytes is too long, but lists and other unconventional articles could be longer. This article is over 500,000 bytes though, much higher than that guideline. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:03, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
Per WP:ARTICLESIZE, there are three related measures of an article size, readable prose size, wiki-markup size, and browser-page size. The first section, readable prose size, is further defined in its own section and reads as follows: Readable prose is the main body of the text, excluding material such as footnotes and reference sections ("see also", "external links", bibliography, etc.), diagrams and images, tables and lists, Wikilinks and external URLs, and formatting and mark-up. The listing of article size explicitly excludes lists from article size limitations. The size guideline which lists 100,000 characters has this above the size listings Readable prose size, so again the size limitation is for prose articles, and not for lists. I am not saying my interpretation is correct or that yours are wrong, although that is what I believe. What I am looking for is a discussion where the administrators or a large amount of editors have actually discussed this inclusion of lists into the article size limitations, and came down one way or the other. Until I see such a discussion, I will continue to believe this is yours and User:Pigsonthewing opinion vs. my opinion, and maybe others such as User talk:Zawl. At this point, I do not see an administrative ruling saying the article must be split. When the whole article size issue arose, there was at least one article that was over a million characters long, and now all the articles have been reduced down to less than 600,000 articles, and I say good for you and others. I also say I do not see a need to take down these lists. There is a section about technical issues and mentions that large articles are difficult to access on dial-ups, but then there is another section that says no need for haste, because among other things, browsers have improved. Not stated in the section, but network bandwidth algorithms are also improving, and we are currently marching towards 5G possibilities. I guess I am trying to say that I think article size vs. list size needs to be a large community discussion rather than an article by article split-up discussion such as this discussion. Mburrell (talk) 04:32, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
Okay, and given that the reasons for the 100,000 rule applying to prose articles also apply to list articles as well, what do you think would be the equivalent guideline for the length of list articles? Surely not five times that amount. Lists are only excluded from that guideline when they appear in prose articles, not when the lists are the articles themselves. I don't see an "administrative ruling" to split this or any article either, and nobody is making that claim. There are all the other long articles that have been improved by shortening and splitting them, but what's relevant here is that splitting (or shortening) this article is better for both readers and editors, especially when the article is already split into sections. While we may not need to consider dial-up connections, we should most certainly consider mobile connections and smartphone browsers, who have technical limitations more severe than computers. We can have a community discussion about something like the size of articles and lists, but that can't stop us from making constructive edits to this article. All things considered, splitting the article in half is a very mild change here. Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:00, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
I am going to take this discussion to Wikipedia talk:Article size. At this point it is just you and me discussing opinions. I don't know who pays attention to the Wikipedia:Article size article, but I am hoping it is some higher level administrators. I will also try to pull in some editors I have seen over the years who seem to have better legal minds than mine. Mburrell (talk) 05:08, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

There are 63 page watchers of this article and only three people have made comments. I intend to split this article promptly, but given the objection of Mburrell, I would rather another editor contributed to the discussion. Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:30, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

I have taken this discussion to Wikipedia talk:Article size#Does this project page regulate size of lists / maximum size non-prose Wikipedia articles?. I hope others will join in on the discussion there before a major edit is done to this article. Mburrell (talk) 05:38, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
It's not relevant how much myself or Pigsonthewing contributed to this article, per your edit summary. What matters is the arguments we have made. Onetwothreeip (talk) 03:26, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
I agree. At this point, if you could support your argument, I would not reject an article split. No editor owns an article, no matter how involved they are in an article. To fight a split when Wikipedia rules indicate it should be split would be edit warring. However, and to me this is the reason I am being stubborn, there is no justification for the split. Wikipedia:Article size does not support your case, or that is how I read it. I stated my issue on the talk page of Article size, you stated your case, and no-one spoke up on either side of the issue. I want to pull in some administrators into the conversation to get some of the policy wonks involved, but I cannot seem to figure out how to involve them. I am asking, begging, pleading for a ruling on the interpretation of the Article size requirements, but until there is a ruling, I do not agree with your interpretation and will continue to see the splitting of large lists as unjustified and damaging to the lists. Mburrell (talk) 04:13, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
The argument for splitting an article of this size is that its current size makes it harder for readers to navigate and read the article, and harder for edits to edit the article, particularly in visual editor. It's a pretty simple argument and it's essentially the point of guidelines like WP:ARTICLESIZE and WP:SPLITLIST, but this is really self-evident. It's not about any interpretation of any guideline so I don't need to quote from them, but this article does exceed the 100 kB guideline many times. Given that the article is too large, the proper remedy would be to split since there isn't justification or the means for other remedies such as deletion, content removal, condensation or reformatting.
That's not really what administrators are supposed to do. I've never heard of anything like a "ruling" on what a guideline means, since they're just guidelines. Ultimately it's all about what makes these articles better, and not simply how we can abide by rules. Those relevant guidelines were written to document our desires of keeping articles an ideal length, not the other way around. Every article is different and it requires editors to make judgements about what should be split and how, depending on the particular circumstances of every article. Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:33, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
Sorry, this doesn't deal with your preceding paragraph, but I was typing this up, and we had an overlap. I am just posting this, and I will look over your discussion tomorrow.
I mentioned on the Wikipedia:Article size that the List of 2017 albums list hit the template size limit and stopped showing any references in August 2017. This is also mentioned at the top of the earlier talk section, the one before Redux. I am in favor of splitting the article if we again hit that template limit, which is about 80 references, or 80 new albums away. A bit of history: I joined the band of people editing the List of 20xx albums back in late 2014 or early 2015. Back then, we had no standards for listing albums. If you could prove the album existed, it got added to the list. Currently, List of 2015 albums and List of 2016 albums still have many albums, over 100 each, which are supported by iTunes citations. We were doing the same for List of 2017 albums, but one user, Danny0503, made it a project to list every album ever released that year, and the list just kept growing. We hit our citation template, and a decision was made to keep only notable albums, ones that could be proved to be notable by Wikipedia's definition, which meant mentioned by an independent regional or national news source. Minimum citations were used per album, aiming for one per album. This brought the list down in size, so that by the end of the year we still had growth room. All new albums listed on any of the List of 20xx albums now needs to be shown as notable. Editor Redrkr and I are going back into the earlier lists and adding album information and citations to the albums or deleting non-notable ones, and should be done by 2020, and in 2021 I intend to go into 2015 and 2016 and improve the citations there as well. I also had mentioned somewhere in this discussion that there were some non-notable Norwegian jazz albums on the List of 2017 albums that could be deleted. Because we were transitioning from any album that existed to notable albums, and because user Knuand kept pushing them, I let the Norwegian jazz albums slide even though there were no periodicals mentioning them. They could be removed, but they add some balance to the article. So, that's the history of the growth, and when I think the reasonable point to split the article happens. I suggest helping me grow the article by 80 more notable albums, and then we can split it. Mburrell (talk) 05:46, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
Notwithstanding a response to what I previously wrote, why not split the page in anticipation for reaching this limit in references? I don't recommend removing entries such as these Norwegian jazz albums simply to reduce the size of the article, but if they were removed based on some other reason it would reduce the urgency for a split. I think by your own standards about a limit to references this would justify splitting the article anyway. Most importantly, there is nothing to fear from splitting the article, nothing is lost from splitting it. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:11, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
Reviewing your comments from yesterday, the major problem I have with the argument is the statement that the article exceeds the 100 kB guideline. There is no 100 kB guideline. That is for the readable prose in the articles. If I went into the article about the Beatles, and stripped out every list, table, citation, infobox, image and heading, and then counted the remaining words, the article should be under 100 kB. That is what the 100 kB guideline is. There is absolutely no guideline that Wikipedia articles should be under 100 kB characters in total. Mburrell (talk) 03:46, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
So what do you think would be the equivalent guideline for this kind of article then? The guideline isn't for "prose articles", it's about the prose of the article. The content in these tables are effectively the prose of this article, being the main content that people are reading. It's not as if this article is 110 kB, this is over 500 kB. It's not at all about conforming to guidelines, they are only guidelines, it's about the best way to store this information on Wikipedia. Onetwothreeip (talk) 03:51, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Request for comment

No consensus. I am personally sympathetic to the split argument; indeed, I don't see how a list with a scope this large is even useful to anybody. But even after assigning lower weight to opinions sought in violation of WP:CANVAS, and disregarding the opinions of those that are blocked for socking-related reasons, there's no obvious consensus here. Since no consensus was reached, the matter may be revisited at any point. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:13, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This very large page should be split in order to make it easier for readers to navigate and read the article, particularly mobile users and those with poor internet connections, and to make it easier for editors to contribute to the article, particularly with visual editor, all in line with relevant guidelines such as WP:ARTICLESIZE and WP:SPLITLIST. RfC relisted by Cunard (talk) at 01:52, 11 March 2019 (UTC). Onetwothreeip (talk) 20:59, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

  • Split The article is currently 545,842 bytes, which is far, far too long. It is our biggest article! Its content is currently divided by subheadings into quarters, and then into months. It should be split into four, or twelve, articles, along those lines. In prior discussion, no cogent argument as to why the content needs to stay all on one page has been advanced. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:06, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose The article is currently very large, and may even be the longest article for now, but it is nearly dead in terms of growth. It was not the longest article until some aggressive pruning of longer articles occurred. It won't remain the longest article, after other list articles are allowed to grow back, once the justification of using Wikipedia:Article size for lists is discredited. The statement that it is far, far too long is subjective, not objective. Objectively, there is no justification for splitting the article, Wikipedia:Article size is for limiting the readable prose of an article, and does not deal with maximum size limits of articles, except to note that 2 million characters is the technical limit. The argument for and against the guideline applying here can be read in the first two sections of this talk page, and in the talk page of the guideline page. The Wikipedia guideline explicitly excludes lists, tables, and footer sections. I agree that when the article grows unwieldy, i.e. the reference table breaks again, it should be split. I oppose any split based solely on the a mistaken use of Wikipedia:Article size. I am not opposing splitting the article because I am attached to this article, but because the basis for splitting it is a misused guideline, and I am taking a stand until the guideline usage is made clarified or bought into by a fair sized consensus. Also, thank you for posting this discussion in the RfC sections, that sounds exactly like the groups of people I want to join in on the discussion. Mburrell (talk) 03:59, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
    • Mburrell I'm very pleased to say that the guideline isn't the reason why the article should be split. This article should be split to make it easier to read and easier to edit. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:15, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
    • You persist in misrepresenting WP:Article size; which gives three measures of an article's size; one is the "Readable-prose" on which you depend; the other two being Wiki markup size (545,842 bytes as stated above) and Browser-page size (currently given as 609.3 KB by [1]). Both of the latter are excessive. And still you offer no cogent argument as to why the content needs to stay all on one page. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:45, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
    • Addendum The comment section was not closed on March 6 when decisions were made, and has been restarted. When it appeared to be closed, the vote was 50/50 on split and oppose, but more voters wanted it reduced. The list was being reduced, and if it had continued, the article would have been reduced from about 492k bytes to about 160k bytes, so that is what is possible if reduce is the selected option. If the article is to be split, there is no incentive to reduce. Mburrell (talk) 03:12, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
  • split into quarters. Way to big to be useful - long render times in old browsers / old machines, diabolical slowness when paging around. Absolutely no good reason to keep this as a single page. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:54, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose, on my laptop the readable prose on the page isn't very long, and half the article is taken up by references which don't count as readable prose. If anything most of the references could be removed which would lessen the pages coding and loading problem. (removed the split template since this is being RfC'd). Keep it as is with less references seems the way to go. Wikipedia should certainly not compromise for mobile viewers, it already has truncated itself by removing templates, categories, and talk pages from mobile, thus giving mobile only a portion of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and should not be a mobile-device encyclopedia, and decisions such as asked for here should not take mobile into consideration at the extreme cost of lessening Wikipedia by the effort.Randy Kryn (talk) 03:03, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
    • Randy, you bring up an interesting point about citations, and whether they are needed in the article. I have started a poll on the current album list, at Talk:List of 2019 albums#Do we need a citation per album? on whether the citations are needed or excessive. If citations are viewed as non-essential, that would be one option in trimming the size of this article, but that depends on the user feedback on the active album list. Mburrell (talk) 04:00, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
    • @Randy Kryn: Even if half of the article is references, half of the article is still very long. Still, the references take up time to load just as it takes the prose. Splitting the article isn't compromising the article at all, and we absolutely must consider the needs of mobile users. Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:28, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
    • "readable prose" is only one of three measures of article size. As pointed out above, this article causes problems under the other - equally (if not more so) - two measures. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:42, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
    • "Wikipedia... should not be a mobile-device encyclopedia" I wonder if you have any logical argument for that rather remarkable assertion? And whether you have ever read Help:Mobile access, or if you are aware that the Wikimedia Foundation has a whole team working on mobile access? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:04, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
      • Andy, I'm not saying Wikipedia shouldn't be presented on mobile, but that major decisions on content shouldn't be made solely with mobile in mind. Mobile readers aren't given templates (maps to Wikipedia), categories (maps to Wikipedia), and other features - just as some of the skins, even the main default skin, removes the Wikipedia globe and other symbols of the encyclopedia (I use monobook, the only way to fly in my opinion). As to references, on the new ongoing discussion started by Mburrell I'll suggest that entries on this page which are already referenced on a date certain be deemed "okay", and all references on the page can be removed (but still exist in the history) - but that subsequent additions to this page have to initially come with references. Or, alternately, that entries with existing articles won't need to carry references on list pages. Loading time is important, but changing this page may set a precedent making it easier for editors to split other articles while ignoring or unaware of the "readable prose" language as compared to full-page numbers. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:27, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Was notified of this by Mburrell, but the article is still on my watchlist and I have never supported splitting. Are we going to go around proposing a split of every page on Wikipedia:Database reports/Articles by size so that nothing is above a certain size now? Splitting by quarters seems quite bizarre (what would we title it? List of first quarter of 2017 albums? Come on) and splitting by months is frankly a preposterous, excessive suggestion (12 separate lists for one year so this article is left as a shell and repository of links? Please, no). I agree with Mburrell: until someone clarifies how exactly WP:Article size relates to this article. I also think Randy Kryn's argument above holds some weight; mobile Wikipedia already collapses sections. I've browsed these pages on mobile, they were fine for me. Not saying that's everybody's experience but splitting just for mobile viewers or even as one of the reasons doesn't hold much weight to me. There has been no logical suggestion for how to split the content made here, because the first is bizarre (I don't know how this separation of these lists came about either) and the second is excessive. Ss112 03:22, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
    • @Ss112: Many of the articles on the current database report have already been split or decreased in size significantly, and that is only from a few days ago. If you look at the database report from six months ago, there were 35 articles larger than this article while this article is now the largest. There are indeed many articles that are too large, but some articles are in more urgent need of addressing such as this one. Splitting by quarter would mean articles up to 80,000 bytes in size which is certainly not small. Splitting the article into quarters would easily be titled List of 2017 albums (January-March) and so on following convention, unless you or anybody else has an alternative proposal. Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:28, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
      • @Onetwothreeip: I don't have an alternative proposal because I don't agree with splitting it. And it looks like most, if not all, of those large articles from six months ago were split by you. It appears that this is a thing you and Pigsonthewing do, and so this is just your next target. I honestly didn't think that there would be editors whose main area of focus on Wikipedia was splitting large pages...I guess you learn something new every day. I also fail to see how this is an "urgent" matter whatsoever. (No need to ping me if you want to argue back, as I just said this article is on my watchlist and I'll be looking more closely at it. I don't know if you have watchlisted it, hence my ping.) Ss112 07:39, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
    • "split of every page on Wikipedia:Database reports/Articles by size" Why not? Such overlong articles cause significant problems for our readers.
    • "until someone clarifies how exactly WP:Article size relates to this article" This has already been done in this section, just above your post.
    • "what would we title it? List of first quarter of 2017 albums? Come on" We have many articles named in the form "List of Foo in 2017 (April-June)".
    • "There has been no logical suggestion for how to split the content made here" Yes there has: by quarter or month. Either is highly logical.
    • Like others opposing a split, you offer no good reason why the content all needs to be on one page.
    • I'm concerned about the clear and egergius breach of WP:CANVASS, with many more instances here. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:42, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
      • Uh, clarification: some of our readers. And where do you do your canvassing, Pigsonthewing? Off-wiki? Where was the obvious communication between you and Onetwothreeip? You can't mean to tell me it's coincidence that they have turned up to support you at so many of your recent article split proposals. Perhaps your concerns with Mburrell's methods of notification would be better proposed not as a reply to me, but directly addressed to him. I already supported not splitting it off based on my previous actions specified above, so it's not as if he influenced my decision. My "good reason" was that all the information is tied together as being released in 2017 and it seems any decision is going to leave this article as a shell, a repository to other links—that's useless and counterintuitive to having this article exist in the first place. That's my "good reason". (We know you don't agree with that reason, and you're not going to change my opinion, so there's no real point in arguing with me on that basis.) I don't see you offer a logical proposal either. I don't see those naming proposals as logical, I see them as ridiculous and excessive. Are you and Onetwothreeip going to go through and systematically propose splits to every long article still on that list above 100kB? Are the other "list of albums" articles next? By all means, please do do another tq line-by-line reply to everything I've just said, as if you're intellectually checkmating me by quoting me to myself—you're just arguing over opinion, not something that needs to be done. Oh and last thing—no, your interpretation of a guideline is not "clarification", thanks very much. I was referring to Mburrell asking on that article's talk page for clarification on its specificities, i.e. from editors who aren't involved in tag-teaming split proposals with other editors on every long article's talk page one after the other. Ss112 14:09, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
        • Like, is this a thing you need to do? Argue with everybody who doesn't support the split? In all my time on Wikipedia, I have not seen arguing with anybody's !vote change their opinion. So why bother? You are wasting your time. Ss112 14:15, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
          • @Ss112: "obvious communication between you and Onetwothreeip?" I'm gong to invite you, one only, to withdraw and strike that outrageous accusation, which you have no evidence whatsoever. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:25, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
            • @Pigsonthewing: Talk:2016–17 Coupe de France Preliminary Rounds, Talk:Timeline of the war in Donbass, Talk:List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation/Archive 3, now this...need I find more? How do you explain that you and Onetwothreeip have turned up at so many of the same article split proposals? That looks like coordination. So no, I will not be striking my comment, as there is enough evidence for me (or anybody) to think so, and it most certainly is not an "outrageous accusation" given there are over four recent instances of this. I'm sure there are more. (By the way, as I already said, no need to ping me even if you're directly replying to me. I am monitoring this page. Also, regarding this, I also just had to correct your indent.) Ss112 00:02, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
              • Your evidence that myself and Pigsonthewing co-ordinating is that we've both commented on some article talk pages? Obviously we both have an interest in making the content on very large articles more accessible, that's the beginning and end of it. Any suggestion that we are co-ordinating, completely without evidence, is completely inappropriate. Onetwothreeip (talk) 00:51, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
                • Yes, because it's happened too many times to be a coincidence. I'm not aware of any such notification board for proposed splits (aside from a list of long pages), unless you are following Pigsonthewing's edits enough to be commenting after him quite frequently. That is the evidence. I'm sorry that I don't have access to your Wikipedia emails or any other such communication to know if you have or haven't been coordinating elsewhere (nor would I). Also, you both need to stop speaking as if you're being accused of some heinous crime or that it's a personal attack to say "I think you must have been speaking about it because it's happened quite a number of times". It's not like you can really face consequences for it unless it's proven to be a recurring issue and you've been asked not to (and that's a very hard thing to prove, as I really doubt in the history of canvassing there have been many editors who've admitted to doing so off-wiki, but that's neither here nor there). All I'm saying is at least be honest about it if you have, especially if you're going to go off at Mburrell about it. At least he did it openly. As you've denied it, I suppose, even against my own opinion, that we can just chalk it up to a...frequent coincidence. Ss112 02:40, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
                  • It's not a coincidence, nobody is saying it's a coincidence. It's just not co-ordinated in the slightest. What you're accusing us of, if there was any truth to it, should be enough to ban someone from the project. I think you're saying this purely because there has been a clear and direct attempt at co-ordination where Mburrell on your own talk page solicited your participation in this discussion. It's absurd how you're not aware that people with similar interests would happen to edit similar kinds of articles and participate in similar article discussions. You continue to cast aspersions and it's very unfortunate that this discussion has become so nasty. If you believe we might be co-ordinating then report it to administrators, or strike it out and retract it. Onetwothreeip (talk) 03:02, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
                    • WP:CANVAS does not say if somebody is coordinating off-wiki that they can be instantly banned, so you needn't be concerned. I don't see why I'd be "retaliating" just because Mburrell solicited my comments—I'm not in the wrong there. He even said he did not care how I (or the others he asked) would !vote, and I clearly have not been influenced by him because I already didn't support splitting. My comments will stand as they are; I don't need to retract them. I'm not trying to direct attention away from what Mburrell did; that is what it is. I'm more concerned with the systematic demantling of all long articles than just this list. But I'm not going to do another 10 replies on the topic. Ss112 04:47, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Split, probably into monthly articles. It won't even load in my desktop browsers and continues to load as I scroll down the page. In fact, I'd argue that it's not needed at all and a category would suffice. It's also incomplete despite its size. For those asking for clarification: WP:ARTICLESIZE. Walter Görlitz (talk) 07:09, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The topic cannot be split into commonly used time segments, because the yearly division is the commonly used one. Nobody considers albums by month, unless it's Christmas music in December, and only people deep into the music business think of albums by quarter, in which case it would be based on the fiscal year, a further step of strangeness for this topic based far more strongly on pop culture and popular ways of thinking. So to reduce the size of the article, we should remove references. Binksternet (talk) 15:16, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Split. A page this size borders on active hostility to readers with slower connections or smaller screens. There are other long lists on Wikipedia that have been subdivided with no noticeable harm. If breaking up album lists by quarter is such a bizarre idea, why is this already the ToC organization of every album list article I looked at? --RL0919 (talk) 18:22, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose for the same reasons given by Ss112, Binksternet, and others. I don't have anything to add to what they've already posted above. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 18:23, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment @Mburrell: how do you explain your Wikipedia:Canvassing? You personally asked several people on their talk pages to come here and were clearly describing what myself and Pigsonthewing would say without us the opportunity to refute that. There's also an accusation that we're companions which is completely unfounded.
There is a conversation about splitting an article because of its size, but I don’t care which way you would vote on if it should be split or not. My issue is that the other editor and a companion-in-arms are misusing, mistranslating Wikipedia:Article size. These two are reducing the size of the largest articles in Wikipedia, which sounds like a noble goal, but when I asked what limit there should be on an article size, the response was 100 kB characters. The Wiki-guideline does state that readable prose should be less than 100 kB, but readable prose is the article minus citations, lists, tables, footnotes, and images, so I find the interpretation dangerous. The other editor said to get articles down in size, a yearly list could be cut down in half, in quarters, or even monthly. I cannot picture the easy usage of lists that is divided by month for multiple years. The guideline mostly states lists and tables are excluded from the guideline, so my objection to the split is that there is no justification except a misused guideline.
Basically, I think these two editors are going beyond being useful in improving Wikipedia and are moving into damaging Wikipedia, so I would like you to come to Talk:List of 2017 albums#Request for comment, read the discussions in the two section above it, especially Talk:List of 2017 albums#Redux, and provide feedback. I do not care if you say split or oppose, but to me the discussion is not about the split but the misuse of the Article Size guideline, and I want your and others I respect feedback on the conversation and the proper use of the guideline.
This was what you sent to many people within about a fifteen minute period. It contains things that I've already said are untrue. I am not saying we must split the article because of a certain reading of a guideline. I've never said the limit for an article should be 100 kB and I don't see anywhere that Pigsonthewing has said that. You've indicated before that it's not really the split you object to but a potential precedent about WP:ARTICLESIZE, but haven't said what that awful precedent would be. The reason for splitting remains to be making it easier for readers to read and easier for editors to edit. Along with the comments from User:Ss112, it's unfortunate that this discussion has turned so nasty. Onetwothreeip (talk) 19:59, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
I explain by saying that first, I was unaware of the Wikipedia:Canvassing guideline. However, as you posted the message above you can read that I stated but I don’t care which way you would vote on if it should be split or not. and I do not care if you say split or oppose, which clearly indicates that my intention is in no way to influence this vote, just get editors I respect involved. I did state strongly in the talk page requests that I think your rationale is based on a false premise, but that should not affect this vote, so I guess it was not canvassing after all. If you can show that the request would influence this vote, please tell me how, and I will stop doing that. If you tell me that my negative opinion of how you interpret article size would influence this vote, I would point out that two people who I contacted that were not watching the list came to vote, and one was Split, and the other was Oppose. Mburrell (talk) 04:08, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
It shouldn't be something that you would have to know there's a guideline for. I thought you might mention that you said you didn't care how they "vote", but that doesn't matter since you're choosing the people. The other problem is that you were making these false accusations about my argument for splitting the article, and away from me seeing that. I don't know what you're aware of, but you keep repeating this narrative that the reason for a split has been claimed by me to be because WP:ARTICLESIZE says so. Onetwothreeip (talk) 04:27, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
One thing that was said, that I made false accusations, bothered me. Per your response, you state I've never said the limit for an article should be 100 kB and I don't see anywhere that Pigsonthewing has said that. I thought you did earlier, reading from your comments as linked here cite 1cite 2cite 3. As for the statement about not saying we must split the article because of a certain reading of a guideline, I was reading that into these posts: cite 4cite 5cite 6. I also want to disagree that this discussion has turned nasty. There is arguments and counter-arguments, maybe a changing narrative or viewpoint, but I have seen no name calling, no personal attacks. You feel I went behind your back reaching out to respected editors, and there is some truth to that, but I thought the posting on the RfC pages was also biased to bring people in for a discussion of splitting an article instead of discussing the use of a guideline, so I thought there was some sly maneuvering on your side as well. But nasty, no, I don't see that. Truly, I think this has been a very civil discourse. Finally, I never said companions, what I said was companions-in-arms. Basically, do you or don't you share a common goal of reducing article size? I did not mean to say you knew each other or that you collaborated, just that you two had the same vision, one I don't share. Mburrell (talk) 04:08, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
None of those links show anybody saying that there should not be articles over 100,000 bytes in size or that a split must take place because a guideline says so. Of course this has turned nasty, and you now seem to be accusing me of "sly maneuvering" by tagging this in Request for Comment, which is exactly what is supposed to happen when there is an impasse in a discussion. You actually were in favour of that until apparently they agreed to split the article.
Other than that, I have been accused of co-ordinating with another editor and of canvassing, which are things that you have clearly and openly done, and then accused of dishonesty on that matter. Most Wikipedia editors "share a common goal" of reducing the sizes of the largest articles, so that's obviously not what would make me a companion of someone. It's clearly a problem if you're telling people I'm saying something that I'm not, at a place where I am unaware that you've said it.
It would be helpful if you would clarify if or how you think I have been "maneuvering", and if you would stop implying this discussion is one about any particular Wikipedia guideline. This discussion is about whether to split the article List of 2017 albums, which is why this was posted to the RfC page. Onetwothreeip (talk) 04:29, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Split into quarters, by quarters. It would be nice if the resulting (much shorter) page here then included a summary of high points, e.g., a {{Main}} link to a page dedicated to all the albums released in the second quarter, followed by text like "Among the albums released in the second quarter were the multi-award winning Example, the first-ever platinum album by Sally Singer, and the last album by Fred Famous, who died shortly after the release." That would help some readers find the thing that the specific section that they're looking for, and it would give everyone an encyclopedic summary of the year's albums. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:16, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
That doesn't make !votes invalid, I'm afraid, and as you might already be aware if you'd read before you and Pigsonthewing coordinated your attack on this page, I already opposed splitting. Look above. I'm also very well aware of the canvassing policy, don't treat I or Binksternet as if we're stupid. We're not in the wrong because Mburrell asked us for our opinions and we agreed. Perhaps just stop referring to me before it goes any further, yeah? Ss112 02:13, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
I was saying that Mburrell was unaware of the policy. Again, there was absolutely no coordination between myself and Pigsonthewing, and there is absolutely no evidence of that. I have no idea what you would be going "any further", but I fully encourage you to take further whatever you're implying you want to take further. The point of my comment was to clarify that I do not believe Mburrell acted maliciously. By you being aware of the policy I don't see how that would be better for you but I don't really care. Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:18, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
I meant arguing any further and wasting my, and your, time, especially in light of the above. Ss112 02:25, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
Okay..? I wasn't even referring to you. It would be helpful if you stopped repeating that accusation. Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:29, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
Uh, you did mention be my name, assumed I was unaware of what canvassing is, and basically tried to invalidate my and Binksternet's votes or influence whoever counts them because we were "canvassed", as if I didn't have already have the opinion that the list should not be split, or that Mburrell influenced me to have that opinion. Pretty sure in most cases users don't just pretend they agree with something just because somebody asked them to comment somewhere. Are you really going to continue to argue this? Ss112 02:49, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
Again, I was talking about Mburrell not being aware of canvassing, since they admitted it. I disagree that it makes someone stupid. Onetwothreeip (talk) 03:37, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
Actually, Ss112 was already aware of the talk page, as he follows it, so although I reached out to him, he would have responded anyway. The proper result of the outreach, which specifically stated that I did not care about which way they voted but just was looking for intelligent participation, is one for the split, Walter Görlitz, and one opposed, Binksternet. One could argue that I chose the editors so I knew which way they would vote, but I chose them based on previous intelligent discussions on RfC and AfD panels and on talk page discussions. Many I have never had personal interaction with, and others that I have interacted with I have managed to piss off with my style of writing or my positions. I deny that the people I reached out to would have been pro-oppose or anti-split, or pro-Mburrell. I do affirm that they are all editors that I respect for wise actions and calm, deliberate dialogue. Mburrell (talk) 03:57, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Split It is roughly 118 pages of A4, which is very very large. Size of Novelette. Too big. We are here for the reader, not the content, nor the editors. It needs to be split probably into quarters. There is no comment not supporting quarters. There is no arbitary metric applied to it by industry that can force it into a single page, or an argument against a link article with additional content, with possible album highlights. Albums are released singly, so any format applied to it. It is only a list. scope_creepTalk 12:54, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. While I agree that the article is too long, instead of splitting it should be condensed by adopting a more restrictive selection criteria. Try "entry must have its own Wikipedia article", as this fulfills the role of lists as navigation tools. If it's still too long, consult reliable sources that try to list only the most important albums of 2017. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 09:11, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per the people above. -- Flooded w/them 100s 16:27, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Reduce in other ways, then split by quarters if still too large. I agree with Finnusertop that this needs to be limited to notable entries, like most of our major lists. That might actually fix the problem. If it did not, then splitting by quarters would be sufficient. I don't agree with removing citations unless they are redundant (on per entry, that establishes the date, is sufficient). It's not normal at all for us to denude WP:SAL articles of all citations!  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:01, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
Removing non-notable entries could reduce the size of the article by 10%, and the article would still be too big. Most of the entries have their own Wikipedia articles. Onetwothreeip (talk) 04:10, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Alternative: we can remove the references in items that already have their own article. The references should already be there, so they are redundant here. This would leave only references to prove notability and to prove the data in the list (date, genre, etc.), where that proof is not available on a separate article. Notice I'm proposing this as a compromise to solve a technical difficulty, and I don't advocate doing the same thing to other lists where the size is not an issue. Frlara (talk) 16:01, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
Removing references for albums with established articles has been one of the proposed solutions. User:Randy Kryn proposed this earlier on this talk page's discussion, and the discussion was taken to this years album list talk page, Talk:List of 2019 albums#Do we need a citation per album?, and again on Talk:List of 2019 albums#Poll on what columns are needed on the list of albums, and why. The consensus mostly seems to be to keep the references as it would be complicated to have references for albums with no articles or poorly supported articles, and no references for others. Instead of reducing citations, there seems to be a leaning to remove album listings that do not have a Wikipedia article for the albums per Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists#Common selection criteria, but using this strict criteria only for lists which size is an issue, which is currently the 2016 and 2017 album lists. Mburrell (talk) 22:52, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
We can remove entries from all the articles, not only 2016 and 2017. They don't have to be removed all at once on every article, but we can establish that as the intention. We should also move towards splitting the article, it seems the consensus is going towards that. Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:14, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
It is not the intention to have the lists have only albums that have articles per the definition of general notability selection criteria. The only reason to remove the additional albums would be because the size of the list makes some people uncomfortable. There also does not appear to be a consensus of splitting the list. In a simple majority vote, 7 out of 15 are for splitting the list, 7 opposed, and 1 for reducing in other ways first, then splitting if necessary. However, a consensus conclusion is not a simple majority vote, but that the preponderance of votes go in one direction. As of right now, we have Onetwothreeip, Andy Mabbett, Tagishsimon, Walter Gorlitz, RL0919, WhataimIdoing,and Scope creep for splitting the list, Mburrell, Randy Kryn, Ss112, Binsternet, NihonJoe, Finnusertop, and Flooded with them hundreds are opposed, and SMcCandish would like to see reduction in other ways attempted first before looking at splitting. As of right now, I think we should be looking at reduction in other ways first, such as strict notability guidelines for 2017 and 2016 album lists, and see where that takes us. Mburrell (talk) 02:36, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
I am for removing albums without articles regardless of the list size. When it comes to a straw poll, you cannot reasonably include the two editors that you canvassed to vote here. You soberly admitted this was wrong before. Some want to split the list into quarters while some don't want the list to be split at all. I think it's reasonable to split the list into halves. Given all the possible choices we could make, what we are currently doing is all the way to one end of the spectrum. It seems we all agree the article is too long, so obviously something will have to happen. You're entitled to remove entries and if they are ones without Wikipedia articles I would support that, so you already have a few people supporting an action to do that and I don't see any opposition to it. A consensus isn't required since you can do that boldly. Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:47, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
If we remove the two editors I canvassed who were not already involved in the talk page, that would be Walter Gorlitz and Binksternet. Therefore, we have 6 out of 13 for splitting and 6 out of 13 opposed. I am trying to work with you to reduce the size of the article, but no, we do not agree that the article is too long. This article, and others that have been reduced, were just the right size. I am trying to compromise and looking for ways of reducing the article size because working with people of differing viewpoints is how Wikipedia should work. Mburrell (talk) 03:45, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
"Who were not already involved in the talk page"? Come on now. It doesn't matter if Ss112 was active on the talk page before, you still potentially canvassed them. If they were active in the actual discussion we were having then you wouldn't need to have ask them at all! Walter Gorlitz disagreed with you, so of course you didn't canvass them. One way of reducing the size of the article in a compromise way is to split it in half, rather than quarters. Another way is to remove entries without their own articles, on the basis of notability, which you are perfectly allowed to do without anyone's permission. I have to say the logic you bring up is some of the most confusing I've come across, but if you don't think the article is too long, yet you think the article should be reduced in size? I don't see a distinction, but I'll acknowledge it. Onetwothreeip (talk) 04:26, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
Disagreeing with your viewpoint. Ss112 already defended his right to speak out about this list earlier in this conversation, and if you want to disenfranchise him, that is a discussion you need to take up with him, not me. As for canvassing, as stated earlier, I asked people I respected to join in on the conversation and said that I did not care how they voted, which was an improper request but not a means of swaying the vote. Now you want to toss the ones that support oppose and keep the ones that say split, and I say that is not how it works. If you want, toss out Walter Gorlitz and Binksternet equally, but you do not get to choose only the ones that are against your opinion. If you want to toss out Ss112, that is your issue with him, and I am out of that discussion. Mburrell (talk) 22:35, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
@Mburrell: I insist on the idea of removing redundant references. The discussion you linked (in 2019's list) is not comparable to this discussion, as that article is not being proposed for a split, so that consensus is not applicable here. 3 people already gave this idea (myself, @Binksternet:, and @Randy Kryn:), and there was no opposition on those 3 comments. My idea is to have a strict rule: if and only if the album has its own article, it's OK if no citation is given on this list (and this list only); all the needed references will be on the linked article. All albums that don't have a separate article need a reference that establish their notability. There could be some warning at the top of the page, explaining this exceptional situation.
I'm contrary to indiscriminately removing every album without an article, because of 2 reasons: 1st, just because a page doesn't exist doesn't mean it CAN'T exist (it can be a notable album, but nobody had the interest to write its article yet; I believe this is an example of WP:NOWORK). 2nd, it won't solve the problem and this discussion would have to continue, as already noted by Onetwothreeip. Frlara (talk) 07:03, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
I would support removing references too. It's not appropriate or necessary for the article to have no references at all though. What would be appropriate is some minor information in the lead, with a few references that somehow summarises the albums of that year. This could essentially be copied from the articles about the music of a year. Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:38, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
The 2019 list of albums discussion is relevant to this discussion, because these lists are a series, not individual stand-alone. After Randy Kryn made his statement, I took the sizing discussion to the most current list in order to engage the most people involved in the list, and both Randy Kryn and Onetwothreeip followed to continue the discussion there, so we cannot just throw out that relevant related discussion. I do agree that Onetwothreeip has changed his stance on keeping all references, so we can discuss if that is one way to reduce article size. As mentioned multiple times above, I don't agree with splitting or reducing article size, but do see that multiple users are uncomfortable with the size of the list, and so I am trying to work with others to find ways of reducing list size without breaking up the article, which is great for a non-series stand-alone list, but gets awkward in multi-year stand-alone list series. 22:35, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Reduce in other ways, then split by quarters if still too large. Could we not at least make the months under headings that could be collapsed? It wouldn't reduce the overall size, but it would make it easier to read without running a find on your browser AmioDarone (talk) 16:41, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
Also, another idea i just had; isn't there a list on Billboard or something that has most of these on it? Then the ones on there could be linked to one source, wouldn't that reduce size considerably? Also WP:NALBUMS seems applicable AmioDarone (talk) 16:54, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
@Mburrell: Why would I have to discuss it with them? The last time they were part of a discussion on this article was in 2017. You asked Ss112 and Binksternet personally, who both agreed with you, and you accept that was inappropriate. It's irrelevant if you respected these people, it's quite likely that you would respect people who you think would agree with you. If someone's !vote was discounted from you canvassing them even if they went against you, then you could just as well canvass every person you think would disagree with you and then invalidate their vote, so clearly there's no logic to invalidate the opinion of someone you canvassed but disagreed with you. Furthermore, the editors who are stating that the article should be split if the page can be significantly shortened are effectively voting with the splitters if all you intend to do is remove entries without articles, which would only be a reduction of about 10%.
I don't recall opposing the removal of references or entries. I think you should take the initiative as soon as possible to remove entries and references, and you have my support.
Amiodarone That would be exactly the kind of reference we would have in the lead, which would allow us to not use any references through the rest of the article. Onetwothreeip (talk) 00:58, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
On the disenfranchisement of voters, nope, now I am reading a rewrite of earlier discussions, still on this page. Please go back and review if needed. I did not reach out to anyone who I thought would vote for oppose, or anyone who I thought would vote for split. I do not know these people, and I do not know their opinions. I reached out for thoughtful considered opinions. Ss112 followed up, but clearly stated that he followed the talk page discussion and would have responded anyway. He and you and a long discussion, and I do not see that his defense of having an opinion needs any rider. His vote counts. Now you want to disregard Binksternet who voted opposed, but not Walter Gorlitz who voted split, even though I reached out to both and said please vote how you want to. Therefore, you are cherry picking. Also, Friara counts Binksternets comments on the discussion to remove references, so others choose to include his opinion. There is no consensus to split.
There is a consensus to reduce the article, and now we are discussing means to reduce the article. The general discussion seems to be leaning towards removing references for well supported album articles, and I can start work on that this week. Mburrell (talk) 05:17, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
Those discussions were years ago. It just can't be trusted when you personally ask someone to comment and then they agree with you. Obviously if you asked someone to comment and they don't agree with you then there's no reason to distrust that. It's not about simply asking people to comment, it's about asking people who agree with you, whether you say you knew they did or not. They can have as much of an opinion as they want and they may very well make very sound points, but so could people that I would ask to agree with me, so we don't count those as measuring consensus. I didn't ask Walter Gorlitz or anybody personally to comment, and if I did then that would certainly be untrustworthy. There's no problem with the comments that these people make, it's just about accurately representing the community views.
Why would it take a week to remove the references? Surely it's a matter of deleting a column, especially if we're removing non-article entries too. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:31, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
It would take a week because it had not been my intention to remove the reference column, or to discard the albums with no articles. That seems to be combining two separate discussions on reduction, and I thought we were discussing one or the other but not both. The other reason for taking the time is that not every album article is properly supported in the article, and I was going to actively examine each album article and see if the album article was adequately supported by a news source citation. I see you have another approach. I think you are wrong, but let's see where it takes us. As for the other discussion, I have no idea what you are talking about now. I don't know of which discussion was years ago. All these discussions have been taking place in the last few months. You have lost me here, and I no longer care about your viewpoint on this. Mburrell (talk) 04:16, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
The discussions you were talking about were years ago, such as 2017. Discussion seemed to be approving both removing entries without articles, and removing references for entries with articles. Is there any reason we can't do both? Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:43, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
I don't believe I have referenced the 2017 discussion of how to reduce article size during the current round of discussions. It does not matter. You have taken over the act of reducing the size of the 2017 album list, and I am just standing back for now. Mburrell (talk) 03:14, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
When you said another editor had previously commented about the issue before this discussion. It's not as if only one of us can reduce the size of the article, I fully encourage you to do so as well. Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:55, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Closed as: rough consensus for not splitting the article. - MrX 🖋 11:31, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

NOTE
I am self-reverting my close per this request: user talk:MrX#2017 albums RfC, so that another experienced editor or admin can close it.- MrX 🖋 11:05, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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