[Wikipedia-l] Year pages: argument against artificially setting the number of things listed

[Daniel Mayer]

On Friday 28 June 2002 04:12 am, Jan Hidders wrote:
> How about the following:
>
> - We make a guideline that says that there should be no more than, say, 10
>   births / deaths / events on the page and that these should be the most
>   important ones in that year.

I don't think that would be a good idea. Some years are just loaded with many 
notable people who were either born, did something really important, or died 
during that year that continue to be relevant to us in the present. We 
shouldn't place any type of artificial rule on the number of things listed. 

After the page gets too long on a readability standpoint weighed against the 
relevance that year has to us in the present  (1940 being more relevant to us 
than say 1840 -- therefore 1940 should naturally be longer no matter what), 
it can be broken up and the less notable stuff placed in a "List of .." page. 

> - ....
>
> - If someone comes along and thinks a very important event is missing but
>   the list is already full then he or she has to remove the least important
>   one.

Again, this wouldn't be desirable with such an artificially short and 
contraining list -- what is important to a geneticist is going to be 
different than what is important to a painter and these two different 
contributors would cull very different things when having to choose such a 
"top ten list" (esp. for years that both geneticists and painters were doing 
astounding things during the same year). And when the time comes for a 
break-up of the article, less contraining rules should prevail so as not to 
impugn any truly notable events just because those events happened to occur 
in a year in which even more notable events occurred in.  

There is also the issue that the 20th century has a HUGE amount of history 
(more people, more things happening) than any other century in history (both 
in terms in sheer amount and more importantly, in terms of what is relevant 
to us today). If there are to be any rules to keep these list-type articles 
readably short, then much of that should be directed to these pages and not 
say, many of the pre-Renaissance AD or BC entries which have one or two 
things listed if anything at all. Besides, if the event weren't at least a 
little important, chances are very good that any written history from those 
earlier times wouldn't have even survived to us today. So this issue might be 
self correcting for these earlier year pages.    

--maveric149