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Comments about 3b transferred from initial FLC nomination

[edit]
  • Question – In the lists there are only four items total. Do my fellow reviewers consider that to be enough to meet criterion 3b? Giants2008 (Talk) 02:09, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Response yep, this is most likely a good article candidate, it certainly doesn't meet our 3b criteria, but I'm not sure if there's a main article for this to slip into. Either way, not sure it's a featured list candidate. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:14, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • In what way does it not meet 3b? There's no length requirement for a number of subjects in a list, and it is a stand-alone topic, just the same as List of battleships of Germany or any other similar list. The list is a comprehensive topic (the battleships purchased by Greece) and is not a content fork. Parsecboy (talk) 01:08, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • The way it's presently worded, WP:SAL is basically useless for our purposes. That leaves WP:CFORK violations as the only reason to oppose based on criterion 3b. Anyone arguing that this is a content fork should name the article (existent or not) of which he or she believes this to be a content fork. I'm not particularly pleased about the shortness of this list, but without a reasonable merge target, I'd have to say that it meets criterion 3b. That said, I think it could "reasonably be included as part of" List of decommissioned ships of the Hellenic Navy. If there's arguments against that, I'm willing to listen, but for the moment I'll have to oppose. Goodraise 17:02, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
          • If that list is improved to the quality of this list, it would be unmanageably large. I have plans to break out at least some other sections of the list (such as the ironclads and probably the cruisers for starters). Regardless, there is precedence for lists of this size: List of battlecruisers of Russia and List of battlecruisers of Japan both have only 3 entries and List of battleships of the Ottoman Empire has 5. Parsecboy (talk) 19:59, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
            • We are not bound by precedence; WP:FLRC exists for a reason. Also, we're not item counting; what we're concerned with is article size. Assuming a natural growth of List of decommissioned ships of the Hellenic Navy, with the largest sections (presumably the ones with the most items) being split first, I'm not convinced that the battleship section would have to be split at all. Goodraise 21:24, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
              • I didn't say we were bound by precedence, I was pointing out that lists of similar size have passed without issue. Since we're concerned with article size, then, this list is 12.7kb, the Russian list is 16.8kb, and the Japanese list is 17.2. The difference is insignificant. But let me get back to WP:CFORK - please explain how this list is an unacceptable fork of the List of decommissioned ships of the Hellenic Navy? As far as I can tell, CFORK prohibits articles that largely duplicate another, or are POV forks. How is this list either one of those? Parsecboy (talk) 21:53, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
                • Let me put it differently: What previously passed is irrelevant. We don't care.

                  CFORK basically says that multiple articles (with a few exceptions) shouldn't cover the same subjects (note that it's about the articles' subjects, not their contents). One of the exceptions being articles created through following WP:Summary style. Summary style in turn recommends against splitting off sections not establishing notability, which this list does not presently do in the way demanded by WP:LISTN.

                  Perhaps you're thinking now that we're interpreting these guidelines overly strict, but we have to do that, because if we don't (and there was a time when we didn't) editors will go around scooping little pieces out of larger articles for the purpose of gaining featured credit at FLC as opposed to creating spin-out articles when doing so is the best way to present the content and it outweighs the additional burden of maintenance having sub articles creates. Goodraise 00:20, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You are interpreting the guidelines overly strict, and your analysis seems partially incorrect at best. What previously passed is relevant in the sense that two of the three lists above were passed with the same criteria as are in place now without the hassle this one is receiving. I don't see how LISTN is failed here as I'm sure the battleships have been talked about as a group (prove me wrong), and it specifically states there is no consensus for assessing the notability of "List of X of Y" lists besides the WP:GNG, which has been satisfied in this case. And I'm not sure a list that has precedence for inclusion (many "List of battleships of X" exist) will get everyone to go hog wild trying to force other small lists through FLC as you seem to imply. ClayClayClay 04:48, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What Clay said. To argue that this list does not meet notability while numerous others on other countries' ships have passed without issue is ludicrous; it's systemic bias if nothing else. The same applies to SYNC; no one raised SYNC concerns when the previous FLs on types of warships I have written. Please stop wikilawyering and withdraw your baseless opposition. Parsecboy (talk) 11:33, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think we all need to chill out a bit here. My concern over a "list" of four items still holds (while not in the criteria, we have, for some time, used ten items as an unwritten benchmark for submission), I've seen featured and good article nominations with less prose and more tables than this candidate, hence my suggestion that it would be better suited to the WP:GAN process. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:39, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Lists cannot be GAs - see the GAC. As I pointed out above, there are several examples of FLs with the same number of items (well below 10) that did not have these concerns raised. List of armored cruisers of Germany, one of my other FLs, has six entries with 9 articles; List of battleships of the Ottoman Empire has five entries with six articles. If you want to have a cutoff, then do so, but tell people, and please do not apply it inconsistently. If I knew this was going to be an issue, I wouldn't have wasted my time writing this list. Parsecboy (talk) 11:45, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I am aware of the GA criteria (for recent examples of GAs which contain listed info, see 2011 Team Europcar season and Delaware Route 36, by the way), but what I'm saying to you is that this isn't really a list. It's mainly prose with some very brief tabulated information. I do think you need to remain calm, we're hear to discuss this, well I certainly am, and losing your temper won't help anything. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:08, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
@Clay: If we were bound by what previously passed, in time we would not be able to oppose for any reason, because with every FLC that passes, things are missed. Reviewers aren't perfect. Furthermore, as Wikipedia matures, its guidelines and policies evolve. Standards rise even if the wording of the featured list criteria remain the same.

Proving that the battleships have not been talked about as a group is impossible. There's no burden of proof on me here. The GNG isn't satisfied either. LISTN merely explains how notability guidelines should be interpreted for lists. That "There is no present consensus for how to assess ... cross-categorization lists" only supports my position. If we can't assess a subject's notability, then we can't consider it meeting notability guidelines.

I'm not implying anything. I'm saying it straight up: Promoting tiny lists makes editors create more tiny lists.

@TRM: I'll have to disagree with you on two points. Firstly, this is a list. Of course I can't cite some guideline to support this opinion because of WP:SAL's uselessness. Secondly, falling back to "unwritten benchmarks" every reviewer has to set for him- or herself and their unpredictability for nominators is the worst possible thing we can do. Relying on CFORK may only be a stopgap measure until the community finally decides on what lists should stand alone and what lists shouldn't, but it's still way better than arbitrary limits. Goodraise 13:21, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not convinced of its listness, many GAs have more listness and less prose than this one. It could easily be submitted there without anyone blinking twice (and I saw this FA: Tanks in the Spanish Army which, while it has more prose, is essentially the same as this list). However, everyone's entitled to their opinion, of course. Probably best for me to withdraw here and let the community at large decide. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:57, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
If this is not a list, then why are any of these lists? The only difference is size, and in the case of several of them, that difference is negligible. If you don't want short lists, fine, I'll withdraw the nomination and only work on categories of items that have more than some random, arbitrary limit. But decide on the limit and let everyone know, so I don't keep wasting my time.
Having said that, no one has yet explained (as far as I can tell), how this is not a stand-alone list. Parsecboy (talk) 18:01, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I understand the frustration but size is important. We couldn't, for instance, imagine a list of two items becoming a featured list, it would simply be an article (or pair of articles) which should achieve GA or FA status if possible. I wonder (and I'll need to do some more research) how much more this list brings to the Wikipedia beyond the individual articles about each battleship, most of which seem to have a {{main}} article. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:11, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
So four items is too few. Gotcha. I won't be wasting my time here anymore. Archive the nomination so I can go over to GAN, where someone else can tell me it doesn't fit their criteria either. Parsecboy (talk) 13:00, 16 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - For what it's worth, I don't see GA and FL as being mutually exclusive (see, for example, The Simpsons (season 1), Smallville (season 1), Millennium (season 1) and The X-Files (season 1); and yes I do seem to focus on television a bit). I think this article does work as a list, as lists don't strictly need to have tabled data. The article is a list of entries, rather than a list of raw information in table form; if that's deemed to be outside of FL's purview then I think there'd be a few other FLs that would have to be taken to FLRC and then brought FAC instead (List of Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow characters, List of Uncharted characters). I've seen a similar grey area over what is and isn't within the scope of FLC, and I'm wondering if perhaps an RFC on the subject to draw a line in the sand for what we do want here and what would be better served by FAC instead would be in order. GRAPPLE X 12:20, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't think we need such an RFC. What we need is clear criteria on what lists should exist. Dividing articles between FAC and FLC is not really a problem. We take what they don't want. As far as GA-lists are concerned, I'm in agreement with you, but if the Good Article people don't want lists, that's fine with me also. Goodraise 13:21, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • To be fair, "the Good Article" people is a pretty nebulous term given that reviews can be done by anyone, whereas featured content has a set panel of delegates. I know I've passed GAs that could have been termed as lists, because I see GA as an intermediary step for FL when the list is prose-heavy (as is often the case with things like television seasons or summaries of warship classes, etc). I'd probably straight-pass this as a Good Article as I see no problems with it within the standard used at GA. However, another editor may fall under the "lists are for FL only" crowd and quick-fail it for that. It's a grey area that could probably do with a hard-and-fast rule somewhere down the line. I'm erring on the side of this one being FL, and not FA, territory, but ultimately I'll have to defer to Giants and Rambling Man as they're the ones with much more experience in this field. But to equate FL and GA isn't really right, as FL and FA are the equivalent processes, GA being a rung below either (and feeding into both). GRAPPLE X 13:35, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • As a point of order, GA does not feed into FL - the WP:Good article criteria are very specific on that ("Stand-alone lists...should be nominated for featured list...status" under "what is not a good article"). Unless there is a discussion and the criteria are changed, lists should not be nominated, or passed, at GA. I realize that the majority of this discussion is focused on whether this list is actually a list or more of an article, but I wanted to make the distinction between GA and FL clear before more confusion is sown. True lists do not go to GA...it is not a stepping stone to FL status. Dana boomer (talk) 16:42, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
          • Gah, I didn't want to come back here, but one question is clear and obvious to me, what is "a list" Dana? I noted two articles above that passed GA which are essentially lists with significant prose. We have many examples that are similar. What's a "true list"? Sounds like we're back to the old "why isn't there a 'good list' if there's a 'good article'" discussion which I've never really seen satisfactorily resolved. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:11, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
            • I think it's less one single question, but several related ones we (and the wider community) need to answer. To name the main ones: What distinguishes a stand-alone list (aka. list article) from a non-list article? And when is the existence of a list article justified? The page that should (but doesn't) answer these questions is WP:SAL. Recently I tried getting things moving over there, but all I accomplished was stepping on tows and getting caught up in tedious debates over minor details. Anyway, we've been dancing around theses questions for long enough. A large scale RFC may be the only way to get this problem solved. If it even can be solved, that is. Goodraise 19:45, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
            • TRM, I definitely agree that there are many articles/lists that are borderline - the ones you note above are great examples. This battleships article/list I can see as going either way; however, I think it is more list, since if it went to FA they would ping it for having too high of a table to prose ratio, IMO. My main point was in reply to Grapple X saying that GA should feed/does feed into FL - this may occasionally happen, but the GA criteria explicitly say it shouldn't. If people want that to happen, then a discussion needs to start to have the GA criteria changed. I don't think there's a call here for a good list page, since if this was at a theoretical GL page people would still probably be arguing over whether it was an article or a list. The argument here isn't "this is almost good enough to be FL, but not quite, so it should go to GL", it's "there's too much prose for it to be FL, so maybe it should go to GA". To be honest, I think that this type of situation isn't something that can be fixed by a hard-and-fast rule - it's more of a case-by-case thing, to my way of thinking. Dana boomer (talk) 22:00, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I can't believe that this nom is getting hung up on the number of entries; what does that matter? The main principle should be if it has a fundamental organizing principle. So what if the Greeks only bought two battleships and attempted to buy another pair? The organizing principle is valid and cannot subsumed into any other than a complete list of all decommissioned Greek warships, which is unlikely ever to be finished. Breaking that list down by type is a perfectly valid way to handle that information in bite-sized pieces. Otherwise you'd have to try and digest lists with over 100 entries as even the smallest navy has likely had that many warships over the years if you get down to gunboats and the like. Aside from the few entries I see no fundamental difference between this and List of battleships of the United States Navy as they're both structured around the same fundamental principle. Just as List of birds of Colorado is fundamentally equivalent to List of birds of Matto Grosso. So what if one has over 70 entries and the other only 4? I think that threat of an inundation of short lists is greatly exaggerated in reality and can easily be dealt with by looking at the organizing principle. List of The Prisoner episodes that aired in Peoria, Illinois may not even be short, but is pretty easy to shoot down as an invalid basis to organize the list around as it is better subsumed into List of The Prisoner episodes. Just like List of battleships of the US Navy recommissioned in the 1980s is best incorporated in with the Iowa class battleship article, to go back to our original naval theme.

I find it odd that The Rambling Man supported the FLC for List of battlecruisers of Russia with only three items two years ago, but have now problems with this one, which has even less text than the Russian battlecruiser list, but I suppose that people can learn better over time what is GAN worthy or not. If y'all want to impose some sort of limit for minimum # of items to qualify for FLC then do so formally rather than this "informal consensus" which is just outright wrong. There are few enough reviewers here that such a consensus can pretty well dominate all of the noms and it's not fair to the nominators to judge them by a hidden criteria. And if you do set a minimum please start the FLCR process for the Russian battlecruiser list and all the other short FLCs so we can discuss things at length. Hell, maybe I'll do it myself, just to get the ball rolling. Oh, and I'm working on List of battlecruisers of the United States right now with only two entries covering 7 articles and I expect that I'll be nominating it in a few weeks so y'all might want to put some effort into deciding this issue. It will be formatted about the same as the Russian battlecruiser list so I wonder if I'll see some comments that it's really rather an article than a list. Unlike List of battlecruisers of the Royal Navy which covered 20-odd ships and classes and passed FLC a year and a half ago. But that was then and this is now.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:27, 16 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you wish to single me out, then just a couple of minor points of information: the Russian list had nine items in three tables, and I don't recall supporting it, I simply reviewed it. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:10, 16 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Forgive me for mischaracterizing your comments, but you are correct that you did not support that list. Your characterization of the Russian list is correct, but limited. It does cover nine ships, but none of them were completed and all are covered in only three class articles. So which is more important, # of entries in the list or the number of articles? It matters because my forthcoming American battlecruiser list has a dozen entries, although over half of them were never completed and they are covered in 5 individual ship articles and two class articles and I'd like to know if I should bother coming here or not.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 13:16, 16 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Of course you should bother. This discussion has come about from a couple of editors (mainly me and Giants) who expressed concerns. It would appear that we are in the minority, and that's just fine. It would also appear that we need to revisit the "implementation" of 3b in this sense, so we should do that too. My suggestion here is to move this lengthy debate to the talk page, and restart the nomination so all this chatter doesn't get in the way of people deciding whether or not this is a piece of Wikipedia's finest work. What say thee to that? The Rambling Man (talk) 14:01, 16 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That would be fine. Let's clarify 3b so everybody knows what the standards are.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 14:57, 16 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Done. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:45, 16 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(Outdent) I'm curious where you people want to go from here. I see several (non-exclusive) options:

  1. Sharpen the line between list article and non-list article. -> WP:SAL
  2. Sharpen the line between list articles that should exist and list articles that shouldn't exist. -> WP:SAL or WP:N or WP:CFORK
  3. Make the criteria more explicit about what 3b means and how it is interpreted. -> WP:FLCR

Is there other options I'm not seeing? Goodraise 19:45, 16 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It seems apparent to me that there is some sort of unspoken size requirement for an article to be considered a list. Please decide what the requirement is and codify it. Hidden rules help no one and only cause frustration. Parsecboy (talk) 11:44, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It's not that there is some unspoken consensus, there simply is no consensus. Editors (including nominators and reviewers) don't agree on how criterion 3b should be interpreted, what constitutes a list article, and what list articles are justified to exist. Goodraise 12:35, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
See The Rambling Man's comment above: "we have, for some time, used ten items as an unwritten benchmark for submission". Coming from one of the FLC delegates, I'd say that amounts to some kind of unspoken consensus. Parsecboy (talk) 12:59, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You're wrong about that. TRM's opinion is highly respected at FLC and shared by a number of reviewers, but it's still an opinion that does not have sufficient support to be written into the criteria. It does not have consensus. Also, I don't think TRM meant to say that no list with less than 10 items should be promoted and that every list with more than 9 items is acceptable. Goodraise 13:26, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
And that's why I restarted the discussion so the community could form an opinion without distraction from any directors. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:57, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
A prudent decision. Still, we'll have to solve the underlying problem eventually. Goodraise 16:30, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It may be that there is no neat solution. Let's look at why we have list articles, which would normally breach our requirements to write articles in good prose. I would argue that in an encyclopedia, there often exists a need to collect together a number of related facts and present them in a way that helps the reader to overview, to compare, to contrast, and to look up those facts. If I want to know who directed the ninth episode of House (TV series), I look at List of House episodes#Season 1: 2004–05, where I can also count how many episodes that Frederick King Keller wrote, and even compare how well received each of them were (although that would be easier if the table were sortable). That sort of functionality is what makes our list articles or list sections of hybrid articles so useful that we abandon normal prose. If you agree with my argument so far, it is difficult to disagree with the conclusion that confining articles to either "article" or "list" is not only unnecessary, but does nothing to improve our encyclopedia.
I recommend, therefore, that we strive for as much flexibility as possible in allowing borderline candidates to be assessed against our featured list criteria. While I don't believe that a list with a single entry meets my idea of why we have lists, I wouldn't want to disqualify lists with just a few entries without examining them first. It may be that some lists with a few entries might be better re-written as prose – or it may not. From that viewpoint, I agree with TRM's "rule-of-thumb" that lists with ten or more entries are clearly good candidates for being written as lists – and our mistake is to reach a contrapositive conclusion that all those with fewer are not. I know it doesn't help nominators when we don't have rigid criteria that they can work to, but I'd rather leave sufficient margin for exceptions, as I think that leads to better results (even if we have to put more work into reaching a consensus at times). --RexxS (talk) 17:13, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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