Wikipedia:List of people by name

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List of people by name (sometimes abbreviated as LoPbN) is the title of a page in the main (or article) namespace, but the same name is freely used for referring to a complex of hundreds of pages that together provide the function of a comprehensive list of biographical articles (about actual human beings) in WP. (Inevitably, the list also has entries for people who don't yet have such articles, but should and presumbably sooner or later will. An argument can be made that this side-effect is a desirable function of LoPbN, and a reason for not relying on the descendant categories of Category:People as a complete replacement for it.)

The main purpose of this page, Wikipedia:List of people by name, is, at this writing, as the center of and index to a group of pages documenting the de-facto practices of LoPbN. It may make sense to refactor Talk:List of people by name and its constellation of oversized subpages onto the talk pages of this group of WP:-namespace pages (and reserve that group of titles for a lk to here and discussions about the single page List of people by name), but initially (for a day, or a year?), these WP: pages will try to at least summarize the fairly high-inertia reality of the past months and years of LoPbN.

[edit] Pages of the WP:LoPbN Suite

• Wikipedia:LoPbN Meta-structure

  At the least, an inventory of the diverse kinds of structure that exist within the LoPbN complex; hopefully a useful orientation that will avoid confusion when reading about or discussing specific structures.

• Wikipedia:LoPbN Inter-page Structure

  The organization of pages that contain the name entries, or provide access to those pages. In particular, an account of the stages in the development of the scheme of 2005 Dec. and the next proposed stage.