Wikipedia talk:Lists in Wikipedia/Alternative version

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I'd like to invite everyone working on this alternative proposal to have a look at:

Wikipedia talk:Categories, lists, and series boxes#Lists and references

That is a Village pump (policy) discussion from some months ago, preserved on that talk page.

The ideas I subscribed in that discussion could be summarized:

• Lists are not different from (other) pages in Wikipedia's main (i.e. "article") namespace as far as Verifiability etc... are concerned:
  • Avoid "self reference", so: inclusion in a list is not "verified" by the content of another wikipedia article, but by external references in the list (and let these external sources speak for themselves, I mean, what their worth is).
  • Avoid "self reference" also in the other direction: mentioning that (e.g.) a composer is gay, with a reference only to another wikipedia page (be it a list with an external reference), is not enough as reference: every article is meant to be stand-alone regarding its references.
• Categories are, by their nature, *only* depending from correctness of references in wikipedia articles: per wikipedia:categorisation of people category definitions need to take care to be formulated thus that they *exclude* doubtful cases (while there's no choice: a "category" name can only appear at the bottom of an article, if that is a characterisation of that person that is broadly supported).
• For lists the definition of the inclusion criteria on the list is of less importance: external reference works may use their own criteria, which may, in some cases, not be interchangeable: the list only notes down what can be found in reputable sources, and leaves it to these sources to use the definitions they think appropriate (wikipedia is not in the position to discriminate between external sources re. which one used the "wrong" definition, and which one used the "right" definition).
• From this follows also that for *many* sensitive topics it is perfectly viable to have as well a category as a list: the category only contains the *non-problematic* examples; the list can contain more names, referring to reference works and their respective inclusion criteria. If such reference work happens to be, e.g., a "newspaper" or "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (with its many factual errors, according to Nature), readers of the wikipedia encyclopedia have to assess for themselves what value they attach to such publications: wikipedia is not prescriptive and can only note down that in such-and-such a publication, such-and-such was contended about someone. Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes says that for many topics several article grouping techniques are used one along another: note that it is clear that it is nowhere said that these grouping techniques are *interchangeable*: for a sensitive topic a list usually can not be converted to a category, neither the other way around (if the external references are not added).

Example of a "successful" list according to the description above: List of gay, lesbian or bisexual composers.

Example of a "successful" category according to the description above: category:terrorists (well, there was some fierce debate over the category definition, but I remember everyone was pleased with the final result)

Note that in the above I more or less limited examples to "people": of course, for other "sensitive" topics the same applies, but, in general, the problem usually only comes up sharply in people-related topics.

The results of the Village pump discussion mentioned above (Wikipedia talk:Categories, lists, and series boxes#Lists and references) are still not fully applied in Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes, I know, I should have occupied myself with that a bit (mea culpa) - If I had done that, these present two alternative guideline proposals re. "Lists in wikipedia" would have been completely redundant (as in: unnecessary) IMHO. --Francis Schonken 09:24, 9 January 2006 (UTC)