On Thu, Jun 27, 2002 at 10:48:44PM -0700, Toby Bartels wrote: <snipped good points on nature of Wikipedia that I agree with entirely>
So this is what we do with material that is correct and neutral, but still more information than a main article needs. I'm confident that if Wikipedia continues, say, another hundred years, then someday we will have a page like [[List_of_books_published_in_1962]] that lists every book published that year with an article. (And someday that page title will be too broad as well.) Since we agree that Heinlein's books deserve articles, then they'll be there. In [[1962]] itself, we'll list only Silent Spring, but there will be a link to [[List_of_books_published_in_1962]], and Stranger in a Strange Land will show up there.
Ellmist is placing these listings under a new heading of '''Books''', and while I think that it's silly to spend time listing books *now*, someday there will be Wikipedians whose normal Wikipedia activities include checking that every book with an article is in the yearly listings, just as today there are those that sometimes check for births and deaths. When a newbie looks at [[1962]] today, they won't think <How excessive!>; they'll think <How incomplete!>; and if they have enough time to waste, they'll start adding their favorite author's books. While a poor priority, I don't think that this is a bad thing; it'll start out slow, and when it gets to be too much to handle, a simple cut & paste job (maybe aided by a script?) will create [[List_of_books_published_in_1962]] and its ilk, and the future will have arrived.
I agree that [[List of Books Published in 1962]] and its ilk are completely appropriate. What I am concerned about is maintaining the integrity of the year in review pages in the process by keeping them a) short and thus useful, and b) ensuring that only really important stuff gets on there as we build content so that we keep the integrity of the pages as a reference *now*. In this specifi* case, excluding material is just as important as including it. If we just let everybody list their favourite books, we could quite conceivably end up with a list mainly consisting of Terry Pratchett and Star Wars novels. That would be worse than useless in my opinion - while Star Wars novels and Terry Pratchett books are perfectly worthy of encyclopedia articles, they are *not* in general worthy of Year In Review listings.
So, list all you like elsewhere, but IMHO not on Year in Review.
----------------------------------------------------------------- Robert Merkel rgmerk@mira.net
Go You Big Red Fire Engine -- Unknown Audience Member at Adam Hills standup gig ------------------------------------------------------------