Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lists/Archive 4

This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

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RfC to remove notable performers from list who don't yet have articles

There is an RfC to remove dozens of entries from the only list of male performers in gay porn films because the articles for the performers don't yet exist. More eyes would be appreciated. -- Banjeboi 21:41, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Two Questions

I'm not very familiar with lists so here are my two questsion:

Is a list notable if the things it is listing are not notable? From what I understand, Wikipedia lists are meant to organize information on Wiki. If the information isn't on Wiki, there's nothing to sort.
Are these articles notable? They're lists of EHV-substations in 2 different countries. They only list the name of the installation and coords for the substation. I couldn't say for sure if each substation is notable or not. There are no articles for any of them that I can find.

Thanks for your help. OlYeller^Talktome 04:36, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

You can have a list of entirely-non-notable things (it's agood way of including things that deserve a mention but not an article), but be prepared to defend it if it ever goes to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. Please can you link to the list you're talking about, so we can assess it? Totnesmartin (talk) 11:04, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

This is one of them. I believe there are more lists of a similar nature for nearby European countries. OlYeller^Talktome 15:39, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

It's a bit basic but it's good enough. The only thing it needs is some citations or external links. Totnesmartin (talk) 16:56, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Old merge proposal

Hello there, I'm working through Category:Articles to be merged from November 2007 and I've got to List of Six Feet Under episodes and List of Six Feet Under deaths. Could someone take a look and see if this is worth carrying though (the first one or two series have been done)? Thanks. Totnesmartin (talk) 20:05, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, merging seems sensible here. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:59, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

MoS Taskforce audits of list styleguides

Users Matthewedwards and Dabomb87 have begun a survey of what needs to be done to rationalise the unfortunate plethora of guides concerning lists and tables. The aims are to rationalise, improve, and probably to merge some of these guides so that they are easier for editors to consult, and easier for the styleguide editors to coordinate.

We welcome participation and feedback in this process. Please see Wikipedia_talk:Lists#Consolidation.3F. Tony (talk) 02:20, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Question on how to create a summary for larger lists

How do we choose a short list of items as a summary-style sample in an article from a larger list of elements that have been moved to a subpage?” Thanks for any comments and advice.(olive (talk) 17:52, 27 April 2010 (UTC))

Add: If the names on the lists are reliably sourced, and have been been categorized, although the number of names in each category varies, do we have to find another list in another source in order to summarize the names/categories we already have? (olive (talk) 17:45, 28 April 2010 (UTC))

One option is to use shorter lists that are found in reliable sources. Or, another option is to avoid picking entries from a longer list and simply describe the longer list, such as "The list of notable practitioners include many musicians and actors, plus doctors, politicians, and businessmen." Or, a third option is to leave no summary at all and just link to the list. Will Beback talk 18:03, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

See the same question being discussed at Wikipedia talk:Summary style#How to summarize a list? This is inspired by a thread at Talk:Transcendental Meditation#Discussion and concerns List of Transcendental Meditation practitioners‎. Will Beback talk 18:32, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I like the OPtion of the sentence "The list...." and then add, "including Mr X, Mrs Y, Ms Z". --BwB (talk) 06:56, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

You're suggesting picking three names out of a presumed 26. Why pick Mr X but not Miss A? If a few entries are chosen from a list then it seems like an objective standard should be used. One standard is to simply pick them randomly, for example, every 8th name. Another standard is by prominence. In the case of Talk:Transcendental Meditation#Discussion, we seem to achieving consensus for using the names which have been mentioned most frequently in Google News. That's a fine way to proceed, but I think that it's also acceptable to summarize a list by describing it, without including any entries. So there are at least three possible methods. Will Beback talk 18:59, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Football player lists naming convention

An RfC has begun on the WT:FOOTY#Name of football player lists page regarding proper naming. Sandman888 (talk) 19:53, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

List of languages by name

FYI, List of languages by name and related articles have been prodded for deletion on 30 May, see Category:Proposed deletion as of 30 May 2010

76.66.193.224 (talk) 04:52, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

List of oldest companies

I tagged List of oldest companies for checking by WildBot, and it found an incredible number of company name links that need fixing. --Geniac (talk) 22:25, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

List box

This article is listed as:

an orienteering competitor

I have made a draft of a list box template (see example) that informs on what lists an articles is listed on. There will be links in both directions; from list to article and from article to list. Adding this link will made lists more visible in Wikipedia.

I planned to make it capable of taking a hidden category as a parameter. This way the category and the list can be compared if there is some entries missing. Maintenance of the list becomes much easier. First all articles that should be in the list will be tagged with the list box template. After tagging the category listing is copied as base for a new list or for comparison of an already existing list.

I was thinking that template should take three lists as parameters. I think it is quite rare that an article is listed on more then three list.

Any comments before I proceed? --Kslotte (talk) 16:05, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

This is a great idea, however, I think the text should be more descriptive for novice users. Maybe "This article is a part of the following lists:" Dkriegls (talk) 06:52, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Is Popular cat names a list?

On May 22, an editor changed the name of List of most popular cat names to Popular cat names, saying in the edit summary for the move that the article was not a list. I'd radically changed the article just before that. It's made up of a series of published lists of most popular cat names and explanatory material about the lists and about what the information in the lists says about cat names. I think what I created may actually be an article the subject of which is "lists of popular cat names". On the other hand, "Popular cat names" may be essentially the same thing. I'm still trying to think this through. Any editors with experience thinking these thngs through is invited to contribute some wisdom at Talk: Popular cat names#Article name question. --

I think the purpose of this article needs to be established before it can be determined if it is a list or not. Clearly just listing all popular cat names is not WP. However, this seams to be an attempt at a more in depth write up about cat naming norms, but is not really successful at that either. Further discussion should be had at the articles talk page.Dkriegls (talk) 07:24, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Irish maritime events during World War II

Is this a list? should it be renamed? Originally part of Irish Mercantile Marine during World War II but it became too large, so I divided the article. Please advise. ClemMcGann (talk) 22:23, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

This looks like an appropriate stand alone list to me. It's relevant to main article but too big to embed. I don't know if there is any consensus on timelines, but I was able to find several stand alone timeline article for different wars. here is an example of a well hashed out war timeline. Looks like the one you're working on has better sourcing though. You might want to consider turning the years into lever 2 headings instead of level 1. Hope this helps Dkriegls (talk) 07:16, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply ClemMcGann (talk) 16:04, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Opinion needed for AFD discussion

I've recently objected to the prod of two professional wrestling-related articles, List of independent wrestling promotions in the United States and List of professional wrestling promotions in Mexico. This was taken to AFD and the nominator insists that the list is unnecessary since List of professional wrestling promotions exists and that un-linked promotions are not notable. He also cites WP:NOTDIR and WP:ADVERT. I am leaving this message as there has been little activity on the page aside from my discussions with the editor in question.

Prior to removing the prods, I closely read WP:LIST and I believe these lists qualify under its guidelines as a Stand-alone list. In the original version of US list there were 190+ cited references from reliable sources per WP:RS. I feel this supports the claim that the un-linked promotions meet WP:N and WP:CORP. Even if I am wrong, however, there are 75 existing promotions on the list and that there are enough notable promotions to justify a separate listing from the main list.

I believe that independent promotions are a legitimate subtopic of professional wrestling in the United States. The list is fairly detailed and separated by US regional area but has a very limited scope in that it lists "notable" US promotions rather then a directory of "every US promotion which has ever existed". I don't agree that this list qualifies as a directory or is advertising these promotions. The original list had 180+ promotions (active and defunct) from 32 US states, and while that seems like a lot, it is a relatively small number considering there have been many thousands of promotions in the US over a period of 20 years. I think that a listing of notable independent promotions in the US is a valid topic and worthy of a list under said guidelines. I have provided a similar wrestling list, List of National Wrestling Alliance territories, as an example as well as List of airlines of the United States and List of convenience stores.

These points also apply to the Mexico list though I did add numerous sources from books and news articles before removing the prod. This list is much smaller, with only 17 promotions (7 exist on Wikipedia), however there is a considerable distinction between American professional wrestling and Lucha libre wrestling in Mexico. Would I also be correct in saying that a list of puroresu organizations in Japan would also merit their own list?

My question is do these lists fall under the guidelines set by WP:LIST? Are these lists notable? If these do qualify under the policies the nominator cited is it possible to rewrite or otherwise improve the lists so that they do not violate these policies? 71.184.42.165 (talk) 12:47, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

List of professional cyclists who died during a race

This List-Class article might benefit from the attention of this Group. Not sure it is structured correctly plus right now, the only 'references' provided are Wiki-links to other Wikipedia articles.

Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 14:13, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi Shearonink. The citation issue is actually a big one because only about 25% names link to Wikipedia articles. So as it stands now most of the list violates Wikipedia:No original research. I made a comment on the page. If there were a few names missing ciations, one might just add citation need tags, but a whole list, that's not good. If you are into this list, then just google each name with the word 'death' included in the search and you should quickly find a reference to use. If you don't find one, then the name should be deleted until someone can find a reference. Dkriegls (talk) 05:14, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Article alerts

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Thanks. — Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 09:21, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists (television)

What should our policy be on articles that contain lists related to television? You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Stand-alone lists (television). Taric25 (talk) 22:39, 20 June 2010 (UTC) (Using {{Please see}})

List of manufacturers

I've just come across a recently-created list, List of wetsuit manufacturers. I'm generally unhappy to see an obvious WP:LINKFARM, and regard it as a content fork from Wetsuit where there is consensus that an embedded list of manufacturers is not suitable. The article itself has no reliable sources or any indication of why Wikipedia should have such an article, but I'm not sure of how these principles should be applied to lists, so I'm asking here for a more experienced opinion before I waste time pursuing deletion. Should the article exist, and if so, is it appropriate in its present format with an external link for each manufacturer? Thanks in advance for any help you can offer. --RexxS (talk) 22:55, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

List of awards and nominations received by Justin Bieber

Request for comments is currently being asked for in a proposed merger of List of awards and nominations received by Justin Bieber that may be of interest to the project.Moxy (talk) 06:50, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

List of awards and nominations received by Kesha

Request for comments is currently being asked for in a proposed merger of List of awards and nominations received by Kesha to anyone that may be of interest to the project in question. Rp0211 ^(talk2me) 20:23, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

List of microfluidics research groups

This list seems to consist mainly of a linkfarm to in itself non-notable (in the WP sense) groups. I think it could do with the attention of some members of this project. Thanks. --Crusio (talk) 07:55, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you don't think this doesn't meet notability. For lists it's a bit different. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists). As for structure, most all groups seem to be referenced using their homepages. The few homepages I checked (10) all but one listed their academic publications, which is sufficient enough for Wikipedia Notability (The one had an "under construction" note). I guess the only thing I would change, is to reference the group's published works directly, instead of to their homepages. However, this would just be for clean up, since the links I checked were good enough. Dkriegls (talk) 05:47, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, I think there are several things wrong with this list. First, all of those links seem to go against WP:EL. Second, I don't agree that the fact that they published shows notability for these groups. For an academic, simply having published most certainly is not enough to be notable (see WP:PROF) and while Universities are automatically notable (unless they are non-accredited diploma mills), not even departments are notable automatically. This list gives links to "prof. so and so's group", where prof. so and so may very well not meet WP:PROF. The last addition to the list was to a "Dr. Alexeev group", an assistant professor. People at that stage of their careers rarely are already notable and their bios are rarely kept at AfD. In addition, according to WP:LISTPURP, lists should aid in navigation by containing internally linked terms (wikilinks). The only internal links here are links (and overlinked at that) to the institutions where the different groups are located. As far as I can see, none of these groups has a wiki article and only a very few are linked to a researcher's bio. At the very least, this list needs a lot of cleanup, but perhaps it should even be deleted. --Crusio (talk) 07:55, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

A few thoughts for response. First, this list could use work and some of your points are valid. However, I think you may be misreading WP:LISTPURP. Those are not exclusion creation, they are guiding reasons for creating lists. The 'Development' purpose highlights this, in that many lists do not serve this purpose. The microfluideics list seems to be a good resource for anyone interested in organizations working in this WP noteworthy research area, and thus fitting the 'Information' purpose. Second, this is not a list of external links as you suggest by citing WP:EL, most all citations in Wikipedia are external links, as is the case here. List of Digimon is a good example of useful information compiled into a list with most items not meeting criterion for their own page. List are often used to compile interesting information which only meets notability in the collective. Third, WP:PROF is typicality met with "publications in especially prestigious and selective academic journals" (See 'Notes and examples' - item 3). The example you gave of "Dr. Alexeev group" is a perfect example. The group is not included because of the prestige of the assistant professor who heads it, but because the group has produced over 30 published articles. A few are in the top journals in this field.Dkriegls (talk) 08:31, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

List articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the List articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Sunday, November 14th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of November, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

If you have already provided feedback, we deeply appreciate it. For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 16:34, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Notable People Lists

Looking for some feedback on the appropriate name for these lists. See discussion here:Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities/US Guideline#Notable people vs Notable natives and residents Dkriegls (talk) 09:59, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Google Refine

Interesting link at WP:VPIL#Google_Refine to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45EnWK-fE9k

A new data transformation tool. They use one of our articles as their example, converting a structured list into a table. More details at the VP thread. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:01, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

That is one sweet software. Thanks for sharing. Dkriegls (talk) 20:16, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

List of Nostalgia Critic episodes

Having already survived one AfD nomination, I have trimmed this page down severely and tidied it up, but I still don't think that the article should exist. I suppose the crux of it is the question of should internet shows have episode lists? What does the WikiProject think? Thanks. —Half Price 16:36, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, I don't know that you will find much in the way of consensus here, one way or the other. List inclusion consensus discussions tend to happen on the list's discussion page. I've followed some of the discussion about fans of this site pushing hard for inclusion on Wikipedia, so I understand some of the arguments for inclusion. I think this list looks better on its own than at the site's article page.

However, as the list stands now, it suffers from a few violations; that can be fixed. The main one is WP:original research. My quick look at the references don't support the list. A lot of TV episode lists suffer from this though, but other TV episode lists aren't part of a larger debate for inclusion of the subject as a whole. The other big violation, along these same lines, is the use of WP:Fancruft language. Mostly I'm referring to the descriptors for each episode. Again, a common practice with many TV episode lists, but if the goal is to fight deletion discussions, these two issues are a good place to beef up inclusion positioning. Hope this helps Dkriegls (talk) 13:23, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Please take a note

I seldom raise my voice on wikipedia, but i am really struck by the futility of your efforts. Have you ever given thought of contacting whoever promotes semantic categorization on wikipedia? These lists ought not be created or maintained manually. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.88.32.119 (talk) 13:22, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Why? Who? Why? The Transhumanist 01:07, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Missing from this project or...?

Okay I'm not sure about this but should the 2 lists below not be a part of this project?

The latter is at the moment categorized as an index but I think it could do better as a list if it was edited a bit. Some of those characters can hardly fill a whole article for themselves so this could be the only place to look for information (which is missing right now). Mottenen (talk) 17:09, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Lists to non-list-Articles

Hi, to the esteemed list experts here, a question. Are there any examples out there of lists that over time have become non-list articles? That is, as details are added and the list eventually looks more like a normal article explaining its subject, with various sections, than a list collecting its member items. What is an example (if one exists) and how do you deal with these? ElevenNames (talk) 08:17, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Notable People sections comes easily to mind. They usually start off as lists but are meant to be transitioned to prose. Then, if they become too big, they are broken off from the city/town's page and turned back into a list. I assume you have a target list in mind for said transition, why don't you clue us in.Dkriegls (talk) 17:25, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Nice suggestion, I'll have a look at some Notable People sections in city articles. I don't have a list in mind; I'm interested in the phenomenon itself of articles transitioning in or out of list formatting. Such articles are hard to find by any search or browsing criteria I can dream up so I'm asking for any examples that are out there. ElevenNames (talk) 21:31, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Undefined list

List of teen films‎ seems like an undefined list to me. The list is entirely without references and includes very little explanatory prose. Even as a category it wouldn't be particularly clear. It has survived one deletion discussion already (and if you follow the trail similar lists survived though lack of consensus) so I'm trying to get clarification here to see if maybe the article can be improved.

The very short introduction mentions "Teen films have been a trope of the cinema industry for decades since the 1950s" and I understand why a list of films like American Pie or John Hughes might fit on the list and that makes some sense to me. Unfortunately this isn't very well defined and makes it difficult to know what should or should not be included.

It gets worse. The introduction includes another sentence "Some of these films are targeted at adult as well as teenagers" which is incredibly vague, and makes it very difficult to exclude much of anything. This nebulous claim about target audiences makes the article even more difficult to define.

I'm hoping this is the right place to ask and that the editors here will know enough to explain how this list can be improved. I'm used to articles where the subject is a bit more clearly defined, where editors can be expected to follow the WP:SIMPLE rules and at least provide some sort of edit summary (well mostly, not as much as they should), and where at least some of the article would be referenced. I'm not quite sure where to start? -- Horkana (talk) 02:37, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, the first thing to do would be to find a guiding reference on the subject. I found this from 'film reference', but there might be a better one out there. Once a guiding reference is found, all other edits should follow from there. Dkriegls (talk) 17:29, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a start. It fits with the first less vague suggestion of the article might supposedly be about. -- Horkana (talk) 01:34, 4 February 2011 (UTC)