Wikipedia talk:Topical index

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[edit] What is the current status of this page?

At the top of the page, it says it includes all the pages in the Wikipedia namespace. Is this still true? The discussion page mentions Wikipedia:List of pages in the Wikipedia namespace, and Wikipedia:Alphabetical index; are these still used, and if so, are they bot-updated? Genrally, what is the status of this page as of Nov 2004? JesseW 02:48, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Re completeness: it's not complete. The alphabetical index is 32 kilobytes long, the topical index is 30 kilobytes long, and the alphabetical index has less markup. A simple check of Wikipedia:List_of_pages_in_the_Wikipedia_namespace reveals that the latter is 323 (!) kilobytes long, not in the least because it includes all subpages like the VfD entries. I think it's safe to say that that page isn't fit for human consumption. JRM 07:25, 2004 Nov 3 (UTC)
So apparently discussion needs to be re-opened regarding what should be on here... Well, let it begin. JesseW 13:56, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Templated Research_resources

I've just replaced the list of Research_resources with a template that lists them in a central place. There were a lot of wrongly catagorized links in there: I'll list them below.

Let me know if there's a problem with this. JesseW 10:52, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It's fine to delete an entry for Wikipedia:Complete list of encyclopedia topics (obsolete) from a list, but please do not delete the page itself, under any circumstances - it, along with associated talk and subpages (and, more critically, their histories), contain important documentation of the early days of Wikipedia - documentation which will (someday) be very important to historians. Trust me (as someone who worked on something else important where we threw away the records "because they are obviously useless junk" - which is now driving historians of technology to despair) on this one! Noel (talk) 13:33, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
03:23, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC) nods. Right, of course. This should probably be mentioned on the page. 03:23, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Old talk

I just have tried to set up new topics at the bottom of the Geometry article referring to the 2, 3, 4-dimensional space, denoted by an R and a little 2, 3, 4 :

geometry in R3

and so on, but the new page had a title that did not display the correct title, but rather included the sup and /sup brackets written out in plain text etc. A message said : You cannot edit this page. Looks like a bug to me. Karl

Manning, this is very useful, but the new Wikipedia PHP script will allow us to have all "about Wikipedia" pages in a separate "Wikipedia:" namespace. Moreover, the new script isn't going to permit subpages. Soo.... --LMS

When is it coming? --Seb
well it will be very useful until then, and it only took me a few minutes to set it up, so no big deal. - MMGB
Exactly. We don't know when it's coming!  :-) --LMS

Cunc - thanks for doing that - I was thinking that the statistics stuff would make more sense somewhere else, but I was too tired to fix it last night. - MMGB

I am gradually trying to get all editor pages currently on the site listed here. I'm SO tired of schlepping around trying to find one of them in the huge maze of pages, so I'm going to make this a one-stop shop for editors. When the meta pages are officially moved, this will still be helpful. --Dmerrill

Even though I was the one who created this page in the first place - I must say that I come here pretty often and find it useful. I do hope it stays (in some form) when the move comes. - MMGB

What purpose does it serve a "list of pages that have been deleted"? --AN


Whoa! this page has got far far to much stuff on it. It takes too long to load & there is too much to take in. I plan on merciless culling -- eg only one link to Naming Conventions since that page is a hub to specific naming pages, etc. Voice objections or beat me to it. :-) -- Tarquin 15:39 Oct 30, 2002 (UTC)

I love this page. I wish I had seen it when I first registered here. Is there any chance that it could be made available via a link appearing on every page? David 21:52 Oct 30, 2002 (UTC)

The same request has been made by a user of the German wikipedia for the German pendant of this page. I support this idea, too. Maybe over the special-menu? --Elian

Hi, would a utility like watched pages hitlist be helpful? It would be interresting to see, what

  • the top 10 watched pages of all registered (and maybe active) Wikipedians are.
  • Or the "unwatched" pages, to see if there would be any page that needs more watching.

Thanks for comments, Fantasy 16:19 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

For me equally interesting would be to see a list of unwatched pages on which noone is keeping an eye on.
Kpjas 08:03 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:feature requests and submit a tracker. Martin 12:03, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Request for the word Contents to appear somewhere on the Main Page Community / About the Project section

This may seem a bit esoteric, but, I'll try... The search features are great, but, when trying to work out if Wikipedia can do something (I'm not talking about the encyclopedia content, but the functions of Wikipedia the system), the search may not find what you are looking for. Then you need to try a differnt research approach. You may want to look and see what it can do, a summary, overview, to see if it has something like what you are looking for. (I was looking for a Wish List) It is at this point at which, in books that have one, you turn to the contents page. But where is the contents page for the Wikipedia System documentation ? Actually, there is pretty much a contents page in the Wikipedia:About page. All I'm suggesting is that perhaps we rename that page as the About and Contents Page, or at least on the Main Page the pointer to the Wikipedia:About Page be changed to About and Contents I sure hope people see the point, because it is very hard to explain. RB-Ex-MrPolo 13:59, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I do see the point. Wikipedia:Utilities and Wikipedia:Help should serve as contents, of a sort, but I do feel the documentation area continues to need work. Martin 14:09, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)


[edit] Huge List

This page is nuts. it needs to be a hub, not a complete list. But each time I try to clean it up, someone puts HUGE LISTS OF LINKS back in! sigh! -- Tarquin 14:07, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I think there are two ways to solve this:
  • Top 10 Utilities on the top of the page
  • split this page in Wikipedia:Utilities and Wikipedia:Most useful utilities
 :-) Fantasy 21:49, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)
We might as well redirect to articles in namespace. ;-)
--User:Docu

The problem with this page is that there are too many top-level categories (22). It's too hard to find which one you want. Additionally, those 22 categories are rather ambiguous. I suggest trimming it down to about half a dozen top-level categories, with subcategories under each of those, and finally up to ~20 pages in each subcategory. Something like this:

  • Communication
    • Help
      • Village pump, reference desk
    • Short-term requests
      • VFD, requests for adminship, VFuD, changing username, etc.
    • Can't think of a sufficiently euphemistic name for this one
      • Vandalism in progress, problem users
  • Policy & advice
    • Editing
      • MoS, all the things under "writing and editing technique"
    • Conflict and debate
      • NPOV dispute, WikiLove, etc.
  • Organisation
    • Topical lists
      • List of reference tables, list of flags, etc.
    • Quality/technical lists
      • Stubs, brilliant prose, orphans, etc.
    • To do lists
    • WikiProjects
  • About Wikipedia
    • Wikipedians
      • Various lists
    • Software and hardware
      • MediaWiki, Bug reports, server status
    • Publicity
      • Press coverage, increasing membership, referrers
  • Resources

I'm not sure if that will cover everything, but we can alter it somewhat after we've started. -- Tim Starling

I think this is a great idea. Maybe it will also be an opportunity to link every help page here. There are still some that aren't, and I have at times found it very difficult to find things again.
Can't think of a sufficiently euphemistic name for this one --> Other issues ?
-- Viajero 10:57, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Okay, I've started. See Wikipedia:Utilities/Temp -- Tim Starling 00:23, Oct 16, 2003 (UTC)
A great ' improvement! -- Viajero 07:27, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Renaming the page

The heading of this page makes it sound like a relic from before we had the Community Portal, and in a way it is. However, I think it would be salvageable as a general index of the Wikipedia namespace, arranged by topic, and therefore propose to rename it Wikipedia:Topical index. This would match up with Wikipedia:Alphabetical index, which is how I plan to rename Wikipedia:List of pages in the Wikipedia namespace. I think these names will be more sensible and make the pages more useful. --Michael Snow 01:16, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Is it going to include all of the pages in the Wikipedia namespace? If it is, then I think the title should be changed but if it is going to remain just a selection of those, I think topical index might be misleading. Angela. 21:12, Mar 24, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, I do intend for both indices to contain the same set of pages, but using different organizational schemes. Note that I am planning for them not to include a lot of the subpages, however (see Wikipedia talk:List of pages in the Wikipedia namespace). I also rather doubt the value of linking all the talk pages. And it may take some time for me to get this page organized and add all the links, so I'll probably put an "under construction" type notice when I make the name change. --Michael Snow 03:53, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The talk page links are useful for using the related changes feature. It saves having to have so many pages on your watchlist. Angela. 03:42, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)
Oh, I see how you're using the page, then. But a watchlist automatically picks up changes to talk pages. Does the Related changes feature not track talk pages? Guess not, now that I've tried actually using it for the first time. In any case, I trust that you can live with only having the talk pages included in one of the two indices. I don't want to have to add them to this page as well, and it seems like a very specialized use to me. Otherwise, they strike me as unnecessary, especially since so many of these pages don't even have a talk page yet. --Michael Snow 22:52, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Yes, as the same pages will be listed in both, only one needs to have the talk page links. Angela. 22:07, Mar 30, 2004 (UTC)

I think a good final resolution is that the bot is still generating the more complete list, including talk pages, periodically at the old name. That would allow removing talk pages from Wikipedia:Alphabetical index. --Michael Snow 23:45, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The problem with starting out with this page as opposed to the alphabetic index is that it gives us the extra step of checking this list against the alphabetic index to see what pages aren't included, something I'd rather not do manually. Are you going to write a program that checks this page and adds any pages listed in the alphabetic index that aren't already here? Also, it seems to me the topics on this page should be completly reorganized. --Voodoo 03:44, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I've already manually created Wikipedia:Alphabetical index based on Wikipedia:List of pages in the Wikipedia namespace, which is automated. The topical index should eventually include the same content as the alphabetical index. The categories certainly could be improved, and I think that might actually be the more important step. With good organization, then we can figure out where the missing pages should go.
Once decent categories are in place, we can just cut and paste content from the alphabetical index. Both indices will have to be maintained manually, I'm afraid. Because we're not including every last page, I don't see a good substitute for human judgment. But it should be pretty simple to diff the bot list whenever it gets updated. That can let us know about changes we might want to make. --Michael Snow 15:58, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I think if the alphabetical index will not be a complete list of all the pages in the wikipedia namespace, then there should be a second page that lists those pages not included, and a link to that page should be provided. The reason for this is that the bot is the only way to keep track of 'orphaned' wikipedia namespace pages. 'Orphaned' in the sense of not being included in a top level index of all help pages. This index won't just be used as a reference page for people looking for help, it'll also be probably used to refine and reorganize the help pages. If you remove pages from the index because they are redundant or out of date, then it becomes harder to remove/update them. I think one of the reasons why there is a lot of repetition in the current help system is because there was no top level index. --Voodoo 23:58, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Lol, these two edits of mine (below and above) weren't very clear at all. On the one above...I somehow missed the first paragraph of your response. So there is a complete list. Good, however I still think that a page with all pages not listed in the topical index is a good idea. This way anyone who wants to improve the help system can:

  • go to a section of the topical index and read a number of pages on a related topic.
  • check the list of pages not listed (which most likely would be newly created by someone) to see if any non-listed pages covered the same topics.
  • merge/remove/update etc.

But, since there is a complete list, if you're not planning on doing anything of the sort, I'll just do this myself, if there are no objections.

And the text below was really meant for any newcomers. Please read this thread before editing. --Voodoo 03:23, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This page is now a complete copy of the alphabetical index page. Please don't remove pages as it's meant to be a fairly complete list. Edit only by moving pages between categories.

Not counting the 'Editing' section, most of the pages have been categorized based on page name alone, without checking the page content (which needs to be done.)

This category scheme needs to be refined, expanded, etc. - this is just the innitial proposal. --Voodoo 23:57, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You're just going back to the excessive numbers of ambiguous top-level categories that I went to so much trouble to remove. Please, use two levels of categorisation. -- Tim Starling 04:37, Apr 15, 2004 (UTC)

It's still a work in progress. By the way, why shouldn't we include the "!" pages? Should they be removed from the alphabetical index as well? (guess you already took care of that) --Michael Snow 04:50, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Because as soon as users are able to see the dark underbelly of MediaWiki, they start whinging that it doesn't make sense and that they don't understand it. Such complaints get tiring after a while. No offence intended. -- Tim Starling 07:01, Apr 15, 2004 (UTC)

Why not just make a list of pages which are in the namespace but not in the utilities page, then categorise them into the existing system? It seems easier than recategorising the entire namespace. -- Tim Starling 07:04, Apr 15, 2004 (UTC)

For me it was easier to take the complete list (List of pages in the Wikipedia namespace), leave out the stuff we don't need, like subpages and archives (Alphabetical index), and then re-sort it to create a Topical index. I didn't have an easy way to identify all the pages not in the old Utilities page.
As far as the categories go, Voodoo actually made the switch, and I've been working from that as a base. The risk of collaborative projects is that people who help out may go in directions you hadn't planned to go. I will consider the old categories, along with Tim's earlier suggestions above, in moving this page to a more polished version. But I also think starting over isn't that bad of an idea - sometimes you have to break things in order to fix them. --Michael Snow 15:48, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Since we are dumping the idea of "selected Wikipedia:" pages, which is what I thought Wikipedia:Utilities was always intended to be, note that such a page sort of exists anyhow at Wikipedia:WP. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 07:52, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

With the shorthand links to WP hopefully replacing the community information backlinks (see MediaWiki talk:Communitypage), I agree that WP should become the focal point for people who want a smaller selection of useful pages in the project namespace. --Michael Snow 15:48, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WP is much smaller than Wikipedia:Utilities, and Wikipedia:Utilities is quite a bit smaller than Wikipedia:Topical index. Why not keep all three? -- Tim Starling 01:20, Apr 16, 2004 (UTC)

I started from Michael's list for the same reason he mentioned, but also because of my views about what the index is supposed to be, which was why I chose the category scheme that I did. It's unlikely that newbies looking for help files are going to read the entire several megabytes of text in all the files. Therefore most of the time the index is probably going to be used for reference (that's usually what indexes are used for.) That means a wikipedian will have a specific problem or an issue, and will check the topical index to find the appropriate page (that he may or may not have tried to locate using the search function.) At first he might just want to edit a page on his favorite subject, so all he needs to know is markup and style guides. If he picks a popular page then he might also want to know how to deal with potential problems involving other wikipedians, he would then be looking for a solution to either vandalism, other abuse, or disputes. He might want to bring his page to the attention of other wikipedians for other reasons or he might not want to work on articles at all, and instead work on help files, or organizational issues (communicatioin and adminstration.) Etc. My choice of headings may not have been great, but the point was that using headings such us Wikipedia Community or Policy and Guidelines (in other words categorizing things according to more "physical" properties, policy being all the rules that are not coded as software, possibly everything from editing style guides to administration, and Community referring to everything having to do with people rather than software) are very convieniant ways of categorizing for those working on the index, but probably not the way a person looking for help would think about his particular problem. He or She might be looking for something more task based.

In any case, that was just the general idea, and the first version. I do like the current version quite a bit, and it looks like Michael is almost done --Voodoo 21:00, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Nobody, newbie or not, is going to read through the entire index (except, of course, that some of us have been doing just that). Instead, people will navigate based on the table of contents, so it needs to be relatively useful. The categories don't have to be totally transparent to newbies, but that's a good target to shoot for anyway. And using additional category levels helps people move quickly to the subject they're really looking for, so I think Tim was right about that.
As for the separate existence of Utilities, if Tim really wants it as it was, then I can accept that. There are many pages in the Wikipedia namespace with far less justification for continued existence - part of what has motivated this project for me is finding those pages and weeding them out. --Michael Snow 02:14, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Of course no one will read through the entire list of page names, the whole point of a topical index is that it gives people the option of skipping over entire segments of the list. My previous message was about the choice of headings. (On a side note, I never use the TOC, preferring instead to scroll down the page and check the headings that way.)

The Utilities page includes headings such as "information" with pages under that heading as diverse as, for example, bots, browser notes, de-adminship, how to edit a page, how to reduce the number of colors in a jpg, ISBN, media wiki namespace, common misspellings, searching, tex markup, and what is an article. Some of these probably don't even belong in the top level heading, which is "Policy and advice." If there is a heading called "Policy" at all, than it should only contain those pages that don't belong in task based headings, as is the case in the current version of this page.

The current help system is a mess even on the individual page level, with lots of redundancy, plenty of content that shouldn't be there, no clear division between content for policy makers and those who just want to read about the current policy, etc., etc. Having 20 different top level indexes, with different help pages linking to different indexes, with some not linking to any indexes, makes things even worse. The utilities page itself links to a community information page (yet another index,) which is linked to on the comunity portal page (which of course is itself yet another index.) This is confusing as hell to new users (it was to me, and in fact the reason I helped in this project was so I could figure out the help system myself.) In my opinion there should ofcourse be a short version of the topical index, but only one, and that should be the redesigned version of the Community Portal page (the only index linked to on every wikipedia page - in the side bar.) That page should be using a category scheme based on this page, with the less important pages simply removed. And of course it should link to the three complete lists. --Voodoo 04:14, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I very much agree with the sentiment about the index mess. If it's important to you, you might consider looking at the discussion at MediaWiki talk:Communitypage, which is about those backlinks to the Community Information Directory you find all over the place. That redundant index and its siblings are what I really object to. The Utilities page as an intermediate-size index I can live with. --Michael Snow 05:34, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] What's on this page

This page currently contains all the pages in the Wikipedia namespace that don't redirect to other pages in the same namespace, minus those Michael removed because he didn't think they would be useful in a topical index. Since this is based on a bot-made list, adding other pages will make this page harder to maintain. I think we should make a seperate list of pages on the meta site, than somehow reorganize the whole help system (having help pages spread out on different sites is one of the many things wrong with it, in my opinion.) Still, let's not just start adding links to something other than pages in the wikipedia namespace without discussing it first. --Voodoo 19:30, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Ok, the reason I added the link to meta was just because I was just fixing links after I moved a page. In effect, the Wikipedia:Wikipedians by birthday page is a redirect now, so would not normally be included here, but due to the opposition to interwiki redirects, it is only a soft redirect rather than an automatic one. I don't mind the meta page being removed - I just thought it might be more useful than having to click twice - once on Wikipedia:Wikipedians by birthday, and then on the link on that page. This is going to apply to a lot more pages when the software is upgraded and everything moves to the Help namespace, which I believe is going to be situated on Meta. I guess a decision should be made before whether to include the links here or not. Angela. 21:44, Apr 28, 2004 (UTC)
I agree with having the links direct to meta as the most useful solution - this page is basically hand-crafted, although it has bot-y origins. Sometimes there appears to be a "fear of meta" that borders on the irrational! Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 23:27, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Duplicate entries?

Are duplicate entries on this page OK? I'd like to put Wikipedia:Cite sources under Bibliographies/Works_cited but it's already there is a how-to, which is also correct. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:32, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

I guess so. The page is pretty out of date though, so there is no point. I was going to do an overhaul on it, but most everything here is found in the Community Portal*Kat* 06:58, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)
Actually, remarkably much isn't. Probably about half. And I bet there are some omissions even from this. An overhaul of this would be great. Meanwhile, I will boldly duplicate that one entry. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:21, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Overhaul in progress

We now have Category:Wikipedia as a navigational tool to find Wikipedia namespace pages by topic. The category tree is more up to date and will be easier to feed and trim in the future, so I'm simply going to direct people there. I'll try to use this page and Wikipedia:Utilities as a guide to improve the category structure. -- Beland 02:20, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The page is linked to by the Community Portal, so if you are superseding it, make sure that the Portal gets an appropriate replacement. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:28, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

The portal links to Category:Wikipedia now. -- Beland 09:48, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Category tree dump

If anyone cares, the Category:Wikipedia tree could be dumped here or somewhere else by a bot, to have the whole thing on one page. But first everything needs to be merged into the category tree, so there's only One True List. Personally, I don't feel the need, but if you do, leave a note. -- Beland 09:48, 31 July 2005 (UTC)