Wikipedia talk:Contents/Overviews

Rearrangement suggestion

Wikipedia's current overview is great. but it can even be greater. For example,

here is the current order:

1. General reference
2. Culture and the arts
3. Geography and places
4. Health and fitness
5. History and events
6. Mathematics and logic
7. Natural and physical sciences
8. People and self
9. Philosophy and thinking
10. Religion and belief systems
11. Society and social sciences
12. Technology and applied sciences

here is a better order, carefully arranged (in 3 years) from prerequisite subjects to dependent ones:

1. General reference
2. Mathematics and logic
3. Natural and physical sciences
4. Geography and places
5. Health and fitness
6. People and self
7. Culture and the arts
8. Religion and belief systems
9. Society and social sciences
10. History and events
11. Philosophy and thinking
12. Technology and applied sciences

It's never perfect, but

• For 10 years, I've been studying at least an hour a day to improve it.
• Every step of the classification is better than before
• I can bring reason for every slight arrangement that I choose. for example:

1. We must start with references, because a reference is what separates information from other types of text.
2. Math is immediately after that, because it contains coherent and formal info. not every info
3. Ontology, then separates real info from just coherent formal info
4. Physical science
   1. Physics is the rules study of rules governing quantities. or simply, the relation between reals.
   2. Chemistry studies the properties of this reality,
   3. and cosmology studies the part of this reality that we are in contact with. (what's definite. not just what's possible)
5. Geography is a part of cosmology. (but it should be separate here).
6. History (time) is NOT after geography (place), because we mean History of societies.
7. ...

Since the alphabetical order is not required here, I can also classify the arrangment of sub-contents. example: the section about technology really needs to be arranged.

Add template?

How about we add "Template:Wikipediacats-flat" here? Although those are a type of categories, they are not category pages and they do link to basic kind of information (such as time, etc.) [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 19:45, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻

Done. This page looks much more like Wikipedia:Browse by category now, and should be more easily maintainable because it uses templates. —AlanBarrett 16:55, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thank you. +sj+

get rid of "abstraction" category, or rename

The name "abstraction" for a category (and its choice of categories) is awful. Can't we find better categories or invent a new one with a different name to put these in?? Revolver 09:08, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The "Movements" link seems inappropriate

deleted page?

Am I just confused, or had somebody deleted this page? It links right off the Main Page, so I didn't think it should be deleted. (Gosh, I hope I didn't do it myself, by accident.) Uncle Ed 19:04, July 15, 2005 (UTC)

Culture should link to cuisine

Culture should include a link to the cuisine portal. How do I go about doing that? --Rakista 20:37, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Edit it here: Template:WikipediaTOC Use  – to space each link from the next. -- Sitearm | Talk 08:44, 2005 August 22 (UTC)

Double Systems Theory

Why are there two links to Systems Theory (on under mathmatics, and one under the main box)? I noticed that one goes to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_Theory, and the other to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory (a very minor difference). I'd edit it, but I'm not sure if it's that way for a reason.

I removed the extra systems theory at the bottom. It was added slightly out of place to the template above but I fixed it here. -- Sitearm | Talk 06:51, 2005 August 22 (UTC)

Rename to "Browse by article"

This browse page doesn't "overview" articles any more than the category or portal browse pages. I propose it be renamed to "Browse by article." — RDF ^talk 04:31, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, it could be "browse by article" or even "browse by defining article" if you want to get technical, since almost all of these articles have a corresponding category. -- Fplay 13:19, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

On the other hand, "overview" or "main article" are the current terminology used in the UI. We should try to make this uniform by choosing one term and settling on it.

Shortcut name is unfortunate....

WP:BROWSE is the overviews and Wikipedia:Browse is the Categories. We need to make this less confusing. -- Fplay 23:13, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I went ahead and repointed WP:Browse to Wikipedia:Browse . There were no references to it on "What links here". -- Fplay 08:53, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Basic standards for overviews in this list

The things listed here should at least:

• Be the overview for their category
• Follow the style described in the Category FAQ (use {{catmain}}, have redirect if names are different by singular/plural). If cat has description, it should closely match that of the overview.
• Have portal links, if they exist
• Generally be a well-organized and balanced category (neither too few nor too many non-overview articles or sub-categories) and a well-written and accurate overview, because this browser increases the visibility of those pages. That includes an opening paragraph that describes the nature and scope of the catagory.

-- Fplay 08:59, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

A different approach

I'm fairly new to this project, so I'm not going to make big changes without consulting you guys, but what do you think of something like this version of the overview page? I'm not sure how to fill up the righthand side of the bottom of the page yet, but I'm working on it. Also, I'd like the images to be on the right, but alignment is more important. If we could, we should use <div> tags to correctly align the images to the right of their categories. - ElAmericano | talk 22:00, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Publishing

I'd like to suggest adding publishing. Most other types of mass media are included. Maurreen 05:54, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Done. Rfrisbie^talk 17:26, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Section headers

The colored section headers help to break up the page visually. --The Transhumanist 03:01, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Phantom TechSpot ad

The icon that displays when an image can't be shrunk down to the size specified in an image link has been replaced by a TechSpot ad. The artic map was triggering the display of the ad, but I increased the size slightly and the ad went away. But the ad still needs to be tracked down, and the original error image restored. --The Transhumanist 23:53, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Rename to...

List your favorite rename candidates here.

• "List of overview articles" because that's what should be here, short and sweet. Then the navbar links can be renamed to "Overviews," as a parallel construction. Rfrisbie^talk 15:40, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
• But most of the articles are not overview articles. This list has been completely transformed. The list itself is an overview article, while the articles listed are key topics of each major subject. Waitasec, just got a brainstorm. The articles aren't overviews, but the sections are! Just name the sections "Overview of Art and culture", "Overview of Geography", "Overview of history", etc. To fit, you'd just need to drop the "articles" from the end, which would make it List of overviews. --The Transhumanist 17:45, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

• But, having just reminded myself by visiting a few of the links, if a topic's so-called "main article" (as in {{main}}) serves as an overview, this list does seem to be a list of (links to) articles that are overviews. Perhaps, therefore, List of overview articles is a more accurate / less ambiguous name...?
  Also, since this list lists items within the encyclopedia, should it reside in the "Wikipedia:" namespace...?  Regards, David Kernow (talk) 13:40, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Move to Wikipedia:List of overviews

Since my move was reverted I will make it clear why I believe that this ans all the other pages listed on the top of this one should be moved to Wikipedia space rather than Article space.

1. This is more of a table of contents than an actual article. Usually, tables of contents aren't considered articles, and something like that should be put in to the Wikipedia space.
2. This article does not meet anything in the Manual of Style at all. I know those are just guidelines, but ususally, lists in the main space actually have descriptions next to each of the items. This doesn't, so putting it in the article namespace, along with the other lists that this links to, Only exaggerates our article count.

THose were the main two reasons and I am willing to talk to others in order to Iron out the situation so that we can reach an agreement. The Placebo Effect 13:00, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Here are some reasons you might not have considered:

1. Most lists do not have annotations (descriptions next to each item). Nor are they required to.
2. List of overviews is a structured list, as per WP:L.
3. The List of overviews lists topics which are overviews of the subjects they are named for. The topic philosophy is the "top" or "root" topic in the subject of philosophy, thus being a gateway to the entire subject. This isn't any more abstract nor arbitrary than a great many other lists, such as List of films that most frequently use the word "fuck". Other examples of lists of arbitrary or abstract things include List of unusual deaths, List of faux pas, List of paradoxes, and Prizes named after people. Thus, listing topics which are overviews of their respective subjects is totally acceptable under Wikipedia's policies and guidelines.
4. Wikipedia has quirks you might not be taking into account. Keep in mind that Wikipedia is mirrored all over the Web. For example, in Answers.com. Pages in the Wikipedia namespace don't show up on it. Among other uses, mirrors serve as alternates when Wikipedia is down (or for when you mistakenly get blocked). But Wikipedia mirrors aren't as useful without the tables of contents!
5. Migration just adds another maintenance chore to our already huge maintenance burden. We're not keeping up as it is.
6. More than merely lists of articles, the lists in question are expanded lists of topics. What's an "expanded list"? Well, when an artcle, including a list, grows too large, part of it is split off and a link is provided to the new page. For this reason, many articles have links to a History of page, for example. The same principle applies to lists, with links to various "List of" pages, thus becoming lists of lists. Some lists retain their "list" name even when they are broken up into parts, others get the new name, with over 130 "Lists of" lists on Wikipedia so far. For example, under this system, List of animal species would become Lists of animal species. The set of lists is the same list, just split up into multiple pages. To remove part of the list to the Wikipedia namespace and not the whole list would be counter-intuitive.
7. Pages in the Wikipedia namespace are not included in the Wikipedia article index. If a user wanted to get a list of all the lists on Wikipedia, they'd go to All pages and start from List of. If the Lists of were removed to the Wikipedia namespace, such users might not think of looking there, assuming that all the lists would be kept in the same place.
8. Almost all lists on Wikipedia are defacto tables of contents. As Wikipedia's coverage expands, redlinks are rapidly becoming a thing of the past, so lists become lists of articles rather than merely lists of topics. Technically, that makes most stand-alone lists in violation of the "no self-references" rule, which is why we have the stand-alone list exception. Many stand-alone lists started out as embedded lists in articles, which were split off from articles when they grew large enough. It wouldn't make any sense to migrate them or their expansions to non-article space.
9. Links to the Wikipedia namespace are generally not allowed in the main namespace. So when List of animal species becomes Wikipedia:Lists of animal species, editors would no longer be able to provide links to it, such as in the See also sections of articles. Instead, they would be forced to include the entire list of lists in each article. List of mammal species, List of reptile species, List of insect species, etc. This defeats the purpose of having lists of lists in the first place! Similarly, at the end of the article Mathematics, we wouldn't be able to include a link to Lists of mathematics topics, even though that page is entirely relevant, because a link to Wikipedia:Lists of mathematics topics would not be allowed. Instead, a link to each individual list would need to be included. That would make the See also section HUGE.
10. Even if Wikipedia namespace links were allowed in the main namespace, those links would be dead in Wikipedia mirrors that don't include Wikipedia namespace pages.

Therefore, forcing lists of lists to the Wikipedia namespace cripples the list system. The Transhumanist   17:18, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

RfC on Lists and Contents pages

Please see a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Contents#Contents pages, and lists of lists concerning the Wikipedia:Contents subpages, and specifically on the namespace they belong in. Thanks. --Quiddity 17:18, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

since this is obviously an index page to Wikipedia, keeping it in article namespace qualifies as Wikipedia:Self-reference. This sort of thing is why we have Wikipedia: namespace. --dab (𒁳) 10:04, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Thushar Creations

It appears some company tried to turn this page into advertising; I didn't realize this at first, but I fixed it and I will be keeping an eye on this page. Eran of Arcadia 13:23, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

"Self-referencing" template at the top of the page

I have removed the ambox at the top of the article. It appears that this is an attempt to force the issue identified at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of overviews. I note that WP:POINT may apply: this page is potentially used by hundreds or thousands of readers every day, whose first impression will be that the page is (somehow) wrong. It's not - there just are editors who want it to be located in a different place (at least that seems to be the sort-of-consensus). An article messagebox on the top of the page isn't the right way to get editors to come to a consensus on where it goes, so I have removed it. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:30, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Topical contents pages transclusion test

I'm using this page to test the process of transcluding contents page sections to multiple pages. You can see the related discussion at Portal talk:Contents#Topics-based contents pages project. You can see a working example of how a section here is transcluded to another page at Portal:Contents/Reference. RichardF 03:18, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Coordinating Portal:Contents pages

A group of editors is working on coordinating Portal:Contents and all of its subpages. This activity has two basic parts. The simplest part is to coordinate their presentation, such as page layouts. Most of the discussions about how to accomplish this are at Portal talk:Contents. The more involved part is to coordinate their substance, such as what gets linked from the pages and their classifications. Most of the discussions about how to accomplish this are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Contents and related projects such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists of basic topics, Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists of topics, Wikipedia:WikiProject Glossaries, Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals and Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories. Please feel free to join in on these activities. RichardF (talk) 12:46, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Abiogenesis

Abiogenesis should be added under natural sciences —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yosef1987 (talk • contribs) 11:17, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

what is the point of this page?

This page just lists regular articles, like Art, Earth or University. In what way are these "overviews"? Overviews of what? If you like, any article is an "overview" of its topic. If this is simply a "list of core topics", how is it different from Portal:Contents/Lists of topics, which is obviously also a list of core topics. Unlesss somebody is able to describe exactly what this page is supposed to do, it would be best to {{merge}} it into Portal:Contents/Lists of topics. --dab (𒁳) 11:04, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Essentially: This page links to prose articles. The other page links only to List-type articles.

E.g. Portal:Contents/Overviews#Mathematics_and_logic vs Portal:Contents/Lists_of_topics#Mathematics_and_logic

The distinction has become less clear and less controlled in the years since the scheme was implemented.

See Portal:Contents in 2005 (at the time called [Wikipedia:Browse] iirc) to see where we started from. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:59, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Change name to 'Categorized Article List'

The name does not represent what it is. It IS a list of categorized articles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kenriolover789 (talk • contribs) 14:24, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Since it is not meant to be complete, simply calling it a "list of" does not convey its specialized scope or purpose, which are that of an overview. The Transhumanist 03:33, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Proposal to change a section title

There's a proposal to adjust one of the main section titles used in "Wikipedia's contents". See Portal talk:Contents#Proposal for main section title adjustment. The Transhumanist 09:57, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Edit request

Include redirect WP:7 in a "Shortcuts" box. 71.146.20.62 (talk) 03:15, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Arts and culture

I suggest someone revert the vandalism of the entire section that seems to have been replaced by content having nothing to do with the subject as a new editor i am not competent yet and do not have autocomfirmed status --The Peaceful Punk (talk) 23:27, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

 Done Thanks for spotting this. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:02, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

History and Events in need of Edit?

Under the Ages of History section, I noticed that the Information Age is listed before the Space Age. Since these seem to be listed in chronological order, should these two be switched to where the Information Age is last?

--The Macabre Milkman (talk) 23:40, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

 Done Indeed :) —Quiddity (talk) 08:06, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Hooray! I helped!:D

--The Macabre Milkman (talk) 19:44, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 21 January 2014

122.61.193.28 (talk) 06:16, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Not done: please be more specific about what needs to be changed. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:59, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 May 2015

125.20.38.129 (talk) 21:24, 3 May 2015 (UTC)