[WikiEN-l] trying hard to do a list right

[Ray Saintonge]

Tom Parmenter wrote:

>Tokerboy and I are having a conversation about a list of songwriters.
>
>He started with [[List of songwriters/temp]].  I made some comments on
>the talk page and then started [[List of songwriters/temp2]] with
>further talk page discussion.  I followed the idea we had discussed
>here of using other people's lists as the basis of a Wikipedia list.
>
>I'm not really wild about either the first idea, list the top 12 in
>each genre, nor the second idea, use the lists from Songwriter Halls
>of Fame, because they are so long.
>
>Even if you aren't interested in songwriters, the issue is a recurring
>one and hard to solve, so maybe you'd like to chime in.
>
This is often a no win kind of article.  This kind of problem came up at 
[[List of famous Canadians]] with DW involved in his usual techniques 
for making friends. Eventually people just went away.  If you try to 
keep the lists short somebody will always be upset when you leave off 
their favorite.  If they are open-ended they get awfully long, but can 
still be useful as a wish-list for future articles.  

Some kind of weighted voting feature could be handy here.  Voting for a 
list would be left perpetually open, and running vote totals maintained. 
 Unlike voting on policy proposals, the results will not affect anything 
else, and that's what makes it philosophically workable.

Eclecticology