User:Rudyfalcon/sandbox

This is the user sandbox of Rudyfalcon. A user sandbox is a subpage of the user's user page. It serves as a testing spot and page development space for the user and is not an encyclopedia article. Create or edit your own sandbox here. Other sandboxes: Main sandbox | Template sandbox Finished writing a draft article? Are you ready to request review of it by an experienced editor for possible inclusion in Wikipedia? Submit your draft for review!

This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

Shortcuts WP:SAL WP:STAND WP:STANDALONE MOS:SAL

Manual of Style (MoS)
Content Accessibility Biography Disambiguation pages Organizing by subject Gender identity Hidden text Infoboxes Linking Self-references Words to watch
Formatting Abbreviations Capitalization Dates and numbers Pronunciation Spelling Text formatting Titles of works
Images Captions Image placement Icons Images
Layout Layout Lead section Tables Trivia sections
Lists Lists Lists of works Road junctions Stand-alone lists
By topic area Legal Legal Trademarks Arts Anime and manga Comics Blazons Film Lyrics and poetry Novels Philosophy Television Video games Visual arts Writing about fiction Music Music samples Record charts Stringed instruments History Military history Regional Specific naming conventions Canada China (and Chinese) Egypt France (and French) Hawaii India Indonesia Ireland Japan Korea Macedonia Malaysia Pakistan Philippines Poland Singapore Trinidad and Tobago Religion Islam Latter Day Saints Science Chemistry Computer science Mathematics Medicine Taxonomy Sports Cue sports (Snooker) Figure skating (Terminology)
Related guidelines Article size Article titles Categories, lists, and navigation templates Categorization Citing sources Hatnotes Notability Signatures Subpages Talk page guidelines Template namespace Understandability User pages Wikimedia sister projects WikiProjects
Overview Contents Tips
v t e

Stand-alone lists (also referred to as list articles) are

or series of items discussed in prose form. Such articles often, but not necessarily, indicate their list nature using titles beginning with "list of", "timeline of" or similar. Not all articles can easily be identified as list articles or non-list articles.

Being articles, stand-alone lists are subject to Wikipedia's content policies, such as

guidelines.

A well written

article body

.

Lead

Stand-alone lists should begin with a

lead section

that summarizes its content, provides any necessary background information, gives encyclopedic context, links to other relevant articles, and makes direct statements about the criteria by which members of the list were selected, unless inclusion criteria are unambiguously clear from the article title. Even when the selection criteria might seem obvious to some, an explicit standard is often helpful to others, and reduces the tendency to include trivial or off-topic entries. The lead section can also be used to explain the structure of embedded lists in the article body when no better location suggests itself.

General formatting

There are a number of formats, both generalized and specialized, that are currently used on Wikipedia, for list articles.

1. Alphabetized lists or indexes, such as
   Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (0-9) or Index of economics articles
   , as well as simple alphabetized lists without letter subheadings.
2. Annotated lists, such as
   List of bicycle manufacturing companies
   .
3. Subheading-structured lists (i.e., categorized or hierarchical lists), such as List of cat breeds, Lists of mathematics topics or Lists of philosophers.
4. Chronological lists, such as
   List of winners and shortlisted authors of the Booker Prize for Fiction
   . (Lists whose titles begin with "timeline of" are always chronological.)
5. Sortable lists, which are formatted as
   List of social networking websites
   .

Specialized list articles

1. Timelines, using the timeline syntax, such as Timeline of architectural styles or Graphical timeline of the Big Bang. Most "timeline of" list articles do not use this specialized type of timeline syntax.
2. Glossaries, such as Glossary of philosophy or Glossary of pinball terms, where the annotations are definitions of the list's entries. Wiktionary is also compiling glossaries (in Appendix: namespace), and glossaries found on Wikipedia should best be transwikied to wikt:Category:Glossaries

Selection criteria

Selection criteria should be unambiguous, objective, and supported by reliable sources. In cases where the membership criteria are subjective or likely to be disputed (for example, lists of

.

When establishing membership criteria for a list, ask yourself:

• If this person/thing/etc., wasn't an X, would it reduce their fame or significance?
• Would I expect to see this person or thing on a list of X?
• Is this person or thing a canonical example of some facet of X?

Common selection criteria

• Every entry meets the
  best lists on Wikipedia
  reflect this type of editorial judgment.
• Every entry in the list fails the notability criteria. These lists are created explicitly because most or all of the listed items do not warrant independent articles: for example,
  List of minor characters in Dilbert or List of paracetamol brand names
  .
• Short, complete lists of every item that is verifiably a member of the group. These should only be created if a complete list is reasonably short (less than 32K) and could be useful (e.g., for navigation) or interesting to readers. The inclusion of items must be supported by reliable sources. For example, if reliable sources indicate that a complete list would include the names of ten notable businesses and two non-notable businesses, then you are not required to omit the two non-notable businesses. However, if a complete list would include hundreds of entries, then you should use the notability standard to provide focus to the list.

"Creation guide" lists—lists devoted to a large number of

Wikiproject's space, or list the missing articles at Wikipedia:Requested articles

.

Titles

Shortcuts

• WP:LISTNAME
• WP:NCLIST

Main page: Wikipedia:Article titles

Standard practice is to entitle list articles as List of ___ (for example list of Xs). A list of lists of X could be at either Lists of X or at List of X: e.g.,

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (long lists)

.

The title is not expected to contain a complete description of the

, famous, noted, prominent, etc. in the title of a list article. Similarly, avoid titles like List of all Xs.

• People: People by nationality are either
  List of United States people redirects to Lists of Americans which contains, amongst other things, lists by US state. (Special treatment is necessary because American
  is ambiguous.) Note, however, that lists of people organized by individual city should be at List of people from [city], rather than List of [city] people. In all relevant lists, people is far preferred to alternatives such as persons or individuals.
• Language: Poets and authors listed by language are at, for example List of German-language poets (see List of poets for the list-of-lists of them).
• Fiction and real life: List of fictional dogs is a list of fictional creatures, whereas List of individual dogs is a list with real-life examples. Note that the lead section of both lists explains what their contents are.

.

Chronological ordering

Chronological lists, including all timelines and lists of works, should be in earliest-to-latest chronological order. Special cases which specifically require frequent daily additions, such as

.

Appropriate topics for lists

The potential for creating lists is infinite. The number of possible lists is limited only by our collective imagination. To keep the system of lists useful, we must limit the size and topic of lists.

Lists that are too general or too broad in scope have little value, unless they are split into sections. For example a list of brand names would be far too long to be of value. If you have an interest in listing brand names, try to limit the scope in some way (by product category, by country, by date, etc.). This is best done by sectioning the general page under categories. When entries in a category have grown enough to warrant a fresh list-article, they can be moved out to a new page, and be replaced by a See [[new list]] link. When all categories become links to lists, the page becomes a list repository or "

, which is made up of specific categorical lists.

Lists that are too specific are also a problem. The "list of one-eyed horse thieves from Montana" will be of little interest to anyone (except the person making the list).

Some Wikipedians feel that some topics are unsuitable by virtue of the nature of the topic. Following the policy spelled out in

, they feel that some topics are trivial, non-encyclopedic, or not related to human knowledge. If you create a list like the "list of shades of colors of apple sauce", be prepared to explain why you feel this list contributes to the state of human knowledge.

Lists of people

A person may be included in a list of people if all the following requirements are met:

• The person meets the
  BIO1E
  .
• The person's membership in the list's group is established by reliable sources.

Special care must be taken when adding living persons to lists based on

}}.

Lists of companies and organizations

A company or organization may be included in a list of companies or organizations whether or not it meets the Wikipedia notability requirement, unless a given list specifically requires this. If the company or organization does not have an existing article in Wikipedia, a citation to an independent, reliable source should be provided to establish its membership in the list's group.

Lists of lists

Wikipedia has many list of lists articles. On lists of lists, nonexistent lists should not be included. That is, all the links in a "lists of lists" should be active (blue, not red).

Lists of lists should also be available as alphabetical categories. Put lists that have actual content in one of the subcategories under Category:Lists.

Lists of words

Some lists of words – glossaries, as opposed to lists of notable entities – may be better suited to Wiktionary, in accordance with Wikipedia is not a dictionary, particularly if it is just a list of words, with little comment. Some lists can yield an encyclopedic page, such as List of English words containing Q not followed by U, the condition being that notable secondary sources for the topic can be cited.

Glossaries (annotated topical lists) have historically been compiled on Wikipedia. The condition is that the topic of the glossary in question can be established as notable within Wikipedia's usual criteria (

.

Categories, lists and navigation templates

As useful as lists are, certain lists may get out of date quickly; for these types of subjects, a category may be a more appropriate method of organization. See Wikipedia:Categorization and Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates for more information on the appropriate times to use lists versus categories.

Taxonomic links

For many genera there may be a considerable number of species. For the smaller genera a

it is probably better to move these into their own page. The bulk of the page will be taken up by the list. Such lists do qualify as encyclopedic: for many of these genera there are specialized monographs to assist in the identification of these species.

Citing sources

Stand-alone lists are subject to Wikipedia's content policies and guidelines for articles, including

four kinds of material absolutely required to have citations

.

When an inline citation is not required by a sourcing policy and editors choose to name more sources than strictly required, then either

List of fruits

, will not be supported by any type of reference.

Bulleted and numbered lists

• Do not use lists if a passage is read easily as plain paragraphs.
• Use proper wikimarkup- or template-based list code (see WP:Manual of Style/Lists and Help:List).
• Do not leave blank lines between items in a bulleted or numbered list unless there is a reason to do so, since this causes the Wiki software to interpret each item as beginning a new list.
• Use numbers rather than bullets only if:
  • a need to refer to the elements by number may arise;
  • the sequence of the items is critical; or
  • the numbering has some independent meaning, for example in a listing of musical tracks.
• Use the same grammatical form for all elements in a list, and do not mix sentences and sentence fragments as elements.
  • When the elements are complete sentences, each one is formatted with sentence case (i.e., the initial letter is capitalized) and a final period.
  • When the elements are sentence fragments, the list is typically introduced by a lead fragment ending with a colon. When these elements are titles of works, they retain the original capitalization of the titles. Other elements are formatted consistently in either sentence case or lower case. Each element should end with a semicolon, with a period instead for the last element. Alternatively (especially when the elements are short), no final punctuation is used at all.

Lists and the "Related changes" link

A very useful Wikipedia feature is to use the "Related changes" link when on a list page. This will show you all the changes made to the links contained in the list. If the page has a link to itself, this feature will also show you the changes made to the list itself.

See also

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists
• Wikipedia:Listcruft
• Help:List
• Help:Table