Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Outline of self

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 no consensus. Sandstein 07:13, 27 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Outline of self

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A topic outline. This was speedily deleted but Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2018 March 4 decided that AfD should discuss this article's inclusion. This is an administrative nomination, I am neutral. Sandstein 14:11, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. No refs. There is a whole outline wikiproject which i'm struggling to understand, isn't the outline of a subject the regular articles lead section? Szzuk (talk) 15:32, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment – @Szzuk: "Outline of" in an article's title is short for "Hierarchical outline of", because the latter would just be horrendously long to include in titles. So, we use its short form, which is the common term used throughout academia and by other encyclopedias (including Worldbook, Britannica, etc.). Hierarchical outlines are a form of tree structure, a type of visual layout. They include sentence outlines, like the type most students learn to plan the structure of a paper, article, or book; and topic outlines, like the synopses professors hand out to their classes at the beginning of the school semester, or the subject outlines included in the 15th-edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Wikipedia outlines started out as purely topic outlines, but are evolving into a hybrid of the two forms, becoming annotated outlines, with the most developed ones being a list of topics with each topic including an annotation. Annotated lists are covered and encouraged in WP:STAND. — The Transhumanist
Keep -- The fact that there's an outline wikiproject and there are dozens of these outline articles, many more than ten years old, suggests that there's a consensus that they're notable, probably if the subject being outlined is notable. Self is clearly notable, so probably the question of whether this outline is notable is actually a policy question, and should not be settled at AfD, but through some other process, maybe RfC or something? See WP:OUTLINE for a description of the presumptive notability. Note that I'm aware that DR sent it back here, but I think that was a mistake. They ought to have overturned the speedy and suggested an RfC. 192.160.216.52 (talk) 17:43, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment – outlines are a type of list, and are covered by the WP:LIST and WP:STAND guidelines, and further explained by WP:Outlines...

There are over 900 outlines (740 outlines with the title "Outline of x", and over a 160 more outlines with the title "List of x topics". To see a list of all of the latter, view this page with SearchSuite.js with details turned off.)...

Outlines date back to the very beginning of Wikipedia. Back then, both outlines and indexes were titled "List of x topics", or even "List of basic x topics". The problem was that 2 very different formats shared the same title naming standard. So they clashed: how could you name a structured list as the "List of geology topics" when there was already an alphabetical index using that title? So, new naming conventions were created, so you could have both an Outline of geology and an Index of geology articles. — The Transhumanist 02:46, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete outline articles in general are fine, but this one seems problematic to me because of the nebulous and extremely broad inclusion criteria. This includes every topic which relates to individual people, including vast swathes of philosophy, psychology, economics, ethics and many other disciplines. I don't think the result is very useful. Hut 8.5 18:19, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Point taken, the result looks like crap, but WP:DINC. Self is notable and complex, so Outline of self must be also. 192.160.216.52 (talk) 18:54, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think this is something which can be addressed through editing, given the extremely high level and abstract nature of the article topic I strongly suspect that any other attempt to have an article at this title is going to run into similar problems. The logic that "X is encyclopedic, therefore Outline of X must be as well" doesn't work. The fact we have an article on Entity isn't en excuse to write Outline of entities listing every single kind of entity. See also WP:NOTINHERITED. Hut 8.5 19:05, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

But, Wikipedia has an entire list system dedicated to listing every single kind of entity. Those can be considered to be part of one huge gigantic multi-part list of entities. See the top-level lists at Portal:Contents/Lists and List of lists of lists. With an outline of such general scope, such as the Outline of knowledge (which can be interpreted as the "Outline of all topics"), the scope of which is all knowledge (which is even bigger than the scope of all entities)... such an outline is possible because of WP:SPLIT, through which we branch it out to other outlines or lists (lists are branches of outlines too). Self, by comparison, has a much narrower scope, and would be much easier to build than the broader subjects of geography, culture, science, technology, and so on. But we have outlines for each of those hugely broad subjects...

If the encyclopedia has an article on the subject, then the corresponding outline is likely entirely fixable. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Outline of relationships, for which the article was improved from a very shoddy vague state. — The Transhumanist 02:13, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't a high level article though. The vast majority of the entries are things like Self-esteem, Temperament or Equanimity, which are low-level concepts and don't really subdivide any further. The idea of "self" relates to little bits of many different disciplines, which means the articles listed are going to have to be fairly low level as the high level ones won't necessarily relate to the subject matter. Self-esteem is part of psychology, for instance, but you couldn't include psychology in the list because much of it doesn't relate to "self". By contrast it is a lot easier to build an outline of "science" or "philosophy" because those are conventional academic disciplines with well-understood subdivisions. Hut 8.5 18:46, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Restructuring of the outline is underway. Now, psychology is included in the list, as Psychology of self, which narrows it down in context to the scope of the current topic.

You mentioned that science and philosophy would be easier to build outlines for, but I started both of them and did extensive work on both over the years, and I can tell you they weren't any easier to build (I also started Outline of self). You can't get more abstract than "philosophy", and the foundations of science are about as abstract as you can get, while the overall technicality of the subject and its specialties adds further difficulty. But, how hard an outline might be to build is irrelevant: we don't shy away from a topic just because it is hard.

By the way, Outline of self is a very high level article. You are right, it is an extremely broad subject. Here is the top tier of Wikipedia's content organization system, by which all of its major navigation subsystems are organized (where they are displayed at the top in the table of contents for each), including Portal:Contents/Outlines:

As you can see, "self" is included in WP's top-tier of classifications. Not having an outline of self would be a major oversight and would create a glaring gap in the outline system. — The Transhumanist 11:26, 15 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it's a terribly good categorisation, even if it is the one the portal uses. If you want to improve it then I suggest you come up with some sort of objective inclusion criterion for the page, ideally something which can at least in principle be checked against reliable sources. Otherwise the contents of the page comes down to the whim of whoever wrote it and you end up with a mess that isn't very useful. The portal dodges this by restricting itself to articles with "self" in the title, which works there but probably won't generalise to an entire article. By contrast philosophy is a conventional academic discipline and as such it has various schools and sub-fields, I wasn't terribly surprised to see that Outline of philosophy mostly just lists the most prominent of these and there must be secondary sources which give an overall outline of the field. Hut 8.5 19:31, 15 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The nomination does not provide a deletion reason and the speedy was WP:A11 which was rightly dismissed as inappropriate. So, there's no case to answer. AFD is not cleanup. Andrew D. (talk) 19:02, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
~~Move to portal namespace~~. I'm deliberately not bolding that because it is controversial so maybe an AfC for outlines in general is in order. See Portal talk:Contents/Outlines#namespace discipline for instance and the discussion around the failed proposal Wikipedia talk:Move navigational lists to portal namespace. Outlines are an alternative navigation method to categories, lists, or navboxes. They are accessed through Portal:Contents with the top level page being at Portal:Contents/Outlines. Thus, to my mind, the outline pages should be in the Portal namespace. At least where there is a main article of the same name, to have an outline as well in mainspace is a content fork. I would expect the mainspace article and the outline to have a great deal of commonality of links. The fact that they don't says to me there is something badly wrong with one or both pages, but that is a cleanup issue, not AfD. There does seem to be some awfully big holes in the outline system though. Outline of self is found listed at Portal:Contents/Outlines § People and self under "Types of people". There is only one other entry: Outline of children. I'm pretty sure those are not the only types of people! SpinningSpark 19:15, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment – Note that all the major page-based navigation systems have a top-level page in Portal:Contents, including Lists, and Categories. But, Categories also has its own top-level pages in its home namespace. Lists, Outlines, and Indices each have a top-level page in portal space, category space, and in article space (where they reside). The home namespace of all lists (of all types) is the article/main namespace. The topmost list is List of lists of lists, and the Outlines' topmost level outline -- the system's true top page (that is, which is actually part of the outline system) -- is the Outline of knowledge...

Concerning holes in the outline system, see WP:IMPATIENT. The outline system is a work-in-progress, just like Wikipedia is. The religion section of the outline system was empty for years, constituting a major gap, until the Religion WikiProjects had a frenzy of friendly competitiveness after the Outline of Islam was posted. :) Now we have some very extensive outlines on religion. Gaps are more likely to be filled the more exposure the system has. Front and center, in the encyclopedia itself, is the best place for it. After all, it is not just navigational, it is topical as well, falling under the WP:LIST and WP:STAND guidelines.

One thing that is not immediately obvious, is that regular lists have been merged into and split from outlines many times. Outlines are the most versatile type of list, and they are by their very nature comprised of smaller lists, both structured (smaller outlines) and straight lists (regular lists). Because of this, outlines contain thousands of lists, link to thousands more, and many hundreds of "List of" redirects point to outline sections. Moving outlines to another namespace would create thousands of cross-namespace links (on both sides), and would estrange many "regular" lists from their home namespace, where they originated before being merged into outlines. Since all lists together comprise the list-based navigation system, breaking it apart across namespaces would be highly disruptive. "Outline of" and "Index of" articles used to be named "List of", but were changed due to overlapping scope with each other—they are still the same lists they used to be. — The Transhumanist 03:28, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. The Transhumanist has convinced me that this is the way that outlines are done on Wikipedia so I have struck my original !vote. I'm still not entirely convinced that navigation pages should be in mainspace but an AfD is not the place to change that. SpinningSpark 08:25, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete-WP is not a place to post your sociology essay. ‡ Єl Cid of ᐺalencia ^ᐐT₳LKᐬ 19:40, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep – this is a bonafide outline, a type of list and Stand-alone list. Outlines form one of Wikipedia's navigation systems, and along with regular lists and indices with which they are highly integrated, comprise an even more extensive navigation system. Outlines are the top of the list system, for every major subject, because they link to the other outlines and regular lists for their respective subjects. So outlines aren't just "the outline-based navigation system", they form the core of the "list-based navigation system".

Note that list types in titles are not part of the subject, they simply indicate the format. So List of sharks is not about a list, nor is it about shark lists, it is a list of sharks. The same with WP's glossary of philosophy. It is a glossary, it is not about some glossary. And so it goes with all the other list types, such as outlines, indexes, and timelines.

So, the subject of this article is "self", and its format is outline format. Self has its own article, which establishes the notability of the subject.

The question then becomes, why have an outline on the subject? Outlines on Wikipedia have two main purposes: 1) show the structure of a subject (what topics belong to the subject, and which topics fall under each other) in a form (as a list) that is easy to understand: the tree structure, and 2) provide a navigation tree of Wikipedia's coverage of that subject, like a table of contents. Concerning the latter, in the spirit of its navigation role, the question the outline tries to answer is "what does Wikipedia have pertaining to the subject of self?". And it does a pretty good job of answering that question and presenting the answer in an easy-to-grasp tree structure to assist the reader in deciding what they want to read about next. — The Transhumanist 03:40, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Improvement of outline underway – overhaul begun. — The Transhumanist 03:44, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep This is a reasonable outline, and there is no indication that any deficiencies cannot be improved by regular editing. Jclemens (talk) 05:41, 16 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 18:12, 19 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: the list is about a significant area of philosophy, also intersecting with psychology, religion etc. as the article mentions. I think the "Other personal concepts" and "Individual rights" sections are off-topic and need to be cut, but the list overall should stay. On a side note, the article's placement under "People and self" in Portal:Contents/Outlines seems very dubious to me – I think the section should be renamed "People" and the outline should be listed under "Philosophy and thinking". — Bilorv_(c)(talk) 02:20, 20 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions. MT Train^Talk 03:12, 20 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The "delete" arguments seem to be merely disputes about the content of the outline, not the value or notability of the outline itself (and it certainly isn't a "sociology essay"). This is kind of a "contents" page, and I recognize its value as such. Whether it can be restructured to be more helpful is a different question. I'm disappointed that editors want to delete this, as the outline enhances the value of WP. Jack N. Stock (talk) 04:46, 26 March 2018 (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.