Wikipedia talk:Featured lists

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Contents 1 Title 2 List of featured lists 3 Featured lists on the Main Page 4 Mathematics 5 Very Few Here 6 Fishing for comments 7 Moved California Hurricanes 8 Template:Featured list 9 Municipalities of Lithuania 10 List of notable brain tumor patients 11 Lists of Users 12 100th FL 13 Sections of certain lists 14 List namespace 15 Football 16 Release Version 0.5 17 New collaboration 18 Proposed change to all featured lists 19 This month's featured list 19.1 Implementation 20 List Namespace

[edit] Title

Since all of the lists are prefixed with "List of X" would anyone object if I removed the list of in front of every article listed here? It is going to get very redundant and very repetetive very soon. This link is Broken 01:17, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC) (I'm just going to be Bold and do it, actually)

• So far, timelines, a line of succession, and a few other non-"list of X" articles have been nominated. How would we deal with them? --Dmcdevit 03:55, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Good idea. I suggest we suppress "list of" but use the full name of articles that do not start "list of". -- ALoan (Talk) 10:44, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] List of featured lists

Come on, where's the sense of humor?!? =) --Alterego 02:07, July 15, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Featured lists on the Main Page

What would it take to get featured lists to actually be featured on the Main Page???? [[User:JonMoore|— —JonMoore 20:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)]] 03:04, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Judging by the featured lists you need lots of pictures, or good annotation, or put it in a well-maintained table format. I'm not sure how you can get pictures relevant to a list of lists. As for tables I'm not sure that'd help anything. Annotation would likely be unnecessary, but maybe possible.

I hope someday a list I created or worked industriously on gets to be here.--T. Anthony 10:58, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

(This was brought up at Talk:Main page#Featured Lists.) Now that there are 130 Featured Lists, with ~10 added per month, putting them on the main page seems like a potentially great idea. You can't do it every day because they don't come that often, unless you do it like Featured Pictures, with the list starting over when it's run through. Or it could be done only on weekends like Featured Pictures used to be done. Any thoughts? Whatever gets on the Main Page might mean trimming something else, though. --Dhartung | Talk 22:12, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I wonder what happened at this proposal. The FA-diehards seem to don't want to add FLs in the Main Page. Then if this is the case, then we should really rename this into Wikipedia:Showcased lists or Wikipedia:Best lists, or any title we can think of, because the lists here, aren't really featured. --Howard the Duck 05:44, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mathematics

Why is List of lists of mathematical topics in a section labled Science? Math is, well, math. Although it is heavily used by science, it is not science. I'm going ahead and changing it. --Tox 12:04, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Very Few Here

I noticed that we have way more articles featured than lists. Is this because lists are harder to produce in general, or is the citeria harder to become a FL, or is it just by chance? Tobyk777 02:57, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

It is because the Featured article process started with Brilliant Prose back in 2002, but Wikipedia:Featured lists was only set up in May 2005. If anything, the standards for lists are slightly lower than those for articles. -- ALoan (Talk) 03:18, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Fishing for comments

I don't want to nominate them as these were up for deletion not that long ago, but I guess I would like to draw attention to them. First there's List of Catholic authors. This wasn't created by me and it's been largely a group effort so I feel better about mentioning it. I personally feel kind of proud of the List of Christian thinkers in science. I have received help of late and I don't mean to belittle those who did. That said I think it's fair to say this one has largely been my project.

I'm also mentioning these as I'm hoping to relay ideas on further ways to improve either or both.--T. Anthony 11:35, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Fishing for compliments? That's dangerous:) You may get some constructive comments though: The first one is in desperate need of references. On first view, the second one looks better, though it's not 100% clear to me what determines whether someone is or isn't included, jguk 11:53, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Changed the title. I'll relay that information to the page on the first one. On the second one it's people who made contributions to religious and scientific work. Admittedly there are a few borderline names on it though.--T. Anthony 12:05, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh, if we want Catholic lists, List of pastoral visits of Pope John Paul II outside Italy and List of Encyclicals of Pope John Paul II have been on my featured wishlist for ages. Having added a reference, I was about to nominate the second yeserday when I noticed the rather embarassing redlinks (10 out of 14)... -- ALoan (Talk) 12:03, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps we could start a Request for comments type page for prospective Featured Lists - as our criteria are quite different than those for featured articles. Also perhaps a list of quite good lists? Rmhermen 22:05, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moved California Hurricanes

I've moved List of California hurricanes into the History section (from Geography) per the standard for featured hurricane articles. —Cuiviénen (Cuivië)

[edit] Template:Featured list

similarly to {{Featured article}}, I created {{Featured list}} which puts a star on the upper right corner of a featured list. I've marked all the FL with this template. CG 21:08, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Municipalities of Lithuania

Why isn't List of municipalities of Lithuania in the geography section? Afonso Silva 21:01, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of notable brain tumor patients

I'd really rather see this categorized as a list of people than as a medical list. Durova 21:03, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lists of Users

I created a List of Wikipedians by Featured Lists successfully nominated. I believe that there are no inaccuracies. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 21:32, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. There is also Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations and Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured list nominations (both slightly out of date, I believe). -- ALoan (Talk) 23:55, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 100th FL

I've only just realised, but given that two lists were previously demoted, the 100th list to be promoted to be a featured list was List of municipalities of Portugal, which I promoted earlier today. We lost a third list today, so we are back to 98 again.

If all goes well, the list should get to 100 entries with the 103rd list to be featured, which will either be List of Formula One drivers next Monday 10 April (if objections to List of Presidents of Liberia are resolved so it is promoted first) or, more likely, List of Alberta premiers next Friday 14 April. -- ALoan (Talk) 16:59, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sections of certain lists

Shouldn't French Monarchs and Portuguese Monarchs go in a "Royalty, nobility, and heraldry" section, while Battles of the Mexican-American War goes into the "War" section? Currently, they are all in the "History" section. If no one opposes, I'll put the three lists in question into my proposed new sections (which are will just be uncommented and use the terms of the featured articles page). Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 16:09, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

• Sure - go ahead. -- ALoan (Talk) 18:00, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

• • Shouldn't the football-related lists be lumped back into the "Other lists" section because it groups association and american football together, and those are quite different sports. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 18:44, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List namespace

I think we need to have seperate namespace (e.g. List) for lists. I have left a short note at the end of featured content's talk page. If you have any ideas, please comment there. Shyam ^(T/C) 19:43, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. "Lists" are just articles with lists in them. -- ALoan (Talk) 02:30, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Football

If the football category is not just soccer, as it has NFL content, should rugby football (Tri Nations Series champions) be in there as well? Cvene64 17:00, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I'll be putting tri nations champs at football, in case somebody disagrees, just revert it. --Howard the Duck 13:55, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok i split football American and Football every where else in the world into two categories. hope this fixes the problemTrey 05:47, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm opposed at this, but I guess it would be fine. Also changed Football-related lists: into Football (soccer)-related lists: following the article title "Football (soccer)". --Howard the Duck 04:52, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Don't see why you would be opposed they are two completly different sports. No one would combine a list that includes cricket and baseball and call it one sport. And i left it as Football not football soccer since the huge majority of the world thinks of as football as soccer.

Well, these sports all derived from Football. I dunno about cricket and baseball (I think they're differently derived). Also, we have to match the article name. Currently, its "Football (soccer)" so it should stay that way. Also, Tri Nations Series champions and Super 12 champions were previously at "Football-related lists", so it would cause further confusion, so I moved them to "Other lists". Or we can move both "Football (soccer)-related lists" and "American football-related lists" into "Other lists" since they're few. The reason why Cricket was segregated was that it has many FLs. And BTW, next time, sign your posts using ~~~~. --Howard the Duck 05:41, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Since the subdivisions within FL categories are completely arbitrary, we do not have to follow article naming conventions. Also the MoS is not mandatory for the Wikipedia namespace, in case you were wondering. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 10:19, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, although the readers won't have to be confused with one "Football-related" list, then on the next section we have "American football-related" list. And even though it is not mandatory, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't follow it. Besides, this is the FL page, and we have to present this page like it is a "featured page".

I'd rather go with the previous convention (all football codes merged in one "Football-related" list category, or we place tem in the "Other list" category. --Howard the Duck 05:23, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I really don't know where you got the idea that we have to present the FL page as a "featured" page itself, but I think you are reading too much into the concept. If we judge we have too many lists of one kind we clump them together to make navigation easier, but we don't have to do that at all (see the FA page). It's that simple. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 11:46, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Being a list of featured lists, it is corollary that we'd have to present this page in the highest of standards, at par with the lists they present. --Howard the Duck 07:25, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I really don't see the problem here at all. Really I wouldn't mind breaking out the other list into each sport even if their is only one list under it. I think that would make navigating the list easier than having swimming and rugby under one big catch-all topic. And I deeply and profusely apologize for forgetting the tines at the end of my last post, 500 some edits and I finally forgot the tines... I’m surprised the world didn’t end right then and thereTrey 17:28, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I'll support the classification of each list by sport/game.

Apology accepted. --Howard the Duck 07:25, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Release Version 0.5

Featured lists are eligible for nomination for Release Version 0.5. Maurreen 12:55, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New collaboration

Would you consider creating a "List Collaboration of the Week" which aims at improving lists to the FL status? CG 17:39, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

That's a good idea. Maurreen 17:41, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed change to all featured lists

If you look at the featured lists section of the feature content page you will see that it is currently just a big list of the lists... basically a condensed version of this page. It would be preferable to instead have that page display just one randomly selected list on each page view, as it currently does for featured articles and pictures. However, there is no way to do so currently. To this end I'd like to propose that we put <includeonly> tags, or 'FeaturedStart' / 'FeaturedEnd' templates which do nothing but place those tags and have an explanation of why on the template page, around the header paragraph(s) of each featured list. This would not change the display of the featured list page at all, but if a featured list page were then transcluded only the header paragraph(s) would show up... like we currently show just the header for featured articles. This would allow the featured content page to display the lead-in for one randomly selected list with a link to the full list - just as we do for featured articles (though that is accomplished a different way). Thoughts? --CBD 19:19, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

While this is a nice idea, the problem is that in many cases the lead paragraph(s) is/are only one or two lines long, especially in the older lists. In many other cases the lead only goes over the inclusion criteria, which makes for quite boring reading, because the rest of the interesting text is spread over the list.

My guess is that in many cases you won't have enough text to entertain the reader. A better idea would be to manually select the FLs that have enough text/background info and just use that subset for the Portal. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 18:44, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

The list of pages to be accessed has to be put together manually anyway for the randomization logic to work. Thus, excluding some pages would be no additional effort. Though I'd think we might want to try displaying a different section of the page for such lists or updating them. Maybe instead of the header we should always display a few entries from each list. --CBD 11:36, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Whatever you choose I'm all for it as long as it helps to improve the Featured Content portal. My guess is that you'll end up using a combination of the methods described above. There are some lists that cannot be "updated" (e.g. the lists of chemical elements) and for some others it would be interesting to display a few entries (I'm thinking lists of incumbents for instance). At the end it would be nice if you kept somewhere a record of the lists you've selected. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 09:53, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I think you are really asking for a Featured List Of The Day/Week/Month, with an excerpt from the header, an image, and a sample from the actual list. It would be a bit of effort to set up, but would be useful here, could be added to user/talk pages, and would give us something to show as a possible contender for a slot on the Main Page... -- ALoan (Talk) 11:08, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

That's in essence how I understood it as well. I was pointing out above some of the implementation issues he will come across, since I think CBD wanted to semi-automate the process. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 11:29, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

POTD and TFA are semi-automatic, in that the templates, etc, are all set up, but the content has to be created by hand, in advance. Would could do a similar thing. -- ALoan (Talk) 12:19, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Well, a 'List of the day' following the traditional setup would work by creating a new page for each list which is formatted to look nice specifically for that list. Exactly as we currently have pages like Wikipedia:Picture of the day/August 15, 2006 for each picture/article of the day. That could be done, but as you note it would take some time to set up and then a while longer to build up an 'archive' of list pages which could be selected from randomly. What I was suggesting was actually to go directly to the existing list articles and put in markers on each to specify a specific section (or sections) to display on the Featured content page. For example, this diff shows me placing such 'markers' on a copy of one of the current featured lists. At User:CBDunkerson/Sandbox you can see that these markers have no impact on the article itself, but when transcluded, as at User:CBDunkerson/Sandbox2, you get a nice little 'blurb' with just the specifically marked elements. Advantages are that it is easier to set up (no separate pages) and automatically updates when the list page does... for instance if the number of reactors for a country is updated this would display the new value while a separate page would continue to display the old. Disadvantage is that if someone removes or changes the tags it would mess up the display of the 'blurb'. I could put the 'markers' into templates to make them less likely to be messed with, but ultimately it comes down to whether people think this is a workable approach. This method could also be used for a 'List of the day' by just changing the page to link to each day. Probably wouldn't be workable for the Main page though because vandalism to the list page would then be transferred to the Main page. --CBD 12:45, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm all for the proposal if someone has the time to implement it. Durova 02:21, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I went ahead and implemented this on three of the featured lists as a test case. See Wikipedia:Featured content for the actual display (refresh / purge cache to see the displayed list change - though with only three you may need to try a few times), this for an example of updating the number of pages which can be displayed from 1 to 3, and this for an example of changes needed to the featured list page itself to display properly. If people are ok with this and there aren't alot of problems with the inclusion tags getting moved around we can look into fully implementing this. --CBD 22:22, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I like it. I think you should also provide a link to the list below the table itself (ala the "read more" link at the end of the FA blurb). -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 08:54, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I was pondering whether it should be there or in the section title (where it is currently)... but both probably wouldn't hurt. --CBD 10:48, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Hey - I was just looking at Wikipedia talk:Featured content and saw that User:Howard the Duck has a mock-up of a "Featured list of the month" on his user page! See below. I guess this was done by hand. -- ALoan (Talk) 19:57, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This month's featured list This a complete list of Presidents of the Philippines that consists of the 14 heads of state in the history of the Philippines. The list includes Presidents who were inaugurated by as President of the Philippines following the ratification of a constitution that explicitly declares the existence of the Philippines. For leaders of the Philippines prior to the ratification of the 1899 constitution, see Royal Governor of the Philippines. For leaders prior to the ratification of the 1935 constitution, see Governor-General of the Philippines. Note that the Presidents under the Commonwealth of the Philippines were under American administration, and that of the Second Republic is considered to be a puppet government of the Japanese during World War II. # President Took office Left office Party Vice President Term Era 1 Emilio Aguinaldo January 23, 1899 April 1, 1901 none (Magdalo faction of the Katipunan) none (The 1899 Constitution did not provide a Vice President) - First Dictatorship First Republic 2 Manuel L. Quezon November 15, 1935 August 1, 1944 Nacionalista Sergio Osmeña 1 Commonwealth 2 3 José P. Laurel October 14, 1943 August 14, 1945 Kalibapi (Caretaker government under Japanese occupation) none (The 1943 Constitution did not provide a Vice President.) - Second Republic (continued...)

[edit] Implementation

The 'random featured list' on Wikipedia:Featured content has been active for about a week now without any problems so I'm going to go ahead and start slowly increasing the number of featured lists which are set up to work with this. You could leverage that to do a 'featured list of the month' or create individual pages like the example above... in which case I'd probably switch to using those separate pages once enough of them had built up to provide a large selection for the random generator. --CBD 18:41, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Excellent. Please don't forget to direct editors who may be confused by your actions to this talk page. Good luck! -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 19:23, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Yay. Just saw my list a while ago at WP:FC. --Howard the Duck 13:47, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Comment: Can you omit the references? Or is it OK that they're displayed? --Howard the Duck 13:47, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I've run into a few display issues like that. We could omit references, but in many cases it would require bracketing them with 'noinclude' tags (or closing and then re-opening 'onlyinclude' tags around them)... which might increase the likelihood of confusion or problems if the references get changed. A couple of the lists have been edited since I expanded the list (up to 20 now) without problems so maybe it'll be ok. As time goes on and people get more familiar with this concept I hope those who actually work on the lists will make these decisions on where/how to place the inclusion tags. I've been trying to decide whether or not it is important to include the table 'key', how much of the header text to include, whether to bring in pictures - and which ones, et cetera... all tasks which would be better handled by the people who know the subject. It is actually very flexible in what you can choose to display / not display, but the more complicated you make it the more tags are involved and the more you'd really want the page regulars to be running the show. I can set up a test page so that it would be easy to see what adjustments to the inclusion tags would look like in the final presentation if people are intereested. Otherwise, let me know which list and what you'd like changed and I'll try to do so. I'll take a look at the references now to see if there are any which can be easily taken out. --CBD 10:47, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I went ahead and created the test template. See {{list preview}} for instructions on how to use it. Basically, that template will display how any list it is added to will appear on Wikipedia:Featured content. Only problem is that it displays the currently saved version - so you have to put in the inclusion tags, save it, and then use this template. Still, quick way to see what it will look like rather than waiting for the right random list to come up. --CBD 11:38, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List Namespace

A discussion is going on here to introduce seperate namespace. A request to bugzilla (7561) also have been made for this. Your response is invited on the proposal page. Regards, Shyam ^(T/C) 21:34, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I think this was defeated. --Howard the Duck 14:22, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Yup. Withdrawn by nom. See archived discussion. --Quiddity 17:49, 26 October 2006 (UTC)