Talk:Outline of humanism

Rename proposal for this page and all the pages of the set this page belongs to

See the proposal at the Village pump

The Transhumanist 09:19, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I would like to know how it can be decided that Vancouver is "pro-humanist" and London is not?? Someone please explain.

194.156.44.23 (talk) 14:09, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Guidelines for outlines

Guidelines for the development of outlines are being drafted at Wikipedia:Outlines.

Your input and feedback is welcomed and encouraged.

The Transhumanist 00:31, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

The "History of" section needs links!

Please add some relevant links to the history section.

Links can be found in the "History of" article for this subject, in the "History of" category for this subject, or in the corresponding navigation templates. Or you could search for topics on Google - most topics turn blue when added to Wikipedia as internal links.

The Transhumanist 00:31, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Not an outline of humanism

This page (it's hardly an article) is not an outline of humanism, but an example of POV pushing, possibly a POV fork, in order to portray secular humanism as the only humanism. Until this problem is fixed it will be POV tagged. Jeannedeba (talk) 23:17, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

The version to which you object contains, in the opening paragraph, the sentence: "Two common forms of humanism are religious humanism and secular humanism." How is that "portray[ing] secular humanism as the only humanism"? You should really consider the possibility that it is your edits on these matters, and not the edits of others, that reflect a non-neutral position. Ghmyrtle (talk) 23:42, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

@Jean, this isn't an article. It's a list. See WP:LIST. It's intended to guide readers to related topics, which is why it contains nothing but links and a description of how the links are related. I don't see any way it could be a POV fork, or be pushing a POV. Yes, secular humanism is included in the list, because it is a type of humanism. So is Christian humanism, which is equally prominent. Do you have any suggestions on how to improve the list? Tagging the article without proper discussion is not helpful. I would advise removing the tag unless there is a substantial objection which will require prolonged discussion, and general consensus that a problem exists.   — Jess· Δ♥ 23:46, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Dear Jeannedeba,

Stand-alone lists are a type of article, and outlines are a type of stand-alone list. Non-list articles, that is, those that consist of sentences arranged in paragraphs, could be described as "prose articles". It's true that outlines on Wikipedia are not prose articles. But it is not true that outlines (and other lists) are nothing but links. Outlines are intended to summarize a subject, not merely a subject's coverage by Wikipedia. In subjects in which Wikipedia's prose article coverage is incomplete, outlines can and should have entries that are not linked (as excessive red-linking is frowned upon).

But all that is irrelevant to whether or not a particular outline pushes a point of view.

You stated in this thread's title that this article is "Not an outline of humanism". Yes, it is, absolutely, an outline of humanism. Note that the word "Outline", as used in "Outline of" article titles, is short for "Hierarchical outline" (which is a hierarchically structured list). This is to save the reader from excessively long titles such as "Hierarchical outline of the United States of America". And because "hierarchical outline" is just so much more cumbersome than simply saying or writing "outline". The term "outline" in this context is widely used in the education field and in the encyclopedia industry; for example, professors often provide topic outlines of their course itinerary for the quarter to their students, and Britannica used it in the title of its Outline of Knowledge.

There are two main types of hierarchical outline: topic outlines and sentence outlines. Most of the outlines on Wikipedia are topic outlines, rather than sentence outlines. Some are a hybrid between topic and sentence outlines, being topic outlines with descriptive annotations.

I hope this explanation has been of help to you. The Transhumanist 22:09, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to respond. Thank you, but this is substantially off topic. This article is an 'article' in a technical sense, but our lists and "prose articles" are governed by different rules, are expected to contain different content, and are in every sense very different entities. It is common for lists to be called "lists" and not articles, and there's a reason for that. Jean wrote that this is hardly an "article", intending to indicate poor quality by commenting on its lack of content. He's a new user, and so obviously unfamiliar with lists and outlines, which are not intended to have the sort of content he expected. I explained that to him, as an aside, before getting to his main point about weight and POV concerns. I appreciate that you've taken time to explain it to me - thank you for that - but I'm not a new user, and I understand how lists and outlines work, so I'd prefer to keep discussion on improvements to the page. Thanks.   — Jess· Δ♥ 22:13, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

By the way... I didn't create the section title. Jeannedeba did. Did you perhaps get the two of us confused?   — Jess· Δ♥ 22:16, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Okay, you did get the two of us confused, and you corrected the name in your reply above. That makes more sense now. I've struck my comment above. Thanks! :)   — Jess· Δ♥ 22:19, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Revamp underway

You are welcome to join in. The Transhumanist 04:26, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Quick explanation of Wikipedia outlines

"Outline" is short for "hierarchical outline". There are two types of outlines: sentence outlines (like those you made in school to plan a paper), and topic outlines (like the topical synopses that professors hand out at the beginning of a college course). Outlines on Wikipedia are primarily topic outlines that serve 2 main purposes: they provide taxonomical classification of subjects showing what topics belong to a subject and how they are related to each other (via their placement in the tree structure), and as subject-based tables of contents linked to topics in the encyclopedia. The hierarchy is maintained through the use of heading levels and indented bullets. See Wikipedia:Outlines for a more in-depth explanation. The Transhumanist 00:07, 9 August 2015 (UTC)