Lists Project‑class | |||||||
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The guideline says that every list-of-lists should have a matching category, which seems reasonable. A category is easy to maintain, and if the list of lists is just an alphabetic list of the category entries, the list probably is not needed. Demanding a matching category means the list should be more than just an alphabetic list: it should have some structure, some added information. That said, the great majority of lists of lists do not have a matching category. With the large lists, creating and populating a category would take a fair amount of work. With the small lists like Lists of places in Sussex, two or three entries, the category would be at risk of being deleted. Any thoughts on softening the "should have a category" rule? Aymatth2 ( talk) 02:31, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
Or, more generally, any article that serves as an index to multiple list articles which, together, partition one logical list (by year, alphabetically, by country, etc.), and which could reasonably all go in one article if not for size concerns? Just a few examples:
Structurally, these articles are lists of lists, but semantically they really just represent a single list, no?
They're very different from articles like Lists of battles, Lists of books, Lists of highest points, Lists of English words etc. I would consider these ones the "true" lists of lists. By design, they do not partition their domain. There will likely be overlaps (e.g. books that are listed in multiple lists in Lists of books) and gaps (e.g. books that aren't listed in any of the Lists of books lists). They're presenting the reader with a variety of subsets of the domain according to different criteria.
I think these groups are very different, and advice that applies to one will not necessarily apply to the other. For example, split-long-lists are unlikely to have a corresponding "Lists of..." category, whereas the true lists of lists will (or should) always have one. Another example is naming. A "true" LoL should have a name of the form "Lists of X", or "List of lists of X", whereas a split-long-list makes more sense at a singular "List of X" title.
What if this page (and Category:Lists of lists) dealt only with true lists of lists, and split-long-lists were dealt with in a separate page? WP:NCLONGLIST would be a good starting point - it's nominally a naming guideline, though it already talks about more than naming.
I realize this would be a major change, but I just wanted to throw it out there as an idea.
Also, there is the mirror image possibility: is it possible to have pages which semantically are lists of lists, but structurally are confined to a single article? You could argue that something like List of films considered the best is an example, since it consists of several loosely-related, overlapping (embedded) lists i.e. "List of films considered the best by critics", "List of films considered the best by genre", "List of films voted as the best in national polls". Would it be helpful to readers to rename it "Lists of films considered the best", and to categorize it in Category:Lists of film lists? I'm more ambivalent about this. Colin M ( talk) 23:43, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
Also,
List of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes demonstrates a hybrid approach that became possible with the advent of sectional transcludes. That main list page transcludes the bare episode lists from each season sub-list, producing a one-page searchable total episode list, then for each season it uses {{
Main}}
to branch to the season-specific page which provides much more information that just the season's episode list, including an overall plot summary, reaction/review/impact info, production and cast info, etc. This kind of format should not be discouraged just because material written here about list splitting pre-dates sectional transcludes and thus has created an accidental false dichotomy. That said, this hybrid format is not going to be useful for cases like
List of The Nature of Things episodes, where the claim is that just a bare ep. list is too long for a single page, and we have no encyclopedic information to provide at a per-season level anyway, other than a bare episode listing.
But we absolutely should not be doing this
[1]; it's just a pointless "landing page" waste of the reader's time. (Aside from the fact that this particular list should be re-merged into one page, anyway; the amount of content is nowhere near enough to have justified a split.)
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼 10:57, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
I was thinking it would be useful for development to have a tracking category like Category:Split list indexes (possibly with subcats for alphabetical/chronological splits) for these master/index pages described above. Examples of scenarios in which this would be useful:
It would also just be useful to be able to readily browse examples when reasoning about policy for these articles. Any objections to me making such a category (or any suggestions for a better title)? I can't find any guidelines on the creation and use of maintenance categories, so I'm guessing there's pretty wide latitude there. Colin M ( talk) 04:10, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
Introductions are hard to write for list articles, but seemingly doubly so for lists of lists. Here's a semi-arbitrary sample taken from Category:Lists of military lists:
These are all pretty bad, each in their own unique way. I don't know if this page needs its own complement to WP:SALLEAD (I think SALLEAD applies here for the most part, though list selection criteria are less of a thing), but at the very least I'd be interested in examples anyone stumbles on of good LoL intros which might be used as blueprints to improve the rest. Colin M ( talk) 03:49, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
Lists of ports seems to be a hybrid of a legitimate list of lists of seaports, and a disambiguation of lists of seaports, spaceports, airports, computer ports etc. There is perhaps a common underlying meaning of "point of entry". Does anyone have an opinion on whether and if so how this should be broken up or restructured? Aymatth2 ( talk) 14:15, 25 November 2019 (UTC)
Any objections if I remove the {{ Brainstorming}} tag? Would it be premature to add a link to this essay from WP:LISTOFLISTS? Aymatth2 ( talk) 18:59, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
Lists Project‑class | |||||||
|
The guideline says that every list-of-lists should have a matching category, which seems reasonable. A category is easy to maintain, and if the list of lists is just an alphabetic list of the category entries, the list probably is not needed. Demanding a matching category means the list should be more than just an alphabetic list: it should have some structure, some added information. That said, the great majority of lists of lists do not have a matching category. With the large lists, creating and populating a category would take a fair amount of work. With the small lists like Lists of places in Sussex, two or three entries, the category would be at risk of being deleted. Any thoughts on softening the "should have a category" rule? Aymatth2 ( talk) 02:31, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
Or, more generally, any article that serves as an index to multiple list articles which, together, partition one logical list (by year, alphabetically, by country, etc.), and which could reasonably all go in one article if not for size concerns? Just a few examples:
Structurally, these articles are lists of lists, but semantically they really just represent a single list, no?
They're very different from articles like Lists of battles, Lists of books, Lists of highest points, Lists of English words etc. I would consider these ones the "true" lists of lists. By design, they do not partition their domain. There will likely be overlaps (e.g. books that are listed in multiple lists in Lists of books) and gaps (e.g. books that aren't listed in any of the Lists of books lists). They're presenting the reader with a variety of subsets of the domain according to different criteria.
I think these groups are very different, and advice that applies to one will not necessarily apply to the other. For example, split-long-lists are unlikely to have a corresponding "Lists of..." category, whereas the true lists of lists will (or should) always have one. Another example is naming. A "true" LoL should have a name of the form "Lists of X", or "List of lists of X", whereas a split-long-list makes more sense at a singular "List of X" title.
What if this page (and Category:Lists of lists) dealt only with true lists of lists, and split-long-lists were dealt with in a separate page? WP:NCLONGLIST would be a good starting point - it's nominally a naming guideline, though it already talks about more than naming.
I realize this would be a major change, but I just wanted to throw it out there as an idea.
Also, there is the mirror image possibility: is it possible to have pages which semantically are lists of lists, but structurally are confined to a single article? You could argue that something like List of films considered the best is an example, since it consists of several loosely-related, overlapping (embedded) lists i.e. "List of films considered the best by critics", "List of films considered the best by genre", "List of films voted as the best in national polls". Would it be helpful to readers to rename it "Lists of films considered the best", and to categorize it in Category:Lists of film lists? I'm more ambivalent about this. Colin M ( talk) 23:43, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
Also,
List of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes demonstrates a hybrid approach that became possible with the advent of sectional transcludes. That main list page transcludes the bare episode lists from each season sub-list, producing a one-page searchable total episode list, then for each season it uses {{
Main}}
to branch to the season-specific page which provides much more information that just the season's episode list, including an overall plot summary, reaction/review/impact info, production and cast info, etc. This kind of format should not be discouraged just because material written here about list splitting pre-dates sectional transcludes and thus has created an accidental false dichotomy. That said, this hybrid format is not going to be useful for cases like
List of The Nature of Things episodes, where the claim is that just a bare ep. list is too long for a single page, and we have no encyclopedic information to provide at a per-season level anyway, other than a bare episode listing.
But we absolutely should not be doing this
[1]; it's just a pointless "landing page" waste of the reader's time. (Aside from the fact that this particular list should be re-merged into one page, anyway; the amount of content is nowhere near enough to have justified a split.)
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼 10:57, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
I was thinking it would be useful for development to have a tracking category like Category:Split list indexes (possibly with subcats for alphabetical/chronological splits) for these master/index pages described above. Examples of scenarios in which this would be useful:
It would also just be useful to be able to readily browse examples when reasoning about policy for these articles. Any objections to me making such a category (or any suggestions for a better title)? I can't find any guidelines on the creation and use of maintenance categories, so I'm guessing there's pretty wide latitude there. Colin M ( talk) 04:10, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
Introductions are hard to write for list articles, but seemingly doubly so for lists of lists. Here's a semi-arbitrary sample taken from Category:Lists of military lists:
These are all pretty bad, each in their own unique way. I don't know if this page needs its own complement to WP:SALLEAD (I think SALLEAD applies here for the most part, though list selection criteria are less of a thing), but at the very least I'd be interested in examples anyone stumbles on of good LoL intros which might be used as blueprints to improve the rest. Colin M ( talk) 03:49, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
Lists of ports seems to be a hybrid of a legitimate list of lists of seaports, and a disambiguation of lists of seaports, spaceports, airports, computer ports etc. There is perhaps a common underlying meaning of "point of entry". Does anyone have an opinion on whether and if so how this should be broken up or restructured? Aymatth2 ( talk) 14:15, 25 November 2019 (UTC)
Any objections if I remove the {{ Brainstorming}} tag? Would it be premature to add a link to this essay from WP:LISTOFLISTS? Aymatth2 ( talk) 18:59, 5 December 2019 (UTC)