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This page documents an English Wikipedia style guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense and the occasional exception. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. |
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This page in a nutshell:
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| Wikipedia guidelines |
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| Manual of Style
See also policies |
Lists are commonly used in Wikipedia to organize information. Lists may be found within the body of a prose article, or as a stand-alone article. This guideline explains when and how to use lists appropriately.
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A list can stand alone as a self contained page, or it can be embedded in an article.
Redundancy between lists and categories is beneficial because they are synergistic, and is covered in the guideline Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates. Like categories, lists can be used for keeping track of changes in the listed pages, using the Related Changes feature. Unlike a category, a list also allows detection of deletion of its entries, and, more generally, a history of its contents is available; lists also permit more than 200 entries to appear on a single page.
Lists have three main purposes:
The list may be a valuable information source. This is particularly the case for a structured list. Examples would include lists organized chronologically, grouped by theme, or annotated lists.
Lists contain internally linked terms and thus in aggregate serve as natural tables of contents and indexes of Wikipedia. If users have some general idea of what they are looking for but do not know the specific terminology, they could browse the lists of basic topics and more comprehensive lists of topics, which in turn lead to most if not all of Wikipedia's lists, which in turn lead to related articles. Users without a specific research goal in mind might also find the articles listed in articles' see also sections useful. Lists are also provided in portals to assist in navigating their subjects, and lists are often placed in articles via the use of series boxes and other navigational templates.
Users with a specific research goal, described by one or two words that they can spell correctly, are likely to find Wikipedia's search box useful.
Some lists are useful for Wikipedia development purposes. The lists of related topics give an indication of the state of Wikipedia, the articles that have been written, and the articles that have yet to be written. However, as Wikipedia is optimized for readers over editors, any lists which exist primarily for development or maintenance purposes (such as a list that consists primarily of red links) should be in project or user space, not the main space.
For a stand-alone list the list's title is the page name. For an embedded list, the list's title is usually a section title (for instance Latin Empire#Latin Emperors of Constantinople, 1204–1261), but it can be shorter, see for example Streamlined style or horizontal style below. The list title should not be misleading (and should normally not include abbreviations), but overly precise list titles can be less useful (and make the list difficult to find); the precise inclusion criterion of the list should be spelled out in the lead section (see below), not the title. For instance, words like "complete," "famous" and "notable" are normally excluded from list titles, and instead the lead makes clear that that list is complete, or is limited to famous or notable members.
The contents of an article that is a stand-alone list should be clear. If the title does not already clarify what the list includes, then the list's lead section should do so. Don't leave readers confused over the list's inclusion criteria or have editors guessing what may be added to the list.
However short or schematic a list description, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view applies, including:
It should not be asserted that the most popular view or some sort of intermediate view among the different views is the correct one.
Lead sections and paragraphs should also not go counter the recommendations of the Self-references to avoid guideline.
Stand-alone lists should always include a lead section just as other articles do.
Wikipedia:Featured list criteria recommends that "[a list] has an engaging lead section that introduces the subject, and defines the scope and inclusion criteria of the list."
Further, non-obvious characteristics of a list, for instance regarding the list's structure, should be explained in its lead section (example: List of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach), or in a separate introductory section (example: List of compositions by Franz Schubert#How Schubert's compositions are listed).
Lists should not be used to create content forks between a topic that has a separate wikipedia article (e.g. "republic") and a list complementary to that topic (e.g. "List of republics").
Embedded lists should have a lead paragraph in cases where the title is ambiguous or when the list has non-obvious characteristics.
Although lists may be organized in different ways, they must always be organized. The most basic form of organization is alphabetical or numerical (such as List of Star Wars starfighters), though if items have specific dates a chronological format is sometimes preferable (List of Belarusian Prime Ministers). When using a more complex form of organization, (by origin, by use, by type, etc.), the criteria for categorization must be clear and consistent. Just as a reader or editor could easily assume that the headings A, B, C would be followed by D (rather than 1903), more complex systems should be just as explicit. If a list of Australians in international prisons contains the headings Argentina and Cambodia (organization by country), it would be inappropriate for an editor to add the heading Drug trafficking (organization by offense). If a list entry logically belongs in two or more categories (e.g., an Australian in an Argentine prison for drug trafficking), this suggests that the list categorization might be flawed, and should be re-examined.
Lists should never contain Unsorted or Miscellaneous headings, as all items worthy of inclusion in the list can be sorted by some criteria, although it is entirely possible that the formatting of the list would need to be revamped to include all appropriate items. Not-yet-sorted items may be included on the list's talk page while their categorization is determined.
Lists, whether they are embedded lists or stand-alone lists, are encyclopedic content as are paragraphs and articles, and they are equally subject to Wikipedia's content policies such as Verifiability, No original research, Neutral point of view, and others.
Difficult or contentious subjects for which the definition of the topic itself is disputed should be discussed on the talk page in order to attain consensus and to ensure that each item to be included on the list is adequately referenced and that the page on which the list appears as a whole represents a neutral point of view.
The principle of Neutral Point of View requires that we describe competing views without endorsing any one in particular. Wikipedia:No original research applies equally to a list of like things as it does for the content article on each individual thing listed.
The verifiability policy states that if material is challenged or likely to be challenged, it is the responsibility of the editor who adds or restores the material to an article to cite sources for that material. Inclusion of material on a list should be based on what reliable sources say, not on what the editor interprets the source to be saying. In the case of edits lacking citations, according to Wikipedia:Verifiability:
Any material lacking a reliable source may be removed, but editors may object if you remove material without giving them sufficient time to provide references. If you want to request a source for an unsourced statement, consider tagging a sentence by adding the {{fact}} template, a section with {{unreferencedsection}}, or the article with {{refimprove}} or {{unreferenced}}. Alternatively, you may leave a note on the talk page requesting a source, or you may move the material to the talk page.
However, in lists that involve living persons, the following from the Biographies of living persons policy applies:
Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons — whether the material is negative, positive, or just questionable — should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion, from Wikipedia articles, talk pages, user pages, and project space.
You can add a suitable subcategory of Category:Lists at the bottom of the page.
There are several ways of presenting lists on Wikipedia, please remember not to add blank spaces between list entries:
The format is:
== Title of list == * Example 1 * Example 2 * Example 3
As a matter of style, list items should start with a capital letter. They should not have a punctuation mark such as a period, a comma or a semi-colon at the end, except if a list item is one or more full sentences, in which case there is a period at the end.
This style is appropriate for long lists, or lists of entries which consist of both a link and explanatory text. Also, it is appropriate when the article already has several titles and/or subtitles.
The Title provides a direct edit point, if one enables section editing. It also enables the automatic table of contents system to detect the list. It is not required, however.
Many Wikipedians feel this style is the easiest to read.
Similar to the above, use a # symbol to obtain a numbered list. The format is (note that to ensure sequential numbering, list items must not be separated by empty lines):
== Title of list == # Example 1 # Example 2 # Example 3
The format is:
''Title of list:'' example 1, example 2, example 3
Title of list: example 1, example 2, example 3
The style requires less space on the page, and is preferred if there are only a few entries in the list, it can be read easily, and a direct edit point is not required. The list items should start with a lowercase letter unless they are proper nouns.
The format is:
; Term 1 : Definition 1 ; Term 2 : Definition 2 ; Term 3 : Definition 3
Use these real definition lists instead of fake ones like
* Term — Definition
or
* '''Term''': Definition
In many cases tables are better suited than definition lists.
Although the use of tables to display lists is discouraged — because it provides bad quality context information for accessibility tools, and has more complex notation which hinders editing — there are some instances where they can be useful, such as when three columns or more are required. See Wikipedia:When to use tables
Before or after an incomplete list, insert the following text which will be automatically substituted:
{{expand list}}
which produces:
class="sortable", this page explains how.
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