Wikipedia talk:Why do we have outlines in addition to...?

Indexes

This page raises the question of indexes for me. What purpose do they serve? The only advantage to indexes that I've found while searching for hidden outlines is that they generally include many red-links, pointing the way for future article development. But it seems that this sort of list would be better put in Wikipedia space as "List of requested Foo-articles" and be done with it. Any ideas? --Gimme danger (talk) 01:06, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Sometimes a reader can only remember the first letter of a topic, or can't remember the name of the topic at all. But he may recognize it when he sees it. Indexes allow you to scan a subject's topics to take advantage of recognition. Indexes also provide an alternate way to browse. Some people prefer alphabetical lists over outlines.

The point of redlinks is that they turn blue when their articles are created, saving you the trouble of adding them back into the list. By having them in article space gives them maximum exposure to readers, any of whom may decide to create the page. Hiding the redlinks in project space, reduces the size of the group likely to access them.

I hope these answers help. The Transhumanist 22:59, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm still not seeing it...

Surely, for a start, these outlines do not belong in the article space? Would it not be better to include them in the portal space, in the spirit of Portal:Contents/Lists of topics? I can see the difference between outlines and portals, but I just think they are closer to portals than they are to articles. J Milburn (talk) 21:13, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

The short answer: To quote myself:

1. "There are a LOT of navigational pages in mainspace, that for technical reasons should really remain there (Category:Disambiguation pages, Category:Lists of lists, Category:Indexes of articles, and many more), and there are a lot that are somewhere between a navigational(index) page and an article (Category:Glossaries and Category:Timelines and Category:Bibliographies by subject and Category:Outlines and more). As Transhumanist says above, we've been trying to bring some order to the mess (such as renaming pages in a consistent manner, and assigning them to wikiprojects, and giving them a consistent structure) which has naturally brought them up on watchlists, and shocked some people who were apparently unaware they all existed, or how many there were of each." (Quoted from here)
2. "Each type has appeal/benefits/problems. Compare: Japan, Outline of Japan, Index of Japan-related articles, Portal:Japan, Category:Japan, Category:WikiProject Japan articles. (plus all the various sidebar and footer navboxes). Yes, there could be a perfect, autogenerated, utterly-intuitive, never too-much nor too-little indexing system, but noone has built it so far... Until then, we have these manually created lists/indices." (ibid)
3. "The portal namespace is not included in our site search (and cannot be, because the profusion of subpages makes searching portal-namespace painful) hence moving indexes there makes them partially invisible to the readers (unless we scatter links to the outlines everywhere)." "(eg, if one searches for "Africa" in portalspace, only about 4 of those 2621 results are useful: Portal:Africa, Portal:Current events/Africa, Portal:Military history of Africa, and Portal:South Africa.)" (Quoted from here and here)

The long answer: many other past discussions, including many failed-requests for a new "list/index/etc" namespace (because: too subjective, too much overlap, too complicated. nobody is interested in doing the huge quantities of work&argument that would be needed, for very little gain).

That help? :) -- Quiddity (talk) 00:17, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

So, could one of these ever become a featured article? A featured list? J Milburn (talk) 00:24, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Only one was tried so far: Wikipedia:Featured_list_candidates/List_of_basic_geography_topics (Nov 2007) (fail: unclear scope, not enough sources)

I would hazard a guess that the situation is comparable to Timeline of radio or Timeline of architectural styles. It's possible to achieve WP:FL, but would need some fortuitous discovery of sources that happen to cover that exact scope, in order to satisfy the "comprehensiveness" WP:FL? requirement. -- Quiddity (talk) 01:13, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

So, if these sources don't exist, surely it's entirely arbitrary what is included and what isn't? We wouldn't have a completely arbitrary list (List of good films, or something stupid) so why have a completely arbitrary list here? J Milburn (talk) 01:22, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

I/we believe that appropriate sources do exist, they just haven't necessarily been found yet, for each outline. Academic textbooks would be the most simple example of the kind of source that will probably give a list of "core" or "basic" topics that form an "outline" of a subject.

See Outline of geography#References for some examples of what have been found.

As for "stupid" and "arbitrary" lists, I think that's a fairly gross-mischaracterisation (or, to put it differently, a bad analogy ;). Rather, there is a possibility for confusion as to intent: Are these outlines intended to be navigational indexes (like Lists of films is), or are they intended to be clearly encyclopedic lists (like List of highest-grossing films is). The answer to that is "both" (somewhat subjectively, different people might argue otherwise, in both directions). Outlines overlap in scope/intent with articles, indexes, portals, and categories - See my point#2 above. Some people have suggested/argued that Outlines are superior replacements for Portals, others disagree and suggest both have their place.

On a side-note, if you want anyone else's opinion/insight, I'd recommend asking your questions at a more central location (eg Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Outline of knowledge) because I don't think anyone else is really watchlisting this subpage... :) -- Quiddity (talk) 19:41, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts (I must say, I am warming to these outline articles after hearing them- your opinions and insights seem just fine, as long as you're happy to keep giving the, :) ). I personally like portals, and feel that these things are more suited to the portal space. For instance, I have included Portal:Fungi/Topics in Portal:Fungi- would this be redundant to a potential outline of fungi article? Seem to cover pretty much the same ground. J Milburn (talk) 20:58, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm happy to keep postulating and pontificating :)

I like portals too, and I totally understand the resemblance issues. The main differences are the self-references and meta-details, that portals are full of: wikiproject links, to do lists, didyouknows, current events, etc.

Portals are also usually aiming at selective sampling, rather than total overviews. They focus on quality, rather than importance. Some portals (eg Portal:Religion) break into subtabs and get more comprehensive (which brings up accessibility/ease-of-discovery issues).

The indexes and portals, and some would say outlines, have always been semi-experimental, and woefully incomplete, and will possibly be replaced by something better and bigger in the coming years. But as-of-right-now, where and what they are, is the best thing anyone's come up with.

[tangentially: these issues are quite similar to the Category:Glossaries, which a few vocal editors are massively irked by, and occasionally try to delete them, or move them en-masse to Wiktionary. This has some complex difficulties, such as: they get placed in the [Appendix:...] namespace at Wiktionary (which is not included in the wiktionary site search), and they tend to get completely forgotten/ignored once moved there. The other issues, and most prior discussions, are collated at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Glossaries#Old_threads, if you're curious.]

It's all related to Wikipedia's part-time goal of being an "almanac" as described at WP:Five pillars (recently argued about and confirmed as still relevant, at WT:NOT#Conflicting/confusing guidelines).

S'all dripping with context and complexity. Huzzah! -- Quiddity (talk) 22:54, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting that they are redundant to portals per se, I'm just suggesting that what they have may be better suited in the portal space, for example, as an extended version of Portal:Fungi/Topics. I consider this kind of thing one of the roles of portals. I think these outline articles are extremely meta-article, as they could not exist as a free standing article (unlike almost any "normal" article or list- more like a category). The meta-article space, for me, should be the portal space. I think these outlines are useful, and are doing a good job, I just feel that it would be better if the energies were pointed at the portal space. J Milburn (talk) 23:22, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Yup, that's what I meant by the Portal:Religion example. Click that, to find a row of tabs at the top, one of which is Portal:Religion/Categories and Main topics. But how many people are going to find that page, given that it is unlikely to be directly linked to from anywhere? (stats page says 5-10 hits per day (that might just be webspiders?). The main portal gets about 10 times that [1]. A good outline also gets about 10 times that [2]).

As for moving them, it's been suggested before, and I partially agree (hell, I proposed it as a possibility back in Nov 2007). But it affects so many more articles than just outlines. And portalspace is so flawed for the reasons I've explained above. We've been 'discussing' it at Wikipedia talk:Stand-alone lists#Outline namespace issues, but most of it is just repetitive circular argument at this point. -- Quiddity (talk) 02:52, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I have no problem with portals either- the main discrepancy with having the outlines in portal space is that they are not included in the default wikipedia search engine, and are more difficult to create/maintain technically (the wiki table/image markup, etc.). As far as your examples go, Portal:Fungi is definitely not redundant and serves an important function in tying together all the different aspects of fungal coverage on wikipedia. I'd however, consider what is covered in Portal:Fungi/Topics to be appropriate in the prospective Outline of fungi. If you're intrigued enough to work on it, I'd recommend Outline of sharks as the best and most comparable in scope (order/phylum). Minnecologies (talk) 21:28, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Completely agree. Follow the Sharks example, and incorporate elements/keywords/main-memes from Fungus, Portal:Fungi, Category:Fungi, etc. Transclude the various navboxes (eg {{Fungi classification}}) to avoid content-drift. Can also use {{familytree}} and related infographics to concisely summarise some aspects. Use summary style for excerpting key items from lists such as List of mycologists. I've also found in constructing/checking Outlines, that it is sometimes helpful to check the "top" and "high" wikiproject-by-importance lists (Category:Fungi articles by importance), though these are often a bit chaotic and subjectively populated by individual editors. -- Quiddity (talk) 22:54, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

J Milburn, of course outlines belong in article space. They're lists! See Wikipedia:Lists. Prior to being called "outlines", they were referred to as "structured lists". Almost all lists on Wikipedia are of one of two types: structured lists (outlines) or alphabetical lists (indexes). There are thousands of each. By the way, "Timelines" are outlines of history.

Moving outlines to portalspace would be impractical. There are thousands more outlines than there are portals (we haven't renamed them all to "Outline of" yet), and a great many of them do not correspond to portals' subjects. So, if you move them to portal space to be part of portals, you'll have many many portals that only have an outline page. That would be a huge mess.

But, more importantly, portal development is not keeping up with outline development. Outlines are being developed faster and faster as more people learn about them.

Please keep in mind that only the top list in the list structure is in portal space (Portal:Lists of topics). The same with the top list in the glossary structure (Portal:List of glossaries). And the top list of the outline structure (Portal:Contents/Outline of knowledge). Each list, glossary, and outline listed on those lists is in article space. Because they are each a type of list article. The top-level lists were moved to portal space primarily because they don't look like articles (they have graphical formatting, including background colors, etc. that match other pages in the contents navigation set that were already in portal space).

Outlines are lists, and could be brought to featured list status, though I'd prefer much more having a "featured outline status". But we have better things to do right now than chase down references that should already be included in articles (but are not). The WP:WPOOK is currently concentrating on completing existing outlines' coverage and gathering the rest of the "List of" articles that are actually outlines into the outline collection.

Outlines are subject to Wikipedia's verifiability guideline, and can weather V-challenges just as well as articles can. Most references missing from outlines are most likely missing from articles as well, and for those that aren't, it is an easy matter to copy the references to outlines if needed.

But, "verfication" (having a reference for each fact) isn't mandatory, only "verifiability" is. And those are not the same thing - believing they are the same is a common error made by many editors (I made the same mistake myself). The encyclopedia wouldn't grow anywhere near as fast as it is growing now if material without references wasn't allowed to be added. But it is allowed. More than 90% of material added to Wikipedia is unreferenced. But most of it fulfills the verifiability requirement. Even more so for outlines, which focus on subjects' essentials, which are usually pretty easy to find information on.

The Transhumanist 01:42, 22 July 2009 (UTC)