Talk:Lists of fictional extraterrestrials

Species list format

Hello! I see that you've done a lot of work on this article. Despite the fact that it is completely against what I had in mind (when creating the article) I find it very informative. So I've elected to go ahead and revert the article to the way it was before you began editing it, and I've copied everything you did into (the previously relatively bare) article Lists of fictional extraterrestrials which bares a more content-related title. It could also potentially fall into a new article List of fictional alien species by work, but List of fictional alien species is just what it says, a list of species (not a list of works or list of species in works) Do you understand what I'm trying to say? I'm not terribly articulate at times. Regardless, thanks for all your work, please continue it under a more appropriate title that reflects the content of the article in question and remember that an incomplete list (hopelessly or otherwise) does not make it any less worthy of existence.

Kindest regards,

Ncboy2010 (talk)

1. You don't WP:Own this article. You need to work with others.

2. You canot just object that "WP:I just don't like it."

3. The list as you envision it is only a few % done, but is already some 20K in size. You can read here the reasons for page needing to stay well below 100K in WP:Article size.

4. Your proposed format creates Wikipedia:Content forking with these pages:

Lists of fictional alien species: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z

5. Even if all this above were not the case, your design is impractical compared to either the above lists, or the format I created.

If someone knows the approximate spelling (when they see it) of the species but not the program it is from they can use the lists above... and if someone knows the program it is from (when they see it) they can use the format I created.

There is no need for another group of lists that still requires the approximate spelling and still requires knowing if it was first/mainly a tv program or first/mainly a book, etc. tahc ^chat 12:59, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I never stated I own the article. As far as content forking, sure I can see that although the larger (in your opinion more-complete) article is a misguided attempt, listing many non-species and characters. My original plan was to slowly go through the "complete" list, adding the actual species into the tables to be split along the lines of similar /fictional animal/ articles. The list by name is fine by me, but lends itself to an extremely long, difficult to navigate and even harder to maintain article. I've spent months trying to clean up similar articles and have often hit reluctance and even outright refusal. Just because one is longer does not make it better. I left wikipedia before, because this problem. Inconsistent application of standards and a general attitude of apathy except when it comes to specific people and articles.

Again, the point is to clear out cruft, organize it in a more easily navigable format and create splits that fall in line with all the other fictional animal articles.

Ncboy2010 (talk) 15:37, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

A content fork also makes things harder to maintain. Nothing I see would make anything less long, nor less difficult to navigate.

Most examples of WP:Content forking are made by people to who feel the "other" page(s) is "misguided." Wikipedia is not a place to creat a better version of the same content. If you feel the content is misguided you should work to improve it where it is, such as removing the non-species and the characters.

If you think you will encounter "reluctance and even outright refusal... Inconsistent application of standards and a general attitude of apathy " somewhere else, that is still not an excuse to create a Content fork, poor format, overlong page sizes, and/or inconsistent application of standards over "here". tahc ^chat 15:59, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Alright, I see your point. I was poorly mistaken and I am sorry. Also sorry if I upset you in any way. It's just that I've plodded slowly through these lists without any help and only finding opposition so I never asked for it. But no, you're completely right. I should have thought it through a little better. In any case, I've un-watched all the alien list articles. Sorry if stepped on your toes. No hard feelings?

Ncboy2010 (talk)

No hard feelings. Thank you for listening. tahc ^chat 16:34, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Many of the links are broken or don't lead to any of the lists of alien races

Many of the links are broken or don't lead to any of the lists of alien races. And if we clear all those links, only few lists will remain - which will move this article away from the neutral point of view even further. EchoBlu (talk) 07:08, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Purpose of this article is unclear

This list is a mixture of lists of aliens and wikilinks to other articles listing aliens. There’s an attempt at indexing by franchise perhaps? But there is no completeness criteria and there is a lot of overlap with the A-Z lists. I’m thinking this needs either radically stripping back to simply be a “list of lists”-type article - or perhaps a dose of WP:TNT. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 23:03, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

I have implemented the above. The article scope is now simply a list of other lists elsewhere on Wikipedia. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 10:31, 16 January 2023 (UTC)