[Wikipedia-l] Lists in categories

[Lars Aronsson]

List articles have been with Wikipedia since the first year. 
Categories were introduced in 2004, and many thought they were to 
replace lists, but both forms have continued to exist side by 
side.  Today list articles often contain tables with basic data 
about each item (birth years of authors, length of rivers, etc.) 
even before each item has its own article.  A typical example 
would be [[List of rivers of Argentina]] on the English Wikipedia. 

Each category has a page of its own, where supercategories can be 
added as well as short introductions.  Sometimes that is a link to 
the "main article" for the category, which is precisely that list
for [[Category:Rivers of Argentina]].

In a current discussion on the village pump of the Swedish 
Wikipedia it was suggested that the contents of list articles 
could be placed in the category pages, thus combining the two 
mechanisms. This strikes me as an obvious innovation, and I'm 
surprised that I haven't observed this anywhere on the Wikipedias 
I visit (and I had active accounts on 30 languages before SUL).

Has this combination of lists and categories been tried anywhere? 
Has any language of Wikipedia decided on a policy for or against 
such a combination?  What experience exists about advantages and 
drawbacks?



-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se