User talk:Ozob/Archive 4

This is an archive of past discussions with User:Ozob. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

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Email

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Access

I hope you're enjoying this discussion about access. It is something our project needed to address. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 12:29, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Dashes and music-album lists

Hi, I think this is what it's referring to. Tony (talk) 12:25, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

WP:WPM interview

Update: Thanks for participating in the interview. Just a heads up that section editor Mabeenot, has move the publication date to this coming Monday, 21 February. The final draft has now been posted. Please go through it to check for any inaccuracies, etc. Thanks again. – SMasters (talk) 23:48, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost

Hi, could you review how I've presented the successful nomination of the two animations in "Featured pictures"? If there's a way of presenting what they're about to the intelligent non-mathematician, that would be good. link. Tony (talk) 10:29, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I was away all weekend, so this is too late to help you. But the description is fine. Ozob (talk) 12:21, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Derivative

Hi Ozob, I see that you've reverted my modification in the article Derivative, section Derivatives of elementary functions, from $f'(x)=0.25x^{-0.75}\,\!$ back to $f'(x)=(1/2)x^{-1/2}\,$ . I wonder why the latter seems superior to you? I do see a couple of reasons myself why mine might be somewhat clearer. Iamthedeus (talk) 22:15, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, my reasoning is mainly that 1/2 is a simpler number to think about than 0.25. I also prefer to use fractions rather than decimals because too many students identify numbers with their decimal expansions, and I think that using fractions fights that. So it's nothing deep. It sounds like you have a reason for preferring 0.25, so please say why. Ozob (talk) 02:05, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Well in the case of using 1/2 or 0.5 as the value of r in

f(x)=x^{r},\,

one finds created in the resulting derivative a visual symmetry that is meaningless and thus potentially misleading: the number one-half appears both as the coefficient and, in negative form, as the exponent. Of course this is an anomaly that occurs for only one of the infinite possible values for r, and thus is meaningless, and yet it is a rather salient feature of the example, all the more so for readers with less of a grasp on math. This seemed to me reason enough to change the value of r in the example to some other number, such as one-quarter, in order to avoid any unnecessary confusion as to the true rationale for the values of the coefficient and exponent in the derivative function, while preserving the other important features of the example (such as the derivative being undefined for negative values of x).

This, too, is nothing deep, and surely most readers would not be thus confused upon encountering the one-half version, but I see no harm in opting to avoid that possibility entirely.

As for my choice of decimal over fraction, it was merely that the "0.25" strikes in me a slightly sharper conception of the number than does "1/4"—I suppose I myself am one of those who at heart identify numbers with their decimal expansions—but I certainly see the value of discouraging that, so I do not dispute your preference for using fractions.

Also, I noticed that you reverted a number of modifications I had made to various formulas on the page; specifically, I inserted "\,\!", forcing them to be rendered as TeX PNGs. I did this because they had been rendered in HTML (for me, at least—even if they contained just "\,") and as such happened to have some readability issues that were fully avoided by rendering them as images. Is there any reason I should know of for which "\,\!" would be undesirable in these cases?

Iamthedeus (talk) 01:31, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree with your reasoning, so I've changed the article to use 1/4 instead of 1/2. To me, 0.25 seems much less precise than 1/4: The former literally means "25 parts out of one hundred", and I have a hard time visualizing one hundred parts; whereas the latter means "one part out of four", which I can easily visualize.

\, should always force a formula to be rendered as HTML, unless perhaps you've changed your math rendering preferences. Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics) explicitly suggests \, as a way to force PNG rendering. I figured that your use of \,\! was an attempt to prevent the formulas from having extra space at their ends. This can't happen in practice because of how they're rendered, so I thought the extra characters amounted only to clutter. But if they have a real effect then you should start a thread about this at the math MoS, as a lot of articles may have to be changed. Ozob (talk) 01:57, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the default math rendering preference is, but mine is set to "HTML if possible or else PNG", which would explain why \, was insufficient. In any case I was guided by Help:Displaying_a_formula#Forced_PNG_rendering which seemed to indicate that the practice of using \,\! is acceptable. I suppose, though, that the rendering option "Recommended for modern browsers" would be more ideal for someone like me with a modern browser, so I'll switch to that. Iamthedeus (talk) 04:59, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

The italics issue

Hi. Just a note to say that I have raised the italics issue here (with a mention here). I am broadly in favour of re-opening the discussion — as a proper centralized discussion — though obviously without wanting to take on a huge workload personally. Regards. --Klein zach 04:23, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Salebot

Hi Ozob; "Boubaker polynomials" are pretty infamous on frwiki, and Salebot is trained to automatically revert edits containing the term (in French), ignoring 1RR for this specific case. You're on Salebot's whitelist now. --gribeco (talk) 00:32, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi. Just for your information, Rirunmot was blocked (global account) in May 2009 on it: as sockpuppet of Softer, main account of the "boubaker team" on it:. Rhadamante (talk) 04:33, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Straw poll regarding lists of mathematics articles

In light of your participation in the discussion(s) regarding the treatment of disambiguation pages on the "Lists of mathematics articles" pages, please indicate your preference in the straw poll at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Straw poll regarding lists of mathematics articles. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:58, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Good advice at WT:WPM

I shouldn't have gotten heated. I'll try to count to ten in the future. In hind sight I can see that if I don't understand the words it is a bit silly to take offense to them. Thenub314 (talk) 21:29, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Spacing of en dashes

I just wanted you to know that I've since loosened up my thinking about the rules on the spacing of certain en dashes (the "von Keipert" thing) – and I think I took a rather too hard line against your proposals at MoS, last year, was it? Tony (talk) 04:08, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

(Sorry for the delay, I've been on vacation.) Yes, you did take a rather hard line. I did too. I've also softened on this issue, and I don't object to spaces as much as I used to anymore. I'm sure that we can come to some consensus! Ozob (talk) 12:41, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

pentagram map questions

Hi Ozob, I tried to answer your questions on the pentagram map discussion page. I didn't do a perfect job, but I hope it helps. RichardEvanSchwartz (talk) 05:46, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Riemann Integral

Thank you for your edits...I made a lot of stupid typos despite my efforts with the "Show Preview" button.

Fraqtive42 (talk) 18:54, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Infinite Numbers

Thank you for your mathematical insights. I could follow almost all of them. Indeed Infinite reals can be straightforwardly added and subtracted in a convergent manner, but they CANNOT be multiplied convergently. You may not even multiply a real by an infinite real by your argument. Then again, who says that numbers have to be multiplyable, maybe we can be SATISFIED with mere addition and subtraction. Anyway I had fun concocting this and fun reading your eloquent treatise. Thank you Sir! — Preceding unsigned comment added by BenHeideveld (talk • contribs) 21:04, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Hey ozob

Thanks for showing me what was wrong, I'm just writing here to let you know I read your response. I won't make those mistakes again, but I definitely need to do something about that derivatives page. It is way too hard for learners to understand.

Anyway, thanks for your message! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Evan2718281828 (talk • contribs) 02:49, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

If you have any suggestions or ideas, please be bold and add them to the article. Or if you're not sure how, you can write a note on the article's talk page asking for help. Myself, I am pretty much out of ideas on how to make the article more accessible. Ozob (talk) 12:00, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I probably put my edit in the wrong place.

I spend very little time voting and engaging in the behind the scenes stuff that helps keeping wikipedia rolling along. This is a good reason as to why. Thanks for paying attention even tho I apparently was not. EInar aka Carptrash (talk) 15:08, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

"Outline of" articles

TT's thoughts

I think you may have overlooked a context of the word "outline". One major use of the term is short for "hierarchical outline", which is synonymous with "hierarchically structured list". The context is used mostly in academia, writing, and in the realm of professionally published encyclopedias (most notably the Encyclopædia Britannica and the World Book Encyclopedia).

The Wikipedia article tree structure presents the hierarchical outline as one of the forms of tree structure.

It is obvious that "Hierarchical outline" is just too cumbersome for titles. Therefore, we use its shortened form "Outline" in titles, which is the same way that teachers, writers, and publishers of other encyclopedias refer to hierarchical outlines.

Hierarchical outlines have several major uses, from the document planning skeletons (for books/papers/reports) taught in primary school as a writing tool, to reverse outlining for revising existing documents, to the topic outline synopses provided by college professors to their students, to the subject outlines presented in professionally published encyclopedias — World Book uses them as article summaries, while the Encyclopædia Britannica developed one colossal outline, of all knowledge, as a plan for the encyclopedia's 15th edition, and published it as a topic outline to show how everything is related to everything else.

Here's a little glossary of outline-related jargon:

Outline - Short form of "hierarchical outline". The conventional form of hierarchical outline is an indented list where each item on the list is preceded by an alphanumeric prefix (e.g., I.A.1.a... or 1.1.1.1..., etc,). The prefix establishes a path for each item. Though there are many other formats, including non-prefixed. The important thing is that all (hierarchical) outlines represent their items in a hierarchy, that is, they present them in levels. Wikipedia outlines do this through subheadings, followed by indented lists (bulleted or not).
Sentence outline - hierarchical outline composed of sentences. Used by students to plan papers, and by authors to plan books. Also, it is the format of Britannica's Outline of Knowledge, which is a topic outline in which most of the topics are presented as sentences (due to lack of simple terms to describe them).
Topic outline - hierarchical outline composed of topics, as opposed to sentences. For most topic outlines, the topics are single words, or terms, though some topics require an entire sentence to name them. Used in secondary education to present course
Reverse outline - hierarchical outline built from an existing non-outline document (book, paper, etc.). Often used as a revision tool or to build a table of contents. On Wikipedia, most "Outline of" articles start out as reverse outlines of the subject material present subject's myriad of articles across all of Wikipedia.
Subject outline - outline of a subject, rather than of a specific document.

"List of ... topics"

By suggesting that outlines be "eliminated", you inadvertently targeted outlines titled "List of ... topics". Most of the opponents of "Outline of" articles are equally opposed to "List of ... topics" which differ from "Outline of" articles only very slightly (mostly in name) - the contents (below the lead section) are almost identical in structure.

Please be more careful in the future. I don't want to see topic lists deleted any more than you do.

Based on their content, structured topic lists are hierarchical outlines. As soon as you've added topical subheadings to a topic list, you've given it a hierarchy. It then falls under the definition of "hierarchical outline". It doesn't matter how far down the levels go. Because in a summary format (which is one application for outlines), you can be as detailed or as little detailed as desired.

Keep in mind that merging outlines into indexes is the same thing as deleting outlines. "Outline" refers to the format. Remove the format, and you've deleted the outline.

If "Outline of" articles get deleted by community consensus, whether by AfD or via merge-proposal, the "List of ... topics" articles won't be far behind. Most opponents of outlines don't differentiate between "Outline of" and "List of ... topics". And some are opposed to all topics lists (including the "Index of" articles).

Mathematics

I've been leaving the mathematics topics lists alone, even though they are hierarchically structured topics lists (topic outlines).

Concerning the new guy (Gamewizard)... He isn't a member of WikiProject Outlines, and has been acting entirely on his own. He apparently likes lists, and has been revamping them all over the place (topic lists, timelines, help menus, outlines, etc.). He's been damaging outlines as much as the other list types, though he tends to add valuable links to outlines, so I haven't been too critical. He's unfamiliar with our guidelines and conventions, and he's a bit talk-page shy, but his energy-level and enthusiasm are awesome. I hope he doesn't get discouraged from editing Wikipedia by you guys coming down on him too hard. (Please don't scare him away). I believe he'll make a fine editor once he has learned the ropes.

Come to think of it, I should probably invite him to join the Outlines WikiProject.

Outlines WikiProject

Keep in mind that even if the outlines get renamed, the WikiProject will most likely get renamed along with them. The focus of the outlines wikiproject is on hierarchical outlines (hierarchically-structured topics lists, as opposed to alphabetical topics lists), regardless of the outlines' titles. See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Indexes.

What's next?

I look forward to your thoughts and ideas. The Transhumanist 22:18, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, that's not TLDR for me, but I don't mind reading. (If I did I wouldn't be on Wikipedia. :-)

My objection

As I see it, right now, the only important difference between a "list of ... topics" article and an "outline of ..." article is that the former is sometimes a hierarchically structured list of articles, and usually the articles have no annotations; and the latter is always a hierarchically structured list of articles, and most of the articles have annotations. In addition, the latter sometimes has prose which is not well integrated into the list structure: While the prose may be under a topic heading, it could stand alone.

I don't mind having hierarchically structured annotated lists of articles grouped by topic. I think that would be wonderful. (And in fact I'm rather dismayed that most of the support so far for my RfC has been from the "throw out all navigational aids" crowd. I don't agree with them.) But I do object to standalone paragraphs and to annotations which might as well be standalone paragraphs. They are redundant content forks, and I have a strong aversion to content forks. They are impossible for editors to maintain and annoying as all heck for readers.

I don't think that annotations alone make a list a redundant content fork. (Everyone agrees that summary style is desirable and effective, and it's not a redundant content fork.) It's the scale of the annotations that bother me. They seem to grow without end; like how some medieval authors annotated the works of the ancients so heavily that they ended up writing their own books. If the annotation needs footnotes then I think it's gotten too big.

I can't tell what your eventual goal and what the Outlines Project's eventual goal is for these articles. But judging from what people say are the good outlines, it looks like that goal includes what I would call content forking. I don't support content forking, hence my proposal to eliminate outlines. (There's some hair-splitting going on here, since the hierarchically structured annotated lists grouped by topic that I approved of above are, as you pointed out, outlines in the dictionary sense of the word.)

Naming

My objection is mostly not to the name "outline". I think that sometimes that name sounds silly (Here is an outline of a circle: ∘), but it seems to be appropriate for what you are trying to accomplish.

I would prefer if outlines were all named "List of ... topics". And I think alphabetical lists of articles would be better off at "Index of ... articles". "List of ... articles" would be OK, but I think it might be confusing since the names would be so similar. Of course, achieving that kind of consistency on Wikipedia is probably hopeless.

The new guy

I don't want him to be discouraged, either, even though I didn't like what he did. He seems kind of young to me, but I think he has lots of potential. (He's bold and I like that.) I think he'd make a good member of the Outlines project.

Outlines WikiProject

As long as the Outlines WikiProject doesn't advocate content forks, I don't want them to go away. Right now I don't think (or I am at least not convinced) that's the case; this is why I said in my RfC that the project would be marked historical. But if I'm wrong about that, then that part of the proposal is unnecessary.

I think the Outlines project would do itself a huge favor if it (1) came up with some careful guidelines about what is and is not appropriate in an outline, and (2) raised at least three outlines to FA status. The two are complementary: If you have careful guidelines, that helps everyone (including FA reviewers) know what a good outline is; and if you can raise three outlines to FA status, then you will have received a lot of feedback from a lot of people on what a good outline is (which helps you to write good guidelines).

FA might not be the right forum. FL might be more appropriate. I'm not sure.

One of the reasons why I think this is necessary is because right now nobody knows what an outline is or what it's good for. I have been disappointed at the quality of the oppose votes on my RfC, because they are mostly just WP:ILIKEIT. (Granted, that's also true of a lot of the supports, and most votes on most things are that way...) Having guidelines for an outline would clarify the purpose of an outline. Knowing what an outline is would help people explain why they think outlines are useful; and you would probably not get any more RfCs like mine.

It seems pretty clear to me that the eventual result of the RfC will be "no consensus". If, after it's over, everybody goes their own way and pretends like the RfC didn't happen, then I will be very disappointed. If an Outlines guideline comes out of this somehow, I will be satisfied. Ozob (talk) 00:20, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and I should add that while I have expressed disgust at the Outlines WikiProject, it was directed at what I see as inappropriate behavior, specifically, non-consensus page moves. The project stopped that behavior stopped a long time ago. I wrongly assumed that the new guy was a member of the Outlines project and so laid some of the blame for his moves at your feet. But I was wrong, and I would like to own up to being wrong. Ozob (talk) 01:47, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Reply to Ozob

I'm glad we can talk about this casually, rather than in the combative argumentative mode that has been all too common concerning these pages.

The new guy

Gamewizard71 appears to have disappeared. His last edit was September 7th. I hope we haven't scared him away. Hopefully, he's just busy with the new school year.

Content forking

I believe the redundant content forking guideline is intended specifically to prevent Wikipedia from having 10 articles on the same precise subject under various synonyms. For example: "United States", "The United States", "United States of America", "USA", "The USA", etc. If there was an article by each of these names, that would be rather confusing. It would also detract from the quality of Wikipedia, which would be chock full of incomplete duplicates. Finding the most complete article on each subject would be a pain.

I do not believe the guideline was intended to prevent different types of pages on the same subject from existing. The purpose of a list (including indexes and outlines) is different than the purpose of a prose article.

The guideline generally does not pertain to the subsection level, as that falls under the summary format guideline.

Leads and annotations

You stated: "I don't mind having hierarchically structured annotated lists of articles grouped by topic." You also mentioned that you didn't like stand-alone paragraphs or annotations as extensive as paragraphs. You also suggested that we develop outlines to Featured status.

The above stance is currently contradictory, in that section leads are generally required for a list to reach Featured List status, and hierarchical outlines are lists.

I understand your objection to section leads - they defeat the purpose of an outline. They are a non-hierarchical format. Paragraphical format is the exact opposite of an outline. So then, why have a lead paragraph at all? Let me explain...

Please keep in mind that outlines are evolving, and the whole endeavor has been a trial and error learning process. Many subjects are not self-explanatory - you can't tell what they are by their subject titles. So to aid in subject identification, we started adding short lead sections. But when we took on the geography branch of knowledge and endeavored to build an outline for each country, writing a lead from scratch for each was too much for the small team to handle. So we copied the lead section of each country with the intention of condensing them down to the bare essentials for each country, to perhaps the one or two things each country was most renowned for. To help readers recognize what country they were reading about.

The team disbanded after about a year, and it was too much for me to handle it all by myself, due to subsequent events. A particular individual began to wage war on the outlines and upon me, and I became engaged in defending the outlines against him with little time to develop them. The war lasted a whole year. When it began, I found that any outline I worked on became his focus, and so I took the opportunity to work on a volunteer project in my locality. Meanwhile, I switched to cleaning up the damage the opposer inflicted rather than develop the outlines (he had turned it into an uphill battle). My switching to repair turned it into an uphill battle for him. He was like an ant attacking an elephant. After a year, he had damaged about 10% of the 500+ outlines. Since then, most of his damage has been repaired.

So we were left with bloated lead sections in the country outlines. Eventually, according to plan, they will be condensed, but there is a lot of other issues that need to be cleaned up first.

What we were aiming for was similar to the Featured List criteria: "It has an engaging lead that introduces the subject and defines the scope and inclusion criteria." Though instead of "engaging", our aim was on assisting with subject identification and minimizing confusion, and minimizing the need to click all over the place to other pages trying to figure out what subject the outline was about. In accordance with FLC, I agree that the subject should be introduced in the lead section.

As far as I'm concerned, the lead isn't part of the outline itself. It's just a description of the subject that precedes the outline, which is the content of the page (this is expressed in the final sentence of each lead section: "The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to"...).

An example of a nice short lead that assists in subject identification can be found in Outline of basketball.

I don't agree with FLC that each section needs a lead paragraph. That can usually be accomplished with a list item with a short annotation. I don't believe section lead paragraphs violate the content fork guideline, it's just that they're not hierarchical content.

Concerning annotations, the need arose out of the necessity to click on each link to see if you wanted to read about it. To see what it was. So we started adding annotations to aid in topic selection. Even though the main purposes of outlines are structural and summarizing, as navigational aids outlines function much like menus or tables of contents, and brief descriptions have proven very useful for browsing.

To get the general gist of what a list of 50 topics are, it is much faster to read 50 annotations than it is to click on each of the 50 links to read their descriptions and return to the list to read the next one. This is the main reason we started adding them.

History of the endeavor, and naming

It started with the discovery of a page in the Wikipedia namespace called "Wikipedia:Basic topics". It was a list of pages called "Basic x topics", where x was the subject of each list. The list included about 50 subjects.

The set of pages was created by Larry Sanger at the dawn of Wikipedia to identify missing topics for major subjects via redlinks.

Eventually, all the links turned blue, and so what you had were rudimentary topics lists on each subject gathering dust. Some of the lists had been renamed and moved to article space. So I cleaned up the rest and turned them into "List of basic x topics" articles and moved them into the encyclopedia proper. I had done work on navigation menus for Wikipedia, so naturally I added the list of basic topics lists to it.

I noticed big gaps in the set and started filling them in with new list pages. Under their various names from that time and since, I've created hundreds of these pages (under my current nym and previous nyms).

But something unexpected happened. The lists expanded beyond basic. Editors just kept adding more links and the lists grew more and more comprehensive. And due to the visibility of the project, with its own navigation page and WikiProject support, most of the lists became more comprehensive than the corresponding topics lists. (Non-basic topics didn't have a WikiProject devoted to them back then, but now they have two: the Outlines WikiProject and the Indexes WikiProject). Another factor was that the "basic" lists were all hierarchical. The whole thing was growing into an outline of all of human knowledge. It was obvious a rename was needed.

Initially, we were going to rename them to List of x topics, but we discovered there were two sets of lists competing for that same name: hierarchical topics lists and alphabetical topics lists.

To solve that problem, I started renaming them to outlines and indexes.

The important thing is that there are two sets of names, to accommodate the two sets of lists.

Interestingly, there were never any complaints about the index renames. The name is very intuitive, almost natural. Unfortunately, relatively few people know what a hierarchical outline is. But since that was the most accurate name for the structured topics lists, we used it. And, since the indexes were also topics lists, it seemed ludicrous to use "topics" for outlines while there was clearly another type of topics list that wouldn't be included (indexes). I figured that using the two separate names for the two types of topics list was less awkward semantically.

But before I could finish renaming outlines, I got into a heated argument with someone, he took it personally, and the war mentioned above started. I should have just let him blow off steam in the initial encounter, rather than blowing steam back at him. Oh well. Live and learn.

A resulting problem

One problem that has emerged from this progression of events is that there are two names for outlines on Wikipedia: "Outline of..." and "List of ... topics". As you touched upon above, they differ little in their content scope and formatting.

There are about 500 "Outline of" pages and around 200 "List of ... topics" pages.

Except for the math lists, the selection of "List of ... topics" are almost random compared to the list of outline-ofs.

Outside of math, there is virtually no development support nor WikiProject support for "List of ... topics". Most of them sit for years almost untouched. Meanwhile, there's at least one outline developer (me) who continuously monitors outlines to maintain them and in addition tries to cycle through them all at least once per year to update and further develop them (including placing links leading to them).

When I pull a "List of ... topics" page into the outline project, I do so with the intention of cleaning it up and of bringing more visibility and support to it. "Outline of" pages generally receive more edits due to their inclusion as a subsystem of Wikipedia's contents system, and their growing recognition by readers as a standard article type and navigation aid.

As an example of the work I put into such a conversion, compare the Outline of poker with the way it was before the conversion. If the conversion work I do gets renamed back to "List of", I have less incentive to upgrade such pages. It would be more productive for me to start new outlines from scratch on each subject, or simply create outlines for subjects with no topic list coverage yet.

I'd like to further develop the poker outline to be comparable with Outline of chess. They're natural siblings.

Featured status

We tried to get one of the outlines to featured status, but the participants at Featured Lists insisted that every item in the list have a citation, just to prove that it belonged to the subject (i.e., met the inclusion criteria). I thought that was ludicrous, since the overarching subject is usually self-evident once you click on the link. See Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of basic geography topics.

It is mind-numbingly tedious to gather citations that state something belongs to a particular subject, for instance to verify that "mountain" is a geography topic. The semantics of the rules come into play, and there's a whole debate as to what the source needs to say. Is a statement needed? Or is inclusion in a geography textbook good enough? Some would claim that providing the latter is original research, that it's inclusion is being interpreted. It's a quagmire.

Since then, we've been adding annotations to outlines, so it might be enough to provide citations for the claims made in the annotations rather than to support the inclusion of the listed items themselves.

But my guess is that an effort to build a featured outline will not be undertaken again until outlines have attained critical mass. Prior to that, a nomination would probably revert into a naming war. Not worth the trouble.

The eventual goal

The Outline of chess is the model I'm working toward. Short lead paragraph that identifies what chess is without itself becoming the article. No lead paragraphs in sections. Short annotations just long enough to explain what each topic is.

Outline guidelines

There is an essay concerning the formatting and development of outlines. See Wikipedia:Outlines. I expect that eventually it will evolve to guideline status.

The essay is informative, as it covers how to develop an outline. Those interested in establishing a guideline should probably discuss and edit the essay.

I hope this all makes more sense

I've done my best to provide some background on how outlines evolved into outlines and the rationale behind it.

I look forward to your comments (especially on the eventual goal mentioned above) and will be happy to answer any questions you may have. The Transhumanist 00:35, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Reply to The Transhumanist

Content forking

For the most part, WP:CFORK doesn't address content forking in the present context. It's focused on forking entire articles (as in the examples you gave). But there are a few parts which seems relevant. Under WP:CFORK#Redundant content forks, there's the sentence, "flesh out a derivative article rather than the main article on a topic". It's not clear to me what the sense of "derivative" is, but it seems to mean "related". Also, there's the section WP:CFORK#Related articles, which talks about articles whose content has a lot of overlap. It's not clear from this just what proper summary style is, and just how much duplication is acceptable.

You brought up the example of leads and prose in featured lists. Perhaps you will not be surprised to find that I am also critical of the current interpretation of WP:FL?. I don't see anything wrong with the featured list criteria as they are written, but in practice the result is often a minor content fork. While it may not be possible in practice to write a list that would be promoted to featured status and would also meet my standards (and I admit that I'm quite stringent on this topic), I don't believe that it's impossible in principle.

You express the hope that we're almost in agreement over what outlines should and shouldn't be. I am not so hopeful. I see this as a major point of contention.

Featured status

You comment that, "It is mind-numbingly tedious to gather citations that state something belongs to a particular subject". I agree. My impatience for citation gathering is why I don't do FAs. But that is not why the FL nomination for List of basic geography topics failed. It failed because there were no citations for the structure of the list. So, for example, you break down geography into human geography and physical geography, and you provide citations for that. Good. But then you go on to say that there are some further branches: Integrated geography, geomatics, and regional geography. It's you who's saying that, not a reliable source. That's a problem.

Let me give another example, this time from my own field of mathematics. Suppose that you are trying to determine the right structure for the List of mathematics topics. You want to know: What should the top level headings be, what should their subheadings be, and so on? Well, it turns out that there is a standard for such things. The American Mathematical Society created the Mathematics Subject Classification so that it would be easier for research mathematicians to look up papers they're interested in. So you could use that to organize the list of mathematics topics.

But that's not your only option. The Library of Congress assigns call numbers using their own classification (sketched at Library of Congress Classification:Class Q -- Science#QA Mathematics, though it's actually finer than that). And the Arxiv created and uses their own classification system. And you're not done there, because the International Mathematical Union uses yet another. Which suggests the question: Who's right? The answer is that none of them are right. The systems are meant for different purposes: The MSC is for indexing all research papers ever published, the LOC system is for monographs and books, the Arxiv system is for tracking recent preprints, and the IMU system is for deciding which talks you want to go to at the International Congress of Mathematicians.

If you're going to make a list of mathematics topics then you can only use one system. If you used one of the above-mentioned systems, then you'd be able to cite a source for your list's structure. If you make up your own system, then you're introducing your own point of view as to what the important divisions of mathematics are and are not. That's a POV issue.

I think this is an almost insurmountable problem with outlines. I think it's very, very hard to find a reliable source that gives a comprehensive list of all topics in a subject area. But if you're going to keep outlines in article space, then they need reliable sources. If that's not possible, then they should be in a different namespace with different featured criteria. And if it's not possible to raise an outline to featured status, then I am not sure what outlines are doing on Wikipedia on the first place. Any content that we want to have should have the possibility of featured status.

(By the way, I have said before that I think that when the annotations in an outline have footnotes, then they are too long. I'd like to say that I see that as a different context from the present one. There is nothing wrong with the structure of the outline being properly cited and footnoted.)

Naming

Wikipedia:Outlines points out that outlines are a type of list article (under WP:OUTLINE#Wikipedia outlines are list articles, and share list article features). I said above that I think it would be good for all alphabetical lists of articles to be named indexes and for all outlines to be named list of ... topics. I still believe that would be a good idea. It would be easier on our readers. At the least, I think it would be a good idea to rename all the alphabetical lists to indexes. I said before that I didn't know whether that was a realistic goal. Do you think it might be? If so, then that would be a good step for Wikipedia. Ozob (talk) 00:52, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Reply to Ozob

Content forking

You mentioned that leads are a major point of contention.

I'm sorry, I forgot to lay out a possible easy fix for this. First, let me cover section leads:

Rather than section leads, the section's main list item could be included, with an annotation like the other items, like this (from the roasting section of the Outline of food preparation):

Roasting – cooking method that uses dry heat, whether an open flame, oven, or other heat source. Roasting usually causes caramelization or Maillard browning of the surface of the food, which is considered by some as a flavor enhancement.

Barbecuing – method of cooking meat, poultry and occasionally fish with the heat and hot smoke of a fire, smoking wood, or hot coals of charcoal.
Grilling – applying dry heat to the surface of food, by cooking it on a grill, a grill pan, or griddle.
Rotisserie – meat is skewered on a spit - a long solid rod used to hold food while it is being cooked over a fire in a fireplace or over a campfire, or while being roasted in an oven.
Searing – technique used in grilling, baking, braising, roasting, sautéing, etc., in which the surface of the food (usually meat, poultry or fish) is cooked at high temperature so a caramelized crust forms.

As for article leads, I've been working on a possible solution to this, called the "Nature of" section. I've been using it to describe the classes the subject of the outline belongs to, but it could be expanded or modified to include the main attributes of the subject.

The main thing I'm concerned about is that the reader be able to ascertain what the outline is about without having to click somewhere else to find out.

But, fixing outlines to your specifications would prevent and thus preclude them from becoming featured lists. You and Featured Lists are working at cross-purposes. I would go so far as to say that the Featured List Criteria of the inclusion of leads has community consensus, while your objection does not. However, I don't care about featured lists, and I think spending the time to reach their arbitrary standards is a waste of time.

Integrating everything into the hierarchical structure of each outline would be fine with me.

So, in your opinion, how can we best convey the definition of the outline's subject?

Citations

With respect to citing the structure of an outline, that's ludicrous. That would be the same as requiring citations for the headings and subheadings of articles, and for their order of presentation. There is no requirement on Wikipedia for that. One standard subtopic is "History of". It would be insane to require a citation to establish that such a subtopic belongs. Verification is required only where challenged or likely to be challenged. I'm dead set against holding outlines to providing citations when the corresponding article lacks them. Whatever citations the outlines need, articles on Wikipedia should already have.

But, showing that branches of a field are branches is easy, and the citations for this can be included in the annotation. Proving that every item in an outline belongs to the subject isn't even a standard we apply to articles.

Remember, outline articles are not about outlines, they are outlines. In articles, the structure of paragraphs (the order of sentences) and of headings, is not subject to citation — and similarly such citations aren't required of outlines either. Factual statements are what need citations.

Naming

Yes, I think renaming alphabetical topic lists to "Index of" is practical and realistic, because the name is so intuitive that virtually nobody objects. Almost all of the alphabetical topic lists are already named this (go on, take a look around). And guess who renamed them?

But, alphabetical topic lists are still topic lists. Which makes giving another class of topics list the class name somewhat awkward, semantically speaking, since it implies that alphabetical topic lists are not topic lists. The Transhumanist 02:47, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Reply to The Transhumanist

Content forking

I think your idea for replacing section leads is excellent, as I think it matches the philosophy of outlining much better. However, it doesn't change my stance on whether or not such an item is a content fork. Being a content fork or not is independent of format.

Having no lead at all would, I think, be somewhat jarring for the reader. The reader needs at least a single sentence, maybe more. There's a little space available before it becomes a content fork. Also, I am not convinced "Nature of" will work for every outline. For some it will (outline of chess, for example). But it doesn't seem to fit outline of Japan very well.

I agree that FL and I are working against each other. I don't mind being a minority or disagreeing with consensus. I am still strongly opposed to what I see as content forks, but if you think that I don't represent the community consensus on this matter, then you can choose to ignore me. (I won't be offended.)

Citations

Citing certain aspects of an outline's structure seems reasonable to me. Difficult, yes. But unreasonable, no. If an outline is an article—if it is more than just a navigational aid—then all of its content must be properly sourced.

In an ordinary article, that means that the facts contained in the prose or in lists must be sourced. Because its structure doesn't say anything vital about the nature of the subject, there's no reason for its structure to be sourced. But for an outline, the meaning of the content depends vitally on the structure. For example, the outline of finance lists short-rate model and spectral risk measure as "Fundamental financial concepts". Are they? I wouldn't call them fundamental; I don't think they're as fundamental as interest or money. If I did call them fundamental, it would only be my opinion. If you choose to call them fundamental, then that's your opinion. But we're not supposed to provide our opinions.

Maybe that's not a particularly good example, because most of the bullets under "Fundamental financial concepts" stand alone; they don't have anything beneath them. That's why I think the fields of mathematics are a good example. Each of them is a broad topic, and there's space for large outlines underneath all of them. And you can't justify any one organization better than any other; it's just an opinion. You're not allowed to express your own opinion on how mathematics should be organized here. You need to cite someone else.

I agree that it's not necessary to establish that "History of" is a subtopic of a given topic. It's also not necessary to establish that a topic can have fundamental subtopics. I am even willing to say that it is probably not necessary to provide citations for the major sections of most outlines. (By which I mean: They are not likely to be challenged.) But it is necessary to provide citations for some of the subtopics, like which financial concepts are fundamental or what the subfields of mathematics are. These are things that would need citations in an article, so they need citations in an outline, too. That doesn't mean that every item in an outline needs a citation justifying its existence. You might be able to find a reference that gives a list of fundamental financial topics; then you would only need to cite that list, and only once. If it's not possible to provide a citation, then the choice of which topics are "fundamental" is clearly an opinion, and it shouldn't be in Wikipedia.

Featured content

Is there any kind of plan (or even just vague hope) to ever make any outline into featured content? Would you hope to make outlines into featured lists, or into something new ("featured outlines")? Ozob (talk) 01:19, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Reply to Ozob

Content forking

I'm glad you like the idea for replacing section leads with list items including annotations.

Granted, content forking is still a concern, but not if annotations are made only as long as is needed to convey the meaning of each term. Elaboration may still fall within Wikipedia:Summary style, but threatens to weaken an outline's structure with linear paragraph pose.

Concerning the main lead section, a similar approach may work, with a short statement as to the contents of the page followed by the outline's first list item, the subject itself including an annotated description. For an example see this version of the Outline of chess. I look forward to your comments on this approach.

Another option would be to put the subject's list item in the "Nature of" section, but I believe it would be more intuitive to Wikipedia's readers if it were presented in the outline's lead section.

Citations

You mentioned that all content must be sourced, including structure. I agree that all outline content (including structure) must be subject to Wikipedia's content policies, including WP:VER. I don't believe that means that the entire structure of a subject must already exist out there (in the form of a classification system), because presenting such a structure would itself be a copyright violation (we used to have the entire structure of the Propaedia in proect pages, for instance, but they had to be deleted for copyright concerns). The relationships between headings and subheadings are the important thing: that's where the structure comes from, in answering the question "what is a subtopic of what?". In cases that are not obvious (i.e., likely to be challenged), citations can be called for.

Note that the relation to a subheading of subtopics presented within paragraph prose under that subheading in an article are equally subject to WP:VER. For example, not all subfields are obvious, and not all subfield descriptions include the statement that they are a subfield of the subject; when the relationship isn't stated, a citation is still needed to verify it is a subfield.

I agree with your assessment of "fundamental" sections. Each branch of an outline is itself a list, and each item in that list must meet the inclusion criteria for that section. That is, they must legitimately fall under the subheading, or be what the subheading says they are.

Featured content

Where does featured content lie in the future of outlines? Well, once outlines achieve critical mass, with a worthy number of developers, then it will be feasible to propose a Featured outlines department. It could be a sub-department of Featured lists, and as such its featured-status outlines would be presented in the Featured list section of the Main Page (not in addition to).

Critical mass

Critical mass will occur when outline traffic reaches sufficient levels to attract frequent contributors to each outline. Search engines aren't currently recognizing the subjects of outlines - they seem to be treating the word "outline" in the title as part of the subject of each article. But these articles aren't about outlines, that just happens to be their format. It's frustrating.

A solution needs to be found to match the relevance of outlines to search queries specifying the base subject. After all, who ever searches for "Outline of" anything?

Search engine optimization is one possible approach. But I think the problem resides primarily in the search engine algorythms themselves. They simply don't recognize the relationship of the content to the title of the page. Relevance is lost to their equations.

As always, I look forward to your insightful comments.

Sincerely, The Transhumanist 02:34, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

A humble request

The village pump discussion on outlines has devolved into a deletion debate, and neither of us wish deletion.

I believe there are more diplomatically productive means through which we can improve structured topic lists on Wikipedia.

Based upon the above thread, we're almost in agreement over what outlines should and should not be. The name is the only big sticking point between us, and the proposal's discussion pretty much blew past that issue.

Please consider withdrawing your proposal.

Sincerely, The Transhumanist 01:25, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

The discussion has mostly petered out, and it's pretty clearly no consensus. I don't see an open RfC as a threat to outlines; so after a week or so with no discussion, I'll close it if nobody else has done so first. Ozob (talk) 00:54, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Richard D'Oyly Carte

Hi. Your close header is too high. It should be below the discussion about whether to add an infobox to the Richard D'Oyly Carte article. That discussion is ongoing (although I agree that some of the comments there are general, the discussion is supposed to be about whether or not to add an infobox to that article - you could move the general comments out of it and into your closed section if you think that is necessary). Would you please move it down to where the general discussion about infoboxes for the project begins, please? -- Ssilvers (talk) 00:44, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Mystery

Please solve this mystery if you can...

On September 23rd, traffic to Portal:James Bond doubled, and has stayed at the new level since then. I can't figure out what happened.

See http://stats.grok.se/en/201109/Portal%3AJames_Bond

Traffic to Outline of James Bond stayed the same (though it was at the higher-level already), which leads me to suspect changes made somewhere in Wikipedia.

See http://stats.grok.se/en/201109/Outline%20of%20James_Bond

I'd like to find out what happened, in case it reveals helpful link placement tips that can double the traffic to outlines too!

I look forward to your reply. The Transhumanist 22:33, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Shapley–Folkman lemma at Featured Article nomination

Hi Ozob!

Editor Jakob.scholbach recommended your experience with Featured Articles on mathematics. The article Shapley–Folkman lemma has received 3 (non-mathematical) FA assessments; the "usual suspects" have already contributed thorough GA and A-class assessments, so fresh eyes and experience would be especially valuable.

Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz 11:43, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Your close of RfC: Elimination of outline articles

I think you should reconsider your close of the RfC: Elimination of outline articles. Normally the difference between no-consensus and oppose is symbolic, but here, my alternative proposal of establishing a clear guideline on outline content seems to have had a consensus. Your close seems to derail that notion, and I don't think it is a fair reading of consensus. Monty ₈₄₅ 03:12, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, that was a mistake on my part. I was thinking only of my own proposal. Your proposal did clearly gain consensus, so I've updated my closing statement. Ozob (talk) 11:48, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing it. I don't think the version there is ready to be an enforceable guideline yet, so I have moved it to Wikipedia:Proposed Outline Guideline and expanded it a bit. While I understand you don't like the idea of outline articles generally, I would welcome your input with the draft. I don't wish to make it a mere tool to be used to defend anything that can be called an outline, and I'm serious about creating an guideline that can also be used to fix problematic outlines, whether that means improving them to be good outlines, or getting rid of them in some form. As you seem very interested in policing bad outlines, your input would be valuable. Monty ₈₄₅ 16:19, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

A beer for you

Thankyou for participating in my request for adminship. Now I've got lots of extra buttons to try and avoid pressing by mistake... Redrose64 (talk) 14:51, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Edit war notice

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Square pyramidal number. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Please be particularly aware, Wikipedia's policy on edit warring states:

Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made; that is to say, editors are not automatically "entitled" to three reverts.
Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing. 86.24.46.135 (talk) 8:22, 20 November 2011 (UTC)