Wikipedia:Lists as cruft magnets

In some cases lists of examples have been split off from articles in order to keep the main article from getting "too long". Sometimes this is reasonable, but often these lists grow almost indefinitely. If the property described in the main article is commonplace, editors will find it easy to add new examples to these lists. Pretty soon we end up with listcruft: a catalog or directory of examples which does little for the reader's understanding.

Alternative approaches
There are other ways to handle this situation without spawning boundless lists.

Categories
In many cases, a category is a better solution than a list.

Limit examples to the most notable cases
Many articles are best served by an internal list of the most notable examples, for example:


 * first or last occurrence of the phenomenon
 * a particularly controversial or notorious case
 * a frequently discussed case in the literature

Organize examples by type
It may be better to list subtypes of the phenomenon and then give a single example of each.

Resist the urge to embroider or show off
It is very tempting to "add" to any article by inserting a case you know about that isn't yet mentioned. But you should ask yourself this: is this going to improve the reader's understanding of the subject, or is it just adding to a catalog of already very similar cases? If the situation in your example is already covered by another entry, then you should consider resisting the urge.

Example discussions
Here are a few AfD discussions concerning lists, all of which were taken from Articles for deletion/Log/2007 March 27. Note that their inclusion doesn't represent endorsement of deletion; it simply reflects that the issues discussed here arose in the discussion of the article in question.


 * Articles for deletion/List of cultural references to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
 * Articles for deletion/List of sportspeople who have had microfracture surgery
 * Articles for deletion/Self-injury in popular culture
 * Articles for deletion/List of racing drivers
 * Articles for deletion/List of fiction that breaks the fourth wall (Second nomination)
 * see also Articles for deletion/List of fiction that breaks the fourth wall for the first nomination of this article
 * Articles for deletion/Olympic films