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Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Knight's Cross recipients of the Waffen-SS/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by Dabomb87 16:02, 31 October 2009 [1].

List of Knight's Cross recipients of the Waffen-SS

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Nominator(s): MisterBee1966 (talk) 12:25, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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I am nominating this for featured list because I feel it to be complete and comprehensive. The list is quite long which I understand could be a blocking issue for FLC. If indeed this list gets promoted to FLC special thanks goes to User:Jim Sweeney who created most of the people referenced on this list. MisterBee1966 (talk) 12:25, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

bamse (talk) 13:50, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm undecided. I'd like to see what other reviewers say. I really think you could do it either way (one unified article or separate articles), but the length of the table for the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross makes it difficult to navigate, and there may be some value in splitting it. You set up a conflict, though, between navigability and the value of having a unified list. I do think, though, that both the unit and notes columns should be sortable, the former so readers can identify units from which more than one person received awards, the latter to allow a reader to sort those who were killed in action or were awarded higher levels of the cross. Geraldk (talk) 12:58, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I have that concern about splitting the list too. It may be that the only sensible way to deal with it would be to make the regular Knights Cross recipients of the Waffen SS a separate article and have an article of just the Knight's Cross plus other stuff. Geraldk (talk) 21:33, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I disagree. The length recommendations in the MoS exist largely to ensure ease of accessibility by readers, under the assumption that articles that take longer than about 20 minutes to read are less accessible. First, unlike dense text in an article of this length, information in a list format like this is inherently more organized and remains relatively easy to access despite its length. Second, the series of lists on the Knight's Cross is already splintered into a ton of articles, and further splintering this on some arbitrary alphabetical split will actually make the information less accessible to readers. A reader who looks at this list will most likely be interested in Knight's Cross recipients of the Waffen SS, not just the ones between A and M, and to access the full amount of information they want to, they will have to jump back and forth between two articles. Thus, while your opposition seems to be based on the letter of the law, I believe that it violates the spirit. Geraldk (talk) 21:09, 27 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • You're forgetting the issue of page loading time. Not all our readers use computers powered by multicore processors with broadband internet connections. Anyway, if you believe my position is in line with the letter but not the spirit of the guideline, then why don't you hop over to Wikipedia:Article size and change it? Goodraise 21:49, 27 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, I'm not forgetting page loading time, what I'm saying is there is no perfect solution here, but I think we should err on the side of not splintering articles too much. And I do think Wikipedia:Article size applies quite well in most cases and does not currently require changing, but there is a reason it is a guideline, as you say, rather than a rule. Geraldk (talk) 22:04, 27 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • And the very top of the page you keep citing says the following: "This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Use common sense in applying it; it will have occasional exceptions." You're really not willing to consider the possibility that the article size guideline can be flexible? Geraldk (talk) 22:44, 27 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, we're not disagreeing on whether guidelines are flexible. They are. We're disagreeing on how flexible this one is. When I take the guideline status, the vague wording, and mix in a bit of ignore all rules, then I still come to the conclusion that a 170 KB list is too large. Goodraise 00:15, 28 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that arbitrarily splitting articles and lists only disconveniences the reader by spreading the same related information across multiple pages. This makes it impossible to accurately see all list members at once and renders the sort feature completely useless. Also, with the sortability of the Unit column, aren't List of Knight's Cross recipients 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, List of Knight's Cross recipients 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich, List of Knight's Cross recipients 3rd SS Panzer Division Totenkopf, etc. redundant? Hardly anything needs to be done to merge and redirect them. Reywas92Talk 00:55, 28 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Reywas that there is no need to split the list. List of Chicago Blackhawks players and List of Detroit Red Wings players are two 800+-item FLs that I can think of off the top of my head; the latter would probably be larger in bytes than this list if the many notes weren't included here. I always lean in favor of having a comprehensive list whenever possible, and don't think the size is quite at the overwhelming point where a split would be justified. Giants2008 (17–14) 02:11, 28 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps I should clarify that I have no opinion on whether the list should be split. All I'm saying is that, in my opinion, the list violates Wikipedia:Article size. Goodraise 02:36, 28 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, for the few with very slow browsers it may take a little while to load, but it's not in violation otherwise. Most of WP:SIZE refers to readability: No one wants to read a novel. But this page is a list with very little readable prose, so size limitations don't apply the same way. And remember, most of the list's size is from the wikimarkup for the table that doesn't show up on the page. It could be cut by 20% by just removing all the spaces and templates that make up the table, without making any visible difference. Reywas92Talk 03:51, 28 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Reywas92's comments.—NMajdan•talk 13:12, 28 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I'm extremely reluctant to attempt to review this list, but am here because opinions have been requested. While I think accessibility is something that is rightly being debated very seriously, we have to weigh up the benefits of splitting against the drawbacks. I don't see how a split could be carried out in a way that doesn't detract from the usefulness of the list. There will be load-time issues, but I'd rather wait twice as long for something comprehensive than wait quite a long time in the first place only to find that I'm going to need to wait that time again to load the other page, wait even longer to sort both lists, and then have to manually cross-check them. WFCforLife (talk) 14:16, 30 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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