Appendix namespace

(English) This is an essay. It expresses the opinions and ideas of some Wikimedians but may not have wide support. This is not policy on Meta, but it may be a policy or guideline on other Wikimedia projects. Feel free to update this page as needed, or use the discussion page to propose major changes.

At Spanish language Wikipedia, community took a decision to have an appendix (anexo in Spanish) namespace for including contents such as tables and lists that are not encyclopedic articles per se, but that does complement an encyclopedia.

The idea came from a suggestion in the proposal of Wikilists, that instead of a separate project, a new namespace should be used instead. Content in this new namespace would be subject to all Wikipedia policies including free contents, neutral point of view, ban of original research, etc., except that contents would not be articles, so a simple list of links might be appropiate.

Justification

Unlike in the English language Wikipedia, articles that are primarily lists are banned in the Spanish language Wikipedia, however there are many lists and tables that have been justified because they offer useful content. This situation leads to endless polls for deletion, and a lot of discussions when speedy deletion policies are applied.

So, the proposal for either a Wikilists project, or an Appendix namespace, is that:

• Certain contents are not encyclopedic articles and should not be in the main namespace of Wikipedia.
• Certain content, while not encyclopedic articles, is useful in order to provide a better navigation through Wikipedia and to browse compared and related data at a glance. This content would be called encyclopedic support contents.
• While encyclopedic support contents might be part of a real encyclopedic article, some articles might be too small compared to support contents. Sometimes it is difficult to convert a simple listing in a full encyclopedic article.
• Conclusion: encyclopedic support contents should be either moved to an external project (Wikilists) or to another namespace (Appendix:).

Previous projects

Besides Wikilists proposal, the original proposal for Wikipedia Portals at German language Wikipedia (see Special namespaces for portals and lists), included not only portals but also simple lists.

Consultation process

The consultation process took several steps.

• The first step was a posting in the local Village Pump (Wikipedia:Café^(here)) asking for support of the idea. While the thread moved into discussions of convenience of supporting contents, there was some support to the idea of a new namespace and no opposition. This justified a second step:
• The second step was an informal consultation^(here), in which several proposals were offered, as well as the possiblity to add more proposals. The idea of a new namespace was supported by 12 people against 4 opposing people but whose arguments were enough not to take this result as consensus. So this led to step three.
• The third step was a formal poll^(here), which included the following items.
  1. Adopt the definition of "Encyclopedic support contents" (ESC).
  2. Where to place ESC (ESC is just encyclopedic: main namespace; an existing namespace; a new namespace).
  3. Which existing namespace should be used.
  4. Name of the new namespace (anexo, apéndice, lista, tabla).
  5. Define a policy on admissible content in the category namespace.

  Results of the poll were that the ESC definition should be adopted as policy, that a new namespace should be created and this namespace would be called Anexo, and that a clearer policy should be developed regarding the Category namespace.

• So, the fourth step was to place a request in Bugzilla: bugzilla:9304.

Proposal for other Wikipedias

Just as the portal namespace was adopted for all Wikipedias (whether they use it or not), the Appendix namespace (or List namespace) would be proposed to all Wikipedias.

The definition of Encyclopedic Support Contents (ESC) was adopted as policy in the Spanish language Wikipedia (see: Información de soporte enciclopédico. This should be also adopted for all Wikipedias. How each Wikipedia decides to handle ESC would be up to internal policies.

Note that the definition of ESC not only includes contents for the Appendix namespace, but also infoboxes, navigation templates, and commons contents.