[WikiEN-l] Thoughts on naming people - article content, this time.

[The Mangoe]

On 6/1/07, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's not so easy.[....]
>
> So, that's what I'm up against for *one* single article. Now imagine
> trying to do this on hundreds of them.

These lists, whatever they are about, are a sourcing nightmare. About
a month ago we had a go-'round about a bunch of "List of [type of
work] that break the fourth wall" articles -- that is,
plays/films/etc. where one of the characters addresses the audience
directly. These lists are *huge*-- because in our irony-addicted age,
it's something that is done as a matter of course. Not surprisingly,
the attempt to delete them failed, partly because of people trying to
protect their work, partly because of the "seems useful" vote (which
I'm beginning to think we should deprecate in a big way), and partly
because the lists were serving as a cruft attractor to keep the stuff
out of the main article. But of course, not a single entry of the
hundreds was cited. And it's a problem because a real theater
professional might have considered a lot of them as not true cases.

I'm guessing that as a rule these membership categorizations are
frequently unsourced.