Talk:List of forestry journals

Recent edits have greatly altered this article. Rationale given was that the prior version was 'full of non notable gruft';

• Support reverting to original, longer list. This list was more useful to the reader, and
  WP:NOTDIRECTORY was misapplied here. People confuse "notable" with "has a Wikipedia article" far too easily, and lists of respectable academic journals, notable or not, are in line with the purpose of Wikipedia; for much the same reason we set a low notability bar for schools. --Sammy1339 (talk) 14:13, 7 July 2015 (UTC)[reply
  ]

  Actually, it seems like you are confusing how Wikipedia and its users use the phrase "notable" and how the rest of the world does. Having an article here does equate to how WP's users use the phrase "notable". When a topic doesn't have an article is when you can get interesting with the word "notable", but generally our benchmark is whether there are reliable sources which discuss in-depth the topic in question. Using the phrase notable to mean something else just confuses people on Wikipedia. --Izno (talk) 00:35, 12 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Support reverting to original, longer list for foregoing reasons. An encyclopaedia is for reference, not for boosting celebrity, and notability is not the same as notoriety. Taking
  WP:NOTDIRECTORY too literally or self-indulgently, we logically could land up with no periodic table, but with a table of media stars. JonRichfield (talk) 04:59, 11 July 2015 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Oppose Lists of links to articles within Wikipedia are intended for internal organization or to describe a notable subject. Currently, there are 'no media stars' but entries of articles in Wikipedia. The proposed form is a non-encyclopedic categorization that provides not really useful information other than a random directory. I suggest the user may concentrate in creating the relevant articles.Mootros (talk) 14:40, 11 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  Comment. I'm sorry Mootros, but with all due respect, your explanation does not make sense. "Lists of links to articles within Wikipedia are intended for internal organization..." Really? I thought Wikipedia articles were intended to provide useful information for the reader. This article was arguably much more useful before all the 'non notable gruft' was removed, leaving, indeed, a "list of links to articles within Wikipedia", barely more useful than a Wikipedia category (or is it?). Something seems upside down here. Regards, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 16:46, 11 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  Our guideline on lists actually enumerates that list articles have the explicit advantage of being able to provide list items which are not notable. See

  WP:AOAL #8. It is clear to me that comment does not have a consensus. --Izno (talk) 00:29, 12 July 2015 (UTC)[reply

  ]

• Usually my criterion for whether lists are

  about something Wikipedia is about), I would expect this list to fall into "grow a little/not all" and so would support reverting to the original list. --Izno (talk) 00:25, 12 July 2015 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• Support reverting to the older version. However, I would recommend the removal of some "references": some journals have a "reference" that is only a link to their homepage, others don't. If this were done systematically, this would become an indiscriminate linkfarm. I also recommend to have a look at some featured list articles. Just a list of titles is not very informative, I think, and even when such a list contains some redlinked/unlinked entries, that is barely more useful than a category. Note: I usually tend to apply
  WP:WTAF to journal list articles, because those lists tend to become veritable spam magnets for all kinds of shady journals. This list, however, has a regular and active maintainer, so I can live with ignoring WTAF here. --Randykitty (talk) 04:39, 14 July 2015 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Support in the same terms as Randykitty. Publications are their own sources for their existence. That a paper journal can be verified to exist and examined via normal university or public library methods, like any other paper source, is sufficient. We should not be linkfarming URLs to their websites. Just provide sufficient publication information to identify the source, and use journals' own URLs when they're online-only. It's totally pointless to try to limit a list like this to only entries that pass
  stand-alone list articles are for.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:58, 16 July 2015 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Support. I am OK with including journals that have sources, but preferably not just self-sources, due to spam concerns. Also, having secondary sources makes it less of a directory IMHO. Also, "notability" is a
  WP:LSC. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 11:39, 16 July 2015 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Oppose reversion. There must be a criterion for inclusion: the obvious one is
  notability in Wikipedia's sense. Maproom (talk) 07:53, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Support restoration of content, as the removal was based on several misconceptions.
  disrupts reasonable development and, as there seems to be no consensus for this removal, I am reverting. Andrew D. (talk) 12:25, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply
  ]

Extended discussion Much of the above "analysis" is confused, and we can avoid further confusion by avoiding use of "notable" in any sense other than

WT:SAL, since it affects embedded lists, too). But we should get it correct here, now, in this case, and then go have that discussion there and fix our list-related guidelines to clarify, and to stop making any reference to "notability". We mean relevance.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:07, 16 July 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

• My first question is this: what makes "Forestry journals" (as a group) notable? (My feeling is that every list article should have an introductory sentence or two to establish that the topic of the list is really notable enough to have its own separate list article) Establishing what makes the group notable may help us better define which potential members of the group should (or should not) be included in the list. Blueboar (talk) 11:15, 16 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Thank you SMcCandlish for your thoughtful input! Are you saying that one of the purposes of an encyclopaedia is to provide a "directory-like" overview of a collection of things? If so, what would be a good way to evaluate the underlying classification upon any such list is drawn up? Envisage a list based on Jorge Luis Borges discussion in The Analytical Language of John Wilkins, as cited by Michel Foucault (1970):

This passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopaedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’.

• The point of this excursus here is that creating lists ---beyond merely organising/ linking existing articles-- requires defining underlying principle of inclusion and exclusion. I am not saying that this is not possible, but it ought to be clear how we do this. Pointing to the "fact" that forestry journals exists seems not a sound argument; saying that forestry studies is an established academic disciple, may than confront us with other well-established groupings that are not necessarily as rational as (natural) scientific classifications. I have no direct answers or solutions but would like to sensitise collaborators to the difficulties this may entail. Mootros (talk) 12:18, 16 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• I find myself in complete agreement with Mootros, wish I could ever have voiced it so clearly. Most journal lists are just copies of categories, but I have given up on trying to take them to AfD. As I said above, all I do is enforce
  WP:WTAF, to avoid at least that those "lists" becoming spammagnets. None of the journal lists come even close to the featured list articles we have on WP, most don't even have a single reference (or they "reference" just homepages). None of them serve any purpose that isn't done better by cats... --Randykitty (talk) 18:31, 16 July 2015 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• @
  WP:COI to add entries for things that do not actually qualify for the list like "journals" that aren't really journals but student publications or logging industry house organs.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:50, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• @
  WP:SAL make clear, lists are not strictly a form of navigation, though often serve a secondary function as navigation; they're content, and their primary purpose is to be informative. Thus, the WTAF principle does not properly apply to all lists, even if that essay's lead seems to infer that it does.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:50, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• @
  MOS guidelines on Stand-alone lists has the same stringent requirements for lists as it has for articles. Especially the requirements of no original research and notability creates difficulties for Lists on topic X if Topic X somehow is not deemed worthy of an article itself. Again most featured lists I saw, focused on cross-linking Wikipedia articles and often given summaries of existing article entries. If we were to use list inclusion criteria based on what is "recommended as resources useful to students by university [...] programs [XYZ]" what precisely would we do with lists on topics that are not coved by rational academic curricula taught at universities in the Western world? Mootros (talk) 11:24, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• I think it would be very difficult, or even impossible, to find sufficient sources covering "forestry journals" to make that a notable subject. Heck, I think it would even be very tough to do that for a more general subject (like "biology journals" or "agricultural journals"). There are a few sources around that present a ranking of journals in a certain field, but rarely do such sources have more text than "this is a ranking of...". There are a few and we use them in some journal list articles (I would have to search top come up with examples, though; perhaps economy journals or something like that). --Randykitty (talk) 11:36, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@

Forestry journals is not the putative parent article for this article. It already has two: Foresty and List of scientific journals#Forestry (in the latter, properly for summary style, the section includes a few of the most notable, but uses {{Main}} to link to this article.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:39, 22 July 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

Proposal

Here's a proposal for

Fgnievinski (talk) 03:03, 24 July 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

• C0: trivial dump of a category is unacceptable (alphabetical listing of existing Wikipedia articles);
  • these don't add any further information and quickly become out-of-date
  • example: List_of_medical_journals
• C1: citations to external discussions about this group of journals (meta-literature) is encouraged
  • example: List_of_political_science_journals#Further reading
• C2: listing according to external lists is encouraged (e.g., ranking -- citation metrics (top-10 IF, h-index, etc.), rejection rate, volume (number of articles per year), etc. --; also white-lists (by universities and national bodies) and black-lists (
  predatory journals
  ) -- remember: all within a given subject area
  • example: List_of_mathematics_journals#Top-ranked_journals
• C3: grouping by sub-discipline is acceptable
  • example: List_of_physics_journals#By_subject, List_of_environmental_journals (see contents), List_of_humanities_journals
• C4: chronological listing is acceptable (date of foundation); perhaps only few oldest
  • example:
• C5: redlinks are acceptable and encouraged (in conjunction with all the criteria above), as they point gaps in WP's coverage
  • example: List of forestry journals
• C6: trivial intersections are acceptable if it makes sense for the discipline
  • example: List_of_philosophy_journals (by language), List_of_law_journals (by country)
• C7: tables summarizing publisher, year, etc. are acceptable but discouraged (nightmare to maintain?)
  • example: List_of_botany_journals
• C8: very general listings (all of science or social science) need capped sub-listings (top-10) and need an objective criterion (either ranking or chronological) -- "only some of the most influential" is not acceptable at face value as it's subjective
  • example: List_of_scientific_journals, List_of_social_science_journals

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.