Talk:Outline of Iraq

Major rename proposal of certain "lists" to "outlines"

See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Major rename proposal of certain "lists" to "outlines".

The Transhumanist    00:40, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Rename proposal for this page and all the pages of the set this page belongs to

See the proposal at the Village pump

The Transhumanist    09:05, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Tips for developing country outlines

Instructions for developing country outlines is located at Wikipedia:Outlines (while that section is complete, the page is a draft, and will be moved to the Wikipedia namespace when completed). The Transhumanist    21:45, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

A note concerning redlinks...

Many of the entries (and their links) are standard across all of the country outlines, to aid readers, especially young readers, in comparing countries to each other.

So if this country doesn't have any of a particular entry, like navies, please don't delete the entry. Instead, complete it with "none" (and a brief explanation as to why, for example, "- x is a landlocked country with no ports"). If the explanation exists in an article on Wikipedia, then click on the redlink and create a redirect to that location. See Wikipedia:Redirect, WP:Section linking, and Help:Section#Section_linking.

Standard redlinks (article names) were also chosen based on how country coverage tipically expands. This makes the standard names for these subtopics widely available and easily accessible. So please do not remove those redlinks, for they will turn blue eventually. In the meantime, they can be redirected to the section of whatever article has the relevant information, if any. See Wikipedia:Redirect, WP:Section linking, and Help:Section#Section_linking.

Thank you.

The Transhumanist    21:45, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

P.S.: To discuss the standard design of the country outlines, or of outlines in general, do so on the Outline of knowledge WikiProject talk page.

Guidelines for outlines

Guidelines for the development of outlines are being drafted at Wikipedia:Outlines.

Your input and feedback is welcomed and encouraged.

The Transhumanist    21:45, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Please check and fix the government section

The government section needs to be checked for accuracy. The initial data placed in the government branches sections was generated by template, and the data didn't fit all countries.

So those sections need to be looked over, and fixed if needed.

Please help.

Thank you.

The Transhumanist    21:45, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

P.S.: If you'd like to help out with other tasks concerning Wikipedia's Outline of knowledge, please drop me a note on my talk page.

Merge into Iraq

Tell me: how is this not redundant to Iraq (from which it strips the lead section of) and any Iraq-related navigation templates you could create? Because right now it's not conveying any unique information that should be covered by the main article, or could be covered by nav templates. WesleyDodds (talk) 09:13, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Oppose merger. Outline of Iraq, like all other outlines, differs from the main article on Iraq in that it provides an overview (ideally) linking to all articles on the subject. This outline still needs to be developed further to be of even better use. Designed to be an organized list or table of contents for those who do not want to wade through a bunch of prose, but instead want to find an article dealing with specific issues, I think if you take some time to think about the potential benefits a well developed outline can provide, you will see that a merger proposal is not really all beneficial to the project. Tiamut^talk 09:42, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

That hasn't asnwered my question; in fact it just reinforces why I feel these pages need to be merged. The purpose of an article on a subject is to give a comprehensive overview of the topic (with a table of contents), spinning off subarticles as needed. Navigational templates allow easy access to all related articles. So yeah, it's redundant. WesleyDodds (talk) 10:02, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I think I did answer your question. The key point being your use of "right now". "Right now" the article is still underdeveloped and so it may only include information already linked in the main Iraq article. Once it is further developed however it will be a much more comprehensive guide. (For an example of how the outline might differ once its been worked, take a look at Outline of Palestine which I developed this last week.) Underdevelopment is not a valid reason for deletion or merger. It's a call to action. Tiamut^talk 10:37, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

My rationale for a merge has nothing to do with editing progress that can or can not be made in the future. My rationale is based on its fundamental flaw: it's simply redundant. Citing your example of Outline of Palestine, before you get into the list of subarticles, the Palestine outline focuses on information that should be covered in the Palestine article anyway such as geographic information and the lead section torn from the Palestine page. The list of subarticles can be covered by the "See also" section of that page, as well as a Palestine navigational template at the bottom of the page (the express purpose of which is consolidate related page links together in one space that can be place on all related articles). The advantage of this is that you would have the relevant information all on the same main page, instead of two, with the outline sorely missing any context as to why the information is relevant, since it is primarily focused on arranging items into a hierarchy of links from the general to the mundanely specific. Honestly, when people come to Wikipedia wanting to learn about Iraq, their first stop is going to be Iraq. The point of subpages is to provide greater coverage of specific related topics, for further study; nonetheless, the main article would still deal with them in some fashion, spinning off and linking to these daughter articles in a clear hierarchial fashion. If you have to point people to a separate pages that outlines how the subjects are related, then the main article has failed in its duty. WesleyDodds (talk) 10:55, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Furthermore, the structure is different. One is prose and one is a list. We have lots of lists that duplicate information in articles of the same name. They are kept because they serve a different purpose than the prose versions. Tiamut^talk 10:39, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks Tiamut... Wesley, what do you mean merge this into Iraq? looks like most if not all of this information is already in the Iraq article. I don't understand the merge proposal. I don't understand the function of these "Outline of" pages either. Are you saying you want to replace what's in the Iraq article with this article? or you just want to add the information that's in this article that's not currently in the Iraq article? Izzedine (talk) 11:35, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

That's a stale thread. Though I'll be happy to explain the functions of Outlines. They're topic outlines, that present topics arranged hierarchically rather than with sentences in paragraph format. They're structured lists of links rather than pages with series of paragraphs explaining their subject in a descriptive manner. Outlines are a type of tree structure, which use graphical layouts to depict relationship information about the entries in the tree. They allow you to see how the subject is structured at a glance (that is, to see what belongs to what, like parents and children in a family tree). Also, because a tree presents links, it is a much faster navigation mode than an article that has links buried here and there in paragraphs of text. To summarize outlines in a nutshell, they are:

1. easier (faster) to browse
2. knowledge maps
3. site maps of subjects on Wikipedia

Together, they form an outline of human knowledge as a whole. Though it is at this time incomplete.  :)

I hope this explanation helps.

The Transhumanist    23:33, 5 October 2009 (UTC)