Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Outline of chocolate

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. (non-admin closure) Extraordinary Writ (talk) 19:16, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Outline of chocolate[edit]

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Duplicates information already found at chocolate articles and other related articles. I have read Wikipedia:Outlines, and that specifically says that outline articles are "Not merely an item list", which is what this article is. All of the heading correspond to sections of the chocolate article and other related articles, so much better to find the information there, instead of duplicating it in a bad way in this outline article. Joseph2302 (talk) 16:34, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Food and drink-related deletion discussions. Joseph2302 (talk) 16:34, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy keep, The article appears to comply with the specifications in Wikipedia:Outlines and is not merely an item list. It has an appropriate structure and provides links which are mostly appropriately annotated for the reader's convenience. Outlines on Wikipedia are stand-alone lists designed to help a reader learn about a subject quickly, by showing what topics it includes, and how those topics are related to each other, is exactly what this article is and does. Regular articles (which are prose arranged in paragraphs) are intended as introductions to their respective subjects. They make for a good read, but they aren't all that effective for browsing or navigating an entire subject. An outline is intended to provide more direct access to Wikipedia's coverage of an entire subject via linked branches.
Wikipedia's coverage of a subject goes far beyond the scope of the prose article on that subject. (For example, there are over 30,000 articles on mathematics). The arbitrary network of links embedded in paragraphs throughout a subject do not map out that subject very well at all, and they can't because the ability of the prose format to do this is limited. For lists, however, mapping subjects is a strength, especially for outlines. If it is incomplete or contains errors they can and should be fixed. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 04:32, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- This is not speedy keep eligible, as I believe it does consist just of list items, and therefore is not a valid outline. Which is something that actually needs refuting, rather than people just saying it's fine. Joseph2302 (talk) 11:28, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  - If you look closely you will see that it is a structured set of lists of annotated links to relevant Wikipedia articles, which is what a Wikipedia outline article is supposed to be. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 18:33, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  - You proposed deletion, so the onus is on you to show how this outline does not comply with the currently accepted criteria, rather than just claiming that to be the case. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 18:49, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  - Comment: This outlne is eligible for speedy keep, as all of the nominator's statements are either erroneous, or irrelevant to deletion. The nomination lacks authoritative cause based on the violation of a rule — The nominator has not presented a single rule that is being broken. The point of navigation pages, such as outlines, is to provide article titles organized for ease of access, which this outline certainly does. — The Transhumanist 02:29, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: this is a perfectly fine outline —¿philoserf? (talk) 08:14, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Reluctant keep - this article is justified under WP: OUTLINE, but I understand the puzzlement, if you will, over the presence of Outlines on Wikipedia as they are at the minute. They're not a stand-alone article Type like lists seem to be, with a little purple badge of 'this is a list article', they don't seem all that used - 17 views on Outline of chocolate on the last day, iirc - and their formatting and layout really does strike me as oddly informal for our current-day standards. If an RfC on reshaping the Outline MoS came up, I'd be in support of a number of changes, as I feel Outlines probably need a revamp for the modern day.--Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) ({{ping}} me!) 11:25, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- User:Ineffablebookkeeper, if you have constructive suggestions for improving outlines, there is a WikiProject talk page where it can be discussed. Please ping me if you do, as I would be happy to see improvements to outline utility. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 18:33, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Actually outlines are stand-alone lists and should be rated as list articles (Which is the case with Outline of chocolare). · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 04:02, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep meets the current criteria for "Outline" articles. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 20:12, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy keep - All outlines duplicate information found elsewhere in the encyclopedia, as do all of Wikipedia's navigation system pages, including lists, categories, timelines, indexes, glossaries, portals, navigation footers, navigation sidebars, etc. They are, in essence, classification systems (i.e., collections of lists) of Wikipedia article titles, while many outlines and lists also include annotations (descriptive text) to aid topic selection, sort of like restaurant menus do.

Wikipedia has over 25 classification systems (some stand-alone, some embedded), that organize the subjects of knowledge, and that are at least 3-levels deep.

The outline system is one of the deepest of WP's classification systems, going at least 15 levels deep in some places, and even more if you consider recursion. Only the category system goes deeper, but is heavily recursive, is decentralized, and lacks descriptions.

On another point, there seems to be some confusion as to what an "item list" is, as referred to in the outline guideline. The scope of an item list is the members of a particular type of thing. The other type of list are topics lists, such as outlines (also known as tables of contents) and indexes. Outlines are general topics lists including all topics under a given subject. For example, we have the item list List of sharks that presents the various species of sharks covered on Wikipedia, and we have the Outline of sharks, which lists articles on anything and everything about sharks, including shark species articles. While outlines can contain item lists, they are not exclusively item lists, because their scope is all topics under their respective subjects.

Some chocolate-related item lists include: List of types of chocolate, List of chocolate drinks, List of chocolate bar brands, and List of chocolate-covered foods. Meanwhile, the scope of the Outline of chocolate is all articles about chocolate.

A fact you might find interesting, is that all item lists on Wikipedia are branches of the outline system (every branch of an outline is a list, and many outlines are multi-page) — they are all components of the tree of knowledge and are extensively linked together as such. Whenever an outline or item list is deleted, a gap is created in the system.

I hope this explanation helps. Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 01:58, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Actually there is an opt-in gadget to display short descriptions as annotations in categories, which I find very useful, but the category system also contains a lot of loops and miscategorisation due to bad practice (we need tools to find and fix them) which makes it less convenient for topic searches. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 04:26, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  - Cool, add "category system" to the list of classification systems that support annotations. By the way, what is the gadget called? P.S.: please ping me. — The Transhumanist 07:21, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    - The Transhumanist, it turns out it is a script, see User:SD0001/shortdescs-in-category.js. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 18:11, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. OPs objection is that it duplicates information found elsewhere. I'm not seeing anything necessarily terribly wrong with that. Presenting the same information in two different ways ways and places can be an element of human factors engineering, since not everyone gets information the same way. (There are potential maintenance and synchronization issues tho, true). --Herostratus (talk) 02:31, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- It is quite normal and even encouraged to duplicate information on some ways. A summary section when an article is split is an example of where we are expected to duplicate some of the information. Any list with annotated links, such as in a see also section, duplicates information, so objections on the grounds of merely duplicating some information are not valid. Also, and more importantly, information may be duplicated, but it is not all duplicated from the same article, small amounts of information spread over a large number of articles is repeated, and not necessarily in the same way as in the body of those articles, so it is not a content fork.Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 06:49, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as per The Transhumanist and Peter Southwood. WikiJoeB (talk) 06:59, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, as it is a reasonable outline article.Jackattack1597 (talk) 16:41, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.