Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2020 April 18

= April 18 =

Wikipedia equivalent of Propaedia?
Hi

I don't even know if this is the right place to ask this- apologies if not- but has there ever been a proposal for, or plans in future for, a Wikipedia version of Encyclopaedia Britannica's Propaedia volume? Effectively, what I mean is the creation of a page or set of pages providing a large-scale structure or hierarchy of Wikipedia articles (and thus, effectively, human knowledge) arranged in a consistent, logical way so that people get even more out of Wikipedia. I'm imagining a completed version would look something like a much larger, more complex, more detailed version of Table 1 in the Propaedia article. For those not familiar with the Propaedia itself, a PDF of its 1970s/1980s edition is downloadable here: http://www.markklingman.com/docs/britannica_propaedia.pdf. Clearly, the closest equivalent that currently exists on Wikipedia is Contents/Portals but I may not be alone in finding this hard to navigate, not consistent across all topics, and incomplete. Another possibility for developing a Propaedia-type resource for Wikipedia would be to extend the excellent sidebars available against some articles (e.g. Finance) which give a mini-hierarchy of articles on a specific topic, into a single mega-structure setting out a hierarchy for all or most articles. Not sure if this idea is insane or not, it just feels to me that although the 6 million plus articles of English language Wikipedia is an incredibly successful and exciting experiment- indeed, one of humanity's greatest achievements- it does seem to be a pretty 'flat'/horizontal structure, with nothing to distinguish between the relative importance of articles (e.g. a 'random article' search would be as likely to return an article on a tiny village with a population of 20 people as it would the main 'geography' article), and that some kind of more vertical hierarchy could add an important new dimension. Looking forward to the responses of other Wikipedians. JH1977 (talk) 12:42, 18 April 2020 (UTC)


 * The category structure, with Category:Articles as its root, puts a largely hierachical structure on top of our encyclopedic content. It is a rather tree-like graph, ideally a directed acyclic graph but, I expect, with the occasional cycle. Not all nodes in that graph are relevant for the purpose, but I think it can serve as the basis for a navigation tool. If we tag the nodes that are not relevant for the purpose (e.g. Category:Wikipedia pages referenced by the press) and add snappy one-line descriptions for each relevant node, we are already halfway. --Lambiam 15:46, 18 April 2020 (UTC)


 * To progress this further, may I suggest the Village pump (idea lab) or more directly, Village pump (proposals). Alansplodge (talk) 16:14, 18 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks both- I will copy and paste my original post plus Lambiam's response onto Village pump (proposals) and see what happens- guidance appreciated. JH1977 (talk) 17:14, 18 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Check out Outlines system as well. Rmhermen (talk) 16:33, 19 April 2020 (UTC)