Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 19:49, 25 November 2007

Index Lists

We have a growing collection of index-like "lists of articles" and "lists of lists" (which I'll collectively call "Index lists", as specifically differentiated from "encyclopedic-lists" such as List of Polish flags), and we need to revisit some past discussions about how to handle them, and what namespace they belong in. I'll start off with the examples (4 of our best sets are those covering mathematics, geography, philosophy, and film, so I'll use those), and then give the points for consideration.

The lists are generally one of 3 types:

1. An alphabetical index
   • List of mathematics articles, List of geography topics, List of philosophical topics, List of film topics, etc
2. A list of "basic topics" in a reference-card/cheatsheet format
   • List of basic mathematics topics, List of basic geography topics, List of basic philosophy topics, List of basic film topics, etc
3. A listing of lists
   • Lists of mathematics topics (a featured list in Oct 2005), Lists of philosophy topics, Lists of films, etc
   • also pages like Lists of people, List of timelines, List of centuries, List of '1996 in' articles, List of cycles, etc

The problems and options

Scope

• There are currently: 40 Lists of lists, 31 Year lists, 129 Basic topic lists (and The Transhumanist is running a recruitment drive to generate 900 more), and a few hundred alphabetical/topic lists (100 or so of Mathematic topics lists alone). There is the potential for a few thousand.

Unsourced

• Most of these are unsourced, and represent only what is currently written about within Misplaced Pages. A few of these can be sourced from academic and professional course lists (eg. The Transhumanist is trying to find appropriate sourcing for List of basic geography topics), but most of type #1 and #3 are inherently unsourcable, by their nature.

Wiki-project-like

• Do type #1 pages belong in project-space, like Misplaced Pages:List of standards topics or Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Middle-earth/List of Middle-earth topics are?

Disambiguation-like

• e.g. Lists of languages was recently tagged as being a disambig page. Is this what we should do with all the "Lists of lists" (type #3)?

Portal-like

• Should they become portal-subpages, like Portal:Energy/Explore and Portal:Science/Categories and Main topics are?
  • Don't forget dozens of "type #3" pages in the format Portal:Philosophy/Lists or Portal:Food/Food lists – why should some of these "type #3" lists be in "Portal" namespace, while other portals have them only in main namespace? Wouldn't it be better to have them all in the same namespace, striving for a uniform treatment of "/lists" subpages across portals?
  • There is concern that subpages of portals would not be linkable directly from articles, and hence languish unseen? (see this thread for details)
    • Unjustified concern: linking practice is established, see {{Portal}} ("This template is used to link an article to its related portal") – see also below, suggestions under "A new namespace?" caption.
• The primary indexes (Portal:List of overviews, Portal:Lists of topics, Portal:Lists of basic topics, Portal:List of glossaries) were recently moved from mainspace to portal-space. This move is contested by The Transhumanist, and is still being discussed at Misplaced Pages talk:Contents#Contents pages, and lists of lists.
  • (note: discussion seems to have stalled there in the mean while)
• "Portal:" namespace seems very suited for navigation purposes, per the description at Misplaced Pages:namespace#Portal: "The portal namespace (prefix Portal:) is for reader-oriented portals that help readers find and browse through articles related to a specific subject. It also may contain links to encourage readers to contribute to relevant WikiProjects" (bolding added)

Background

• Related policies/guidelines not mentioned: Misplaced Pages:Namespace, Misplaced Pages:Lists (stand-alone lists), Misplaced Pages:Lists, Misplaced Pages:Featured list criteria
• Further related discussion at: Misplaced Pages talk:Lists#Contradiction between Misplaced Pages:Lists and Misplaced Pages:Avoid self-references

Notes

1. ^ suggestions added by Francis Schonken

Discussion

Slowly-considered feedback would be very much appreciated. I've tried to summarize all the current suggestions, but read the links given above for further background. Thanks. -- Quiddity (talk) 05:24, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Summarizing my thoughts:

1. Indeed most of these pages do not belong in Main namespace (full agreement with Quiddity on this first point I suppose);
2. The problem is in most cases structural, meaning: by their very intent and content many of these pages don't belong in that namespace;
3. Portal namespace is a suitable venue for most of these pages, including the use of these pages as a coherent navigation utility, with an already largely standardised access from main namespace;
4. Other existing namespaces seem less suitable in most cases, although, arguably, some of these pages could be kept in Project ("Misplaced Pages:") namespace (linking to project namespace is less restricted from Portal namespace too while links to WikiProjects in project namespace are expressly foreseen to be placed in portal namespace, but largely discouraged from main namespace per WP:ASR) and a few others (like disambig pages, and WP:V/WP:NOR/WP:NPOV conforming lists) can be kept in main namespace (where they can link to portal namespace as described above); the possible overlap with category namespace is no part of the discussion here;
5. Creating a new namespace for these pages would probably have more downsides than advantages (e.g. decreasing visibility rather than increasing it on the short term, and needing to go through a lot of hoops before we even have the first page in such new namespace started, etc);
6. We can disagree on whether the "Portal" solution is the "least bad" or the "very best" solution we currently have available. But it is currently the best known immediately available solution and I propose to start implementing it without delay. I'm not interested in a "least bad" vs "very best" debate (which would be largely loss of time), and I can only encourage those who see better solutions to persue them, but that shouldn't keep us from proceeding with the best we can *with the available namespaces* (and their rules) we currently have. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:55, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Just a simplistic comment. I like the idea of putting navigation lists in the applicable portals. If there were some way to develop a simple convention to put them on their own pages somewhere, like to-do lists, then they could be transcluded for more than one purpose, if desired, without the headaches of maintaining redundant pages. RichardF (talk) 17:46, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

...and a simplistic answer: "Template:" namespace is more than any other namespace intended for transcluded content, especially if you want to standardise layout (like {{Navbox}}). But that's not the topic here (like a discussion of how this relates to "Category:" namespace isn't). The discussion regards which of the "Index"-type pages (as described in the intro) are displayed in which namespace (and under what page name). If you have a template (or use another page in whatever namespace as transcluded content), there still needs to be a page where one displays (transcludes) that content: well in what namespace should that content be? The only tangent regards the "search" function, that won't find transcluded content from another namespace than the one(s) one is searching. In other words, trancluding such content from "portal" or "template" namespace in main namespace would not yield any search results based on that transcuded content with "default" settings for the search. --Francis Schonken (talk) 18:25, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I think this is looking better than it used to. {{Contents pages (footer box)}} now lives mostly in Portal: namespace and doesn't raise my hairs for {{self-reference}}. To my mind, type (3) lists of lists are fine, and we don't need to do anything about them just as long as they are strictly treated as WP:DAB. The problem is the "list of $TOPIC " articles. I cannot for the life of me find any usefulness in type (1), List of geography topics or List of mathematics articles or (sob) List of mathematics categories (they must be compiled by people who haven't yet noticed that Misplaced Pages is searchable and categorized). But type (2) "cheatsheet formats" like List of mathematics topics can actually be useful as long as they are intelligently arranged and not alphabetized. So, my solution would be: {{move}} the type (1) "$TOPIC articles" pages to "$TOPIC topics" and convert them into something useful where possible ({{merge}} the "basic topics" into "topics": "basic" vs. "non-basic" is not a distinction we should be making). Where such an approach doesn't work or meets opposition, {{move}} the list articles out of article namespace, either to Portal:, or to a newly defined Index: or Contents: namespace. dab (𒁳) 19:31, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Re. "move", see Portal talk:Mathematics#Stalled move request... thus far 2 (as in "two") people expressed an opinion in Talk:Lists_of_mathematics_topics#Requested_move, a fortnight after the start - a third one asking a question. Seems very hard to get people interested in such move proposals. Not even a third party could be found to close the move request, for reasons explained here (5th bullet). --Francis Schonken (talk) 19:51, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

• I've chopped out the "category-like" section, as that was just a preemptive-reply.
• I'm happy to forget the Index: namespace idea. Magic bullets almost never are. I've removed it all as a distracting tangent.
• Linking directly to portal-subpages from mainspace is (I think) the main concern that TT was raising. I agree that it should be (or become) acceptable practice.
• Type #1 pages are primarily useful to editors, partly for the "relatedchanges" function, and partly for collecting suitable redlinks. More obsessive readers will also find them useful, for reading through our coverage of entire topics. (They exist mostly because our category system is still so rudimentary, e.g. can't display subcat contents all on one page. But also because it's weblike and not finite.)
• I plan on posting notices about this everywhere (and/or just pasting it into VPP), but won't have time until at least Monday to resummarize/clarify what we seem to have all agreed on here so far (plus it's an American holiday weekend, which I'm waiting for the end of). My main intent here is to make sure any decisions are as-clear-as-policy solid-consensus. We do need more feedback before pursuing a bold course of action though, so please go slowly until Tuesday ;)

Thanks :) -- Quiddity (talk) 21:11, 24 November 2007 (UTC)