Category talk:Lists of lists

Suggestion to merge in Structured Lists
I've been trying to figure out what a Structured List was supposed to be. If no one steps up with a better definition I have no problem with merging them. --JeffW 04:08, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
 * What page are you referring to? Could you maybe provide a link? I couldn't find it. 68.162.31.68 18:57, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Category:Structured lists was deleted a few weeks ago. --JeffW 21:10, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Self-categorization
I contend that this is a reasonable category to be self-referencing. As per Categorization: "However, acceptable loops also exist. Self-referencing systems such as the meta- fields naturally create cycles that provide many examples." This category is obviously a list whose members are also lists, and therefore falls under the category of lists of lists, which happens to be itself. -Heartofgoldfish 07:35, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Except that only articles are considered to be "Lists" not categories. All categories are lists of course but it would be ridiculous to include every category page on this page.  --JeffW 04:10, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Misuse of LoL category
I think there is some misunderstanding about what articles belong in this category. This category is for lists of lists - that is, the items in this category are lists that contain other lists. It is not for any List_of_* article. Many of the articles in this category do not belong here. --71.224.239.10 15:29, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Very true. The articles contained here should contain the lists of various lists, not lists in and of themselves. Though why would we need multiple pages containing lists of lists. Shouldn't one suffice?--Russoc4 (talk) 03:50, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps this article should be renamed List of Lists of Lists? —Preceding unsigned comment added by ZappyGun (talk • contribs) 14:40, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Bot Request
Obviously all of these should be here. So if anybody can be bothered it might be a good idea to write a bot to put all of those pages in this category. 82.35.84.214 (talk) 10:39, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Should List of Lists list List of Lists as List of Lists is also a List?
For completeness sake, the artical List of Lists really should list itself under the initial L. Anyone to object? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.154.82.226 (talk) 06:26, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

should we add the list of all lists that doesn't contain itself?
... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Lists_of_lists#should_we_add_the_list_of_all_lists_that_doesn.27t_contain_itself.3F — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.118.252.152 (talk) 15:16, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
 * At risk of seeming naive, I think we should avoid that one. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:42, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Suggested naming scheme for subcats
Right now all (non-hidden) subcategories have names of the form "Lists of X lists", except for Category:Lists of lists of people. In most cases the semantics of the category is clear from the name, but in some cases there's an ambiguity: are these lists of lists of things of type X, or lists of lists related to the topic of X? e.g.


 * Category:Lists of book lists
 * Category:Lists of film lists
 * Category:Lists of sports lists
 * Category:Lists of video game lists

It so happens that 1 and 2 are, let's say, "set list categories" (lists of lists of books, lists of lists of films), and 3 and 4 are "topic list categories" (sports-related LoLs, video game-related LoLs). But the only way to tell is by checking.

For clarity, I would suggest we consistently use "Lists of X lists" for topic list categories, and "Lists of lists of X" for set list categories.

Another alternative would be to consistently use "Lists of X-related lists" for topic list categories (analogous to list cats like Category:Film-related lists, Category:Geography-related lists etc.)

Thoughts? Pinging since they recently created a bunch of subcats (for which I salute them - happy to see some more structure being added to this category). Colin M (talk) 19:49, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I see the distinction between lists of x's and lists related to the topic x, but am not sure it would jump out to all editors. A category might reasonably hold both types of list: lists of films and lists of film-related subjects like "film directors". The template at present holds a case structure that turns "people" into "Lists of lists of people" and anything else, e.g. "xyx", into e.g. "Lists of xyz lists". It could easily be extended to turn "books" into "Lists of lists of books" etc. Each new category like this would need a change to the template though, which is true of the SIA template today. It seems to add some complexity. Not sure. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:14, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Ah, I actually wasn't thinking about the List of lists template. I can see how this would complicate things, but:
 * I think the ultimate criteria should be what's going to be clearest to editors and readers. In the worst case, if it turns out this is really complicated to implement with the template, I would say that's just a reason not to use the template approach (i.e. go back to just adding categories manually) or to only use it in a subset of articles.
 * I don't think it should actually be that complicated to implement. Given the size of Category:Lists of lists it seems unlikely that it'll ever have more than a few dozen subcats, which would not be that onerous to hard-code into the template.
 * In terms of playing nicely with the template, the second naming scheme above ("Lists of X lists" and "Lists of X-related lists") could be a nice compromise, since it wouldn't actually require any changes to the template code - the user could just provide "sports-related", or "video game-related" or whatever as the second param. But I guess that could be a bit confusing to users of the template. Colin M (talk) 21:38, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
 * It would be easy enough to copy-paste the template entry
 * particularly if some helpful template expert could simplify the entry to
 * We could also follow the naming scheme "Lists of X lists" and "Lists of X-related lists", which can be implemented with no change to the template. But would we have "Lists of film lists" and "Lists of film-related lists", the one holding lists-of-lists of films, and the other holding lists-of-lists of film studios, directors etc.? I am about done trying to break down Category:Lists of lists into sub-categories. There may be no new subcategories created for a long time. It is a rather obscure area. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:42, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Either one could be created, or both. If both, then "Lists of film-related lists" would be a parent to "Lists of film lists". Which to create is kind of a pragmatic decision. I would generally prefer WP:SETCATs all else being equal, because they tend to lead to a cleaner subdivision (of, in this case, the whole Category:Lists of lists tree) with less overlap. e.g. it's easier if we can simply place List of Harper's Bazaar cover models in the "Lists of lists of people" category, rather than also putting them in "Lists of fashion lists", "Lists of media-related lists", "Lists of photography-related lists", etc. Incidentally, it would also simplify usage of List of lists if articles generally belonged to only one subcat of Category:Lists of lists. Currently, if you want to add an article to more than one subcat, you have to arbitrarily choose one to use as a param to List of lists, and then add any others the conventional way, via category links. Colin M (talk) 01:59, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I was thinking of allowing more than one category in the template. E.g.  would put the article into three categories and give a message like  . But that is probably more complicated than needed. The purpose of list-of-list categories is not obvious. They do not lead to all lists in a subject area, just ones that happen to be grouped into lists-of-lists. Maybe we should just live with the existing categories.
 * Incidentally, I just did a highly scientific survey of articles with names like "lists of xyz" and added some to the main Category:Lists of lists under "L" for "Lists". I would say that about 85% of articles with names like that are tagged as lists-of-lists. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:55, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I was thinking of allowing more than one category in the template. E.g.  would put the article into three categories and give a message like  . But that is probably more complicated than needed. The purpose of list-of-list categories is not obvious. They do not lead to all lists in a subject area, just ones that happen to be grouped into lists-of-lists. Maybe we should just live with the existing categories.
 * Incidentally, I just did a highly scientific survey of articles with names like "lists of xyz" and added some to the main Category:Lists of lists under "L" for "Lists". I would say that about 85% of articles with names like that are tagged as lists-of-lists. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:55, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, the question of purpose is an interesting one. Their usefulness to readers as a navigational device is pretty questionable. There's no obvious reason that someone reading Lists of websites would be interested in other articles in Category:Lists of technology lists. I think the most compelling reason for the category tree to exist is that it's really helpful for development. An editor working on a list-of-lists article may want to look to similar existing LoL articles to get a sense of how they're organized, and to use as a blueprint. It's potentially also useful for certain automated tasks. You could even argue that this means the whole tree should be marked as an administrative category, per WP:PROJCAT, though I wouldn't go that far. After all, you could make the same argument about Category:Lists (i.e. that it also violates the WP:CAT advice that Categorization should not be made by the type of an article), but it's such an extensive tree that's been around as a content category for so long, I doubt there would be support for reclassifying it. Colin M (talk) 19:10, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Pinned?
Why are these articles pinned to the top? What makes them more special than other lists?


 * List of Pixar awards and nominations
 * Lists of DC Comics characters
 * Lists of Marvel Comics characters
 * Marvel Cinematic Universe lists

--2A02:2F07:B10C:E300:CDE8:F75A:C2AA:4799 (talk) 14:36, 30 May 2021 (UTC)


 * On those pages, the display name for the category has a vertical line and then a space, which presumably defaults to appearing at the top with the absence characters. Zoozaz1 talk  15:19, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Ah, I think I see the problem. Someone messed up List of lists. From what little I've seen, it's a mess. Lists of a cappella groups contains both the template and the category, separately. If anyone wants to fix it, be my guest, I'm not feeling up to sift through that mess. Good luck. --2A02:2F07:B10C:E300:CDE8:F75A:C2AA:4799 (talk) 15:59, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Isn't this a list of lists of lists?
Once you categorize it, it becomes a list of lists of lists because you are listing lists of lists. I'm pretty sure there's already a page called list of lists of lists, but I'd have to look it up.

Clamless (talk)