Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Science and academia/Archive 5

Archive 1

←

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Archive 6

Displaying publications on Academic pages as tables vs bullet lists

The topic of displaying books/awards has come up on a page I was working on. Many academic pages list the pages as a bullet list, which is fine, but a bit lazy in my opinion. Other author pages such as Douglas Adams, J. K. Rowling, and others have tables to display their Bibliography, awards, and other lists of information. I think that academic authors could/should have similar tables for their books/awards where applicable, rather then bullet lists. For example, Stephen Hawking's extensive lists of books and publications are in bullet format, and would probably look better as tables organizing the publications. I bring this up because tables have been called promotional on another page. Was wanting to start a discussion here to get other opinions on the matter. Tagging @Espresso Addict as they were part of this conversation, and wanted to bring them into this one. I figure this conversation of broad formatting might warrant a broader audience. This is of course a matter of opinion and aesthetic, so there is no right/wrong answer, and this might be a case by case matter. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 20:52, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

What value does table formatting bring to this application? Is it just colored rectangles surrounding the publications making them look visually busier, or do they actually provide some useful information? If you think splitting the publication year and isbn of a book into separate columns (like the one in Douglas Adams) is useful, do you think it would be similarly useful to split out the pieces of publication metadata in the reference sections of most Wikipedia articles into columns? If so, why?

@David Eppstein, in my opinion, the main benefit of a table would be columns for title, author, date, editions, and reference.

For example:

• The Large, the Small and the Human Mind (with Roger Penrose, Abner Shimony and Nancy Cartwright) (1997)

becomes

Title	Author(s) or volume editor(s)	Year first published	Ref
The Large, the Small and the Human Mind	Roger Penrose; Abner Shimony; Nancy Cartwright; Steven Hawking	1994

References

This I believe looks a bit cleaner then bullet points. If it isn't, then the other authors such as J.K. Rowling could have their book lists similarly turned into simple lists of bullet points. Bullet points to me can look like they are part of a draft that will be flushed out more in the future, while a table listing the publications seems more organized. If they don't have enough published books for a table, then you wouldn't need bullet points, and could probably just write a sentence or two on the books.GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 00:35, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

This just spreads out the same information over more space and makes it harder to read. XOR'easter (talk) 00:56, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

And repeats it unnecessarily, as the same information also still goes into a footnote, causing the references section to get clogged up with things that are not really references. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:35, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

If it is unnecessary and makes it harder to read, then J.K. Rowling and Douglas Adams need their tables converted to bullets, as it would make the pages easier to read. Academic non-fiction authors pages should get the same treatment as fiction and children's authors. When you have more then one publication, like Steven Hawking's page, columns make it much easier to read and reference the work then a list of bullets. This is why J.K. Rowling's publications are in a table, and why it would be absurd to edit the page and remove the table of her works. Creating a table is not that much harder then making the bullets, but makes the page look much cleaner, and less like an 1990s personal website, or a Curriculum Vita. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 02:42, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

For book authors, their books have a small number of well-defined fields. How do you propose to break into columns publications like Dinur, Irit; Kaufman, Tali (2017), "High dimensional expanders imply agreement expanders", in Umans, Chris (ed.), 58th IEEE Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, FOCS 2017, Berkeley, CA, USA, October 15-17, 2017, IEEE Computer Society, pp. 974–985, doi:10.1109/FOCS.2017.94, ECCC TR17-089 ? —David Eppstein (talk) 02:56, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

The publication you are referencing is a chapter within an edited volume of conference proceedings between pages 974 and 985, and is more comparable to a peer reviewed journal article then a book publication. I'm not suggesting we list out every publication an academic ever published in a peer reviewed journal, but if they are the author or volume editor for a book, that information could be included in a table listing major publications. This would only be in cases where we are already making a list of bullets with information separated by commas, or parentheses, like the Steven Hawking page. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 03:07, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't think that there will be any improvement here. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:58, 18 November 2023 (UTC).

I disagree, but if you think that bullets points are a superior format, then the other authors pages like J.K. Rowling should have them as well. I think that the benefit of tables to explain all the stuff we are separating by commas or parentheses looks sloppy, and in the case of authors like Steven Hawking just becomes a text wall rather then something that can be easily referenced. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 04:05, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

The "major publications" of academics definitely include journal articles. In many fields, those matter much more than editing books. Trying to format collections of academic writings in exactly the same way as filmographies is not worth the trouble. XOR'easter (talk) 04:40, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm aware that journal articles are the gold standard and a major part of showcasing a professors work. Generally, from what I've seen and done, books are considered separately from journals on Wikipedia and when a professor is being evaluated for tenure. When books, such as textbooks, edited volumes, or general reference books, are listed as bulletins on a page, they can be treated like other authors books. Journal articles, book chapters, and other short publications created by a professor can be approached separately.

This is already the way things are done on many academic's pages in terms of content, I'm just suggesting tables instead of bulletins for books as tables are easier to use, cleaner, and look more professional overall in my opinion. At the very least, if someone does take the time to make a table it should be encouraged rather then converted to bullet points. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 04:57, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

If	someone	takes
the time	to space	everything
out	to excessive	lengths
without	improving	legibility
they	should be	reverted
and	told	to do
something	more	constructive
		—David Eppstein (talk) 07:25, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

If you think this, go onto the Douglas Adams page and convert the tables to bullets. Tables make the lists easier to read and use, rather then blocks of text, which is why they are used on other authors pages. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 07:29, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Seriously? You're advocating breaking out ISBNs as such an important thing for people visiting the article to read and use that they get a whole separate column in the table? As a good example of what to do in other articles? —David Eppstein (talk) 07:35, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

The advantage of tables—and the only reason to use them—is their ability to sort data. MOS specifically mentions them as an option when there are multiple data points within a given list. For example, with a list of alumni, the list might be ordered by name but could also be usefully sorted by major, class year, or notability. I use tables a lot; more than some editors would like. However, I see little value of a table for a short list of awards or publications, such as those found in the typical academic biography. Although it is interesting to consider a table for a long list of publications because one might be interested by sorting by journal name or article name, in addition to the date. But I have yet to see a list long enough to justify tables in academic biographies. Rublamb (talk) 07:11, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

I disagree that the only reason to use them would be to sort data. They can organize information in a way that is quickly comprehensible. If the bullet point is just "Title", then they might be fine. Many times though, the bullet point will have title, date, and other authors listed either by commas or in parentheses, such as on the Steven Hawking page. If bullet points are superior to tables, then the tables on J.K. Rowling and similar pages should be converted to the simpler format. Fundamentally though, they look kinda lazy, and in a formal publication I would not consider only using bullets for titles in a list. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 07:25, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

WP:WHENTABLE says, "Tables should not be misused to resolve visual layout problems. If the information you are editing is not tabular in nature, it probably does not belong in a table." I have gone through nearly all of the physics prof biographies that are FA and GA; only a couple have tables and those have longer lists. Our standard here needs to be what works best for Biography/Science academic articles, not what is used for a writer/novelist bios or other article types. In addition, the use of tables is rare among articles about writers. If you have concerns about the visue layout problem caused by long lists of authors, you can always shortened the list with “et al”. Rublamb (talk) 08:47, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

The WP:WHENTABLE uses both Filmographies and Discographies as examples of tabular data. "Consider whether the information will be more clearly conveyed by virtue of having rows and columns. If so, then a table is probably a good choice." The way many publications are listed is separated by comma or parentheses. The reason it is even bothiering me to look at is because they look like RAW text files for CSV or other Delimiter-separated values. If there is a comma between title, date, and author, it is tabular data. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 19:45, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

• I came into this via the G11 on GeoSage's article Michael Peterson (geographer) by Alexandermcnabb, which I declined because it looked salvageable and the subject was plainly notable. However to speak bluntly, it did look to me, and perhaps also to Alexandermcnabb, like a paid contribution (for clarity, this was clearly a wrong impression). Apart from a few overegged phrases the thing that most struck me as promotional was the tables for books and awards.

I don't really have much to add other than I'm strongly against tabulating book publications for the average academic (though as for all 'rules' there may be exceptions). 'More professional' to my mind is 'more promotional'. I stand by my view that it makes the article look highly promotional (draws the eye), and agree it is harder to read (it adds space between parts of one entry); it also wastes space on the rendered page, interrupts the flow if there are images or a long infobox, and adds a lot of bloat to the page, making it significantly harder to edit. I also don't think there's any reason why the format used for a popular author such as Terry Pratchett (where nearly all of the entries have articles) should have any effect on the format used for academics, where research papers are usually more significant than books. Espresso Addict (talk) 08:33, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Looking at the article in the state in which you declined it, my first thought was: this organization of information belongs on Wikidata. Here on en.Wikipedia we have WP:USEPROSE. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:37, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

• Obvious consensus here is that bulleted lists are preferable to tables. I'd also say that such bulleted lists should not repeat every entry as a reference for itself. I have changed this in the Peterson article. --Randykitty (talk) 09:30, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

there are similar problems at Alexander Stewart Fotheringham, see also its talk. Xxanthippe (talk) 11:02, 18 November 2023 (UTC).

I have no idea why people like bulleted lists besides being to lazy to make a table. They look hideous, cheap, and offer no benefit over a table besides being easier to make in my opinion. People here seem to have gotten used to looking at them though. If you feel this way, then ALL authors books should be the in bullet format. Again, J K Rowling bibliography would be a perfect place to demonstrate the superiority of bullet points. If you like bullets, I won't stop you from employing them, but I struggle to see why anyone would actively want to format publications that way.

As for the citations, including ISBNs in a list of publications within the main text is not useful for a normal reader. Citing the textbooks as a reference so that information appears below as a foot note is definitely the way to go. If a book is mentioned in the text as belonging to that author, it should be cited. The kind of wall of text you made on the Peterson article causes people to gloss over information as they don't think it will be useful. Putting it in prose should be gold standard, but when listing publications a table is the best way to organize Title, author, date, reference. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 18:16, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

• I Just looked up the Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists of works, "Where a series grows complex, tables can be used." The examples they give are all much simpler than many bodies of academic works, for example again Steven Hawking. A column that states "Type of Publication" and another that states "Journal or publisher" could allow the inclusion of all the other odd works of an academic we would want to include into one table, as shown below. DOI and ISBN are included in the hyperlink for the reference, that would allow reader to quickly find the material after seeing it in a table. Academic publishing is very complicated. I would ask everyone in this comment thread then where the line is for them on table use? As it seems to be very subjective. Non-fiction and academic publishers should not be treated differently then fiction publishers when it comes to bibliography, especially if the books are a large part of why they are notable.

Title	Type of Publication	Author(s) or volume editor(s)	Year first published	Journal or publisher	Ref
The Large, the Small and the Human Mind	Book	Roger Penrose; Abner Shimony; Nancy Cartwright; Steven Hawking	1994	Cambridge University Press
Black holes in general relativity	Peer-reviewed journal	Steven Hawking	June 1972	Communications in Mathematical Physics

References

— Preceding unsigned comment added by GeogSage (talk • contribs)

You appear to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what references are. They are not a place for duplicating content from article text but with its missing detail supplied. They are citations to works written and published independently from the people or topics of the article, from which the claims in the article can be verified. A published book review can be used as a reference for the publication of a book. The book itself is not its own reference. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:58, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

The book itself is its own reference to the book itself existing, and a person being the author of that book. Third party sources discussing the book can support that it is important. Primary sources can not be used to support notability, but can be used to support the existence of something. If I tried to publish a peer-reviewed publication on someone, and referenced their book, failure to cite the book itself would rightly be called out by a reviewer. Not every book has a peer-reviewed review written about it to confirm its existence, but that does not mean it is not present in the cited works of numerous publications and impactful to the discipline. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 20:13, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Again, your proposal just splits the information about the works apart and makes it harder to find a datum of interest. Indeed, in this example you are burying information that is actually important (volume, issue number, page range, and DOI) while throwing in a factoid that is mostly irrelevant (the date that somebody happened to access a publisher's website).

The very page to which you point, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists of works, says that Basic lists are used in the majority of articles. It points to Henry James as an example: several lists, no tables. It explicitly suggests using citation templates to format lists of works. XOR'easter (talk) 03:37, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

There are several pages on this. The Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists of works states "Where a series grows complex, tables can be used, e.g. Diane Keaton or Mandy Moore." In Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual/Formatting and illustrating articles/Creating lists and tables they give the criteria of needing 3 or more columns. In Wikipedia:WikiProject Bibliographies they give an example of using a table to organize a list of published works. On Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Tables they show several examples of tables. What the columns are and what information is contained within a table can certainly be discussed, but when trying to see an authors list of works and publications, a table has added functionality, and is easier to read, then a bulleted list with multiple fields separated by commas. Including a citation to the work to verify its existence can supplement this in a non-intrusive way.

This is making me feel insane, lists are obviously a thing that is used on Wikipedia to organize bibliographies/lists of works for authors. This is not a novel approach, and has plenty of documentation that shows it is permissible. I don't understand why non-fiction books are any different then the works of children's book authors. Lists being used on the majority of articles does not mean tables would not be an improvement in many cases, it probably just means people are not making tables because they are harder then lists.

Look at the list of Publications for Albert Einstein, and tell me that it is as easy to follow as the bibliography for Stephanie Meyer. Then, look at the page for List of scientific publications by Albert Einstein and check the format. Most scientists will never warrant a separate page for their publications, including a table to make them easily readable, sortable by date, and other such minor details seems like something that should be encouraged where someone is willing to put in the effort. I'm legitimately struggling to understand why this is so heavily discouraged, as all I'm stating is that this could, and should, be an encouraged format. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 05:10, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Diane Keaton and Mandy Moore aren't scientists or academics. Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual/Formatting and illustrating articles/Creating lists and tables is some guy's book from 2008, not anything with community consensus behind it. The section to which you refer points to the actual Manual of Style, which says Often a list is best left as a list.

The Charles Darwin bibliography is in list form. So is the one for John von Neumann. No scientific journal article, monograph, or textbook lists its sources in a table. Neither does any scientist's CV that I've ever seen. Whatever extra functionality a table brings just isn't necessary. Why encourage the use of a tool that brings extra cost — in editing work, screen real estate, and ease of reading — without a corresponding benefit? XOR'easter (talk) 05:32, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

The section I point to on Wikipedia:Manual of Style states "Before reformatting a list into table form, consider whether the information will be more clearly conveyed by virtue of having rows and columns. If so, then a table is probably a good choice."

the List of scientific publications by Albert Einstein is a table. Other authors have tables. The reason is that listing works in a sortable table better conveys the information within the table then having it in a bulleted list when there are more then three points per bullet (Author, date, year, edition, languages, isbn, ref, notes, etc.) In these cases, there are clear examples where lists of publications have been turned into tables on major pages. As a table is harder to make then a list, so it is not surprising that editors often opt for the easier format. If someone (me in this case) wants to put in the effort, why actively go through the trouble to put in an inferior product? I'm not proposing something revolutionary here, plenty of mainstream authors get tables. It is not surprising that academic non-fiction authors don't get the same level of attention as teen fiction, but why shouldn't they? Do less notable figures really need to have more poorly formatted pages?

If tables are really inferior to bullets, we should replace all of them on any page. However, it seems that there has been some consensus elsewhere that they are appropriate to use and that won't happen. For my sanity, I need to know when exactly it is considered acceptable or not with clear established guidelines, otherwise it seems to just be editor preference. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 05:46, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

• Comment. It is clear that consensus is against this proposal. Is it worth while going on with the argument? Xxanthippe (talk) 05:58, 20 November 2023 (UTC).

  It is clear that many people have dismissed my points because of personal preference, continually. I've shown many examples of pages where this is done, and cited relevant Wikipedia guidance that allows or doesn't outright prohibit it. Plenty of pages use them because they do add functionality. The arguments I've seen seem to be that people just don't "feel" or "think" they are necessary, without strong support from guidelines or explanations for why it is acceptable in some pages and not others. I really don't understand why there is any resistance to using them on academic pages, much less outright rejection and insistence on removing them for inferior lists of bullets. Feel free to stop responding, I don't consider the dismissal from the editors/admin here as a broad consensus on Wikipedia as a project on this. I am a bit disappointed in the civility of some of the people who responded though, it really felt like when I didn't immediately agree with the opinions of some, they immediately resorted to condescension and mocking. A bit discouraged from bothering to read Wikipedia recommendations and policy before doing a bold edit in the future, as it seems the preference of a few will be enough to over rule it without a sound refusal or explanation that is consistent with Wikipedia as a project, and no amount of evidence, examples, or argument will be able to even gain a "maybe this is a matter of personal preference and not black and white." GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 06:19, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

  Re your promise to ignore the clear sense of the discussion here and continue pushing this format in individual articles on academics: See WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:56, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

  You are the one I'm referring to as not civil and responding with mocking. Forgive me for not giving your opinion much attention. On that page you linked, "repeatedly disregards other editors' questions or requests for explanations concerning edits or objections to edits" is disruptive. Further, this format is used all over Wikipedia, not using it for academics because of the opinions of 4 editors and you is absolutely ridiculous. This discussion was looking for well reasoned arguments on the use of tables based on prior examples for advice, not a poll. Please Wikipedia:Don't be rude in future interactions with editors and avoid "belittling a fellow editor." GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 07:12, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

  MOS describes the benefits of tables, but their use is not required. As a result, most editors do not use them or like them. I say this because I have run across editors who have reversed tables that I have added. For what it is worth, I have created more than 75 list articles and have even had editors disagree with my use of tables in my own articles. My general thought is that the person who creates the article selects the list style and others follow that style unless there is a compelling reason to change it. (such as a list growing from five items to 20 items). This means that, in most instances, we should not change the format of the list in an existing article for aesthetic reasons or personal preferences. If I came across a list that you have created, I would certainly let it remain.

  When it comes to the use of tables, the consensus amongst most Wikipedia editors is to look at the length of the list. With most academic biographies, we are using short publication lists, with five or six items. This is short for a table, even by my standards as someone who loves tables. In addition, I do not believe that the multiple data point argument works for a bibliography of books. The list is in date order already. The author is the same for each item. Because no one is going to sort by ISBN, edition, or place of publication, all we are left with to sort by is a title or publisher (if anyone would sort by that) which is easily read in a short list. I come closer to liking tables for a list of journal articles as someone might want to sort by the name of the journal but, again, the list would need to be longer than those we find in typical articles in this biographical category.

  You have advocated for tables based on your preference for their appearance and readability. I mentioned before that the only reason to use tables is for their ability to sort. Let me break that opinion down a bit as someone who was once a professional graphic designer. In graphic design, tables are not used because of their visual appearance but because the data they include is too detailed or complicated for the average reader to understand in general text format. When looking at a typical bibliography, the data is not complex and the average reader is used to seeing it in that format. Also, tables can create readability issues because of the addition of irregular white space around the text. Many editors center data in the table columns, making it much harder for readers because irregular white spaces to the left of the text goes against how we are trained to read and process data. From a graphic design perspective, moving a short bibliography to a centered table format makes the text less readable. Yes, it looks pretty, but our goal should be functionality and accessibility. Rublamb (talk) 15:10, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

  "My general thought is that the person who creates the article selects the list style and others follow that style unless there is a compelling reason to change it. (such as a list growing from five items to 20 items). This means that, in most instances, we should not change the format of the list in an existing article for aesthetic reasons or personal preferences. If I came across a list that you have created, I would certainly let it remain."

  I can certainly agree to this in some/most cases. I think Steven Hawking and Albert Einstein might benefit from a table, but that is not something I'm planning on doing at this moment. My main issue is articles I originated have had the table removed because of other editors preference, and I can't get a good reason besides preference.

  From what I can read, and examples I can find, the length of the list is only half the problem. If the bullet has many seperations:

  • Title,author,date,edition,language,ISBN,etc.

  Then it becomes an illegible text wall. I'm a cartographer (we have to have some graphic design background) and my wife is a graphic designer. Within the main body of a website, flier, or other publication, we would not leave a list like what appears on the Einstein page without some sort of tabular formatting, unless it was meant to be an unintrusive reference list. Look at the publication list for the Albert Einstein page, and compare that to the page for Albert Einstein's Publications, as I had noted above. The tables breaking up the information into neat columns make the information easier to use, which is why I have used tables in other professional publications. Other Single author tables such as, Stephanie Meyer, have tables for lists of less then 10 books that are all the same author.

  In a table for an academic, one strength is sorting for co-authors, or sorting by alphabetical order instead of date, academics often are not the only one on a book as an author or paper. The point of having a table of publications in a bibliography section is to explore the published works of the author, and with academics that might include who they work with. They don't seem to be consistently used on Wikipedia, but in this case an academic like Hawking would be more warranted to have one then someone like J.K. Rowling if I understand this argument correctly.

  Again, while I'm not motivated enough to go through every page made and make this change, and if people disagree based on basic aesthetics on other pages that is a fine argument. Here, I'm being told that they are not to be used by me, and have had people actively convert them into bulleted lists based on very weak arguments, at least in terms of actual Wikipedia guidelines. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 18:21, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

  Re "Then it becomes an illegible text wall": pot, kettle.

  Re "one strength is sorting for co-authors": not actually possible. You could sort for first coauthor. Or if you spaced things out into lots and lots of columns, you could also sort for second coauthor or for third coauthor. But this still would not provide a way to group all the things by a certain coauthor together, when that coauthor might be in different spots in different publications.

  Anyway, these lists should be short. Five or six things, in most cases. Selected publications, not all publications. Sorting is not very useful when you can see the whole list in one glance. Which is possible in a bulleted format but maybe less so when everything is spaced out unnecessarily by tables. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:46, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

  Other authors have tables for five or six things on other pages. Many academics have many more then five or six books. Sorting by first author could itself be a useful tool, especially for authors like Steven Hawking.

  The "consensus" of this page is clearly not representative of Wikipedia as a whole, as tables are used on many pages. There are countless examples where it can be beneficial.

  With plenty of pages on the project with it, the best argument I've seen is from @Rublamb: "My general thought is that the person who creates the article selects the list style and others follow that style unless there is a compelling reason to change it." Saying that tables should never be used and converting an existing one to bullets without a very strong case based on Wikipedia design guide lines, and not the opinions of a few editors, is very odd. This discussion wasn't a poll or looking for broad consensus, and started with the assumption it "might be a case by case matter." Without a reasonable argument that explains when they CAN used that is consistent with other page examples and design policy, this is just your personal opinion. I don't see a strong reason not to use them myself, or to consider this a case by case basis, besides David Eppstein told me to, and honestly you and a few people here are kind of coming off as bullies. Please note how using phrases like "pot, kettle" as a response can come off as hostile and dismissive, rather then productive.

  On something as small as "maybe using tables on some Wikipedia articles, treating academics the same as other authors," this has been by far the most negative interaction I've had with other Wikipedia editors. People not only completely dismissing the idea without addressing other examples and Wikipedia design guidelines, but then actively going through and pushing their aesthetic choice by going through pages I created while the conversation is ongoing. Not the least, dismissive editors like you making literal tables to mock me.

  Congratulations on that. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 19:21, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

  Apparently the point of "pot, kettle" was lost on you. It was a hint that maybe more concision might help you get your point across more effectively than long-windedness.

  As for "making literal tables to mock me": no, the point was not to mock you. It was to demonstrate by example why the layout you were advocating was not a good idea. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:53, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

  @David Eppstein, There is a way to make every author of an article sortable, simply by listing each person in a unique row (the rest of the related data is in a merged row). However, I rarely find that editors take advantage of this feature, probably because it takes more time to set up. I don't know of an example of this for a bibliography but look at the vice mayors in List of mayors of Asheville, North Carolina which I came across the other day. Note that the data is clustered and not duplicated unless sorted by the vice mayor column. Another weird benefit of tables, in the right instance. Rublamb (talk) 21:39, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

• Books published by non-academic authors only really have title, year, and maybe series, as important information. A full citation would include information about a publishing house, but many of Rowling's books were published by both Bloomsbury and Scholastic so that would be redundant clutter to list both, or simplistic to list only one. ISBNs also are less useful for popular authors whose books often get published in multiple editions. In contrast, academics write varying types of works; monographs, papers, book chapters, etc., all have different kinds of metadata. Books chapters will have editors, pages, book titles, chapter titles; journal articles will have volume, issue, pages, etc. Using a table only works when rows have similar enough information to be meaningfully compared. I'm not sure why they'd need to be treated identically just because they both write things. Also, author bibliographies by academics only ever really need to be presented chronologically; I can't think of a reason they'd need to be sorted by other fields. A similar conversation came up in Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of bibliographies of works on Catullus/archive1, where I have academic publications in bulleted list form; one reviewer suggested the idea of putting the sources in a tabularized form but I, others, and even the initial suggester all realized that a table would not actually improve this article over a list. Umimmak (talk) 19:49, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

  Thank you for your reply. After looking at this, my general argument will be that this should be case by case basis, and left to the original page creator unless a good reason is given. To address your points, in my opinion the gold standard for academic authors of note is List of scientific publications by Albert Einstein. This organizes his books and articles into separate tables. Most authors are not worthy of a separate page for their publications, so I would argue that for many people this template could be used on a bibliography section of their page to give the same benefit of the Einstein list page. I believe it is easier to read then a simple bulleted list if you are going to include more then three separate data points per bullet, as can be seen in Albert Einsteins main page. Steven Hawking would be the best example of a page that could be converted to a table in the format of List of scientific publications by Albert Einstein. Journal articles and books could be treated separately, or combined into a single table with a column specifying the publication "type." Generally though, many academics who are known for their textbooks could benefit from being treated as authors, at least in the publications section, at least in some cases, in my personal opinion. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 20:15, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

  The big difference is that List of scientific publications by Albert Einstein is a stand-alone article created as a list. Most list articles that achieve Feature List (FL) status are in table format because of the sheer length of their content. In another WP that I am active in, our guideline is that a list that contains 50 items is ready to be converted into a stand-alone article. Regardless of specific guidelines, we are looking at something much longer than the short list of publications that are embedded in most scientific biographies. I suspect a smaller percentage of FA and GA biographical articles use a table for select publications.

  With regards to the average length of the Selected Publications section in academic biographies, I recently reviewed in all FA and GA articles for physics professors for another discussion. I found less than six that had more than ten articles listed.

  Even if we don’t use tables, there are other options to break up the text in shorter bulleted lists. For example, subsections can be used to divide books, monographs, journal articles, anthologies, etc. We also do not need to list more than the first three authors of items in the list of publications. Rublamb (talk) 21:27, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

  • I've been looking into this more, not that it really matters. The main thing I found that phrases my thoughts on this matter comes from the Wikilosophy of the Association of Structurist Wikipedians. The quote is as follows:

  "Most users of web content, in most instances, don't read carefully; they skim and spot-read. "Plowing the text" (the most basic model of reading behavior, which most writing implicitly assumes is the commonest one) takes too long and is thus reserved for content of especial interest. When people read novels for fun, they want long passages of undifferentiated prose. When they are trying to quickly absorb work-related information about a topic that they barely care about, they want structure, which helps their skimming. Thus, TOCs, headings, links, cross-refs, and tables are prized."

  I use Wikipedia to start my literature reviews for publications. The academics I have started pages for are all ones I heavily cite. By cross listing them with co-authors, and other publications, it makes following their rabbit hole of publications much easier on Wikipedia. Much of the time, an academic will write a book as a synthesis/digested work of their other publications. The way I use Wikipedia for academic pages is enhanced with a table that facilitates quick reading, skimming, and quick absorption. I review literature for two hours per day, give or take. A table makes this better for me, and I assume for others. Bulleted lists of publications, like the one on the page just nominated for Percy Lavon Julian, are not easy for me to plow through and catch key words quickly. On Academic's biographies, considering who may be actually interested in an obscure geographer that was impactful in the development of a popular statistics method in the 1990s, including comprehensive lists of their publications in a well organized table can only benefit the utility of the project.

  part of my personal research involves investigating the efficiency of visualizations, and how humans process information. I strongly believe Wikipedia Biography's are not in line with this body of literature on this issue.

  GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 17:25, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

• Comment: TLDR. GeogSage, we get it. You are right and everybody else is wrong. Unfortunately, us wrongheaded idiots are in the vast majority and you stand alone (cherry picking some remarks left aside). Putting these huge walls of text here (and elsewhere) is not going to change things. I strongly recommend that you take a step back and take the advice that has been given to you here, even if that goes against your personal opinions. I for one am not going to respond here (or elsewhere) any more because you are obviously incapable of listening and this discussion has become repetitive and a waste of time. --Randykitty (talk) 21:25, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

  I've was looking for thought out responses to Wikipedia design suggestions, reasons for inconsistencies between pages, and thought out responses to these issues based on examples and Wikipedia design policy. I've been met with a lot of mocking, people declaring a consensus within less then a day of a topic posting, and people making major edits on what they consider disputed content during the discussion, including deleting the content entirely and calling for other editors to reformat it, rather then reformatting themselves. I thought at first I was dealing with Wikipedia:WikiVampires, and tried to deal with that by brushing up on Wikipedia knowledge following the suggestions on that page. However, it seems that a vampire den can declare consensus without bothering to respond to those citations. Why bother when you can just make a table to mock my suggestion and tell me to "do something more constructive." I've attempted to keep from being baited, but repeatedly responses don't, "use neutral language", or "avoid snide comment."

  Like seriously, at this point my entire point is just:

  "Generally though, many academics who are known for their textbooks could benefit from being treated as authors, at least in the publications section, at least in some cases, in my personal opinion."

  I like the compromise within the line, "My general thought is that the person who creates the article selects the list style and others follow that style unless there is a compelling reason to change it" that was stated by @Rublamb. That is the advice I'm taking from this more then anything.

  These points do not seem things that should get the amount of aggressive push back I've received.

  Sorry for not immediately rolling over because I was pressured by a few admin. My understanding is that Wikipedia is not a democracy, and that "Decision making and reaching consensus involve an effort to incorporate all editors' legitimate concerns, while respecting Wikipedia's policies and guidelines." Assuming good faith when I don't feel it is being extended to me. It is hard to accept a "consensus" being declared that doesn't fully address my concerns (with reasons beyond personal opinion), offers no compromise or wiggle room, doesn't clarify on things, and that is not consistent with other pages. Sorry if this doesn't feel like your authority is being respected, but I was taught if everyone is thinking the same thing that someone wasn't thinking, and that if I have a firm disagreement on something, I am obligated to not just bend to threats of consequences from authority. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 22:24, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

• And here we go again. --Randykitty (talk) 18:49, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

  Here we go again, hopefully we can avoid declaring a consensus in less then 24 hours that addressed the points I make. It really seems several established admin declared ownership over how all articles related to academic biography are formatted. Please remain civil, and avoid using phrases like "You are right and everybody else is wrong. Unfortunately, us wrongheaded idiots are in the vast majority and you stand alone (cherry picking some remarks left aside)." As I discussed on your talk page after our previous interactions, regardless of how you intended your comments, this, combined with threats of taking action as an admin, followed by your immediate presence on multiple pages I'm involved on, really bummed me out and made me feel like I'm being followed by you to cause distress, or out of revenge for a perceived slight. Even the way you started this discussion, with "here we go again," feels more than a bit dismissive and condescending.

  That said:

  I've been reading up on this for a while

  Wikipedia:Manual of Style:

  "Where more than one style or format is acceptable under the MoS, one should be used consistently within an article and should not be changed without good reason."

  Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists on tables:

  "They are a complex form of list and are useful especially when more than 2 pieces of information are of interest to each list item."

  Consider the first entry in the list:

  • Fotheringham, A. Stewart; Oshan, Taylor M.; Li, Ziqi (2023). Multiscale Geographically Weighted Regression: Theory and Practice. CRC Press. doi:10.1201/9781003435464. ISBN 9781003435464. S2CID 262209577

  This has, Author information (in this case 3 authors), the date, the title of the book, the publisher, the DOI, the ISBN, and the S2CID. That is 7 points of information, and can be more if you count number of authors.

  Tables are good if there is more then 2 pieces of information, bulleted lists are for simpler information at a glance. Even if bulleted tables are acceptable for this instance, tables are as well. As such, they should not be changed without good reason. In my personal opinion, almost any article with a list of books should probably be converted based on increasing useability. When someone is using the list, they are looking for topics, titles, authors, and dates. A giant text wall is simply not useful when someone is "Plowing the text", trying to quickly absorb work-related information about a topic that they barely care about, they want structure, which helps their skimming. Please respond to this with relevant Wiki policy and guidelines to support any change before reverting to avoid edit warring. Any broad consensus involving pages needs to address the Wikipedia manual of style points.

  We all have design preferences, mine are based on the tenets of the Association of Structurist Wikipedians, where "tables are prized." Imposing your design preference onto an article using a different one without a strong reasons is not acceptable based on the MoS. The fact other authors have tables for their lists of publications is certainly a strong indicator that it is an acceptable choice, even if you don't like it.

Sorry for the wall of text. I know you don't like that, but I don't see any other way to engage in good faith discussion on this without elaboration, unless we're just declaring our personal opinions and taking a vote. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 19:37, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

I like tables in many instances. However, in the example of the Stewart Fotheringham article, the conversion from a bulleted list to a table reduced the information provided as the table did not include the publisher or ISBN. The bulleted list was already in publication date order, so nothing was gained there by the addition of a table. Since the authors were not split into seperate rows, the table provided the same access to this information as the bulleted list. In reality, the only benefit of the table was the ability to sort by title, but at the expense of easy access to the ISBN and publisher (as that info had been removed to a previously unneeded citation). In this instance, there is no advantage in changing from a bulleted list to a table. Thus, an editor desiring this change needs to justify it beyond personal preferences. Rublamb (talk) 00:58, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

I originated the article with a table, and later included a column to the table including references to verify the works, which was there before the citations were removed and replaced with a bulleted list. I was told that a books existence can be verified with a citation to the book, and don't see a reason this isn't appropriate in the WP policy. A hyperlink with the reference information keeps the ISBN from cluttering up the main text, and creates a citation that can be easily copy pasted to another Wikipedia page if an editor needs one.

The table could be improved, and I'm open to suggestions including a column for ISBN if you want. I'm trying to find a good approach for breaking up author lists as well, but haven't stumbled on one yet that can easily handle long lists of authors without creating many empty cells. A table allows a user to sort by date, alphabetically, etc., however the main benefit that it is easier to read and understand then a block of text if someone is plowing through an article to get a quick grasp of it. We use tables to organize printed material in textbooks, not just on the internet, because of this benefit. I'm more then happy to discuss how to improve a table, please let me know how you'd set one up for a page like that with examples.

As the table was the original format, deleting it and replacing it with a bulleted list needs to be justified beyond the personal preferences of a few editors. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 03:35, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

• Comment. Users are expected to edit in accordance with consensus, and if they can't, then their editing privileges may be constrained. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:39, 28 December 2023 (UTC).

• Hear! Hear! --Randykitty (talk) 22:23, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Consensus is not a vote, and if it is in contradiction with editing policy/guidelines, is just a poll. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 03:06, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@GeogSage: Since you value the tenets of the Association of Structurist Wikipedians, note this from the Introduction to Structuralism: "Wikipedia provides a large array of structural tools. To become a more effective structurist, familiarize yourself with these tools and apply them as appropriate. Some tools...will apply to nearly every page you work on. Others, like maps and tables, will only apply to some pages." Rublamb (talk) 03:34, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

I have read this, and believe that a table is superior if there are more then two points per line. The point I'm making is not something that is unprecedented or radical, just that book publications attributed to an author can be put into a table. Other books get similar treatment, and it improves readability tremendously in my opinion, which is why tables are used even in printed materials you can't sort. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 03:38, 29 December 2023 (UTC)