Forum:List Articles

Alright, today I somehow stumbled upon Category:Lists of Sims, which links to dozens of pages, all of them lists of Sims in various games. To me, this seems wholly redundant; why do we need articles listing the Sims in each game when a category does just as well. In fact, we already have categories that do the very same thing as these manually-compiled lists, and unlike lists based in articles, the categories are automatically updated whenever a Sim article page includes the appropriate information.

Branching off of Lists of Sims, we have Category:Lists, which has other lists available. Again, it appears as if most of the lists included there are wholly redundant.

What I am proposing is a mass delete of all these lists, since we have categories that serve their purpose. To facilitate this, I will be tagging these list articles and bringing them into one category, in case we decide to delete them.

So, thoughts? --  LiR speak ~ read 00:01, December 13, 2012 (UTC)

Discussion
Mass deletion all the way! They really aren't very useful, and as stated above, Categories do the exact same thing. Why not take the easiest route? ~ Waikikamukow  ( Anyone wanna chat? ) 00:18, December 13, 2012 (UTC)
 * I've begun placing the Redundant template on pages that list things already listed in a category. Note that not all pages on Category:Lists should be marked, since a few of them list things which aren't included elsewhere. I encourage anyone to go and mark any unnecessary lists with that template. --  LiR speak ~ read 00:23, December 13, 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree, I mean there's the categories we can just click on and we can just find out who's in what and other things...so delete them. Star -Talk 00:26, December 13, 2012 (UTC)
 * Additional point. It's worth noting that this constitutes tens or possibly hundreds (low 100s) of articles... If these were deleted, we'd see a subsequent drop in the number of articles attributed to the wiki. But, as we always say, quality is better than quantity. --  LiR speak ~ read 00:27, December 13, 2012 (UTC)
 * I personally don't believe that losing one hundred pages will greatly affect the wiki, as we would still have about 7000 pages. Having 20 full pages is better than 50 stubs. ~ Waikikamukow  ( Anyone wanna chat? ) 01:30, December 13, 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, category does the same thing as these pages. Not to mention we're a bit behind on them and it would be really tedious to make the one's we're missing. Kill 'em with fire.
 * Mostly, yes, I agree that some lists are to be deleted. I can't wait for List of Sims to be deleted. Maybe there are some lists that should be kept somehow, like List of Sims used in promotional materials, but lists like List of traits are good for deletion.  Nikel  Talk  –  Vote!  07:18, December 13, 2012 (UTC)

The list articles are redundant and the categories are a lot easier to update, so I'm all for the deletion. To streamline the deletion process, my bot has its batch deletion script hosted on my VPS so it can operate automatically even when I'm not online and I only have to send  to the server, so I'll gladly help out with that. 11:53, December 13, 2012 (UTC)
 * There are some lists that are relevant, like the list that Nikel23 linked to. That's why it's probably best to go through the lists one-by-one to see whether it is redundant or not, rather than deleting everything at one time. Adding the Redundant template is a bit tedious and time-consuming but this way we won't accidentally delete genuinely useful content.--  LiR speak ~ read 14:17, December 13, 2012 (UTC)
 * Understandable. The offer is still open should anyone change their minds. 12:17, December 14, 2012 (UTC)

Moving ahead
Seeing as discussion has dried up and we have technically begun to tag redundant lists, I believe it is time to move forward. I'm assuming everything that currently sits in Category:Redundant articles should be deleted and as such I'm about to send my bot on the category. For now I'd urge users just to tag the articles before any deletion happens and then once we have a small group in the category we can initiate a mass deletion. Note that everything will be in the deletion log so if we do decide afterwards that something can stay, we can restore it. I wouldn't worry about a time period to have this completed by as we could do it like a project of some sort. 13:33, February 3, 2013 (UTC)