Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anthroponymy/Lists of names

This is an archive of an old Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) discussion.[1]

Lists of names

Right now, lists of names appear in three contexts:

The List of people by name.
Articles dedicated to names. These vary dramatically in quality: I cite Hayley as a very good example, and Allawi as a very bad one.
Disambiguation pages, such as Adamson (disambiguation) (good) and Alder (disambiguation) (better).

This triplicity of formats scatters our efforts and confuses editors (such as yours truly) who are trying to clean up pages with lists of names. I think we need a policy to specify what to do with lists of names. In particular, I think we should either officially endorse LoPbN or remove it once and for all. --Smack (talk) 18:27, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree that LoPbN should be the only name list or not exist at all. (BTW, would you mind editing your own entry above to display the names of the pages you link? Hayley instead of this, and likewise for Allawi, Adamson (disambiguation), Alder (disambiguation)?) But I do think that a policy statement on the acceptability of pages or sections listing people by their given name, surname, or middle name might ease some churn. A list of people named John would be difficult, whereas a list of people named Banana would be manageable (Banana (disambiguation)#People with the name Banana). Some questions that would need to be discussed:

Should surnames be treated differently than given names
When to lump the name holders on dab pages (Banana (disambiguation))
When to make name pages (Adam (name)) separate from dabs (Adam (disambiguation))
When to make separate pages for given-name and surname holders (Arthur and Arthur (surname) - and the disambiguation info should really be pulled out into Arthur (disambiguation) instead of Arthur IMO; I'll get to that soon)
Whether any of these options should be used in favor of lists like List of people named Daniel, List of people with the first name Julie, or Famous people with the surname Smith
How (if at all) this affects people who are at least commonly known by a single name (Adriano, Cher, Adam, Hitler, The Rock))

Some links to prior and current discussions:

I'm sure there are more; the discussion surfaces frequently. These aren't truly disambiguation pages -- they don't disambiguate articles that would otherwise have the same title. No article on Julie Andrews would have been titled Julie, for example. The list of names (by given or surname) appear to me to go counter to WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a directory, but mine was the minority opinion in the discussions I was part of.-- JHunterJ 00:31, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Links clarified per request. --Smack (talk) 05:01, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Family names are usually redirects (and hence disambiguations when there is more than one article to redirect to) because people commonly are known solely by their family name. Given names are only redirects in the cases where the person is commonly known solely by xyr given name. Uncle G 15:44, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. People are referred to by their last name in the stylistic pursuit of brevity, after they've been introduced in a work with their common (full) name. There are exceptions (like Patton; the general is commonly known by his last name only), but, for example, no article about Kurt Vonnegut would introduce him as Vonnegut. Lists of people by surname are not disambiguations any more than lists of cities in Canada are; there is no danger of multiple items in the list having the same title. -- JHunterJ 15:50, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

- You are wrong to disagree. There are plenty of cases where people are referred to solely by their family name and the reader is simply expected to know who, say, Poincaré is. Surname articles (such as Poincaré) are disambiguations. Read Wikipedia:Deletion policy/names and surnames. Uncle G 16:03, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong to disagree, really? This is a discussion, not a place for only those voices that agree. The people link in that supposed dab all have articles that use their full names in their titles, so those support my statement. Note that I am not saying the Poincaré article should not be there; I'm saying that it should be an article about the surname, and a valid link target. If consensus says that surname articles can include directories of name-holders (and consensus has so far), the all of that information should remain. But there is a real difference between a "dab" of Poincaré where none of the articles listed would have had the title "Poincaré" and John Smith, where the individuals listed could have had articles entitled "John Smith". Also, please don't change other users' indentation style needlessly on talk pages.-- JHunterJ 18:14, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Following up to myself, editors discussing issues with deletion are not necessarily "up" on disambiguation policy (as reflected in the "names and surnames" discussion above). The discussion there doesn't change WP:D or WP:MOSDAB, and where it disagrees with those guidelines, the dab guidelines should still be observed. (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/In specie had a similar problem, advocating moving a dictionary definition article to a dab page.) -- JHunterJ 12:26, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Getting back to Smack's original policy question, I favour LoPbN, because I believe it is a better system for dealing with names with multiple possible spellings - such as Shepherd, Shephard, Sheppard etc. I agree with JHunterJ - I think articles which just consist of lists of names go counter to WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a directory. I note that List of people with the first name Julie has now been deleted.

Having said that, I think the first priority is to move lists of people off disambiguation pages where the title of the page is only part of the person's name. Sutton (disambiguation) is a good example of a long page which would be improved by being simplified in this way. Sutton (surname) would not be a disambiguation page. It should be tagged {{tl:Surname}}, not {{tl:disambig}}. (I wouldn't change Banana however - I think fewer than, say, five entries don't justify a separate page.)

I would then favour merging lists from surname pages into LoPbN. I propose this two stage approach because I hope it will make it easier to get consensus one step at a time.

To tackle some of the issues raised by JHunterJ: I think we should encourage the creation of pages such as Adam (name) to hold information on the derivation, historical/geographical occurrence of the name, etc. We only need one page, for the use of the name as a first name and as a surname, now that List of people with the first name Julie has been deleted. CarolGray 10:31, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I must say I don't see the problem here: since an article on the name itself (derivation, meaning etc) is likely to be quite short, why not start an article on "anyname" by first defining/discussing it and then listing those who have it? This avoids having two articles "anyname" and "lopw anyname". It also means that a reader looking for "Derek whathisname? You know that bloke in Coronation Street ..." will find him where he is most likely to look, at Derek. Whether you call this a dab is not too important to me but I believe such articles are potentially useful ... though I agree they are time-consuming to set up (but not to maintain once created). Abtract 21:44, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And the problem is that not all editors agree that "anyname" should include the lists; before it was deleted, the List of people with the first name Julie was split from the Julie article -- since there is no separate policy on name lists, those editors often fall back upon WP:NOT#DIR (which is my inclination as well). As for being dabs, dabs should not be link targets, while articles "defining/discussing" anything are valid link targets. Dabs should not define or discuss anything, but rather quickly and quietly get the reader to the page she should have been on. -- JHunterJ 11:08, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]