Category talk:Lists of writers

Latest comment: 17 years ago by Romanspinner

What the heck is wrong with this list? Half the pages are alphabetical by type of writer (e.g. A for African American) and half are under L for List (e.g. japanaese). But when i tried to edit it, it came up blank. And there was no discussion page. What's up with this????Catherineyronwode 22:23, 15 April 2006 (UTC)Reply

I second the above comment. This list needs to be properly structured, but I, too, was unable to access the editing feature. Since this is a list of lists and not a list of individual names, I decided to move the five names found here to their proper lists. First, I added U.S. journalist Jack Lait, found here under "A"(?!), to List of newspaper writers. Next I added Quebec novelist Louis Emond, found here under "E", to the chronological List of French language authors. I wanted to add Malaysian thriller novelist John Ling, found here under "L", to the List of thriller writers, but he was already there. Then I was going to add U.S. western novelist Ralph Compton, found here under "R", to the List of Western fiction authors, but he, too, was there. Finally, I intended to add Nigerian non-fiction writer Ugonna Wachuku, found here under "W", to the List of Nigerian writers, but he, also, was there. Having attended to the five names, I tried to delete them from this list, but like the previous user, was unable to access the edit. Hopefully, an administrator can attend to it. User:Romanspinner 20:32, 19 May 2006 (UTC)Reply

After posting the above, I examined the lists that make up this article and realized that this is not a standard editable article, but a "Category" list of lists, in which the only content is the introductory paragraphs. Wikipedia has a number of these "Category" lists in which the entries, the list titles themselves, are generated automatically at the bottom of the lists after entering [Category:Lists of writers|Enter the title of the list to be included]. The reason "Canadian Playwrights" is under "P" is because it was entered as Playwrights, Canadian. The same is true for British, German and Irish playwrights. All are under "P". The same problem appears for the letter "L", as the word List takes precedence over the content of the list. Inconsistency is the problem. The only way to edit this list of lists is to go to each individual list contained therein and standardize their "Category" entries. I am doing it as regards the five individual names that don't belong on the list, as indicated in my comment above. User:Romanspinner 19:45, 20 May 2006 (UTC)Reply