Talk:List of articles every Wikipedia should have/Archives/2004

See the list of removed entries for articles that were listed in the past or are still under consideration.

Archives of this page

2004|2005|2006|2007|2008|2009|2010

Please do not post any new comments on this page. This is a discussion archive first created in 2004, although the comments contained were likely posted before and after this date. See current discussion or the archives index.

Some old talks are removed. See history [[1]].19:19, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

List of (partial or full) translations in local Wikipedias

Why is this section <nowiki>'d? - Dcljr 03:47, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Suggestions

Some suggestions:

The current version says "I therefore suggests.." at the beggining. While I appreciate the person who came up with this idea, I would suggest that the page avoid first person.

It was not clear if everyone was invited to edit mercilessly. So I would suggest that there would be some clarifications on that. Only addition is welcome? Or, as one of the comments suggest here, only a desginated editor is welcome?

I can boldly bring my own bias, but still it seems a bit too difficult to be NPOV. I would suggest that the page declares that this is just a list to consider, or to start from, but people are free to modify as they see relative importance of things in their language-culture(s). I would also encourage people to make feedback and bring their own perspectives to improve the list.

A guideline to create a good list would also be helpful. Regarding biography, for example, "the 100 most influential figures and those who are recognized to have made greatest achievements," etc.

Tomos 09:11, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It seems to me that starting off the list with perhaps the most subjective elements -- namely the "100 key historical figures" -- should be reconsidered. A-giâu 07:59, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The biggest problem with any such list as this, is the fact that we are creating a list in english, it will, by its very nature, ignore many key Eastern concepts because it is writennen in an Western Language

We have a great deal of the project in front of us

I see this as a revitalisation of simple, and I plan to begin participating there as part of this project. Perhaps this can be a more meaningful variant of the german Aa-qualitätsoffensive (if you don't know what I'm talking about, don't bother). One of our problems is: where should we put this list? On meta is a very good idea, of course but then we have another problem: How should we link to the simple articles already there, and how should we link to the ones yet to be written? We could simply link to all titles at simple, but then there would be no progress meter. I've done a test at simple:User:Sverdrup/list_test to see how many articles of the list we have.

Then there is another question: Should we pull attention to this project and push it? We have a large workforce at en-wikipedia, and if we invite them to write 1000 useful, simple-englished stubs, we can get the simple-part of the project done in a rush.

Your comments? ✏ Sverdrup 13:38, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I don't think this is something urgent. But I would love to see simple revitalized in that way even gradually. And if the 1000 essentials are created, the project team could go on to expand to the next 1000, and another 1000 afterwards, etc.. Or they could raise the standard a bit (from 5 sentenses to 10 sentenses, for example). So, yes, getting attention would be good, I think. Tomos 06:05, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Another set of Requests

I don't have IRC access, so here are some suggestions.

Biography
- Inventors and Scientists: Cai Lun
- Past Politicans & Leaders: Sun Zhong Shan, Jiang Jie Shi (The common western spelling is different, but I can't remember what it is)
- Women In History: Wu Ze Tian (Wu Zhao, Chinese Empress), Mother Teresa, Florence Nightinggale
Domestics: Fishery, Forestry, Silk
Geography
- Major Cities: these are some of the larger/more populous cities. Some of them should be added
  - Buenos Aires, Argentina, Cairo, Egypt, Dhaka, Bangladesh, Delhi, India, Jakarta, Indonesia
  - Karachi, Pakistan, Lagos, Nigeria, Lima, Peru, Manila, Philippines, Mexico City, Mexico
  - Mumbai (Bombay), India, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Seoul, South Korea, Teheran, Iran
- Miscellaneous: suggest to split out a cateory "Bodies of Water" from this list
Politics: Oligarchy
Culture
- Film: Hollywood
- Literature: Dream of the Red Chambers, Aesop's Fable
- Theater: Broadway
Organism: Animal: Bird: Chicken, Duck
Medicine: Heart Disease
Calendars and timekeeping: Chinese Lunar Calendar, Julian Calendar, Islamic Calendar
Language: Do we need both Mandarin and Chinese? Mandarin is one of the Chinese dialects.
Mathematics: Arithmetic
Military: Military Rank
Sport: Volleyball, Table Tennis (Ping Pong), Tennis
Materials: Ceramics or Pottery
Transportation: Bus
Weapon: Shouldn't this be a subtegory of Military?
- Add: Bow and Arrow, Missile
Disasters: Volcano Eruption

--Vina 01:19, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Statistics

As a one-time statistics graduate student, I've gotta suggest that "Statistics" be added under "Mathematics". - dcljr 04:12, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

History

The entire history section is very Eurocentric. (I didn't even realize this until I saw the Chinese version of the list; then that fact hit me like a hammer in the face.) We need to put in some articles in there about the history of non-Western cultures!

A couple of suggestions:

en:Sengoku Period

en:Mongol Empire

Plus some more examples from Africa, the Americas, and Oceania.

And we need to remove some items from the list as well. -- Ran 02:29, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Television

Listed twice, under Arts and Communication. Why?

As a contributor to a national (cs:) Wiki, I have some matters from this perspective: Are section headers also meant to be among the compulsory entries? Ecology is (the only) member of its category, as is Chemistry, so this would suggest not; OTOH frex Computer or Medicine would be missing then which I think they shouldn't. Also, working on Czech translation, I find I would appreciate much if entries had, besides the link to simple: if there is one, always a separete link to real en: article that would be directly accessible for translation etc. Couldn't somebody write a script to add them? It would also help discover mistakes: (w:Edmund Hillary had two L, and BTW I would remove him - he isn't much important for the development of mankind, IMO rather Eurocentric, w:Eva Perón should have an accute accent etc. (I don't want to edit the list, I did so just now and it could be joint with working some more of my comments in).

Does anybody know the exact number now?

I strongly support removal of entries for individual colours - really, what can you say, "roses are red"?

What is the point of the Boat/Ship dichotomy? (See above: If I could just click, I wouldn't be asking now).

--Maly ctenar 10:24, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Help!

The impression the initiator of a new Wikipedia gets from this page is: "We don't want you to start a new Wikipedia unless you play by our rules for the first one thousand articles. After that, you can write about what's actually important for your language and the area it's spoken." This might be slightly different from the intended message.

I know the project is not finished yet, but the new Wikipediae are not going to wait for it to be finished. If you want to help, change the page to offer them help right now, even if it's currently somewhat incomplete and suffering from Western bias, and find a way to offer it to the current, and future, small wikipediae. The whole Wikipedia project improves by step-wise refinement; the same can hold for this Minipedia. Aliter 19:43, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Many Wikipedia have imported this list and used as one of their start point to improve their contents. Some Wikipedias changed this list and removed the Anglo-centricism of this list. Even a Wikipedia with over 10,000 articles found many black pages on this list when they intrlduced this list into their projects. You find a good example of the usage of this list (and improvement) on Italian Wikipedia. --Aphaia 16:33, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Regarding the Anglo-centrism: If it is know to have been removed from copies of the list, why is it still in the original?

Regarding the Italian Wikipedia: No, I wouldn't. I would just find Italian words there. It's this page that should demonstrate its use, not some specific Wikipedia. But even more, it should probably be the supporters of this project who bring it to the small Wikipediae, rather than having it sit here until someone runs accross it.

Because some Wikipedias are interested in developing this list locally and not synching with this original list. This list appeared in the early summer of 2004. It has been developed here and there. In my observation most of editors like to improve it locally (after copying into their own project) not to remove it from this list directly. If you want to see Italian version or Japanese version, please visit those project. Aphaia.

(If a 10.000 wikipedia lacks a lot of the articles on this list, does that say something about the Wikipedia, or about the list?) Aliter 02:52, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Perpahs about a particular Wikipedia. This list suggested a standard on-line encyclopedia should have so-and-so articles (someone oppose certain articles but the idea itself might be approved; there are certain core concepts necessary to build up an encyclopedia). Some new Wikipedias, like Asturian, have utilized this list effectively. But older Wikipedia have grown according to interest of participants, not systhematially, so it is not strange a large Wikipedia lacks some entries of this list. Sometimes it reflects a cultural bias of contributors (a European language Wikipedia has large number of Europe-related topics but small on Asia related topics, vise versa) or just the characteristics of Wikipedians (for example, if no contributor is skilled on medicals or biology, it is hard to make a good article on Anatomy). --Aphaia 05:24, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yees, and yees, but ... that will only create seperate wish-lists, it will not help the other wikipedias. And where some Wikipedias might use it as a useful checklist, to be effective the project needs to offer a whole bunch of small articles from the start. Look, like this: Minipedia, Talk:Minipedia. That's how I feel the effort should be directed. Aliter 21:38, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Language

The most obvious omission from the language list is Bengali, the sixth largest language on earth by speaker numbers. In addition, at least topics such as IPA, phonology, comparative method, and some major language families should be covered. On the deletion side, why should Danish or Dutch be necessary for every language's Wikipedia? - 172.191.92.62 22:31, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Why not Portuguese? It has more speakers than Bengali. I suspect that no one will see this anyway.