Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Indexes/Archive 1

Archive 1

Finding and categorizing indexes

There are alphabetical indexes all over Wikipedia. They need to be added to the Category:Indexes and subcategories.

The Transhumanist 19:16, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Of course, now you mean Category:Indexes of articles and subcategories, right? :-P --Gimme danger (talk) 02:55, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Index of World War II articles

These indexes were filled automatically with AWB. Bad mistake, since it apparently took everything in a category tree, even if sub-sub-subcategories were largely unrelated to the topic. As an example, it looks like every article which is in a subcategory of category:Paris is included in these indexes, even if they are completely, utterly unrelated to World War II. I have cleaned up the list A and L (removing a thousand or more articles in each case), but it is an annoying job. I am 100% certain that I have removeda lot of articles which do have a link to World War II, but it is better to start again and include articles manually (or at the most only articles directly included in a WWI category, not in a subcategory). I hope that no other indexes have been created in the same way, otherwise I suggest that you list them and check them thoroughly. Fram (talk) 12:12, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't remember how I created them - it was probably an experiment. I even forgot I created them, and was surprised to see my name as the first entry!

Thank you for cleaning them up. Keep up the good work. The Transhumanist 16:29, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Duplicative?

I'm not getting how indexes have significant advantages over categories. Both are just alphabetical lists of articles by topic. The only difference seems to be flatness (lack of subcategories)... --Cybercobra (talk) 02:26, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Duplicative? Hell yes.

Redundant? Almost entirely.

WTF?

The advantages of complementary redundancy are covered in WP:CLN.

In a nutshell...

Indexes are easier to build, easier to maintain, and easier to browse. Indexes are faster to build, faster to maintain, and faster to browse. Indexes are also supported by redlinks and edit histories, so disappearing links and disappearing articles can be easily spotted. Each index is centralized, with changes being made at the index itself, improving communication with respect to them.

The Transhumanist 20:26, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

List of 3-D films (Index of?)

I was looking at the page List of 3-D films and feel tempted to make this into a sort-able table (see my talk comments on that page), but this is a non-trivial undertaking because of the large numbers of films listed there ... so I am not about to undertake this process unless there is some consensus on this.

I also note that on this and related pages, "3D" "3-D" are used interchangeably. However, as I noted on the related talk pages, there seems to be much more legitimacy to "3-D" and propose that a global edit to find all instances of "3D" and replace with "3-D" ensuring of course that no grammar or other errors are inadvertently introduced.

Finally, on this project page, I see the admonition to find "hidden" "Index of" pages. So this leads me to suspect that the List of 3-D films should really be renamed Index of 3-D films.

I am sure that there are other issues that arise from members who were previously unaware of the existence of this page.

Finally, with the imminent emergence of next generation 3-D film and television technology, this and related 3-D pages will become increasingly prominent and important in the coming months and years. Enquire (talk) 07:23, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Converting to a table would definitely be helpful, to separate the details, and to allow sorting by each detail-type.

Leave it at the current title though. Indexes are for plain alphabetical lists, like Index of Brazil-related articles, and (most of the) other articles in Category:WikiProject Index articles. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:31, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

If it's sortable, then it's not purely alphabetical, and thus not an index. --Cybercobra (talk) 22:39, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Index creation

I'm putting together a new WikiProject and I saw that some projects have a consolidated Index of articles (a useful thing) but I could not find a tool or a template to do that very basic job. I have a doubt here: please do not tell me that Wikipedia would be crazy enough to create and maintain those indexes by hand because I won't believe you... --Alainr345 (talk) 21:51, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Bots are probably used. It's a relatively simple type of bot task. --Cybercobra (talk) 22:13, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

What he said. I believe they usually set a bot to create a list based on the contents of one or more categories (either article-based categories, or talkpage-banner wikiproject categories). So the articles themselves still need to be manually marked in some way ;) -- Quiddity (talk) 05:42, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

OK guys I understand all of that; my question is: WHICH bot do I look for EXACTLY (I could not find one and I certainly won't write one either) ??? --^AlainR345_{WikiTechnoGeek} 19:46, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

You ask at Wikipedia:Bot requests ;) (And please consider making your signature a bit simpler/shorter (in both height and code-length), thanks!) -- Quiddity (talk) 19:58, 28 September 2009 (UTC)