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

[Slim Virgin]

On 6/1/07, The Mangoe <the.mangoe at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

And when they are sourced, the sourcing can be inconsistent, because
there's often no agreed definition of the term. So with the Jew lists,
any reliable source that has called someone a Jew means they're added
to the list, even if they're clearly not Jewish according to most
definitions, and don't self-identify. So all we''re doing is repeating
the mistakes of sources. Of course, we do this in articles too, but in
articles you can produce another source that says something else, and
you can discuss the nuances. But with the lists and categories, the
entry is either in or out.