Talk:List of Scotland-related topics

Purpose

I noticed that this article has some "top level" articles, but also some seemingly less important articles including some on individual people. It got me wondering why we have this page at all, rather than directing people to Category:Scotland? If the intention is to have a first port of call for important Scottish articles, perhaps we could come up with a definition or some limits? – Kieran T ^{(talk | contribs)} 01:40, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

This article should not be getting used for what it is currently being used for. I blame myself really, and it has been on my immense "to-do" list for about a year now, which must be a record for me ignoring things.

The reason I blame myself is that last year, when I first started up the Scottish Wikipedians' notice board, I listed this article as one of the very first entries on the Requested articles subpage (obviously when it was a redlink). My intention was that it should be a very structured, thematic tool, following the pattern of List of topics related to the United Kingdom and some others. But User:Berek started it up very soon thereafter (for which he deserves thanks), just as a bare alphabetical list, and I (amazingly enough) did not interfere, and just let it drift. I note that very few editors have contributed in the intervening period. It has periodically been weighing on my mind ever since, because this bare list concept is really useless when we have thousands (probably tens of thousands) of Scotland-related articles.

We should not be too disappointed though, because if you look at Category:Lists of topics by country you will find that most of those articles are bare lists too, many of them much worse than Scotland's.

I propose that we just scrap the current content and start again, basing our new article on the UK and US ones, and any other ones we spot which are thematically structured. Does anyone know if any of those are Featured lists? Perhaps we could do a Catscan?

Template:Scotland topics is a very, very concise version of how this article ought to look.

As far as biographies are concerned, all we need is to link to List of Scots and its various sub-lists (which are all very incomplete by the way). We certainly do not need to link to individual biogs from this main page.

To conclude: yes, it should be a top-level page, because once properly formed it will be of immense use to readers (especially newer readers) interested in Scotland-related topics. The very best tool for editors ought to be the category system, but it is never going to be comprehensive either, and I seem to be one of the few Scottish editors interested in maintaining and expanding it. --Mais oui! 08:04, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi, guys. I have no objections to a re-write on the basis above - as you noted, a bare list is almost impossible to compile, and would need to be constantly updated, something I simply don't have time for. I'll watch your discussions here with interest. Berek 09:06, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I've been bold and attempted a major re-write, based on copied from the Scottish topics template. More still to be added - I mainly edit while at work - please feel free to add or improve on what's there. Berek 12:50, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Re-write based on template now complete (I think). Are there other categories we should add? Should we still keep the template there? Comments welcome. Berek 15:16, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

A total rewrite has been done, from scratch, creating a list for Scotland and for almost all the other countries of the world, and for hundreds of other subjects as well. See Portal:Contents/Outlines. This list (List of Scotland-related topics) has been merged into Outline of Scotland. The Transhumanist 14:52, 7 July 2011 (UTC)