Wikipedia:WikiProject Laundromat

This project's goal is to reduce the number of inappropriate laundry lists in Wikipedia articles. This page and its subpages contain their suggestions; it is hoped that this project will help to focus the efforts of other Wikipedians. If you would like to help, please inquire on the talk page and see the to-do list there.

Scope
A laundry list is a long or exhaustive list of people or things, typically in "bullet point" format, often of minutiae. Having lists instead of article text can in some cases make Wikipedia worse, not better. They sometimes can be hard to read, accumulate cruft, and tend to wander from list guidelines.

The goal of Wikiproject:Laundromat is to scrub laundry lists from articles when they detract from an article's usefulness, and to salvage usable content from those laundry lists into readable, encyclopedic text. A list is sometimes the best way of presenting detailed material; this project is not intended to remove such lists.

Goals

 * 1) To identify non-list articles that are overbalanced with laundry lists.  As a rule of thumb, if more than about 30% of a non-list article consists of a list, it may be a problem.
 * 2) To identify entries in lists that are nonnotable, nonencyclopedic, and unhelpful, and to remove them from both the list and the article.
 * 3) To identify entries in problematic lists that are notable and encyclopedic, and to remove them from the list and incorporate them into the article's main body flow, with appropriate text.

Laundromat is not primarily intended to address NPOV violations, poorly written text, or general style problems, although of course you should feel free to fix those while doing the wash. The goal of Laundromat is specifically to find "laundry lists"--inappropriate lists of miscellaneous items--, and salvage usable content therein and turn it into well-written text.

Resources
The following resources are useful for labeling articles with potential problems.
 * to place at the top of lists that are ill-defined. Category:Wikipedia list cleanup lists all such labeled articles.
 * to label articles that have lists that mainly promote external web sites. Category:Wikipedia spam cleanup lists all such labeled articles.
 * See Cleanup resources for other cleanup templates.

Identifying articles to be cleaned
When you find an article or section with a list that needs cleanup, add Cleanup-list to the top of it, which will add it to Category:Wikipedia list cleanup, and produce this notice:

Cleaning in progress
When you are starting to clean an article, move it from the above section to here. Other Laundromat members can help and monitor it for a while.
 * Akai
 * Occupational safety and health Very list-y in the "Roles and Responsibilities of Occupational Health and Safety" section as well as in "Common Workplace and Hazard Groups", with a couple other lists in the article as well as a massive "See Also" section including many external links.

Cleaned
When a list is cleaned as much as it needs to be, move it here. The above dealt with --  Ohc  ¡digame! 04:50, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Harvey Andrews – cleaned
 * Brainiac: Science Abuse – rem entire 'Experiments' section
 * Yvon Deschamps – simplified by removing tracks
 * Dublin Theatre Festival – removed listcruft
 * Cyrano de Bergerac (play) – removed trivia
 * List of software that uses Subversion – speedy as A7 (importance unclear)
 * List of sports abbreviations – Redirected page to Category:Glossaries of sports
 * List of television shows set in Washington, D.C. – part of multiple AfD
 * Mushiking: King of the Beetles – removed the most serious, but prob needs more cleanup
 * Rude Mechanicals (theater company) – db-spam by non-notable outfit
 * Zoe Tay – delete to start over
 * List of user interface literature – Articles for deletion/List of user interface literature
 * Winstone Servlet Container – speedying as spam
 * University of St Andrews Union Debating Society – trimmed ‎List of Presidents
 * KWTX-TV – News operation: rem directory entries and linkspam
 * Steve Schaeffer ‎ (AfD as non-notable musician)
 * Gżira – rem entries in Buildings, associations and organizations section WP:NOT#TRAVELGUIDE
 * Għargħur – rem entries in Social Clubs: rem WP:NOT#DIRECTORY
 * Dingli – rem assorted listcruft and spam per WP:NOT#DIRECTORY

The above dealt with --  Ohc  ¡digame! 07:12, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The World's Work ‎ (rem laundry list and linkspam)
 * Treasure ‎ (rem laundry list per WP:NOT#IINFO)
 * Transistor ‎ (list seems legitimate)
 * Shimonoseki ‎ (rem per WP is not a travel guidel)
 * Parole board ‎ (rem per WP:NOT#IINFO - it's sufficient to note that there are 52 parole boards in the US,)
 * Divine (corporation) ‎ (rem laundry list of non-notables)

Out of scope
This section is for apparent lists that don't fit in the scope of the project, or are best left as they are.

Projects

 * 1) Fantasy Laundromat: Articles connected to fantasy and science fiction tend to collect listcruft.  For example, fans of imaginary fantasy author J. Worthington Prufrock will know that he once mentioned a dragon in passing in one book, and will rush over to the Dragon article and add a line to "Dragons in Modern Culture" along the lines of "Famed author J. Worthington Prufrock's Raven Darktalon Blood saga has a Dragon character named Euphemistus."
 * 2) Trivia Laundromat: Trivia sections are to laundry lists what agar-filled petri dishes are to bacteria.
 * 3) Link Laundromat: Related to WikiProject Spam.  When cleaning laundry lists of links, use External links as your guide.

Similar WikiProjects
Similar WikiProjects are:
 * WikiProject Trivia Cleanup
 * WikiProject Spam

Participants

 * User:Nandesuka
 * brenneman {L}
 * ˉˉanetode╞┬╡
 * Jaranda wat's sup 04:42, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
 * —   - I'll play a role... a barrel role!... oh wait. 04:48, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Sabine's Sunbird - Talk to me
 * - Does this make me a laundryman?
 * Hydrogen Iodide 05:02, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Aboyall 18:59, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Arknascar44
 * Vikrant Phadkay 08:31, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Amadscientist 05:40, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * SilkTork 11:17, 15 August 2007 (UTC) I like the idea of this. Pass me a scrubbing brush.
 * Ohconfucius 08:50, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Unionhawk Talk E-mail 04:10, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Learnerktm 13:32, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Ringbang (talk) 19:06, 2 April 2017 (UTC)