On Thu, 2003-03-06 at 23:44, james duffy wrote:
Just to let everyone know that Susan/Lir whomever else
they are, has
unilaterally decided that the system of names on lists is wrong and should
be reversed to read {surname}, {name}, rather than the current {name}
{surname}. When I pointed out (after Zoe and I had reverted the previous
tamperings on the List of Polydactyls page) that all the lists were in the
{name} {surname} format, He/she revealed that they have so far modified at
least a dozen of the pages to confirm to what I suppose we should call the
Lir-ipedia Method.
Any thoughts? Ignore it? Challenge Susan on it? Revert changes?
While there is a certain temptation to revert anything Lir (by any name)
does on principle, this isn't a Lir issue at all but a general one.
Long lists of names by alphabetical order *are* more easily scanned
visually if presented in "Last, First" / "Family Personal" order.
This
is primarily because this exposes the sort order in the vertical
alignment:
Fa Lihai
Fassbinder, Uter
Fiddlesticks, Jane
Fizzlesticks, Bob
Fizzickston, Kelly
Fong Liuchang
Fottburton, Manny
Fotzsmith, Wigglesworth
Framsmackle, Otis
is a much easier list to look through than:
Fa Lihai
Uter Fassbinder
Jane Fiddlesticks
Bob Fizzlesticks
Kelly Fizzickston
Fong Liuchang
Manny Fottburton
Wigglesworth Fotzsmith
Otis Framsmackle
though about as good might be:
Fa Lihai
Uter Fassbinder
Jane Fiddlesticks
Bob Fizzlesticks
Kelly Fizzickston
Font Liuchang
Manny Fottburton
Wigglesworth Fotzsmith
Otis Framsmackle
which would require some ugly table code.
Now, most links are in natural name order, which is as it should be --
most mentions of people are going to be in context, not in lists;
natural name order is most appropriate for titles, and most comfortable
for most linking, and therefore that is how articles on people are
titled.
For the occasional alphabetical lists where one might want to present
Last, First order for western names, that means that the code looks
like:
*[[Jane Fiddlesticks|Fiddlesticks, Jane]]
etc.
This is trivially achievable by simple scripts or regexps in 99% of
cases for those who are too lazy to do it by hand, though they need to
be checked for exceptions.
Or, one could make a crapload of redirects -- again, either these need
to be maintained by hand or semiautomated with a script. They would very
rarely be used except in alphabetical lists (including perhaps the alpha
index at Special:Allpages).
Alternately, proposed categorization schemes could be used to produce
most such categorical lists programmatically. A category relation could
be defined with an inherent sortable and/or displayable variant,
allowing automatic generation of lists in name-sensitive alpha order,
rank order by population, age, area, etc. This would save hand-coding.
-- brion vibber (brion @
pobox.com)