Wikipedia talk:Move navigational lists to portal namespace

The primary desire behind this proposal seems to be to clean up mainspace of navigational content. Is there also an issue of somehow getting a better handle on navigational devices? If so, lists-as-indexes is one navigational device; but so are template info/series boxes are another, and categories. Would the portals be a good way to somehow work with all of these and think about ways to present cleaner interfaces to the multitude of navigational devices? --Lquilter (talk) 17:12, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

:With the newish Help:Category#Visualizing category tree function, this could work quite well, as shown at Portal:Internet and others.

:And Portal:Hong Kong utilizes the article navbox {{tl|Hong Kong topics}}.

:Lots of options, at least. -- Quiddity (talk) 06:46, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Last posts seem to be about a month ago, what happened with this? If it's still up in the air, I fully support it. I've been quite frustrated with the proliferation of lists and think they'd make much more sense in Portal space, particularly if associated with specific portals.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 05:34, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Assuming the basic consensus to move all navigational lists to portal space is settled, make it simple enough so a bot (or even an editor! ;-) can do it. Moving these lists under "regular" portals has all sorts of built-in problems, such as no related portal, multiple related portals and ambiguously related portals. The first set of moves should be very simple (read "mechanical"). The best way to start this process, IMHO, is to have a bot move all the affected pages linked from a Contents subpage to be under it. When the bot is finished, someone can move back anything that turned out to not be a "navigational list." After that, editors can take stock of what's left in article space and decide what to do with the remaining navigational lists (probably move each such list to be under one of the Contents subpages and create a link to it in the applicable section). The basic pages for a bot to process, with proposed naming conventions are listed below:

An approach like this would be much simpler to implement and it would allow editors to focus on making the calls that require a little more judgment than a botable "links on page" moving rule. RichardF (talk) 23:28, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

:A few notes, to get my thoughts out. I havent revisited this topic for a few months, so am a little hazy (or "fresh" ;)

:Afaik, where we were at, was contemplating moving the "lists of lists", "topical indexes", and "basic topic lists", and possibly "glossaries of", to portalspace.

:My count for :Category:Topical indexes, per the thread #Categories and pagenames above, was approx 450+.

:Also per that above thread, using articles names is quite unreliable, as is referring to the contents of Portal:Contents/Lists of topics (that page is mostly the skeleton from [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_reference_tables&oldid=31281487 List of reference tables], before we got to it, and it still doesn't have much focus of selection... ;)

:I just want to make sure that we don't accidentally include encyclopedic-articles as part of any mass move.

:Apart from that, I agree!

:I think the projectpage here probably needs to be updated, to reflect any new proposals, first. So that anyone wondering "wtf is going on" can get some quick answers, before we start implementing anything. (and to give us a chance to confirm consensus/details).

:There's a horribly large amount of archive discussion for any newcomer to this dialog to digest (or for us to remember), at (the frustratingly dispersed) Portal talk:Contents, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Contents, Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 14#Index lists, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lists of basic topics, and various other places (our talkpages, other category/portal/list discussions, etc).

:I hope that all makes vague sense. ("think big, go slow"). -- Quiddity (talk) 07:23, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

::What? ;-) RichardF (talk) 22:32, 3 March 2008 (UTC) Maybe it's better to cull the lists of any controversial items and/or cross check them against the corresponding categories first, but the above suggestion of where to put any pages that actually do get moved still stands. RichardF (talk) 22:39, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Obviously, lists of mathematics topics is not intended to be used only, or even primarily, for navigation. "Navigation" means finding your way to where you want to get to when you have in mind some specific place you want to get to. I think if I regarded this is a "navigational list", I might not object to putting it in the portal space.

:

Andrewa, I challenge you to convince us that lists of mathematics topics should be considered "navigational". Don't just act as if that's self-evident and uncontroversial; give us your arguments. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:06, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

: Now I see that in the page we're discussion here, user:Halo first said this was to be about lists whose sole prupose is navigation, THEN mentioned lists of mathematics topics among examples, and didn't even hint that that is NOT a list whose sole purpose is navigation. Just as if that were something no one could disagree with. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:39, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

::I have to agree with Michael and I'd go further and question the basic premese here, that the main name space is "cluttered' and the the Portal name space should emphasized. Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. The capacity of the main name space is essentially infinite. I see no evidence that users of Wikipedia are aided by a proliferation of namespaces, or that most are even aware that such things exist. Moving these lists to portal space will simply make them less accessible by users and therefore less useful. Portals should live or die on their own merits and not be resuscitated by grabbing content that was not created with portal use in mind. --agr (talk) 12:02, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

:::The premise to help navigation and improve organisation. I realise Wikipedia isn't paper, but don't see how that's relevant - I'm not suggesting these helpful lists are are deleted afterall. The point is that that if you're looking for an article and you find, say, List of physics topics. If this was in the portal namespace, it'd be Portal:Physics/List of physics topics, and it'd automatically have a link back to Portal:Physics at the top, which is likely very relevent to the reader's interests. I personally think that's a good thing. It would also encourage portals to link to these article lists, which is also a good thing for readers.

:::I don't see how they would make them less accessible as my personal view is to retain the cross-namespace redirects. I don't see it as "grabbing content", because I don't see this as being some sort of 'war' between namespaces in the first place. Besides, portals have been here for 3+ years now, it's clear they've already lived on their own merits, so it's not really about that either. -Halo (talk) 15:05, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

:I'd argue that any page that primarily consists of a large amounts of links to other parts of Wikipedia without much prose is a navigational aide to help you find the correct article (or, indeed, other lists) and that a general overview of the individual Mathematics topics should be in the main Mathematics article. I'm not sure how exactly I should "argue my case" when I think it's fairly self-evident. Perhaps you could explain how you think people use that article so I can respond directly?

:Oh, btw, I'm still interested in this and think it's a good idea, but I've been spending much less time on Wikipedia as of late. -Halo (talk) 15:05, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

::Your two rationales for the move, as I see it, appear to be pretty weak. 1) They are navigational, so they don't belong in articlespace. What about disambiguations? What about other lists (there are many beyond "topics in X" that you might consider "navigational"). 2) People like links to the relevant portal. So add them. Most physics articles have links to the physics portal somewhere, don't they? --Cheeser1 (talk) 15:18, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

:::I personally believe my rationales are strong enough to make it a worthwhile exercise. Adding lots and lots of portal links will probably require much more effort, with the links having less prominance and less of an impact compared to moving them. I agree Diambig. is a grey area and the current solution is less than ideal but we're pretty much stuck with that. Out of interest, what advantages do you see of keeping navigational lists in main space compared to portal space, aside from an appeal to tradition? -Halo (talk) 15:30, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

::::Namespaces are a technological artifact of computer technology. You don't find them in paper publications. They exist to allow the same name to be used in more than one context. So we have an article on mathematics, a category called mathematics, a project called mathematics and a portal called mathematics. We also have discussion pages for each of the above, also named mathematics. The eight different things named mathematics are distinguished by namespace prefixes. On Wikipedia, namespaces also serve a secondary purpose of making some information less accessible, without hiding it entirely. We keep our policies and guidelines in a separate namespace, Wikipedia, so people looking for general information in the encyclopedia won't stumble on our internal stuff by accident. None of these justifications apply here. I see zero likelihood that anyone would want to use the name "Lists of mathematics topics" with a different meaning (except for Talk). I think we'd all be horrified if that happened. Nor do I see any reason to make "Lists of mathematics topics" harder for users to find. Remembering to type "Portal", followed by a colon, followed by the name you are looking for is a significant added burden to a general audience. There is a reason why articles in the main namespace do not have a prefix. I think the burden is on those proposing this change to justify why it benefits our readers.--agr (talk) 15:58, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

:::::That has to be the most informative and persuasive argument I've ever read on a Talk page, and I entirely agree with its conclusion. Qwfp (talk) 17:13, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

:::::I couldn't disagree more.

:::::You claim you don't find namespaces in paper publications. Except, of course, the paper publication closest to Wikipedia, the Encyclopaedia Britannica's Propædia is almost exactly like what I am proposing. Every book has an index at the back, which is analogous to what I'm proposing. Every library has an index in one place which is analogous to what I'm proposing. One place where all navigation can be found in one easy to use and find way, in this case sorted by topic. Real life supports my idea.

:::::Namespaces are not purely technical or to "hide information" but to help structure the encyclopedia into a logical fashion. When you see the "Wikipedia" namespace, you know it's about Wikipedia-related issues. When you see the "Category" namespace, you know it's a category. When you see the "Image" namespace, you know it's an image. When you visit the "User" namespace, you know it's a user page. When you visit the "Help" namespace, you know it's a help page. Interwiki links exist, so you know Meta:Interwiki map goes to Meta. I want it so that when you see the portal namespace, you know it's for navigation. By your own reasoning, the Portal and Help namespaces wouldn't even exist when they do, so that ship has already sailed.

:::::Cross-namespace redirects will still exist, so you type in "List of Physics Articles" you will instantly get redirected to what you wanted in the first place. You won't lose anything by moving them, only gain the advantages from the added structure, making articles easier to find on Wikipedia, and improve the visibility of the portals, and I fail to see how those are bad things. -Halo (talk) 18:21, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

::::::This proposal starts off "Currently, there are several lists in the mainspace that primarily exist for purposes of navigation, cluttering up the mainspace needlessly. " Now you are saying there will be just as many articles in the main namespace, only they will all be redirects to the Portal name space. How does that reduce clutter? Not only will we have to manage twice as many named objects in the Wikipedia system, all links to these topic lists from regular articles will have to be piped. Still more clutter. And users who get to one of our lists will see them titled "Portal:Lists of mathematics topics"; they will not know they don't need the Portal: prefix to then find List of topics in physics. This all adds another layer of confusion that is completely unnecessary. There is nothing "logical" about filing indexes under "Portal". There is no reason why indexes, if we need them, can't live in the main namespace with the articles, as they now do. --agr (talk) 19:09, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

::::I don't appreciate that when asked to support what I consider weak rationales, I'm told that apparently my only rationale is "an appeal to tradition." Wikipedia is built by consensus, and if you consider supporting the consensus-built version until a better version supported by strong rationales and a new consensus an "appeal to tradition" then yes, I'm appealing to tradition. --Cheeser1 (talk) 16:16, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

:::::No, it was a question about why you're opposing it, and what those rationales are. You were saying "Your rationales are weak, therefore it shouldn't be done" to which I responded "Well, I disagree - I think they're strong rationales. What is the strong rationale for keeping it as it is now, without appealing to tradition?" which you haven't answered and instead you are apparently insulted by that request. I see very few disadvantages aside from wanting to keep the status quo. -Halo (talk) 18:13, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

::::::I'm opposing it because migrating so many lists across namespaces for an arbitrary and ambiguous reason, and a rationale that is weak according to many (perhaps not you), that is absurd. Unless there's actually a good, solid, consensus-supported reason, it should not be done. That's not "appealing to tradition" that's WP:CONS. agr summed up the technical aspects quite nicely, but if you'd like me to really pick apart your "rationale" then I will...

:::::::* Widens people's knowledge of the portal namespace

:::::::*:Irrelevant. Pages are not moved as teaching tools.

:::::::* Adds the "portal" link to the top of each of these pages, which improves reader's navigation

:::::::*:Portal links are included in articles/talk pages frequently. Why do we need it to be a subpage of the portal just to link to the portal? (Ans: we don't.)

:::::::* Would encourage people to link to these lists from Portals if not done already.

:::::::*:See above. If you want a link from a list or article to a portal, do it.

:::::::* Keeps articles within the mainspace and navigation away from it

:::::::*:And it also has readers jumping back and forth between portalspace and mainspace, it creates cross-namespace redirects, and I don't see a particular reason why we should "keep... navigation away from [mainspace]." Lists are lists and they go in the mainspace. This ambiguous "navigational list" thing notwithstanding.

:::::::* Solidifies the current hierarchy

:::::::*:I'm not sure what you're going for here, but things change on Wikipedia. We shouldn't be solidifying hierarchies.

:::::::* Won't artificially inflate the Wikipedia articles count

:::::::*:Because that's a super big deal we should worry about, especially when it's well-understood that articlespace contains articles, redirects, lists, disambiguations, etc.

::::::There are also reasons presented as to why keeping the lists where they are is sensible, and while you might think these reasons are less persuasive, that's only your opinion. You can't make such bold changes, over people's legitimate concerns and objections, based on these reasons above - especially since they're so easily refuted (again, regardless of if you believe they've been refuted well or not). --Cheeser1 (talk) 18:50, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

:(←) I also don't see any particular benefit to moving numerous lists to the Portal namespace. The "navigational" aspect of these lists is hard to quantify, so the scope of the move is unclear - isn't every list navigational in some sense? The "article count" is indeed not something that we should be concerned about - the algorithm for determining which pages are "articles" is very crude, and not intended to be very accurate. Even if there are 1000 lists moved, that would only be .05% of the current count of 2 million articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:41, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

"Halo" wrote:

:

: The point is that that if you're looking for an article and

:

You can't get much more confused or miss the point more completely. He also wrote:

:

: I'd argue that any page that primarily consists of a large amounts of links to other parts of Wikipedia without much prose is a navigational aide to help you find the correct article

:

again missing the point with amazing completeness.

:

The point is that you use these lists when there isn't any article or topic you're looking for. That's called browsing. Lists of mathematics topics is extremely well-designed for that purpose and that is primarily what it's for. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:04, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

:I will concur here. It's a good summary of some of the talking-past-each-other problems that are happening. If Halo wants to talk about "if you're looking for an article" then I can't imagine why he wouldn't want us in articlespace to begin with. Furthermore, he doesn't seem to understand lits - Halo, have you read WP:LIST by any chance? If you haven't, I suggest you do so before before continuing to advocate this change. --Cheeser1 (talk) 19:16, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

::From what I can tell, the only thing you seem to agree with is that you also disagree with me and wish to join in pulling apart what I've said with little rationale because it's obviously both fun and constructive. -Halo (talk) 23:30, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

:I wish you wouldn't call me "confused" or saying I "miss the point" - I understand the situation, the primary situation being that you disagree with me. The fact you don't seem to understand that and have decided to resort to pulling apart what I've said seems a little odd, "Michael Hardy".

:This was a bold idea and obviously not enough people are positive about the change, enough people dislike the idea (rightly or wrongly), punctuated by the fact I don't have enough time to work on it and the fact that people would rather describe my opinion as "confused" than understand it's a difference in opinion so I've rejected it.

:I often wish people would try and see the bigger picture, and the upsides, behind the reasoning and concepts of an idea instead of immediately focusing all their efforts on picking any idea apart based on around smaller detail and people's poor choice of wording - perhaps if we did that we'd have more positive, less controversial, changes coming out of ideas via compromise and discussion rather than just overwhelming negativity. -Halo (talk) 23:30, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

::Nobody's suggesting that you have bad intentions or that you are stupid or anything of the sort, but you proposed an idea that really serves no purpose, has no real benefits, and doesn't have much support. Take it or leave it, but nobody thinks less of you for proposing it - although this conversation may have been adversarial, I'm not sure that's something you can (or should) point fingers about. --Cheeser1 (talk) 08:36, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

My 2¢. I understand and agree with both perspectives covered on this page. However, as I said above and elsewhere, I think lists of mathematics topics was a bad example-case to be using in this discussion, as pages like lists of films are unlikely(?) to become as well-finished as the lists of mathematics topics (because they're inherently unsourcable, because they're just an index of list-articles within Wikipedia). It's the purely navigational (non-encyclopedic generalistic collections) or disambig-like pages (eg lists of languages), and the topical indexes (eg List of biology topics), that I had in mind during these threads.

I do think Michael Hardy was unnecessarily condescending in his remarks in this particular thread, especially the scare-quoted "Halo". But I also understand the frustration over having lists of mathematics topics both FAR-demoted, and being discussed for a move to a less-used namespace, which I think is what his impassioned stance stems from.

There are some good ideas on this page as a whole, and in the fullness of time some of them will surely be revisited. Thanks to all for contributing to it, and good night for now :) -- Quiddity (talk) 17:53, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

with the aggressive pushing of Wikipedia:Outlines by {{user|The Transhumanist}} since May or June 2009, this problem has again become much more urgent. We are now not looking at a few scattered "lists of topics", we are looking at a concerted effort of creating a list-like shadow article for each major (and not-so-major) topic.

"Outlines" are essentially "navigational lists" reloaded, on a much larger scale, and pushed with an astounding amount of "criminal energy", to the point where full article WP:LEADs are copy-pasted to the top of the lists, the lists are touted in talkpage templates and by {{tl|main}} templates. --dab (𒁳) 09:59, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

This is an 18 months old rejected proposal, yet I see the page has been edited recently. I would advise those interested purely to see it as historical and not to edit or try to resurrect it - some of the criticism of this proposal is now moot, and the baggage resurrecting this exact proposal wouldn't be helpful in any attempt to resurrect the core idea.

However, I firmly believe that the core idea still should be implemented, especially now there is a clearer distinction between an 'index' and an 'outline' over pure lists as the ambiguity of what an encyclopedic list was which caused this to be rejected the first time around. If someone wishes to create a similar proposal, I suggest creating a new page writing up the details of the proposal, posting it in relevant places (posting in the village pump, WP:CENT, the "lists" page, the relevant portals, proposed renames etc). -Halo (talk) 17:32, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

: I agree that this page should remain historical only. The Transhumanist 18:41, 30 July 2009 (UTC)