Wikipedia talk:List of reference tables/Archive 1

Old talk, pre-2003

Would it be reasonable to link to things like World Cup (Soccer) and SuperBowl winners here? What if they're embedded in a more general page (as in SuperBowl)? Move them to Subpages (sorry Larry) -- Gareth Owen

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That hadn't occurred to me when I (Larry H, not Larry S) set up this page. I suppose in the back of my mind I was thinking of scientific/technical reference (those sort of timeless, dry things (heh)) rather than events and records. I would be inclined to add a section called, say, Other Tables, like this:

Other Tables

Sports Statistics (or Sports Records) -- Entertainment and Media Awards -- ...

each of which in turn linked to the appropriate multiple pages. But that's just my initial bias, and probably too much factoring. The community will decide what's best by experimentation. --loh (2001-06-20)

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This is a great page and I like lists as much as anybody, but...I have a few cautions. --LMS

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I removed this from the bottom of the page:

we can say to the people of the world, whether you live in Africa, or Central Europe, or any other place, if somebody comes after innocent civilians and tries to kill them en masse because of their race, their ethnic background or their religion, and it's within our power to stop it, we will stop it

I applaud the sentiment, but this is the wrong area of Wikipedia to put it. Gpietsch 16:38 Sep 21, 2002 (UTC)

Talk, 2003-2004

List of people includes lists of people by nationality, profession etc.. I suggest we merge the "People" section from here into that page. Docu 19:06 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)

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Anyone agrees to remove the "Geography and Places: by Country" section beacuse it will makes the page enormous long considering many articles will be written on each countries? A page of [[List of (country name) related topics]] for each country can be created and placed in the country article. Example seen a country article and here.

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I thought about moving them to a subpage Lists by country where I'd put a table, e.g.

Country	Sudivisions	Cities	People	Related topics	....
China	Provinces	Cities	Chinese people	Related topics	..
United States	States	Cities	Unites States people	..	..

At least the cities colum (and hopefully others), could be created automatically. If lists are available for just 10-20 countries, they wouldn't be included in the table.

The page could also enumerate lists like List of novelists by country or Transportation by country in a different section ( Articles by country ).

Possibly this could be included in List of countries. Docu 12:30 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

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I see quite a few entries on this list that I think more appropriately belong on the list of trivia lists - like long words, short words, palendromes, etc. Any comments? Mkweise 16:14 Mar 6, 2003 (UTC)

Please move them to the trivia lists. -- Anon.

It sounds like an interesting project. I'd make it an auxiliary list rather than exclusive one. This avoids having to split subjects across the two. Afterall, other encyclopedias have lists of longest place names (and other long words). Docu

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Pages like these could benefit from anchors! (a middle size document that would not imo ideally be shuffled off into separate pages) - Brettz9 00:50 Apr 19, 2003 (UTC)

Nice work! I hesitated to do what has finally been done.

Thanks. Yeah, I do that too, but with the revert feature, Wikipedia works, I think, often like communication with institutions--demonstrate it first, and change plans if they don't work.  :) (Actually, I do think consultation is important, but it's easily fixable in this case if there's a problem.)

Anchors may indeed help. In addition to the "Auto-number headings" option in preferences and (if one uses Mozilla) the type ahead feature, this may makes it easier to navigate the list. Possibly, one or two headings could be moved up one level (Arts?) or combined (e.g. Transports, Structures and 'Geography and Places'). Docu 12:59 Apr 19, 2003 (UTC)

Please go ahead and make some changes if you like. It is hard (and sometimes arbitrary) to make a final decision on these things. I think it may be useful to double-list things if there is some doubt. I know I debated with "structures", given that they could be seen as art as well, but my logic was mostly to progress from a material focus to more abstract/uniquely human elements. Of course a building is a human creation (as other the other "material" fields, human domains), but the subject itself is associated with a more static material subject. - Brettz9 00:16 Apr 21, 2003 (UTC)

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Great changes, Docu. One question though is do you think items like List of astronomers should be double-listed both under people and astronomy, since people browsing astronomy may be interested to come across that as well? - Brettz9 16:00 Apr 24, 2003 (UTC)

Assuming with "people" you refer to List of people and "astronomy" to 'Astronomy' on List of reference tables, this was the situation before my proposal of Feb 16 above. Shortly afterwards MyRedDice removed most of them, and I added a link to List of people (and its 5 main lists of lists of people: by occupation, by nationality, by faith, incumbents, and awards) at a more prominent position. From time to time, I remove the few remaining ones. Currently, lists of people and lists by country available for 10 or more countries, are +/- the only ones not included here. I suppose if you start including them, you should list them all. Astronomy and astrophysics might be better starting points for browsing just astronomy. ---User:Docu

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The new link just added by Pizza Puzzle to General Knowledge and Mathematics reference tables would be all right if it were consistent. The item that was changed was meant to be a list of the contents of THIS page, not linking to other pages (unless a whole section of this page were wholly exported elsewhere). Since the new page's title includes "general knowledge", if we are going that route, then ALL of the lists in this section should be exported there, not just the ones dealing with mathematics. However, I think I would prefer that the mathematics lists be imported here instead. At the least, the new "General Knowledge and Mathematics reference tables" page should be renamed as just "Mathematics reference tables" and the link should be WITHIN the section, rather than within the Table of Contents (especially if it is a (mistaken) link leading from the main heading). - Brettz9 17:22 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

All I know is that this page is too big. Pizza Puzzle

My apologies if I came out sounding too critical...It is a fine idea, just as long as you take the other standards, statistics, etc. pages (i.e., everything under the General Knowledge section) with you. - Brettz9 03:36 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Not really, I wouldn't worry about this. There is still quite a way to go to 60k (Wikipedia:Page size). Mathematics tables might be better off on Mathematics than somewhere hidden on a small page. -- User:Docu

All I know is that a list of Taylor Series really doesn't need to be on the same page as a list of cocktails. Pizza Puzzle

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Why does List_of_intellectual/social/spiritual/artistic_reference_tables exist when most of that is ripped off here?
And I decided to rename my list of lists to be an index of lists. We need a better way to catergorize things. Also, why are historical animals treated differently than fictional animals (since I started most of them)? I think I'd rather have only the major indicies of lists listed on this big table, and the individual ones listed on their respective master indicies.
~ender 2003-09-20 00:48:MST

List of i/s/s/a rt was created before section editing was available, but now, it could simply be redirected here. The major lists are also available through the other Category schemes, but this list aims to group lists differently. BTW Wikipedia:List suggests to call Lists of lists simply "Lists of ..". - User:Docu

AAARGH! There is partial list which seems that should redirect here... And should be merged with content of this page!!! szopen

Talk, 2004-2005

The article has grown big ( > 46 K) and its time to prune. I plan to remove links that are already available in the main link. For e.g., if there are links duplicated both here and in List of physics topics, I plan to remove those. Jay 14:18, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Rather then removing them by topic, I'd remove them by type: e.g. those included in Lists of people, list of countries and their main sublists (as this already being done), I'd add those available on lists of articles by category. Being a list, 46K isn't that much, we still could grow. -- User:Docu

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Where does the table of lunar month correspondences go? --User:Juuitchan

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It would be easier to find things here if lines didn't start with "List of ..." or "Table of ..." but started with the topic. Maurreen 19:16, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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Why does it say in the box on the side that something is specifically not included on the list and when I look at the list, it is included? --metta, The Sunborn ☸ 13:29, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wrong place?

Shouldn't this be a meta page or something? Shouldn't there be a definition of what a "list" is here, or at least a disambiguation page with a link to list? (list seems to be focused on the computer science definition however).

I was looking up definition lists (html) in google and was given the "definition of a list" thing with a link to wikipedia. Interested in checking out the new google feature I clicked and got something completely unrelated to what a list actually is - instead I got a meta list listing lists on Wikipedia.

Any thoughts? (added by 150.203.2.60 in May 2005)

New meta-categorization project

As the number of lists, categories, and reference tables grows, the need for a proper cataloguing project grows as well. Category:Lists is still rather underdeveloped. Something like the original Wikipedia:Categories categorization project may be called for. +sj + 22:10, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Religious lists

Can there be a sub-category or link to a page of "heads of religions" - Popes, Patriarchs, Dalai Lamas, Sikh gurus etc.

Moved page

I moved this page from "Wikipedia Almanac" back to "List of reference tables". It doesn't look like this move was discuss or consensus was achieved to move it. An article on the "Wikipedia Almanac" because no such published material exists in prominence and notability for us to write an article on it (and this is a list, not an article). Prolaiming this list to be the "Wikipedia Almanac" is against the rules - see avoid self references.--Jiang 04:43, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Of course, if you want to call this the "Wikipedia Almanac" then it would have to exist at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Almanac or Wikipedia:Wikipedia Almanac outside of the main article space, but I don't see how this shouldnt belong in the main article space. --Jiang 04:53, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Any list or most important?

Is this for just any list or the most important? Maurreen 03:38, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

self-ref

Shouldn't the self-ref that was just removed be in there? Afaik the selfref template is only meant to go at the top; is there a bottom-specific see-also selfref template message that should be there? -Quiddity 00:37, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Huh?

Since when is a list a table? Template:Reference pages (header bar) doesn't make sense because the title of this page doesn't make sense. This page is another list of lists. Rfrisbie^talk 04:12, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree. This list has gotten out of control, and no longer contains what its title indicates. The page should be renamed, or the non-tables removed. --The Transhumanist 22:21, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Rename proposal

Wikipedia: Almanac - describes the content well. I had named it Wikipedia Almanac before, but the self-reference wasn't appropriate in the article namespace and eventually got reverted. It would be appropriate in the Wikipedia namespace, which is already self-referential. Then "Lists of topics" and "Lists of lists" could be folded-in to it, as these 3 lists unnecessarily overlap. --The Transhumanist 22:37, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how all those lists would be part of an almanac. They're more comprehensive than that. Rfrisbie^talk 23:10, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, in that case, it's just another "Lists of topics". --The Transhumanist 10:12, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Good job

I like what you did on List of academic disciplines. Did you use Excel on that? --The Transhumanist 10:15, 8 October 2006 (UTC)