Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Newsletter/20131003/Feature

Feature: One person's cruft is another person's pleasure: How to address listless list management

Submitted by Thibbs with additional contributions by Blake, Masem, Diego Moya, and Binksternet; Edited by Torchiest.

Well it's happened, WP:VG. We have more than 1000 list articles. The date of the actual milestone was already several newsletters ago, but today we will be focusing on it and the implications it has for how the WikiProject currently manages and should in the future manage our lists. Lying somewhere between navigational aids and traditional articles, list articles Wikipedia-wide represent an alternative article style that sets Wikipedia apart from traditional paper encyclopedias. Unfortunately, however, they are often subject to major problems and neglect, and are thus often proposed for deletion. To address this WP:VG should (1) adopt a standard format for the article-aspects (everything apart from the list proper) based on broader Wikipolicy, and (2) expand the current assessment regime to allow greater granularity for lists. Accomplishing this will take input from editors across the spectrum. In this feature we present the views of several established editors who have dealt closely with list articles or embedded lists in the past. We look at what lists mean for Wikipedia, current problems and common sense solutions, and conclude with a proposal for the future of lists at WP:VG.

To examine the benefits of list articles and how they can be used to set Wikipedia apart from traditional paper-based encyclopedias we turn to views by two editors. User:Nightspore has been editing at Wikipedia since April 2006, and User:Blake has been editing since January 2008:

“ List of fictional X" article[s] [are] of the [sort] that collectively comprise a clear genre on Wikipedia. ... A very clear set of criteria [makes them] more logical and discriminating in [their] membership. As for boundedness and closedness, ... many ... [have] a tag saying that by its very nature this is an "incomplete list" - see WikiProject_Lists#Incomplete_lists. As that page says, Wikipedia plays a "role as an almanac as well as an encyclopedia." Being encyclopedic isn't the only criterion for entries. ... What ... almanacs contain, among other things, is "lists of all types" (emphasis supplied), as the entry on almanac says in its lead. [Good lists use] well-formed, parsimonious, clear, relevant, and commonsensical criteria, [and can be] a useful resource for ... writers, useful for critics, useful for genealogists of fiction ... [all of whom] could use it not only as a resource but as a place for discovering and drawing connections. ”

–Nightspore (quotation drawn from a December 2011 discussion)

“ Lists come in all different scopes, sizes, and quality. Some are simply a collection of links, some give basic information about each subject, and some, like most video game character articles, are simply a cleaned up version of what an article would look like if you threw full articles about each character all in one list. It is hard to throw lists all under one umbrella, and make guidelines that address them as a whole. ... In my experience, usually if an article does simply say "List of x characters" it is ... a hodgepodge of character sections with a poor lead, and no sections other then the characters. But then you see an article like [Characters of Kingdom Hearts or] Characters of Final Fantasy VIII, which [have] development and reception and the like of characters as a whole. That is what most character lists should strive for. If they were to be truly notable as a collection of characters, there must be development and reception of them as a whole, not simply individuals. ”

–Blake

Problems and Solutions

The major problems faced by lists relate to their size, indiscriminateness, the inclusion of listcruft, and a lack of management due to neglect. List articles exert a uniquely attractive force on a certain kind of editor. There is something about a presumptively complete list that invites scrutiny and actual completion should the list be missing qualified items known personally to the scrutinizing editor. Sadly not all contributions are of equal quality. Sometimes entries are added that do not meet the inclusion criteria or that are so trivial as to be unduly represented in the list. Even when contributions are of high quality, many lists are open-ended in a way that would potentially lead to an infinite length if not managed (e.g. restricted definitionally or split). List management, stewardship, and oversight are rare for lists Wikipedia-wide, and this (combined with the contribution-related problems just discussed) leads directly to the frequent nomination of lists for deletion. While the community often !votes to keep lists, the fact of their frequent nomination in the first place suggests that there are real problems that need to be addressed.

Luckily for us, the broader community has weighed in on the most fundamental list article issues in the past and there currently exists a guideline that provides a good basis for the development of a standard list article format. The most fundamental guideline-based consideration in creating a stand-alone is that:

Being articles, stand-alone lists are subject to Wikipedia's content policies, such as verifiability, no original research, neutral point of view, and what Wikipedia is not, as well as notability guidelines.

–Stand-Alone List Guideline

The fact that list articles must adhere to the normal article guidelines and policies is surprising to many editors and can often lead to conflicts between editors seeking to clean up list articles and those whose primary aim is completeness. The most common conflicts arise around the application of WP:V/WP:RS and WP:N.

Taking these rules in turn, we first recognize that it is Wikipedia's practice to require the inclusion of inline citations directly supporting any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged. This means that the implicit claim of membership of every member of a list must be at least capable of being bolstered by a reliable source. By common practice and local consensus, it is often considered sufficient at list articles for the members of the list to be considered verifiable by merit of their being bluelinks. The underlying idea is that since WP:V/WP:RS are widely understood to be mandatory for non-list articles, reliable sources will be found at those articles. In practice, however, it is strongly advisable to import relevant references from the blue-linked articles of any and all list members whose inclusion is likely to be challenged. And of course this is mandatory if any list members are in fact challenged.

For list articles that are aiming for featured status, and for lists that have proven to be problematic in terms of attracting listcruft, it is often helpful to impose a blanket sourcing requirement for all list members. To discuss an example of blanket sourcing in lists, we turn to two more established editors. User:Diego Moya has been editing at Wikipedia since October 2004, and User:Masem has been editing since March 2006:

“ Many lists are based on a clear fact that is indisputable, such as a list of games by publisher. But there are lists that are built on a more subjective quality where sourcing for such lists becomes critical to avoid bias and favoritism introduced by Wikipedia editors towards the list topic. In the case of Art game (games that are aimed to produce a reaction from the audience) and Video games as an art form (games that are exemplified as examples of works of art), where both articles include lists of example games, editors and players will have their favorite titles that they feel will be on one or both of these lists, and without sourcing, these lists could have grown to indiscriminate levels. To counter this, we implemented a sourcing requirement that requires the game to be mentioned as an art game or as a work of art by reliable sources. In the case of art games, these sources could include the developer's own statements about the game as the quality of being an art game is set out by theme. For those games considered works of art, we required only independent reliable sources as this is more a function of the industry's reaction to the concept. Setting these bars has allowed these lists to be populated easily and trimmed appropriately when editors add game examples that don't meet these sourcing requirements. This also prevents editors from removing titles that they don't believe fits the definition, as it is not Wikipedia's place to make that determination; as long as some reliable source has made that statement, the game should be kept in the example list. Overall, establishing such criteria helps to manage these lists with a minimum amount of conflict among editors. ”

–Masem

“ We can follow several non-exclusive approaches to maintain a healthy list, ranging the inclusion criteria, the way to handle growth, and discussion strategies at the talk page. Robust lists that are accepted by the community have objective inclusion criteria that are easy to assess, without much place to disagreement, and strict enough to leave as many items outside its scope as those included. For video game topics, a solid criterion is to rely on professional critics and criticism from reliable sources for each item. We required a detailed description by at least one critic (beyond a binary “belongs/doesn’t belong to the group") for the art lists, as it amounts to significant coverage, enough to provide relevant information for each list entry. When the list grows above a few dozens, splitting it into separate sections or pages allows it to grow while keeping a useful structure. The lists for “art games” and “games as an art form” were originally a single list, later divided to provide clearer inclusion criteria for each half. Finding a natural split point (such as genre) helps to create viable sub-lists. Failing that, common organizational criteria (year, country or platform) can be used to divide it in reasonable chunks; or a group of verifiable but non-notable items can be pulled apart as a companion list, if the group itself has received commentary. All these keep the list size manageable, allowing each topic to grow at a different rate without making them unbalanced. Finally, for problematic items and while the inclusion criterion was still unclear, we followed a successful strategy by keeping at the talk page a backlog of candidate and rejected additions. Preserving such dubious entries, instead of merely deleting them, allowed us to refine the inclusion criterion; it also explained the reasons for why some entries had been excluded, avoiding repeated reverts of items that didn’t belong. Such backlog provides a good way to find patterns in the kind of items that editors want to include in the list, which again can help identify viable groups for splitting or creating new related lists. ”

–Diego Moya

The determination of what precisely must be verified by reliable sources may again be gleaned from a review of WP:SAL where it is recommended that stand-alone lists begin with a proper lede presenting a well-defined set of inclusion criteria. These criteria should in turn be reflected in an obvious title according to WP:LISTNAME. Also expected in the lede section is a summary of the topic and a demonstration of the list's overall notability. This will naturally require a well-referenced introduction to the list and this in turn requires an encyclopedic topic of appropriate breadth. Guidance on appropriate topics for list articles can be found at WP:SALAT. In support of the topic a clear set of list inclusion criteria are necessary, and the most common such criteria are recommended at WP:CSC. These include:

1. Every entry meets the notability criteria for its own non-redirect article in the English Wikipedia. – Useful for larger lists.
2. Every entry in the list fails the notability criteria. – Useful as companion lists to CSC#1 lists.
3. Short, complete lists of every item that is verifiably a member of the group. – Useful when indiscriminateness poses no length problems.

But these represent merely the most common selection criteria, and in many cases workable lists can be formed using alternate criteria and through appropriate stewardship thereof. To discuss an example where appropriate selection criteria and the drafting of a proper lede have greatly improved a list article, we turn to User:Binksternet, who has been editing at Wikipedia since July 2007:

“ In June 2012 a dispute arose at List of fictional badgers regarding inclusion criteria. One editor wanted to have every list item of a fictional badger meet the notability criteria for an article, or at least be a major character, and the other editor wanted only the fictional work to meet the notability criteria, with the badger character allowed to be a minor character. There was also the question of whether the species must be "badger" or could it be a similar animal. In answer to a Third opinion request I came to the dispute with a fresh outlook. I noticed that the list had not required every entry meet WP:N until after the second disputant had joined, so I determined that the previous, looser criteria #3 should stand. I opined that the character should be compared to or described as a badger, by critics or in the fictional work itself, otherwise the list title would not be correct. This determination was accepted as consensus even though other lists of fictional animals, specifically List of fictional dogs, used the narrower criteria #1.
With the matter of inclusion criteria settled, the article underwent expansion, especially of the lead section which blossomed from one terse sentence to four descriptive paragraphs. Seeing the article's advanced state of development in February–March 2013, science writer Alice Bell of The Guardian called it "a thing of beauty". ”

–Binksternet

Future outlook

If it is recognized that normal article policies and guidelines including Verifiability by Reliable Sources (WP:V/WP:RS) and Notability (WP:N) apply to Wikipedia's list articles, then the importance of appropriately sourced ledes containing well-defined list selection criteria becomes apparent. And if common sense is used to interpret guidelines lacking specificity with regard to lists (e.g. WP:N's failure to cover whether notability of lists relate to the narrow topic of "lists of X" or to the considerably broader "X" alone should be resolved according to availability of RS coverage). Simply holding WP:VG's lists to these already established standards will do much to improve their overall quality. But is there more that can be done to improve our lists?

As has been common practice at WP:VG in the drafting of its bylaws and guidelines, we look to WP:MILHIST for guidance, and here we find details concerning a significant step that could be taken to address list article quality. In its assessment of articles, WP:VG's current practice is to label all lists as List-class until they are improved sufficiently to gain Featured List status. The lack of granularity in the quality ladder leading to featured status means that many wonderful (well-maintained, properly-sourced, and notable) list articles are grouped together in the same assessment category as some of the worst examples of gameguide, listcruft, and indiscriminate nonsense. This practice should be changed and WP:MILHIST's 6-rung ladder of list quality suggests a commonsense approach to achieving this. Below is included

Below is reproduced in its entirety the quality assessment scale used by WP:MILHIST:

Prose article				List article
		Stub				The first stage of an article's evolution is called a stub. A stub is an extremely short article that provides a basic description of the topic at best; it includes very little meaningful content, and may be little more than a dictionary definition. At this stage, it is often impossible to determine whether the topic should be covered by a prose article or a list, so this assessment level is shared between the two scales.
Start				List		A stub that undergoes some development will progress to the next stage of article evolution. An article at this stage provides some meaningful content, but is typically incomplete and lacks adequate references, structure, and supporting materials. At this stage, it becomes possible to distinguish between prose articles and lists; depending on its form, an article at this level will be assessed as a Start-Class prose article or a List-Class list.
C				CL		As the article continues to develop, it will reach the C-Class level. At this stage, the article is reasonably structured and contains substantial content and supporting materials, but may still be incomplete or poorly referenced. As articles progress to this stage, the assessment process begins to take on a more structured form, and specific criteria are introduced against which articles are rated.
B				BL		An article that reaches the B-Class level is complete in content and structure, adequately referenced, and includes reasonable supporting materials; overall, it provides a satisfactory encyclopedic presentation of the topic for the average reader, although it may not be written to the standard that would be expected by an expert. Articles at this stage commonly undergo peer review to solicit ideas for further improvement. B-Class is the final assessment level that can be reached without undergoing a formal review process, and is a reasonable goal for newer editors.
GA						After reaching the B-Class level, an article may be submitted for assessment as a good article. Good articles must meet a set of criteria similar to those required for the B-Class assessment level, and must additionally undergo the formal good article review process. This assessment level is available only for prose articles; no comparable level exists for lists.
A				AL		A good or B-Class article that has undergone additional improvement may be considered for the A-Class assessment level. An A-Class article presents a complete and thorough encyclopedic treatment of a subject, such as might be written by an expert in the field; the only deficiencies permissible at this level are minor issues of style or language. To receive an A-Class rating, a candidate article must undergo the formal military history A-Class review process. The A-Class rating is the highest assessment level that may be assigned by an individual WikiProject; higher assessment levels are granted only by Wikipedia-wide independent assessment processes.
FA				FL		The featured article and featured list ratings represent the pinnacle of article evolution and the best that Wikipedia has to offer; an article at this level is professional, outstanding, and represents a definitive source for encyclopedic information. Featured status is assigned only through a thorough independent review process; this process can be grueling for the unprepared, and editors are highly advised to submit articles for A-Class review prior to nominating them for featured status.