Talk:Outline of management

Contested deletion

This is nonsense. There is an Outline of business administration which would have been categorised for speedy deletion by the same rationale a long time ago? And there's an Outline of finance which as far as I'm concerned would have to be deleted as well, given this rationale. Finance isn't a "larger" subject than management, and business management (there's a page called business administration which is synonymous as an expression) certainly isn't .. --Danielsltt (talk) 11:24, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

• Basically, you're trying to create a category page as an article Andyjsmith (talk) 11:26, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
  • I would say that they created categories as outlines. Outlines existed on Wikipedia first (though they weren't called outlines way back then). Categories didn't come along until years later. They both serve the same function: navigation. Though they each have different strengths and weaknesses. Did you know that Wikipedia has over 20 navigation systems? They all are redundant, but they all strengthen the connectivity of the encyclopedia. The rule is not to sacrifice any of them for the sake of the others. None of the navigation systems are allowed a monopoly on navigation, and they have co-existed for decades.    — The Transhumanist   13:46, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Speedy deletion

The page is largely empty, and duplicates Category:Management as well as Management itself. Andyjsmith (talk) 11:25, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

So, you wish to delete on the basis that it is a stub? In other words, an editor has to fully complete an outline before posting it to Wikipedia, and it if isn't comprehensive from the very start, it should be deleted?

I oppose deletion on those grounds. Speedy deletion does not apply.

If you delete a page for not being complete, then you are circumventing the purpose of the wiki.

The outline presents 220 topics, linked, which is way past being empty, and is a lot more than is included in the corresponding navigation footer.

There are many outlines with fewer than that, but they still fit the definition and guidelines of an outline.

Categories do not support annotations, while outlines do. You can't have annotations until you first have an outline.

Redundancy between navigation system pages is irrelevant; see: WP:CLN.

Outlines exist for the same reasons that categories do: to facilitate topic navigation, and to provide a way to visualize the structure of a subject. They both exist because a search engine isn't always enough: it can't show you what subjects there are so that you can choose what to explore. In contrast, categories and outlines serve as site maps or subject menus and let you see what's there – meanwhile, search starts out as a blank screen and can't show you topics that you don't already know exist. Categories and outlines can. They also overcome the "tip of the tongue" phenomenon, when you can't think of the name of the topic that you want to type into the search box.

But, why do we have outlines in addition to categories? (That's duplication of effort!)

For the benefits. Outlines have support because of the benefits they provide that categories cannot...

1. An outline is a gathering of links on a topic onto one page, while a category splits its topic into many pages. The idea is to get all the links on a particular topic in one place for convenience.
2. An outline trades in clicks for scrolling. To browse an outline, you scroll down the page, rather than click over and over again to drill down to subcategories in a category. It's much harder to browse an entire category due to all the backtracking required. Scrolling down a page is much faster.
3. Outlines don't suffer from multiple page load delays like browsing a category does. Each time you click on a subcategory in a category a new page has to be downloaded by your browswer. On slower Internet connections, this can get really time consuming.
4. While categories help to present a subject's structure, they typically only show 2 levels of its topic tree on the screen at a time, while outlines may have the whole tree on a single page. Outlines are better at providing a bird's eye view of an entire subject.
5. Outlines allow descriptions for topics to be included. Categories can't; you have to fiddle with the cursor and hover it over topics to get pop ups, each of which may incur a download delay.
6. Outlines are articles, and so they show up in search results. Categories generally don't because their critical content is not actually there (it's split up into little chunks and is at the bottom of other pages).
7. Outlines provide edit tracking like regular articles. Categories are decentralized (their data exists at the bottom of many articles), and so there is no history feature to show you when something has been removed from a category – topics just disappear without a trace from categories.

More benefits and explanations are included at Wikipedia:Outlines and Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines.

The Wikipedia community and the Wikimedia Foundation have so far been unable to design a navigation system that combines the benefits of outlines and categories. The technology just isn't here yet. Until then, we have both categories and outlines.

You mentioned that it duplicates the Management article, yet the article is composed of prose (sentences, paragraphs), while the outline is a list of topic links. They don't look anything alike!

If you were referring to them sharing the same scope, that is true: their subject is the same: "management", which is the case for every outline on Wikipedia: they all cover the same subject as the corresponding article, and category. That's standard for outlines, as they are navigation aids.

I hope these observations help.

Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   13:30, 24 April 2024 (UTC)