Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by SlimVirgin (talk | contribs) at 17:22, 19 May 2012 (→Suggestions: header). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Archives

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

This page has archives. Sections older than 14 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 1 section is present.

This article has been mentioned by a media organization: "An ethical diet: The joy of being vegan". The Independent. March 15, 2006.

Sourcing policy

The policy can be read at Misplaced Pages:Verifiability. This allows self-published sources in articles such as this (see the section SELFPUB), as follows:

Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, usually in articles about themselves or their activities, without the requirement in the case of self-published sources that they be published experts in the field, so long as:

1. the material is not unduly self-serving and exceptional in nature;
2. it does not involve claims about third parties;
3. it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the source;
4. there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity;
5. the article is not based primarily on such sources.

This policy also applies to pages on social networking sites such as Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.

Names needing sources

Please list here names missing or removed from the page because of poor sourcing, then tick when the name is restored.

• Maneka Gandhi Y
• Wayne Pacelle Y
• Heather Nicholson Y
• Ruben Studdard Y
• Wade Keller Y
• Elissa Sursara Y
• Natalie Portman (former)Y
• Sean Brennan (redirect to his band)Y
• Justin Pearson Y
• Bethany Black Y
• Elijah Joy
• Marcus Patrick Y
• David Straitjacket Y
• Hunter Burgan Y
• Kevin Cameron (redirect to his band)
• Christofer Drew Ingle (redirect to his band) Y
• Oliver Sykes (redirect to his band) Y (as of 2012-05-08, he's vegetarian, not vegan)
• Warren Oakes
• Jona Weinhofen Y
• Marion Jones
• Eric Litman Y
• Jamie Kilstein Y
• Juli Crockett

A short list

• Tom Lenk of Buffy fame has stated he his on his way to full fledged veganism and has not consumed animal products for over a year

• Uri Geller

Sources = http://www.vegtv.com/videolist_celebrities.htm / http://www.animal-lib.org.au/interviews/uri/

Discuss.

I wouldn't trust Uri Geller. He advocated veganism in The Vegan Society's first film 'Truth or Dairy' (1994), yet ate yoghurt on a live breakfast TV programme not long after (causing the Society considerable embarrassment).

96.224.202.145 02:27, 24 September 2007 (UTC)RussellSimmons

he is also a vegan if you checked his episode of cribs (mtv) he tells you that and he does yoga

Ted Danson

I deleted Ted Danson from this list because the source quoted mentions that he eats fish

Reverting

Sources

Betty, I was wondering, per this revert, why someone's website would not be a reliable source for whether that person was a vegan. So long as the person is notable enough to have a WP article, their own website discussing their veganism would surely be the most reliable source. SlimVirgin 22:54, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Self-published sources are never acceptable unless we can corroborate their authorship. Take Twitter for example, only verified accounts are permitted as self-published sources on Misplaced Pages since actions are taken to ascertain the identity of the account holder. Similarly, if there was a published article or a work profile that identified this site as belonging to the person in question then that would probably be ok. That said, if he is publicly vegan there is probably a secondary source out there that we can use instead. Betty Logan (talk) 23:31, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Self-published sources may be used to discuss themselves, so long as there is no reason to doubt who the author is. The policy is at WP:SELFPUB. For a list like this, a self-published (or primary) source is the best kind, because only the subject can know whether she's a vegan. So long as the source isn't being used to establish notability (i.e. so long as the subject has a WP article based on other sources), then there is no problem. SlimVirgin 16:35, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

You're missing the point; there are plenty of self-published sources used to cite the claims on this list, that is not the problem. The point is about substantiating that the site belongs to the person in question. For a verified Twitter account steps have been taken to verify the identity of the account holder; for an official band website the site can usually be proven to represent the band members. In this case there is no evidence that the website belongs to the person in question—for all we know the editor who added the person could have set it up. Anyone can set up a website and pretend to be someone else, or indeed be confused with someone else. If it can be proven the website belongs to the person then it is a credible SPS source, if not then it isn't. Betty Logan (talk) 17:56, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

The policy (WP:SELFPUB) doesn't say that a self-published source has to be authenticated. It says: " there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity." In the case of the website in question, there's nothing to suggest that it's not his; it's referred to as his on other websites; and he mentions on several pages that he's vegan, or lists vegan restaurants, refers to vegan food, etc. So it seems a reliable-enough source for this point, under the policy. If it were a contentious issue, I'd agree with you, but for something like this it seems good enough. SlimVirgin 18:28, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

The reason the guideline doesn't say that is because it is blindlingly obvious we must be able authenticate that a self-published source is by the subject. The list has a pretty decent standard of sourcing, in that all the sources are either secondary sources or self-published sources which we can authenticate are published by the subject and I see no compelling reason to compromise that. All I can suggest is that you take it up at WP:RSN and get them to ok it as a reliable source if you honestly think it is acceptable. Betty Logan (talk) 20:03, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Betty, it's not a guideline, it's part of the sourcing policy, WP:V. I actually wrote that part of the policy, and the reason it doesn't require authentication is that active authentication would be an unreasonable burden. I agree with you that, for anything contentious, or where there is reasonable doubt about authenticity, we should avoid self-published sources, but for material that's consistent with SELFPUB, they are fine. SlimVirgin 20:44, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

William John Sullivan

On his website, William John Sullivan states that he is vegan..
Whether or not wjsullivan.net is actually his website is being questioned by the Misplaced Pages user Betty Logan who removed Sullivan from the list of vegans, so I will provide two ways that this user might be able to set their mind at ease.
Way 1:
Sullivan's apparent website is wjsullivan.net and his apparent preferred online name is johnsu01
We know that Sullivan is the Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation and that this foundation's website is fsf.org .
So, now what we need is a connection from Sullivan's confirmed work website (fsf.org) to his apparent personal website (wjsullivan.net) or to his apparent preferred online name (johnsu01).
There are two archived documents at fsf.org that provide a decent connection to both.
Way 2:
Contact Sullivan using the information on the fsf.org contact page and ask him if wjsullivan.net is his website. --Andomedium (talk) 23:37, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Ok, thankyou for going to the effort to establish the authorship of the site. It's a pretty ropey looking site for a computer programmer, but the main thing is that we can now explicitly link it to him. Betty Logan (talk) 23:50, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Concerns

Betty, you're reverting well-known vegans, the latest Heather Nicholson. Can I ask that you raise concerns on talk rather than reverting so much?

Also, could we rethink the different colours? The templates are making the page slow to load (it took several minutes to load for me at one point today), and section editing is difficult because people have to constantly check at the top to see which colour they're supposed to use. SlimVirgin 23:13, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

If she's that well known you should be able to come up with a better source than the one you did come up with, because we both know what the outcome on that one will be if I'm forced to take it over to the RS noticeboard. As for the legends, another editor and I proposed dropping them and converting to a table but we were shot down. If you want to resurrect the discussion on that be my guest, I will support a sensible solution. Betty Logan (talk) 23:27, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

As I said on the RSN, I respect what you're trying to do here in keeping the list in order, so I have no problem with a little OWNership if the result is a better quality page. But I think you're taking it too far when you're removing one of the UK's best-known animal liberationists. I added a source from a vegan catering group to remind people to send her birthday wishes. They wouldn't do that if she were a meat-and-two-veg person, so with this kind of individual it boils down to common sense. I don't know whether she has ever said anywhere "I am a vegan," because with someone in her position it's like stating 2+2=4. So the vegan catering source should be enough. SlimVirgin 23:36, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Legends/templates

I've looked through the archives, and can't see you suggesting that we remove the templates; in fact it looks as though it was you who added them. I think we do need to rethink them, because they are making editing difficult, and as the list gets longer the load time will get worse. SlimVirgin 23:40, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

The color coding existed on the List of vegetarians first (not initiated by me). It was suggested at Talk:List_of_vegans/Archive_2#Change_of_formatting_to_match_List_of_vegetarians the vegan list should follow the vegetarian list, and pretty much had universal consensus. The list was constructed at Talk:List_of_vegans/Temp, and as you can see I helped out but was not the primary editor (not that it would matter if I was because the formatting had a clear consensus at the time). Muleattack started a fresh discussion about converting to a table format at Talk:List_of_vegans/Archive_2#Can_we_make_this_sortable.3F, which I agreed to. You can see a n example of his table at Talk:List_of_vegans/Temp#Table_example. The reason that stalled was because you shot it down: Talk:List_of_vegans/Archive_2#Proposal_for_new_format_-_Opinions_needed. Betty Logan (talk) 00:07, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I "shot it down"? I posted once about it, and said: "It's not a big deal, but I quite like the separate country listings; without that, it's just a mass of names."

I don't mind what format it's in, so long as it doesn't involve large numbers of templates, which make the page slow to load for readers and editors. So if no one minds, I would like to start removing them at some point. SlimVirgin 00:16, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Well look, they are in there because there was a consensus for them, so I suppose there really needs to be a consensus to remove them. I would support their removal within the context of a sensible approach to improve the overall organizational structure of the list; for instance, the current ordering of the list is pointless if you don't know what country someone comes from, you basically have to wordsearch, so the list would be much better ordered alphabetically. I also suspect the page loads slowly because of the images rather than the templates (when you consider how much data is being transferred the templates are equivalent to a couple of images), so if loading times are an issue for you then it would be better to remove all the images. But rather than ripping something out to achieve an objective that it might not achieve, I would rather have a broader discussion about the direction of the list. Betty Logan (talk) 00:38, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

No, the page loads slowly because of the templates; this is a well-known phenomenon on WP. Here is one of many discussions about it over the years. In addition, requiring people to find out which colour to add for which profession makes the page awkward to edit, especially for new editors. So whatever format is chosen, the templates do need to go, because the more we add (as the list grows), the slower the load time. The table suggestion you made in the archives also involved keeping the templates, and so would not have helped. SlimVirgin 00:49, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I've removed them for now to see whether it makes much difference to the speed and ease of editing. If not, we can always revert. The speed problem stems from the colour templates, and also from the citation templates, particularly as lots of the names have multiple unnecessary citation templates after them. The speed issue has something to do with the page being reloaded in its entirety every time a template has to be retrieved.

The second issue with the colours is that it makes editing harder because we have to keep looking to see which colour to use, and this is a bar to editing for new editors. So whatever we end up choosing for the format, ideally it would be something user-friendly that doesn't cause speed issues. SlimVirgin 01:57, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't know about load times, it seems to load instantly for me, but I'm leaning towards losing the coloured squares for the reasons suggested. The table suggestion only included the coloured squares because I thought they helped make the page more user friendly, Betty Logan did actually suggest that they were removed.

Just removing the squares doesn't appeal to me though, for the same reason that you opposed the table suggestion. Without any organisation except name and country, it's just a mass of names. Muleattack (talk) 02:44, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

The squares are templates, that's the problem, and templates slow the page down significantly. It can now be edited more easily (though the citation templates still slow it down). Also, for new editors the colour coding was creating an extra bar to editing, and this is the kind of page that attracts new editors because it should be easy to add a name.

Perhaps we could organize a table that preserves the country names, but doesn't involve templates? Alternatively, we could use the list format, but list them per profession, rather than country, then beside each name have a little clickable country flag. The coloured squares aren't clickable, so they don't actually tell you what their profession is anyway. The flags would prettify the list and would be informative. SlimVirgin 03:01, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Another editor has told you that just removing the color codes doesn't appeal, so why are you persisting in going against the consensus? You do understand the concept don't you? Betty Logan (talk) 03:43, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

He wrote: "I'm leaning towards losing the coloured squares for the reasons suggested." You also suggested removing them, as did I. So now they are removed and the page is easier to edit. We can therefore discuss what, if anything, to put in their place. SlimVirgin 03:55, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

No, we both indicated we were open to the option, just as we were last year before you keboshed it. We both indicated we are not happy with the sole removal of these color codes, so the correct way forward is to leave the article as it was and discuss the options that are available to us. Other editors were also involved in the decision to ahve the color codes, so they should have a chance to have their say too. You are an admin, you should be conducting yourself better because you know full well pushing through your edits in this manner is not in keeping with consensus. Betty Logan (talk) 03:59, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I was a fan of the color-coding system and think that the article was more useful and looked better with them. I use a horrifically slow PC and didn't experience any problems with the loading the page as it previously was. That said, I am open to other possible ways of expressing the information that the color-coding system expressed; but if the choice is between the previous system of denoting the individual's occupation or no system at all, I will choose the former in a moment. CCS81 (talk) 04:03, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I was getting really slow load times when trying to view differences between revisions. That problem appears to be gone now.

Example of previous slow loading

Example of current faster loading

--Andomedium (talk) 04:07, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

You can see the difference with these links:

Loading with colour coding

Loading without colour coding

The first takes around 20 seconds to load for me (and a few times today took over a minute). The second loads immediately. SlimVirgin 04:41, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Both are now taking a long time to load. Same with the two that I posted above.

Looks like it might just be that the revision comparison for the most recent edit on the History page always loads fast and the revision comparisons for all other edits load slow. --Andomedium (talk) 15:28, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

If we can ever face going through the list and removing all the extraneous refs (i.e. having one good ref per entry, or multiple refs but without templates), that will speed it up further. Every time we add squiggles -- {{ -- to a page, that signifies a template, and each one puts an extra load on the servers. When a page has hundreds of references that use templates and is likely to keep growing, it becomes a real problem. SlimVirgin 04:33, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I've been adding multiple refs per entry to help ensure that the entry will remain on the list in the event that a valid ref is deleted by another user who deems it unsatisfactory or no longer valid. The more refs that I add, the better the chances are of the entry remaining on the list.

I'll be sure to no longer use templates when adding refs unless I have to for some reason.

I'm currently focusing one getting removed names back on the list and adding a few new names as I go but, after that, I'll write a program to convert all of the template refs to non-template refs. --Andomedium (talk) 15:28, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

If you do, that will be going to dispute resolution too. Citation templates make it easier for editors to add sources, and as such the style guidelines do not discourage their use as per Misplaced Pages:Citing_sources#Citation_templates_and_tools. However, the guidelines state article should not be switched between templated and non-templated citations without good reason and consensus. Betty Logan (talk) 15:42, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough. I see a load time difference, yes. I would still vote for finding a system for expressing the information expressed by the previous system, but I'm merely casting a vote, rather than offering to get engaged deeply. Cheers, CCS81 (talk) 14:45, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Andomedium, that would be great if you could create that script. It would mean we'd speed up load time, and would have a uniform way of writing the references. At the moment, people are using a mix of manual and different templates, which produce different styles.

As for the formatting, following on from Muleattack's suggestion for a table, I've created one at User:SlimVirgin/tables with flags, which prettifies it a little. If people don't like flags, we could try to create the colour-coding without the templates, if there's a way to do it. But any kind of colour-coding is awkward for new editors, because they have to keep checking to see which legend they ought to use, so I'm thinking it's best avoided.

I agree we should try to add some of the names back that have been removed. (Even Maneka Gandhi was removed.) Perhaps in future if a name is not well-sourced, editors could look for a source before removing it, or if they don't have time add it to the talk page so others can look for one. SlimVirgin 21:28, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Exactly what I was thinking. --Andomedium (talk) 04:06, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Suggestions

I've taken a look at the some of the latest featured lists, and I've put together three suggestions (see User:SlimVirgin/tables), the first two incorporating images of the people alongside their entry, where one exists. We could still run a series of larger images down the side of the page if we wanted to.

The first table wouldn't allow section editing, though it's good because the names and countries are sortable in alphabetical order. But no section editing would lead to edit conflicts and would be hard on machines with less memory. The second suggestion retains the table and images, but would present each country in its own section as now.

The beauty of these is that templates are kept to a minimum, so they should be relatively easy to load and edit. I would be quite interested in working on this over time to get it to FL status, if anyone is willing to help. Any thoughts?

SlimVirgin 00:18, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Wouldn't the pictures make the page size a little on the large size? Both in download and scrolling terms. I don't think it should be split by country, to me that makes no more sense than splitting it in to something like age groups. The one with the little flags looks okay, perhaps with occupation also sortable. Muleattack (talk) 01:33, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

You could be right about the images, but it does look good (I took it from a featured list, List of amphibians of Michigan). But I'd be fine with any of the suggestions. My only concern is that the first and third options remove section-editing. I'm thinking we should make the page easy to edit for new editors, because these list articles are often an entry point into Misplaced Pages. SlimVirgin 01:41, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Muleattack and I have already decided on a table format which we were both happy with at Talk:List_of_vegans/Temp#Table_example. It is a shame it has taken you half a year to come around but like Muleattack I oppose having images in the table, I oppose division by nationality, and I support sorting of occupation. Pretty much like Muleattack and I decided in the table we drafted out. But I am no longer willing to discuss editing decision with you without meditiation. I have started a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#List_of_vegans, and will only discuss further changes at the DR board now. The only reason I am commenting here is so you cannot claim a consensus over Muleattack's objections. If you undertake any more changes without engaging at DR board, I will take the case up at the administrator board since DR is compelling, as you well know being an admin. Betty Logan (talk) 01:44, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Here are some thoughts that I had while looking at your examples:

- It's amazing what images can do for a list. The little images in your examples would make the list so much more pleasant to look through. If we could find a way to make that work, it would be great.

- The vertical size of each entry will be increased if we add the images, so more scrolling will be required, but, because the list is alphabetized and will have sorting options, I think this is a minor issue. Especially when we take into consideration how much more pleasant the images will make the list.

- How much will little thumbnail images like these increase page loading time? (Keep in mind that the list is going to be expanding at a pretty rapid rate.)

- Are we likely to have trouble finding images that won't be deleted by the image police for alleged copyright violation?

- The entries in your examples have just one reference each and the appearance is cleaner and more appealing that way. However, having several references for each entry to show current diet status, and even past status, has proven to be very useful for keeping entries on the list and for settling disputes. Perhaps we can have a section below the list for all of the extra ref links, or maybe even a separate page for all of the extra refs to help keep the list page cleaner and loading faster?

- Do we really need/want to list country of origin for something like this? Is there perhaps some more appropriate piece of information we could put in that column? --Andomedium (talk) 23:10, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi, these are my own two preferences below. Of the two, I prefer Suggestion 1 without the section headers, because it looks neater. However, I think we would run into trouble without section headers -- the page might be slow to load with lots of names on it, and there would be more edit conflicts.

If we are going to have section headers (see Suggestion 2), the ones that make most sense are country of origin, because it's the only thing that's stable. A person's occupation can change and can be ambiguous.

As for whether the small images (and they would have to be freely licensed, so not every entry would have one) would slow things down too much, I have no idea. The fewer templates we have on the page, the faster the load time. How much a lot of images will add, I don't know. Perhaps we should start creating the page on a subpage to see how it works out? It would be a lot of work to do that, but we could do it slowly over time.

As for having one footnote after each name to keep it neat, I agree. But remember that we can have multiple references within each footnote, between one set of ref tags, so we can have the best of both worlds.

Example:

<ref>, caroljadams.com, accessed 2 September 2011.

*Hutchinson, Jane and Field, Melissa. , ''The Daily Telegraph'', 20 May 2007.</ref>

Produces:

And you can do this with citation templates too, simply by placing them between just one set of ref tags. SlimVirgin 03:48, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the info about combining refs. No objection from me. Was just listing some thoughts. Do you know if there are many of these lists that have images? If so we could combine the source text of several lists into one list to see how a really large list with images behaves. --Andomedium (talk) 21:33, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion 1

Name	Country of origin	Occupation	Image	Source
Carol J. Adams	United States	Eco-feminist writer
Andrew Günsberg	Australia	Radio and television presenter	File:Andrewg.jpg

Suggestion 2

Australia

Name	Occupation	Image	Source
Andrew Günsberg	Radio and television presenter	File:Andrewg.jpg

United States

Name	Occupation	Image	Source
Carol J. Adams	Eco-feminist writer

1. "Carol J. Adams", caroljadams.com, accessed 2 September 2011.

   • Hutchinson, Jane and Field, Melissa. "Cooking with the stars", The Daily Telegraph, 20 May 2007.

2. "Carol J. Adams", caroljadams.com, accessed 2 September 2011.
3. Hutchinson, Jane and Field, Melissa. "Cooking with the stars", The Daily Telegraph
4. Hutchinson, Jane and Field, Melissa. "Cooking with the stars", The Daily Telegraph
5. "Carol J. Adams", caroljadams.com, accessed 2 September 2011.

If pictures aren't available for some people then they will have far less prominence in the list than others. I really don't think pictures are a good idea even though it does look nice. Muleattack (talk) 21:00, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

The vegetarians who aren't yet on the list have far less prominence than those who are on the list.

Should we remove the ones who are on the list to keep things fair until we're ready to add them all?

My point being that we shouldn't refrain from adding content for one person just because that same content isn't yet available for another.

As is stated at the top of the page, "this is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness".

For the people who don't yet have an image available, we can insert an "Image Needed" placeholder image.

Hopefully, over time, editors will add images for the people who don't yet have them.

In the mean time, at least some of the people will have images (quite a few actually).

Also, keep in mind that we already have images to the right of the list that give greater prominence to a few people, so it's not exactly a new concept. --Andomedium (talk) 17:33, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps we could set up a subpage at Talk:List of vegans/draft and start slowly creating the table. I would suggest trying it with images to begin with, and section headers with country of origin (to allow section editing). And if it doesn't look good for some reason, we can move things around once we have the basic table in place. SlimVirgin 17:45, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good. I noticed that the List of vegetarians has a category declaration for having "inconsistent citation formats". To archive FL quality is this something that needs to be dealt with? Should we decide on an ideal citation format and convert all existing citations to that format? Is that permitted? --Andomedium (talk) 18:06, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm currently working on adding the tables here. Feel free to move the draft to a different location if you prefer. --Andomedium (talk) 17:30, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I noticed that that you were making changes to the article so I put the table work on hold until you're finished. While waiting I wrote a program that will do the table work for us so just let me know when you're ready and I'll make a draft here. --Andomedium (talk) 07:10, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi sorry, I didn't see these posts when I posted here yesterday. Yes, these are great ideas -- if you can automate the process that will save a huge amount of time. Please proceed as you see fit; the only thing to note is that we probably need to retain section editing to fulfill the FL criteria, so we can't have one long table without subsections, and country of birth seems the most obvious one because it isn't going to change.

Agreeing on a common citation style is a good idea too; see the last section on this page that I started yesterday. SlimVirgin 16:59, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

RfC to remove the colour-coding

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of the discussion was to remove the colour-coding. Many thanks to everyone who commented. SlimVirgin 17:41, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Page format seems an odd thing to have an RfC over, but we can't reach agreement, so fresh input would be helpful. I would like to try to bring the page to featured-list quality, so the formatting isn't a trivial issue.

The issue is that the article is colour-coded, so that each name has a special colour next to it depending on that person's profession. It does look nice, but it's making the page harder to edit. I've tried removing it but I've been reverted twice, so here's my reasoning:

• (1) The colours make section editing awkward, because you constantly have to check at the top of the page to see which colour to add to any given name. This means you have to edit the whole page (and it's slow to load), or else have two windows open, which feels like overkill when all you want to do is pop in a name. The colours aren't clickable next to the names, so they don't inform the reader anyway (unless she looks at the legend at the top). The need to add different colours makes the list more fiddly for newbies, and as lists are often an entry point into editing WP, that's an additional strike against.

• (2) The templates that the colour coding requires are adding to load time. This is already slow because of the 200-300 citation templates, so it would be good not to slow it down even further. With the colour coding it is taking me 20-30 seconds to load the page, and using preview or diffs is even slower, so editing it has not been easy.

Therefore, although I do like the appearance of the colours, I would like to remove them, then resume the discussion about how else we can organize and prettify the page (e.g. by creating tables) so we can bring the page up to featured-list quality.

• Support removal. SlimVirgin 04:20, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support removal. I don't believe that the colours are a useful way of applying categories. The categories should be placed in the tables (using their text descriptions) so that they can be sorted and identified easily and immediately for a subject. The removal should also apply to List of vegetarians, and this RfC should be mentioned on that talk page. GFHandel ♬  04:34, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose unless alternative is to change to Talk:List of vegans/Temp format, specifically the Active vegans format. Also, the colors aren't what's causing the slow load times, but all of the images in the article. Silverseren 04:43, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support removal. As an online encyclopedia for adults who know how to read, we should predominantly use words, not colour coding. --John (talk) 05:24, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support removal. The information about each individual is there in the text and is direct. It seems difficult to keep track of the somewhat arbitrary colour-codes when halfway down the page. The images are fine but not absolutely necessary. Mathsci (talk) 05:52, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support removal. Visually distracting, and consequently confusing. It is non essential for the delivery of information...Modernist (talk) 12:36, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support removal. The categories seem to be rather arbitrary, many people don't fit into a single category. So makes more sense to just use a text description. --Vclaw (talk) 13:22, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support removal. Certainly put me off editing here as it seems fiddly.RafikiSykes (talk) 13:29, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support removal, but consider categorizing the persons at the same time. Ultimately this article should be replaced entirely by category data on the individual biographical articles. Wnt (talk) 16:33, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support removal. The color-coding is almost not useful at all. Its best aspect is that it makes the list look a bit more polished. If removing the color-coding will make it easier to add names to the list and speed up page loading, it should be removed.

Additional reasons/details:

1. The color-coding system unnecessarily encourages the overly-simplified categorizing of complex people. There are people who are equally writers and activists or equally musicians and television personalities, but they are being color-coded as one or the other. Those people may not like being color-coded this way and it's not necessary for us to do so. It may even cause delays when an editor has to ponder which color would be best.

2. Because there are so few colors to use, we have a single color being used for multiple professions/labels. We have activist, politician and business person all using the color blue. This isn't quite so bad on the list of vegans where each name has parenthesized details next to it, but on the list of vegetarians it's pretty silly. --Andomedium (talk) 17:17, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support removal. For accessibility reasons, color should never be used to convey key information when this can be avoided. Some people are color-blind, after all. And in fact this is codifed at Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Color, to wit: "Articles that use color should keep accessibility in mind... Ensure that color is not the only method used to convey important information... Otherwise, blind users or readers accessing Misplaced Pages through a printout or device without a color screen will not receive that information... Some readers of Misplaced Pages are partially or fully color blind. Ensure the contrast of the text with its background reaches at least WCAG 2.0's AA level. and preferably AAA level..." (whether this article passes the WCAG standard I don't know). Herostratus (talk) 03:32, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
• Comment - "... Ensure that color is not the only method used to convey important information..." appears to be met. The people listed have their occupation listed to the right of their name in text. Also, we probably don't need {{Overcolored}} on the article while this discussion is ongoing. 2 possible uses of that template might be 1)to get someone to boldy fix the problem which we are discussing here already or 2)to get a discussion going about the problem...which we already have. I don't think we need the template there.--Rockfang (talk) 12:51, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
• Support removal as non-useful decoration. --Michig (talk) 13:11, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
• Support removal. More decorative than useful. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 15:57, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
• Support - I'm struggling to find an example of a list that uses color in a similar manner. On another note, is nationality the best way to sort here? NickCT (talk) 16:49, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
• Support - listing profession after the name is fair enough to give context, but I'm not sure we need to use a visually distracting way to categorise them as well. If occupation is important enough to be colour-coded, why not use these groups as the top-level headings instead of naitonalirt? Andrew Gray (talk) 22:31, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
• Support removal. It doesn't serve any purpose as far as I can tell --PnakoticInquisitor 22:49, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
• Support removal Net effect of the colours is to make the page look like Trivial Pursuit. Readers can figure out what field a person is in by reading what their field is - the colours add nothing at all to the list's value. Collect (talk) 11:09, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Combining the lists

Should we combine the List of vegans and the List of vegetarians into a single list of vegans and vegetarians? List pros and cons below. Here's a rough example of the sort of arrangement I had in mind if we decide to combine lists. --Andomedium (talk) 00:02, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Pros

• Will no longer have to move an entry (or image of an entry) from one list to the other if their diet changes. Just make minor text changes instead. --Andomedium (talk) 00:02, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
• Will no longer lose vegetarian refs as we currently do whenever we move an entry from the list of vegetarians to the list of vegans. Keeping past refs provides people with more information about each entry to help them determine whether or not the entry's current status (vegan, vegetarian, former vegan, etc) is appropriate, and can help settle disputes before they even start. Some of the refs contain links to archived versions of pages that no longer exist and it's a real shame to lose those as they may be useful in the future as evidence that a particular person was at one point vegetarian or vegan. --Andomedium (talk) 00:02, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
• Won't have to deal with people adding vegans to the list of vegetarians because they don't know there's a list of vegans, & vice versa. --Andomedium (talk) 00:02, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
• Won't have duplicate entries. For example, we currently have Natalie Portman on the list of vegetarians and on the list of vegans as a former vegan. --Andomedium (talk) 00:02, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
• Researchers won't need to search through two different pages when researching notable people who abstain from meat. --Andomedium (talk) 00:02, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
• Page style updates won't have to be applied to two different pages. --Andomedium (talk) 00:02, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Cons

• The list will be quite large and we may need to make changes (to image size & quality for example) in order to keep the page loading well. --Andomedium (talk) 00:02, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
• This kind of goes along with the item above, but if the legend templates stay, adding more people will make the page even slower.--Rockfang (talk) 01:29, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
• When previewing & saving edits or when viewing past revisions, the loading time is currently too long and it's going to get even longer as the list grows. This may be the main reason that the vegan section was removed from the List of vegetarians in the first place. Not only might it be a very bad idea to combine the lists, it might actually be a good idea to further divide the lists using a characteristic such as nationality. --Andomedium (talk) 17:47, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Citation styles

The page is a bit of a mix of styles at the moment. I don't mind which we use, but this is what I've been writing in case it's helpful.

For books: Smith, John. Name of Book. Name of Publisher, 2012, p. 1.

Note: We don't need ISBNs and location (though if you want to add them, that's fine).

For newspaper articles: Flood, Alison. "John Kinsella writes of poetry's 'responsibility to bring change'", The Guardian, 14 December 2011.

Note: For newspapers, we don't need access dates, page numbers, name of publisher, or any of the other things the citation templates have parameters for. Access dates are needed only for webpages or articles that have no publication date, or for a webpage that looks as though it might disappear at any minute.

When adding a page from the Internet archive, we don't need the original URL and the archived one, or archive date etc (though, again, if people want to add that, it's fine). It's enough just to substitute the original URL for the archived one.

Hope this helps, SlimVirgin 02:07, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages pages referenced by the press