[Wikipedia-l] Lists in categories

[Amir E. Aharoni]

2008/6/9 Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se>:
> 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).

It's not a very bad idea, but i tend to agree with the policy of the
English Wikipedia on the matter:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lists
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories%2C_lists%2C_and_navigational_templates

Those pages basically say that both categories and lists have their
place in Wikipedia and explain why.

I can also add a couple of my own points to it:

1. A good list is a list which is well-maintained by an expert on the
subject - but that could be said about any article.

2. In the Hebrew Wikipedia there are no defined policies about lists
and their encyclopedicity* is decided by a notability discussion on a
case-per-case basis. Some category pages in he.wiki have a list of
links to articles that should be in the category, but weren't written
yet, as a form of a "todo list" and i've never seen anyone proposing
to delete such lists.

--
* The word "encyclopedicity" doesn't appear in Merriam-Webster
Dictionary, but if you google it, you'll find it - guess on which
site...

-- 
Amir Elisha Aharoni

English - http://aharoni.wordpress.com
עברית - http://haharoni.wordpress.com

"We're living in pieces,
 I want to live in peace." - T. Moore