User:Deiz/Awards, Best of and Top 100 lists

As lists
Such information can be presented as a list assuming (i) compliance with WP:NOT (see below), and (ii) the organisation or outlet which published or issued the list is considered notable and the list is of an annual, all-time or otherwise important nature. Oscar winners are wonderful, "Top 5 tunes in the Rolling Stone office this week" falls a long way short of such requirements.

The copyright status of such lists is a thornier issue. To include verbatim a simple list of ranked items straight from a magazine or television program with no background, context or explanation of why such a list is included will invite concerns about copyright infringement. An introduction or preamble discussing and establishing the importance, influence and notability of the list should be included to help assuage such concerns.

Regarding the official policy What Wikipedia is not, it is paramount that lists should not be "mere collections of internal (or) external links". A "best of..." list should contain substantive context and information for each entry in that list. Examples include and are certainly not limited to:


 * Movies: Year, director, genre, country of origin, Oscar awards / nominations, other major awards
 * Songs: Artist, year, label, album, awards
 * Events: Year or full date, location, nature of event
 * People: Nationality, occupation, year of birth

In all cases an item should also be accompanied by the reason for its inclusion if this is not explicitly clear from the title or nature of the list. If you are unable to flesh out the list in this way, or are unsure of the copyright status of such a list, consider writing the preamble and leave an external link to the official list at its official source.


 * Bad list: FHM-U.S.'s 100 Sexiest Women 2006 | (Version I'm looking at) - zero context / info, plus serious copyvio contender
 * Better list: TIFF List of Canada's Top Ten Films of All Time (Version I'm looking at) - Years supplied
 * Decent list:
 * Good list: List of Academy Award winning films, contains up to 5 pieces of information for each film.

As categories
Over-categorisation is to be avoided, hence categories should only be created from such lists if the list can be shown to be a definitive list of its type, from a major institute or outlet with considerable influence. For example, Category:Best Picture Oscar contains the winners of the most prestigious award in the film industry. Creating a category from "FHM's sexiest women 2000" or "Cheese Monthly's best cheeses 2004" is dependent on a subjective grouping issued by one outlet and compiled by its editorial staff or audience, with little or no gravitas or historical significance. A list conforming to the criteria in the previous section would be the most appropriate way to present such information.

As templates
Great care must be exercised when turning such lists into templates. A popular film or song could appear in literally hundreds of subjective lists, possibly containing hundreds of entries each. The burden of proof that such a list is both definitive and essential to the understanding of an article's significance should be even higher when considering creation of such templates. Templates of Best Picture Oscar winners are broken down into 20 year blocks, and this 20-entry breakdown should be considered the ideal size for such templates unless the list extends to less than 30 entries.