Wikipedia:Featured list removal candidates/Administrative and municipal divisions of Adygea/archive2

Administrative and municipal divisions of Adygea
Re-nominating because the June nomination got only 2 comments, both from the article's contributors, for the same primary reason: It is not a list. If the article's format doesn't preclude nomination for Featured article, then it is clearly not a list, and this could most definitely be nominated. Circeus 02:39, 18 August 2007 (UTC) I'm preparing aanother nom, and will list both at the same time
 * Previous nomination
 * Oppose. It is a list of administrative, territorial, and municipal divisions plus some background information.  The only reason why it may not be readily perceived as a list is because Adygea, being so small, does not have many divisions.  In a list on administrative divisions of just about any other federal subject the same amount of background information would still account for a significantly smaller portion of the article.  Since this article is a member of a series of lists, why it should not be considered a list is beyond me.  What exactly would you propose to keep this an FL?  Cut the narrative?  And if that's done, how exactly will the situation have improved?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 05:22, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Being entirely made of prose, there is no argumentation that can be made for it to be called a list, period. It is a fine article about the organization of these divisions, but it is not a list if them. Circeus 05:35, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * But it is not "entirely made of prose"! If you scroll all the way down, you will see a list of actual divisions.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:32, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Okay, there are a few bullet lists. That still doesn't make the article a list. Circeus 21:03, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I am sorry, but I do not know how to classify this collection of districts and cities other than by calling it a "list". Just because the districts themselves are not bulleted out does not, in my opinion, make the whole set any less of a list.  What exactly do you propose to fix so the article could retain its list status?  Crzy below suggested removing the section dealing with the types of localities; would that be sufficient for you as well or are you looking for further improvements?  If so, what kind of improvements do you expect?  Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 00:56, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Delist What makes this look like an article are the descriptions of all those localities; therefore, they should be edited out, that's just too much info for a list. I still believe this is more of a list than an article. However, I don't believe that this should be a featured list, since it currently fails 1(f) and 2(c) parts of WP:WIAFL. -- Crzycheetah 07:58, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * If the descriptions of the localities are moved to a dedicated article and only a brief summary is left in their place, would you still oppose?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:32, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
 * It would be a lot better. Also, the 4.2 section (Districts) would look better in a table. I have to see a revised version to decide whether I'll oppose.-- Crzycheetah 22:19, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, the tables have been tried before, and they did not work particularly well. See, for example, this revision.  Is this something you'd prefer better?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 00:56, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd prefer one table with 7 districts. See List of counties in Connecticut for an example. It will also shorten the TOC, which is too long for this list.-- Crzycheetah 01:08, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, and in that revision, I really liked the Administrative division structure section, that's exactly what I wanted.-- Crzycheetah 01:21, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Ezhiki. — Nightstallion 16:13, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep, now since when a list having some narrative is bad? I have long opposed featured list for having no background information and short leads. The purpose of this article is to list all the divisions of Adygea. But an outsider will have no chance of understanding what's going on without background info on all these different types of administrative divisions. Do you know what's the difference between rural settlement and rural localities? I don't and the list, without background info, is useless. Renata 17:15, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, and, "looking like an article" is not the same as "being an article." Renata 17:17, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
 * For the record, "being constituted almost entirely of prose" is the same as both. Circeus 04:06, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Delist per Circeus. In its current state, this is not a list. Article has far too much prose. The entire "Administrative division structure" section should be edited out and/or merged into a new article, or else this does not classify as a list. The only thing that even resembles a list in this section is "Numbers of rural localities by year" and the table; otherwise, it just consists of indented paragraphs made to look like a list. The "List of administrative and municipal divisions" should be formatted into a single table, as the County lists of the United States use. Also, if possible, the "History" section should be condensed into fewer paragraphs; it is currently just a collection of stubby paragraphs, and this needs to be addressed. Finally, the "Cities and towns under Republic's jurisdiction" is not a list. Again, it is a collection of indented paragraphs. Either form it into table and edit out some of the prose, or remove it from the list. Raime 05:32, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment - regardless of whether this remains as a FL or not, the solution is not to cut out some of the prose. This is clearly an example of Wikipedia's best work - it would be crazy to make it less comprehensive purely to meet the requirements of the Featured List procedures. I'd also argue that it's impossible to make any hard and fast distinction between "list" and "article" - a list is a type of article. I would tend to agree with Crzy that the "Administrative Division structure" section is badly laid out. --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 12:58, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Well fine, then the solution is clear: delist it. If a list is contituted mostly of prose, then it is not a list. Period. There is distinction between a "list" and a "article constitued of prose". If no sections are to be removed, then this should be delistsed as an FL. But if it doesn't meet criteria, it doesn't meet criteria. Yes, the "Administrative Division structure" is badly laid out, but even moreso in that it doesn't belong in a list; it is just a group of paragraphs. If this is to remain a FL, then the solution is to remove prose, probably by putting it in a separate article with a link to this. I wouldn't say splitting an article necessarily makes it "less comprehensive", as long as the original information is not deleted, but only moved elsewhere. If the solution is to delist and strive for a nomination at FAC, then no prose needs to be removed, but cleanup work is required. Raime 13:13, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment. A list, by definition, is a collection of items grouped by some criterion.  Nowhere in WP:WIAFL it is said that such collection must be laid out using bullets or tables, or that it should contain as little narrative as possible.  The important thing is the idea behind the concept.  Here, we have a list of administrative and municipal divisions (which include cities and towns under Republic's jurisdiction, as well as districts), organized in sections and subsections.  On top of that, additional background information, which is needed in order to understand the terminology and what the list is about, is provided.  So far, of all concerns I only see Crzy's as valid (i.e., it can be argued that the list may not be well-constructed and/or that it's table of contents is overwhelming; although I personally disagree on both counts).  Other than that, the list in its current form is useful (1a), comprehensive (1b), factually accurate (1c), uncontroversial (1d), stable (1e), has a concise lead section (2a), arranged using hierarchical headings (2b), and has appropriate images (3a).  "The list not being laid out as a table" or "too much narrative", thus, according to WIAFL, are not valid reasons for delisting.  I'll be happy to address any concerns with the actual criteria, but so far most of the arguments from the side supporting delisting consisted of the "I-don't-like-it-so-it-must-go" sort based on non-existing technical requirements.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:00, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
 * However, it can't be classified as a list, because it could be nominated per WP:WIAFA. If an article can be nominated as a Featured article, it cannot be a Featured list, as it obviously is not a list; it is an article. WP:WIAFL specifies that a list must be well-constructed, which this article is not. Per WP:WIAFL, the list is easy to navigate, and is annotated with information as appropriate. However, this article is not easy to navigate, and certainly does not have an "appropriate amount of information". This is listed next to Selos: Historically, selos (село, plural сёла) were a type of Russian rural locality, consisting of a large village with a church. Most selos in Adygea were established in the second half of the 19th century on lands abandoned by the Circassians. As of 2007, there are nineteen selos in Adygea, most commonly found between the eastern shore of Krasnodar Reservoir and the left bank of the Laba River (near its source). Each typically has a population between two and four thousand, averaging 1,600. Together they account for 8.4% of Adygea's rural localities and 15% of its rural population. How is that an appropriate level of information? This could be its own article. Also, why can't this be formatted into a table? It would make the list much neater and easier to navigate, which IS a FL requirement. There is far too much background information. This should be solely a list of administrative and municipal divisons; limited (not two paragraphs) background information can be given, but otherwise links to articles are appropriate. If a list doesn't meet even one criterion, then it should not be featured. Raime 22:32, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, a list is a list is a list. If the purpose of an article is to provide a set of links pointing to "administrative and municipal divisions", then it is a list, regadless of formatting details or of the level of additional details provided.  Whether this list is or is not well-constructed/featurable is, of course, a completely different matter.  Judging by the votes so far, those voting to keep this an FL consider the list to be well-constructed and problem-free, and those voting to strip it of its FL status consider quite the opposite.  In any case, it is obvious that this particular point is debatable (and, I dare say, depends mostly on people's tastes).  Like I said, I personally believe the list to be well-constructed and providing just the right amount of background details.  What I don't like about your line of reasoning is that if one is to apply your logic to other lists in this series (this one, for instance), then all that needs to be done to have those lists featured is to paint red links blue, add a short blurb of an intro and a few maps, maybe put everything into a pretty table and voilà&mdash;we'll have a winner.  If this is what you are proposing, I can easily produce one "feature-quality" list per week for the next two years instead of wasting nine months of research on just one list!  To hell with quality&mdash;what matters is the number of FLs and how pretty they look!
 * I am curious: is this or this FL not too detailed by your standards? Is the lead not too long?  Should the History/Government/Etymology sections not be moved to a separate article?  How about this FL?  TOC not too overwhelming? This one?  Not too much narrative, is it?  Because to me, any of these lists is far superior and useful to what a barebones list such as this one provide...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:28, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
 * (undent) Okay, I will completely drop the debate about this not being a list. I personally do not think that this is really a list in its current state, but that is just my opinion, and clearly consensus thinks otherwise, so I'll drop this. I'll go with Crzycheetah's theory: What makes it not look like a list are the lengthy descriptions. Now on to the debate about this not being well-structured. My major concerns / comments / suggestions:
 * History - Very well-written, but I think you should merge some paragraphs together. Most are rather stubby, and they do not seem to all contain complete thoughts, but rather small pieces of information. This will hopefuly be an easy task.
 * Administrative division structure - This is where my main concerns lie. I'm am not sure if this even belongs in this list; It is a list of administrative and municipal divisions of Adygea, not a definition of the structure system. If this is all meant to be background information, then I think that it is a little strange that the information has to be twice as long as the actual list itself. The descriptions would do better in a separate article, with very brief summaries listed here. The entire section shouldn't be removed, but simply edited down. As Crzycheetah already pointed out, the format of the Administrative division structure looks great in this previous edit which was shown earlier. Links to the already exising articles for auls, khutors, etc. and brief information would be more appropriate than 2 paragraph descriptions for each, IMO.
 * Cities and towns under Republic's jurisdiction - Would suggest forming into a table, where population, area statistics, Notes, etc. could be organized. This would help with the "well-constructed" requirements.
 * Districts - Table would also be great here, to help with the "well-constructed" requirement.
 * Now for the rest of your post. Personally, I think you were getting a little out of hand. I did not mean to be rude in any of my comments, and I am sorry if my wording caused you to perceive it as such. First of all, I never said anything about removing the very appropriate prose in the History section, only condensing paragraphs. And I also never said anything about this article's lead. Provinces of Thailand is certainly up to FL standards. I don't know why you would think I would assume the lead is too long; I wrote the lead in the List of tallest buildings in Boston FL, which is just as long, and I never made any comments about a lead at this post. And here, again, the history information is completely relevant. I don't even know why Provinces of the Philippines is mentioned. The history, province list, and etymology sections are well-constructed lists, and the government section has a very appropriate amount of prose. And now on to List of districts of India. I never said anything about an overwhelming TOC. But, while we're on it, List of districts of India's TOC is "better", IMO, that this list's TOC, as it is not nearly as hard to navigate. Condensing would be nice, but is certainly not required. Also note that the Indian district list is 77 kilobytes, while this list is only 33. It is generally appropriate for longer articles to have longer TOCs. Also note that much more information is included per heading than on this list. And I don't know why Territorial evolution of Canada is mentioned, either. The only narrative I see outside of the lead is in the extremely short Notes section. Otherwise, each entry on the list contains at most 3 sentences, with the huge majority having only one senetnce. Why would you think I would classify this as "too much narrative"? And to me, List of counties in Maine is just as good of a FL as any of the previously listed. It is laid out in a different format, grant you, but is still gives an appropriate length of information for each county. If you can bring Administrative divisions of Buryatia up to FL-standards in a week, great. It needs a lot of work, but it can definitely be done, a week or two of consistent and constant editing sounds about right. From my experience, a week is generally an appropriate length of time to bring a list up to FL-standards, with quality. But this is getting completely off-topic. Raime 02:48, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, with my comments I intended to address all of the concerns raised eariler, not just your part. However, the way I formatted my reply did not really convey that intent well (it looked as if I responded only to you), so I apologize for the confusion.
 * To address the two points you raised: I have no problem with compacting the History section into fewer paragraphs. It is only stubby because the available information on the topic is very limited, and yet I was trying to break it by periods.  As for the administrative divisions structure, I disagree.  A section of similar length can be written for any other federal subject of Russia; the only reason why it overwhelms the actual list in case with Adygea is because the republic is so small.  Consider Tatarstan, for example&mdash;if a section of similar length were to be added there, it would still be dwarfed by the actual list of divisions, because Tatarstan has 43 districts (as opposed to Adygea's seven).  Moving these sections into separate articles (or to one master article) could be a solution, but then we'll need to maintain those articles and their summaries in the lists (we still do need the summaries, right?)&mdash;a task I can't justify because the benefits of doing so are almost non-existent.  Finally, as to laying out information on cities/towns/districts in a table format: this has already been tried (with multiple variations).  The reason why tables were done away with was because... people did not like them.  I have no problem with re-instating the tables, but I'd hate to face yet another defeaturing attempt a few months later on because someone would suggest that perhaps the list would work better without tables.  If WIAFL mandated the use of tables/bulleted lists, we would not be having this conversation, but unfortunately this portion of the FL criteria does not go into such specifics, so people request what they like.  But it's impossible to cater to everyone's tastes; something has to be sacrificed!  See what I mean?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:06, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Okay, but even if this list had 600 entries, it would still be too much background information. It just seems to go off-topic. I don't understand why a list of administrative and municipal divisons needs that much clarification about the structure system - It seems it would be much better suited in its own article. It is great information, I just don't think it really belongs in an article (at least not at this level of detail) that has a purpose of listing administrative divisions. Summaries are not necessary; there is nothing in WP:WIAFL that sepcifies that any summaries are needed. It is pretty much a general rule of thumb that if summaries are completely relevant to the topic (for this list - dates of formation, area statistics, population statistics, etc.), then they can and should be included in summaries. Extremely long summaries, such as a 2-paragraph definition of a aul that goes into roughly the same amount of information as the the aul article, is probably too much. Right now, I'd say the best thing to do would be to significantly edit down the administrative divisions structure section and then create a new article for all the information. It just doesn't seem relevant enough to include all that information in this particular list. If the benefit is that this list remains a FL, than that would seem like a pretty justified solution to me.
 * As for the tables, has a table similar to one used in U.S. state county lists been tried? These tables are undoubtedly well-constructed. It really doesn't matter if other editors don't like them. What matters is if the list meets the "well-constructed" requirement, and a list with tables laid out in a fashion similar to the county lists does. If any editor does nominate it here for removal simply because he/she doesn't like the tables, it would almost certainly be "Speedy Kept", as that is not at all a valid reason for removal. If a table would help this list meet the well-constructed requriement, then the best answer is, IMO, to create one. Raime 04:38, 29 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep The argument that lists and articles are 100% distinct is false. Every page in "article space" on WP is an article. Lists are a kind of article and most would fail at FAC for several reasons. That is why Featured Lists were created: we had great content that didn't fit with the FAC. An example of a FA that could also be an FL is €2 commemorative coins. We have several featured lists with substantial sections of prose. United States Navy enlisted rates is one example. The topic of this article is clearly plural. If there were seventy districts rather than seven, we would not be having this discussion. Colin°Talk 17:59, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
 * The given examples are well-constructed and deserve to be featured. I can't say the same about the list we're discussing. It doesn't matter whether Administrative and municipal divisions of Adygea is considered a list or an article, what it matters is that whether this passes WP:WIAFL or not. This list is poorly constructed with overwhelming table of contents. In order for ths list to be compared to the India's list mentioned by Ezhiki, it needs to have lists of forty-one auls, 102 khutors, nineteen selos, fifty-one settlements and twelve stanitsas. In addition, the Giaginsky District section needs to list those five rural settlements and thirty rural localities it's comprised of.-- Crzycheetah 03:34, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Crzy, listing every one of 200+ rural localities within the list may technically work for Adygea, but, to be consistent, you'd have to do the same with the rest of the lists in the series, and I somehow doubt that anyone would want to have featured lists covering three (Tatarstan), six (Moscow Oblast), or nine and a half thousand (Tver Oblast) rural localities. This is not to mention that rural localities are not even a part of "administrative and municipal division"; they are primary units around which most of those divisions are formed.  All in all, if, say administrative divisions of Moscow Oblast (with 38 administrative districts, ~80 cities/towns, etc.) were laid out in the same matter this list is, I very much doubt you'd have any problems with it.  Adygea just happens to be a small republic, but I see no reason to sacrifice the list's quality because of this.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:06, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
 * No, I really wasn't saying that you have to do it. I was saying that you shouldn't compare that India list to this one. I was also implying that in order to have a separate section for all those districts and rural localities, you need to have more info than what you have right now. That's why I am suggesting to remove those section to make the TOC neater. If you make a sortable table in the Districts section, it would benefit this list a lot. It would be a lot easier for the readers to notice the most populous district, or the oldest, etc.-- Crzycheetah 21:27, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep, fundamentally this is a list with a large amount of prose. The amount of prose cannot change the article's fundamental nature. --Golbez 00:09, 19 September 2007 (UTC)