Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-04-30/Featured list

The featured list process this week reached a milestone of two hundred and fifty featured lists with the promotion of List of The Batman episodes on Wednesday. After being introduced in May 2005 (see archived story), the featured list process led the way for the creation of featured topics and portals, both of which were proposed later that year.

Based on the criteria for featured articles, but with necessary modifications, the first draft of a set of criteria for lists was created on 18 May, 2005 by Filliocht. On 1 June, the first list was promoted by ALoan, who has since successfully nominated fifteen lists. Filliocht had nominated the list several weeks earlier, on 18 May. List of North American birds was promoted with four supporting comments, after several objections citing the lack of articles for every bird had been addressed. Very active during its first six weeks of operation, twenty-three lists were nominated; thirteen of which were successful by the end of June. The majority of the lists that failed did so either because of a lack of references, an insufficient lead, or a lack of free images. July of 2005 saw twenty lists promoted, a total that has been matched only by December of last year. Nearly seventy lists had been promoted by the end of 2005.

A featured content portal was created in January of 2006; it has since been added to the navigation section of the sidebar. Initially, a list of all the featured lists was placed under a header of "featured lists". On 11 September, CBDunkerson began transcluding a portion of a randomly selected featured list using &lt;onlyinclude> and &lt;includeonly> tags; this is how the list section of the portal can be seen today.

After earlier discussion in various places, further discussion began earlier this month as to whether featured lists should be included on the Main Page. At its onset, some editors did not believe there were enough featured lists to make such an endeavour sustainable. Several editors then suggested a rotation, whereby one list is displayed per week, but different sections are displayed to keep the content fresh. On 21 April, Ed proposed a WikiProject aimed at Wikipedia's lists. He said, "This project will encourage editors to write more lists. Lists are quite scarce now, and they're definitely needed to make Wikipedia as complete as possible."

Discussion also began in early April concerning fair use images on featured lists, and how much the inclusion of such images should affect the final result. Tompw proposed that the number of fair use images used in featured lists should be limited, due to repeated arguments about the exact interpretation of the fair use policy (especially point #3). The change would particularly affect lists such as those that give episode summaries for television series. In July 2006, a subpage of Wikipedia's guidelines on fair use that pertains exclusively to lists was created. The page describes several advantages and disadvantages of non-free content in lists, although it was tagged as historical in January 2007.

On Thursday, 26 April, Lists WikiProject was created after a proposal by Ed. The final goal is to make all lists conform to the featured list criteria. A dozen editors have already agreed to assist in the effort.

Unlike the featured article process, there is no "featured list" director. Filiocht, ALoan and Rune.welsh have all taken a major hand in the promotion process; Tompw currently promotes or fails the vast majority of candidates. He was also a major contributor to the featured topic of Canadian elections, which currently contains fourteen featured lists.