2008/6/9 Lars Aronsson lars@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_navigation...
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...