From: Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] listcruft
On Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:41:22 +0300, "Jussi-Ville Heiskanen" cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
Not so much a case in point, but a touchstone. Do *you* think we are better or worse than Britannica for having "List of songs about masturbation". Stand up and be counted...
No, a case in point. There is no encyclopaedic topic "songs about masturbation" because there is nothing about masturbation which has any logical connection with songs, and vice-versa (although I suppose one could stretch a point and say that, for example, Whitney Houston's "I will always love you" gives more pleasure to the performer than anybody watching). The connection is an arbitrary one, and pretty much every entry in the list was also unsupported by references, because in the end what constitutes being *about* something, rather than simply mentioning it in the lyrics somewhere? I am all for setting up a sister project, triviapedia or whatever, for collecting such examples of word association gone mad, but there's no question in my mind that a neutral, verifiable encyclopaedia is not the place for them.
I wish there were widespread general consensus that there should not be a "list of X" article unless there is already a high-quality article on the topic of "X." And the list should begin as a section within the "X" article and should not be broken out until it becomes unmanageably long.
I wish there were widespread general consensus that every item in a "list of X" article should be individually referenced. A year or so ago I tried checking out such lists, particularly those of which it was asserted that a reference was not needed because "references can be found in the linked article," and my experience was this was usually not true.
The reason why references are needed is that in many cases list inclusion involves a matter of judgement, and the judgement should be that of an authoritative third party, not that of Wikipedia editors.