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NLIST for List of X in <country> lists
For complex or cross-category lists (like List of X in <country>), NLIST currently states: There is no present consensus for how to assess the notability of more complex and cross-categorization lists (such as "Lists of X of Y") ....[1] A few/some editors might take this to mean that the notability of a List of X in <country> list may be assessed in some way other than by X in <country> meeting WP:GNG or WP:SNG. This makes sense in theory, buuut in practice, editors seem to overwhelmingly prefer to assess notability only by X in <country> meeting GNG or SNG (cf table). Imo NLIST copy should prolly reflect this apparent consensus for at least this sort of complex/cross-cat list, as it's frustratingly vague/unclear at present imo, but I'll only leave this here for record's sake.[2] - Asdfjrjjj (talk) 04:43, 16 August 2025 (UTC) Asdfjrjjj (talk) 04:43, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is a very interesting point that you've hit on in a what is notable sense, is it that list of items in country constitutes an X of Y list or an list of X alone and something that I was debating myself as we discussed in a previous AfD. I agree that some more clarity might be beneficial. Going through the list, I was expecting the keep/delete outcome results to follow what might be considered "large or popular topics" but it doesn't seem to necessarily follow. Thank you @Asdfjrjjj for doing some of the ground work in collecting a list of these cases. Bobby Cohn 🍁 (talk) 22:13, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Asdfjrjjj, mostly, when I see editors asking questions about this general subject, I find that they are looking at the list as if it were an ordinary article. However, lists serve two separate functions on wiki:
article content – helping readers learn more about X
navigation – helping readers find the article they're looking for
Almost all "List of X in <country>" articles are the navigation type. They exist for readers who say "I don't know what the name of that is, but I know it's an X in <country>, so let me scan down this list – Ah, there it is!"
The last time we seriously attempted to work on explaining notability of lists (over a decade ago), we didn't finish the job. This is one of the things that we didn't find wording to explain. There are some significant m:inclusionism vs m:deletionism factors involved. Also, some editors have a gut reaction to a "List of" page (because it superficially looks like an "article") that they don't have for a Category: or WP:NAVBOX that contains exactly the same information, so they're happy to have a "Category:X in country" and a navbox template for X in country, but as soon as it's a List of exactly the same thing – well, now you have to prove to them not only that the list is accurate and verifiable, but that there are lengthy sources carefully analyzing this group of X in that specific country, because now it is an article (in their eyes) instead of a way for readers to find articles (especially the ~67% of readers on mobile, and therefore who don't see categories or navboxes).
I realize that AFDs over this can be frustrating because there's no clear Official™ Written Rule, but please use common sense, and encourage others to do the same. Maybe some day we'll gather our collective energy and figure out how to explain the difference between a navigational list and a content-focused list, and then tell editors to leave the nav lists alone. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:47, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A few thoughts on this…
In some cases, these articles started out as a “list of X” article where all X are notable. However, as that list grew it was deemed appropriate to split it into several sub-articles (by Y)… and someone decided that the Y should be “by country”. If they had chosen some other Y (say alphabetical) no one would question the notability of the list. In such cases, perhaps the solution is to go back to square one, and restructure the set of sub-articles using a different Y.
Perhaps we need a better way to distinguish navigational lists from informational lists. This could be done by renaming purely navigational articles as “Index articles” (as in Index of articles on X or Index of X in Y. Meanwhile, informational lists could continue to be called “Lists” (as in List of X etc). We could then write distinct guidelines for “Index articles” vs “List articles”.
IMO the dilemma is because I don't think that the issue can be solved using our existing framework. The reality is that even if a list is pure OR (a creation of the editor) and there is no independent coverage of the topic of the article (the overall synthesized creation) we often generally accept it as OK; i.e. not excluded by notability rules. If we wanted to work on this we'd probably need to start by acknowledging that decisions about notability incorporate other criteria (such as degree of enclyclopedicness) besides the notability guidelines. Then criteria that measure degree of enclyclopedicness could be utilized. One measure might be how close RS's come to making that compilation even if no source actually did it exactly. Another would be likehood that someone would come to an enclyclopedia to find that list.
I feel like that's exactly what the second NLIST paragraph (for informational or complex or cross-category lists) might've been meant to carve out - the intersections of some categories (X of Y) seem so fundamentally encyclopaedic that even w/o that particular intersection existing in IRSs, it'd still be of value in an encyclopaedia. But at least for intersections involving geographic entities (eg X in <country>), that doesn't really seem to be the majority opinion in AfDs.[3]
Partially agree with Blueboar re point 1 - I was also thinking of these List of X in <country> lists as basically all being one giant List of X, just split along geographic lines for manageability. Did not really consider notability of individual list members though, as I feel I've seen a bunch of X in <country> lists where that's not a membership criterion.[4] Not sure re Blueboar's point 2 - dunno how often editors confuse info vs nav lists, but might be seen as WP:CREEP to require differential naming, maybe? - Asdfjrjjj (talk) 19:15, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've been wondering if the solution is a new template, along the lines of {{disambiguation}}:
This list page primarily exists to help readers navigate to other pages. Accordingly, a majority of the entries should be links to other articles.
We could add some CSS-based text with instructions about sourcing requirements (e.g., "Unlike Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages, inline citations are permitted on this page. However, please do not remove uncited entries unless you have a reason to believe they are actually wrong"). [I base the last sentence on the fact that an entry in a 'list of fruit' that has no citation is not Wikipedia:Likely to be challenged by any reasonable person, when clicking on the entry takes you to a page that says 'This is a kind of fruit'. I grant that there are about three-quarter million registered editors here each year, and that in any group of humans that large, there will be some unreasonable ones.] WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:34, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How much bureaucratic procedure should we put around this? Boldly create the template and start using it, or have a big conversation/RFC or two first? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:59, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I like the template for lists that would unambiguously be navigation lists. That said, I am not sure that the template helps resolve the question of when a cross-categorization list should be created - as I do think we should err towards requiring some sort of independent reason for the list, rather than the cross-categorization being original research. - Enos733 (talk) 20:47, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So, I think you mean that WhatamIdoing's idea looks good but you don't want it to be a substitute for continuing to work on the broader question. If so, that is also my thought. North8000 (talk) 11:58, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
^Though qualified later on by: Editors are still urged to demonstrate list notability via the grouping itself before creating stand-alone lists.
^This seemed to be more fitting than WP:SAL talk. Thank you Bobby Cohn for helping me notice this, and sorry for all the grief (not sticking to consensus reading of NLIST) in that AfD! I was gonna make this a discussion per your suggestion over there but don't think there's any need really, per the table here. As an aside, there's a couple lists I wrote before that one that also fail NLIST per this consensus interpretation, but I'll AfD those pronto :)
^Though maybe there's a bit of selection bias going on ofc, both for nom'd lists, and participating editors.
^And ofc it's not a required membership criterion, though some editors seemed to vote in AfDs as if it were, maybe, but those seemed like honest mistakes rather than substantive stances.
^This is meant to be a complete list, but mistakes could've been made ofc. Info was not double-checked so could be mistaken too (esp summaries in Description column w/c required some interpretation). This list excludes lists of words (glossaries, gazetteers, so on), of numbers (results, stats, so on), and of people. It also excludes lists which were full or partial duplicates, disambiguation lists, split lists. The NLIST? column here answers the question, Was NLIST one of the reasons for nomination?
^Possibly 3/4 but fourth editor (said "If any of those incidents are really notable then we need articles on them instead.") seemed to want list members to be notable, rather than list set/group itself.
^Possibly 2/3 but third editor (said "Not enough entries to meet WP:NLIST") seemed unclear.
^Possibly 4/4 but fourth editor did not explicitly agree with nom.
