Talk:List of articles every Wikipedia should have/Archives/2008

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Weapons section

In an efford to be more realistic as of todays state of the world with wars going on, I'd like to see en:Bomb and/or either en:Shell or better en:Land mine added to the section, maybe even one of some sort of en:Ballistic missile or en:Cruise missile. They are experienced every day in many countries in Asia and Africa and parts of South America. Also en:Aircraft carrier was imho to be discussed. I do not know what to cut down in order to make room for them, except for my earlier suggestions. --Purodha Blissenbach 11:54, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Edit by Ecelan

Does anyome support this edit by Ecelan? [1] It deletes John Milton, generally regarded as among the very greatest poets, and two Irish winners of the Nobel Prize (Beckett and Yeats).--Poetlister 13:07, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I have explained my action in [2]. I think your point of view is far too anglocentric: there are many other Nobel Prizes in other languages that have not been included. And who says who is among the very greatest poets?

If you want to include Wordsworth, OK, no problem, but eliminate some of the other. As long as you keep the number of english speaking authors under 7, I have no problem with it. I do have a problem with a list of 49 authors where 10 are english speaking. Are you telling me that the English literature is more important than the Chinese, the German or the French?

--Ecelan 15:00, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

If you think so, you should start a discussion. It makes no sense to delete a few names at random; I cannot believe that there would be any consensus to delete Milton and Yeats while retaining Tolkein. And please note that all deleted names should go here.[3] Thank you.--Poetlister 22:17, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

As I have already told, I did begin a discussion [4].

If you think that the names I have chosen are not right, then, please feel free to change them. You don't like Tolkien? You prefer to put Wordsworth? Please do.

The problem is to add new names. The idea is to have only 1000 articles, and we have reduced the author list to about 50. So we have to make sacrifices and the English literature is already overrepresented. I will delete Tolkien for you, as you seem to prefer Wordsworth and are not able/willing to do it yourself. I hope this will end the discussion.

You're welcome. --Ecelan 21:20, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I see John Milton has been removed again. He should certainly be restored, perhaps deleting Mark Twain.--Cato 15:53, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Cities

There are five Italian cities in the list (Florence, Milan, Naples, Rome, Venice), that is one more than for all of Africa (Cairo, Cape Town, Dar es Salaam, Nairobi) and only one less than the number for all of the Americas (Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York City, Rio de Janeiro, Washington, D.C.). There is also four Australian cities, and only two South American. Compared by area and population Europe and Australia are clearly overrepresented compared to the Americas and Africa. Of course size isn't the only criteria here, but what makes Dublin more important than Lagos, and Brisbane more important than Lima? I think Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Amsterdam, Dublin, Edinburgh, Florence, Naples, Tel Aviv, Venice and Vienna can go...--Jorunn 00:38, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I think you are right. Again, the list is way to "westernized".

But what are the cities you are proposing instead? You mention Lima and Lagos. Any other?

--Ecelan 21:29, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if there should be any more cities in the list. I find the list strange and clearly biased. I am very biased myself, and I don't know what to add, only that there is something strange about a list where for instance all the musicians and composers are European or from USA.

Maybe there should be some other cities, and/or maybe some of the things suggested by Purodha here, like land mine and bomb.

--Jorunn 00:53, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I would keep Florence, just for its importance in the Renaissance. I would clearly delete Vatican City too (Varanasi is at least as important -for spirituality- as Vatican City, and it's not on the list). For the other cities, I also think there should be a general brooming. We should focus in reducing the number to 1000, to reach an stable version, and don't allow everyone to make changes without any discussion. --161.116.143.97 09:47, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I support Jorunns suggestion in its entirety and suggest that no replacements be made as the list needs to be trimmed down. --Akigka 16:03, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

In this vein, I just removed Toronto, because it was recently added, and not discussed here first. -- Yekrats 11:20, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Eliminate either Periodic table or List of elements

It seems superfluous to have both... --Akigka 16:12, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Excellent suggestion. I would say Periodic Table would lead to a much more interesting article than a simple list. -- Yekrats 11:26, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Strongly endorse Yekrats.--Cato 21:58, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Foodstuffs section

I suggest we remove Rye, Oat and Barley and Grape from that section. --Akigka 16:20, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree, especially with Grape. We already have Wine. -- Yekrats 11:42, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

It seems like Rye, Oat, and Barley could be replaced with something more general like en:Cereal. -- Yekrats 11:54, 8 February 2008 (UTC) I guess it heads the list. Duh. -- Yekrats 11:55, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Revolutionaries and activists

We have Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, both civil rights activists from the same tumultuous period of American history. If I were to keep one, I would say keep King. -- Yekrats 11:42, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Recreation:Sport

American football is really only played in one country, although it is very popular in the United States. (Even Canadian Football is based on different rules.) I think we can remove it because it's too US-centric. - Yekrats 11:46, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree. --Meldor 23:52, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I have a couple of further suggestions for removal from this section. In fact, it would be perfectly OK in my opinion to leave only the most influential and popular sports there (i. e. Basketball, Soccer, Auto racing and Athletics). If nothing else, the relatively obscure elitist sports like golf, horse racing and fencing don't deserve to be on the list. --193.2.89.2 14:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC) (Yerpo @ sl:)

Horse racing seems pretty important, because its longevity. It's been around since -- well -- domestication of horses, I bet. -- Yekrats 16:58, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Longevity, yes, but nothing else. Horse races have been popular in a couple of western countries and their colonies for a while, and the Romans come to mind, but that's it, IMHO. I really don't see what makes it one of the 1000 most important topics everybody should write about first. Compared to car, for example, which was removed from the list. --84.41.32.68 20:19, 16 February 2008 (UTC) (Yerpo @ sl:)

What about listing Equestrianism instead? Working use of horses have been and in many is still important. Riding-sports is very popular in many countries, but the type of sport differs. Equestrianism covers them all, and the working-use. --Godfellow 11:23, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Equestrianism is somewhat... uncommon term. Maybe "horse breeding" would be better. --84.41.32.68 18:52, 18 February 2008 (UTC) (Yerpo @ sl:)

Actually, I don´t think so. The term is the one used in the template and in the article about Summer_Olympics article. In some language does the term "horse-sport" exist, such in deutsch, swedish and nederland. In other languages exist similar terms as the english, italiano,spanish, french. Both terms has simliar mening. And "horse breeding" has nothing to do with sport or recreation.--Godfellow 12:37, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, equestrianism then. But in which section would it fit? Not sport, it's a broader term. (Yerpo @ sl:)

Politicians, leaders and aristocrats

I removed Angela Merkel because it was added recently, and I don't believe it was discussed. (Full disclosure: I'm an American, but I think George W. Bush should be similarly removed.) -- Yekrats 11:52, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree on George W. Bush. An insignificant and non-influential figure if you take all the histoy into account, despite appearing a lot in today's media. --193.2.89.2 14:42, 15 February 2008 (UTC) (Yerpo @ sl:)

I disagree. Yes he is insignificant when you take all history into count, but wikipedia should also pus extra focus on persons who is influential in nowadays. --80.161.112.182 01:24, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I think it should, to an extent - there are some people who are important today but not in the grand scheme of things. I think GWB belongs somewhere low on a list of articles all WPs should have - certainly one of the most important people on there. —Giggy 05:16, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions about law-related articles

I have noticed that there are very few law-related articles listed. Some of them appears under other issues, but some articles that a lot of people, in all states, would find very usefull seems to be missing. There is a problem in writing law-related articles in a globalised perspective, but I think its better to list important articles and say that they might be written about the legislation in the legal system which is relevant for that wikipedia-version, than not listing them at all. That seems to be what we actually do right now, the articles in en:wp are about common-law system, mainly about regulations in USA and GB.

I would suggest we add the following articles to the list, and point out that the most important is that they reflect the situation in the countries where the general user live.:

• Court
• Legal systems (common law, civil law)
• Police
• Privat law
• Public law
• Juristic/Legal person

• Crime
• Punishment
• Fine (criminal penalty)
• Prison
• Pledge (law)

• Inheritance
• Bankruptcy
• Loan
• Property rights
• Offer and acceptance
• Contract

• Public international law
• European Convention on Human Rights
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• Crime against humanity

• Citizenship
• Right of asylum

I really don´t know what we could erase instead, but hope others have suggestions. Maybe fewer historical persons? --Godfellow 11:07, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

We have 19 Artists and architects but 46 Authors, playwrights and poets. Many of the law-related articles above are more important for most users, so I suggest we erase: George Byron Luís de Camões Arnaut Daniel Rubén Darío Ferdowsi Victor Hugo Munshi Premchand Alexander Pushkin Arthur Rimbaud Mark Twain William Wordsworth

We also have 24 Composers and musicians, all of them very focused on Europe/USA. I suggest we put in some from other cultures, and erase for example: Rolling Stones, The Hector Berlioz Anton Bruckner Jimi Hendrix Bedřich Smetana Robert Schumann Tchaikovsky, Petr Giuseppe Verdi Richard Wagner

--Godfellow 15:24, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

As for your suggested additions I suggest you read the existing list more carefully as some of your suggestions are already in the list or covered by closely related topics. --Akigka 13:04, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Court, crime and contract are big legal subjects that I think belong on the list. Legal systems and public/private law are important subjects that ought to be covered in the most basic en:Law article but I don't think separate articles about them need to be in the top 1000. --Biekko 19:03, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

In keeping with the law-related suggestions, I would strongly suggest that Sharia be included, due to the growing worldwide relevance (good or bad) of Islamic fundamentalism. 66.56.2.88 05:31, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions about Family and relationships

I would say Adoption is enough important for being listed. --Godfellow 11:15, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions about social issues

• Discrimination
• Freedom of speech
• Freedom of religion

--Godfellow 11:15, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Good suggestions, but what existing would we remove to put those in? We are over 1000 now. -- 74.132.240.89 11:58, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

User:Godfellow suggested these above: "We have 19 Artists and architects but 46 Authors, playwrights and poets. Many of the law-related articles above are more important for most users, so I suggest we erase: George Byron Luís de Camões Arnaut Daniel Rubén Darío Ferdowsi Victor Hugo Munshi Premchand Alexander Pushkin Arthur Rimbaud Mark Twain William Wordsworth

We also have 24 Composers and musicians, all of them very focused on Europe/USA. I suggest we put in some from other cultures, and erase for example: Rolling Stones, The Hector Berlioz Anton Bruckner Jimi Hendrix Bedřich Smetana Robert Schumann Tchaikovsky, Petr Giuseppe Verdi Richard Wagner"

I agree with almost everyone. I would miss Byron and Wordsworth , Rolling Stones and Tchaikovsky. Also, I would steer clear of the non-western names (e.g. Munshi Premchand) because we need to address the eurocentrism of the list as a whole, but for the rest, I fully agree. --Akigka 12:57, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

About the suggested additions, we already have Freedom in the list and the respective "freedoms" named by the human rights convention are all important but make for too long an addition. I therefore suggest that none of these be added. Discrimination and Adoption are important but are probably covered by more specific topics e.g. Racism/Equality or more general e.g. Family. --Akigka 13:00, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

City replacements

Suggest replacing Milan, Naples and Brisbane with Madrid, Taipei and Dhaka. Maybe another Australian city should go too. --Njaelkies Lea 12:58, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

How about just removing them and not replacing them with anything (we need to bring the list back to 1,000 articles)? --Akigka 00:40, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Could do that too I guess, it's anyhow silly to have so many Italian and Australian cities when some of the largest cities in the world like Sao Paolo and Dhaka aren't mentioned. Very high western focus on the city-list. How far off 1000 are we anyway? --Njaelkies Lea 18:19, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Not all that far: but need to make some 60-70 eliminations to arrive there. --Akigka 12:53, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

4 Australian cities is way too much, I would suggest leaving only Sydney. I agree that Naples and Milan should be dropped as well. --Biekko 18:53, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

There are five Italian cities all in all. I think we could also drop Venice and Florence and leave just the eternal city, i.e. Rome. --140.180.2.62 19:25, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

History Modern

I would say Colonialism is very important. But British Empire and American Civil War are far to anglocentric, and should be removed.--Godfellow 09:43, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, missed that Colonialism is already in the list. But shouldnt it bee under History, instead of Politic?--Godfellow 09:52, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

What about replacing British Empire or American Civil with Women's rights? It´s a historical change as important as the French Revolution. --Godfellow 10:03, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

We have Feminism in the list. Women's rights is not a specific historical event like the French Revolution but an ongoing social issue... --Akigka 13:07, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

American Civil War is certainly not of great importance in most parts of the world. The British Empire was of global influence, but maybe this is sufficiently taken into account by Colonialism. I'd vote for the removal of both Käptn Weltall 15:27, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

British Empire and American Civil War are important to many non-Western users (since they're taught in World history classes, thus they should not be removed. However I suggest many models be removed from the list (they're not well-known in many non-Western countries, e.g. Marx Brothers). Also sociology , social issues and social phenomenon should all be included (to correct systemic bias in many language editions of Wikipedia.--RekishiEJ 13:27, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Bush?

What is George W. Bush doing in this list? There are much too many leaders who brought lots of trouble over their nations in history, to be listed here! If it is only for his power in the current world, we should consider that the possibilities in his last year are strongly reduced and people like en:Vladimir Putin or en:Hu Jintao could influence much more, good or bad. Käptn Weltall 15:10, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps after the next election we replace Bush with the next president. I don't think he is there for historical reason but because he is the current president. If Putin fades into obscurity same goes for him (but according to press reports he may be hanging around) --MarsRover 00:51, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree completely, The rest of the list features important world figures, even Queen Elizabeth II doesn't feature on it and she has been a head of state for over 50 years, Bush is the current president of America, nothing more - he is not needed in this list. --Brideshead 22:04, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree as well. -- Yekrats 00:46, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree as well. Bush should be removed, he is here just because he is current President. I can't see a President is added unless he ruled on or pushed to a historical turning point. Putin, I think should be removed also, but if he seek another term of presidency, that may mark a turning point of Russian and even World politics, and by then he can stay.--Kittyhawk2 06:35, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Em... read the list. Neither Bush nor Putin are there anymore. --Yerpo 09:09, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Tokugawa Ieyasu

Had much more influence in japanese history than e.g. Hirohito and laid the fundaments to a 250 year period of peace, the longest known in newer history all over the world. Käptn Weltall 15:10, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

en:Hirohito seems important (I'm not a Japan expert) in the transition between wartime Japan and post-WWII Japan. Also, his reign was for 63 years and the other guy was shogun for a couple years. MarsRover 01:50, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Remove Mount Rushmore

This monument is of no greater interest for people outside U.S., not even compareable to others like en:Cristo Redentor or en:Cologne Cathedral, which are not on the list for good reason. Käptn Weltall 15:10, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, It should go. But I was surprized en:Panama Canal wasn't in the list. No notable structures from Central or South America? --MarsRover 01:11, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Actors

I'd suggest to remove Bardot, Marx Brothers and Brando and to add at least one actor from the biggest movie industry in the world: Bollywood, maybe en:Amitabh Bachchan. Käptn Weltall 15:10, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

The list of "Actors, dancers and models" already is pretty lean (only got seven). I think "Bardot" is needed to cover French cinema, "Marx Brothers" to cover comedy and "Brando" to cover male lead/drama. Of the three marx brothers is the weakest since we have "Charlie Chaplin" for comedy, too. If anything replace "Marx Brothers" with "Amitabh Bachchan". But do we have a single dancer in the list? -MarsRover 01:23, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

God and Deity

Why is it necessary to have both en:God and en:Deity? In some languages the consept of deity is just going to be called god anyway, because not all languages have one Germanic and one Latinate word for basically the same thing. Here's how the repsective English articles start defining god and diety:

• en:God: "God most commonly refers to the deity worshiped by followers of monotheistic and monolatrist religions, whom they believe to be the creator and overseer of the universe." – but of course the word can also be used of the dieties of polytheistic religions (e.g. the gods of Greek and Roman mythology).
• en:Deity: "A deity is a postulated preternatural or supernatural being, who is always of significant power, worshipped, thought holy, divine, or sacred, held in high regard, or respected by human beings." – The article then goes on to describe the concept of God.

I suggest dropping en:Deity --140.180.2.62 19:56, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually Deity is bold (as in being more important of the two) but it would be a hard sell removing "God". -MarsRover 01:30, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, but then the question arises: should it be bold? Maybe god should be bold and deity removed? There's no need to have two articles that basically discuss the same thing on the list. In fact there's no need to have two articles in the English Wikipedia at all, one ought to be a redirect to the other. But in any case you are a deity iff you are a god. And therefore not all languages will have words to distinguish artificially between the two so as to be able to write two articles. Think of it this way: What if the list were in German and users agreed that it was important to have to have three major cognitive abilities wissen, kennen, and können. Well, English wouldn't be able to have all the articles on the list because there's only one word for all the German words, viz. "to know". Now in this case it's worse, because unlike knowing that, knowing how and simply knowing where there's actually a distinction to be made, there's no real distinction to be made between a deity and a god — if x is a god, then x is a deity; and if x is a deity, then x is a god. The English Wikipedia shouldn't even have two articles just because it has two words, let alone require all other languages to coin words so as to be able to make the same artificial distinction. So having both words on the list makes it linguistically biased. --140.180.20.42 03:56, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

There is a difference between 'God' and 'god'. I think you are correct 'god' == 'deity' but 'God' is more specific than 'deity' since it is the specific deity for Christianity, Judaism and even Islam (since I believe 'God' == 'Allah'). But I get your point of heavy overlap between the two topics. Its similar to the overlap between en:Respiratory system and en:Lung. Also, one of the complaints about this list is its too "Western oriented" so my gut feeling is we need both of them. --MarsRover 18:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

But this article is not confined to the en:God in Abrahamic religions. It also mentions Hinduism and even Buddhism. If you want to argue that there ought to be an article about the God that is common to Christianity, Judaism and Islam, then en:God in Abrahamic religions ought to be it. I still think that the English articles God and Deity should simply be merged. If you disagree with that, then presumably you are of the opinion that God ought to be merged with en:God in Abrahamic religions. Or am I mistaken? --140.180.20.42 19:21, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Didn't realise the en:God article was made so generic. There is still a difference between the two topics where 'God' is a subset of 'deity'. ('God' is the singular deity for monotheistic religion where as 'deity' includes plural god religions). My guess is when other people create their initial 'God' article it will match the more specific 'God in Christianity and Judaism' sense (not the over analyzed 'God in the generic sense'). So, you're right there is a lot of overlap if you assume other wikis are going to copy en.wp way of organizationing itself. But I hope they don't. --MarsRover 20:45, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

But they have to if they want to complete the list. That's what I am saying. Because there IS no distinction between god and deity, although it CAN BE MADE artificially since English has two words. But in some other languages the article for god is going to contain both the discussion for god and deity because not all languages have two words for the same thing, one of a Germanic root and the other derived from Latin. And those languages will therefore always miss one of the two articles. Unless they have an article about god in Abrahamic religions and then another about god/deity (which would then be really be about god/deity in general). But the iw-links will then only link to one of the two articles on the list anyway (because the former would link to en:God in Abrahamic religions and the latter to either one of the other two, en:God or en:Deity). Besides the idea that the word god refers to a monotheistic conception of a deity is simply incorrect. Zeus is a god (in fact his very name is a cognate of the word deity, both deriving from the same Indo-European root). Apollo is also a god. So is Neptune and Odin. The gods of polytheistic religions are also called gods. It is only a spelling convention in Christian countries which dictates that when referring to the Christian god (sic) the word should be spelled with a capital letter. --140.180.20.42 21:19, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

en:Divinity is another article that ought to be merged with en:God and en:Deity. --140.180.20.42 06:51, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Thankfully that one isn't in this list. There is a fine difference between these articles (just try merging them and see how far you get). I also noticed someone wants to splinter the en:God in Abrahamic religions into more articles, uugh. The question is which articles "should" every wikipedia have. Considering the significant overlap and the limit of 1000 articles I agree we should remove 'deity'. But I am looked forward to someone else commenting. --MarsRover 18:14, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

To Christians, and I expect followers of some other religions, there is a big difference between God, the God, and any old deity. If Deity is meant as a synonym for God, clearly there is no need for a separate article.--Poetlister 09:29, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Of course, the same goes for any monotheistic religion. But the article about the Christian god is called en:God in Abrahamic religions. God in Abrahamic religions is certainly different from god/deity in general. The question is which article all Wikipedias ought to have. I'm arguing that an article about deity makes an article about god (as opposed to God in Abrahamic religions) redundant and vice versa. But the argument for having both (and it doesn't seem a good one to me) is that the difference is that the article about deity is about any deity, whereas the article about god is about any monotheistic deity and finally God in Abrahamic religions is about that specific deity. This doesn't seem to hold water. --140.180.20.42 11:27, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree dropping deity. --62.57.188.242 15:21, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Speed and Velocity

Speed and Velocity are close related. Many languages have only one word for these terms. I propose to remove "Velocity" from the list. --.:Ajvol:. 10:46, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree, it's not at all important for all wikipedias to have both of these, especially since speed and velocity are basically the same thing under slightly different descriptions. --140.180.20.42 10:52, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Why remove velocity and not speed? I think it makes more sense to remove speed as that's just the magnitude of velocity. --Erwin(85) 10:18, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Speed is more common term. --.:Ajvol:. 12:28, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Geography

Is en:Latin America necessary? In light of both en:North America's and en:South America's presence on the list I fail to see the importance of also having an article specifically defining South America and the area south of the US-Mexican border in North America as Latin America. --140.180.20.42 11:01, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Definitely "Latin America" seems removeable. -- Yekrats 23:17, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Back to 1000 articles?

List of Wikipedias by sample of articles is using this list as the criterion. However, the irregular total number of articles (1092 but not 1000) causes inconvenience to calculate the score. Therefore, I would like to ask whether most of you here support to reduce the number back to 1000. English Wikipedia recently has sucessfully done the same thing, so it may be a good reference for here to do so. -- Kevinhksouth 05:58, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely, and there have been some good suggestions made in the discussions above. --140.180.2.221 13:14, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with this proposition. You will not be always able to maintain this number to 1000. I'm sure there is a lot of articles who could join this list, for many reasons. For List of Wikipedias by sample of articles it is not a problem, we just have to change the method and the meaning of the calcul of the final score, which must be "independant" of the number of article in the list.--Jauclair 13:51, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

If "there is a lot of articles who could join this list", this list would grow bigger and bigger, and lose its original purpose. Therefore, I think it is necessary to have a upper limit, and 1000 is the most suitable one. If English Wikipedia can maintain this number to 1000, why we can't? (The easiest way to get back to 1000 is to copy the entire list directly from English Wikipedia, but I believe many of you would oppose that.) -- Kevinhksouth 17:18, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

This list exists in all major wikipedias and has his own life. It means there are discussion to add, remove, replace, keep articles in this kind of list in all those wikipedias. Are the choices made by the english community better than the choices made by the german community or by the french community ? I don't think. For this reason, if you want a list which is really shared by all the wikipedias, this list must not be limited to 1000 articles (but it must be kept in a reasonnable limit to maintain its oroginal puprose !).

The actual and major problem is that, now, it's impossible to "mixed" together all this discussions in differents languages !--Jauclair 21:36, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

The main purpose of this list is to "help small wikipedias" i.e. wikipedias that do not have all the articles here listed, but should have them. This list is not IMHO very useful for the largest wikipedias (i.e. the French, German and English ones), although analogous (larger) lists in these cases could be useful. The usual way to put this list to use in a small wp is to translate it locally and then start creating articles for the hundreds of red links that result from the translation. There is no particular logic as to why this list should be 1000 articles long, rather than, say 500 or 1500 articles, other than sheer practicality. If it is too long, a small wp project (with say four very active contributors) will feel discouraged by the work involved in translating it. The list is not a purpose in itself but rather a tool to get somewhere. Therefore I think that an upper limit of 1000 articles should be maintained at all costs, however arbitrary that may seem.--Akigka 14:38, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Substitution article(s)

This list is an english list, and so there are some little problems. For example, as explained in the article en:city the term of city as various significations in different countries. For example, in France the same word fr:ville is used for city and town. there is only one word for city, and town and the french article fr:ville, and the french article is linked with the english article en:town with is the better equivalence of "ville". So the article en:city is considered as missing in the french wikipedia, and it is false !

I propose that this list is, fore some words, completed by alternative or substitution article, which can replace the first article. For example, for city, we must have a line like : en:city or fr:ville or en:city or en:town

It would complicate the program which calculate the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles, but the result would be more right--Jauclair 14:13, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

You could link to en:Town from fr:Ville but link also to fr:Ville from en:City. Some words are going to be ambiguous in one language but not in another and there's no getting around that (words that are ambiguous in English may not be in French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese etc. and vice versa). But there's nothing preventing two or more English articles from linking to one and the same French article (in this case fr:Ville). And if you do this, then there will indeed be a link to a French article in en:City and thus it will not be considered "missing" from the French anymore. --140.180.20.42 19:18, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

You are right ... so I did it, but not exactly as you said ... I have linked together fr:Ville and en:City and kept the links between in fr:Ville and en:Town. So there are two english links fr:Ville. I just hope that this configuration is possible for bots which maintain these links !--Jauclair 21:22, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

That's one way to do it. The main thing is to have en:City linking to a French article of course. That way it won't be "missing". --140.180.20.42 01:14, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

If you link one article to several other it will disturbe the iwbots and they will probably remove all links. So sonner or later you will have no connection at all. Best solution would be to choose list more carefully - 81.182.78.203 16:14, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Don't you think there are too many biography articles?

I am surprised that there are 235 biography articles in the list, which is almost one-forth of the list. The same list in English Wikipedia only have 120. Therefore, I suggest reducing the number of biography articles to (at most) <200 or have a further cut to <150. -- 202.40.137.196 09:44, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Originally the intention was to have 100, but this quickly grew and when I first started reducing the list a realistic objective seemed to get them down to 200. I agree that they are too many, but this is the section which has the most tendency to grow by "spurious edits" - i.e. anonymous edits that just add one or two entries one time and don't do anything else. Above, I suggested moving the entire section to the back of the list (and possibly, the geography section as well), which IMHO would somewhat discourage these additions. --Akigka 14:29, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I also was quite irratated that there are so many people on the list, many of whom I never heard of. Wikipedia is about bringing knowledge to the world, and I think that one could include worthier articles on history, politics, science or even religion. I suggest the following:

- Cut down the list of biographys.

- Replace some architects/poets/dancers/etc. with historical or political figures. Explorers are fine too. People are affected by history every day, not so much by all of the dancers/singers/poets etc.

- Expand the other sections.

Seriously, not everyone on the globe needs to know Shakespeare (I have read some of his works and they're great, don't get me wrong here), but I think people will gain more from Wikipedia if they can inform themselves on real-life topics. After all, Wikipedia can help to inform correctly, nullifying prejudices and even stopping hate and war.

One example: the Middle East conflict. I doubt all of the people in the middle east know the history behind this conflict.

83.77.50.9 16:13, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

My suggestion to the proportion of basic articles

Besides getting back to 1000 articles, the current proportion of basic articles need to be revised as well. Here is the propostion of basic article list in English Wikipedia, together with my suggestion.

Section	en.wiki	Current	Phase I	Changes	Phase II	Changes
Biography	120	235	195	-40	135	-60
History	60	40	40	0	60	+20
Geography	94	159	131	-18	125	-16
Society	88	77	77	0	80	+3
Culture	187	168	168	0	170	+2
Science	225	244	244	0	240	-4
Technology	122	75	75	0	110	+35
Foodstuffs	19	32	27	-5	25	-2
Mathematics	85	33	33	0	55	+22
Total	1000	1063	1000	-63	1000	0

The major problems with the current list in meta:

• Far too many biography articles
• Not enough history articles
• Quite many geography articles
• Better to have some more technology & mathematics articles

Therefore, I have made a suggestion above. Feel free to comment and express your own ideas. -- Kevinhksouth 04:38, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Excellent analysis, Kevin. However, I think your weighting for Mathematics is a bit high. I would prefer to take away some articles from Mat and give them back to science. If we left Science as is, that would still be +18 for Math, right? -- Yekrats 17:37, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Changed according to your suggestions (Science: 225 -> 244; Maths: 70 -> 51). Welcome everyone to give more comments. -- Kevinhksouth 04:13, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Making major swings at this point would be tough, so I would ask that we take the positive scores from Math, Tech, Culture, Society, and History, and give it to the other categories (somewhat evenly proportioned). Why? For one, it's terribly difficult to add or subtract because every choice at this point would take a decision by committee. (The committee = us!) The fewer decisions we need to make, the sooner we can get this to 1000. After we get to the magic number 1000, we can do trades ("X is more important than Y") until we get something that we're satisfied with. Maybe your proposed equilibrium could be an additional step in the future to work towards.

That being said, I could see us trimming down some of the grains which seem to be over-emphasized: (I say, keep Maize and Rice in Ceareals, and ditch the rest of the cereals.) Therefore, I propose we make Foodstuffs -5 instead of -7.

I would prefer to lower the number trimmed out of biography from -100 to -35. It's painful enough removing stuff; I can't imagine picking 100 to remove! I'd rather keep History, Math, and Tech closer to where they are right now, rather than make such big and painful swings to the Biographical group.

Just my 2 cents. -- Yekrats 17:13, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I think we could keep the Technology articles at 75 and that allows us to remove 35 fewer biographies. --140.180.3.65 23:27, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay. I have updated the table. I plan to split this project into 2 phases. The first phase it to bring back the number of articles back to 1000, by just removing articles from Biography & Geography sections. After we get back to 1000, we can improve the proportion of articles in the next phase. Would it be more practical? -- Kevinhksouth 08:53, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Good, but let's make it Biography -40, Geography -18, Foodstuffs -5. (The five cereals mentioned above are an easy removal.) -- Yekrats 23:02, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

OK. -- Kevinhksouth 12:46, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Re: "(The five cereals mentioned above are an easy removal.)"—In modern importance, en:Wheat ranks grains thus: (1) maize, (2) wheat, (3) rice. In historical development, wheat seems to have been the earliest and most important grain, as it inaugurated the agricultural revolution. Therefore, en:Wheat should probably be retained, and if one of these three is to be ditched, it should be rice. Can't all three be kept? J. W. Love 12:57, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

What 18 to remove from Geography?

Just my suggestions...

1. en:Middle East
2. en:Milan
3. en:Naples
4. en:Brisbane
5. en:Mississippi River
6. en:New Zealand
7. en:Niger River (we already have the Congo and the Nile in Africa, which are bigger)
8. en:Vatican City
9. en:Tanzania
10. en:Aral Sea
11. en:Kyoto
12. en:Lake Victoria
13. en:Rhine
14. en:Southern Ocean
15. en:Lake Baikal
16. en:Lake Tanganyika
17. en:Washington, D.C. (we have New York and Los Angeles representing USA)
18. en:Thailand (we have Bangkok)en:Bangkok

If you don't agree, please strike and replace with your suggestions. -- Yekrats 01:09, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestions. I would rather keep Thailand instead of Bangkok. No objection for other suggestions. -- Kevinhksouth 12:46, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

This seems reasonable to me. --140.180.1.16 16:06, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Nice for this stage. Some more can be removed in future. --Hoyannes 02:49, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I would suggest the following removals:

1. en:Auckland
2. en:Beirut
3. en:Brussels
4. en:Dar es Salaam
5. en:Edinburgh
6. en:Karachi
7. en:Wellington

and the following additions:

1. en:Middle East
2. en:New Zealand

for a net reduction of 5 articles. --Panairjdde 17:18, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Timekeeping

Currently we have:

1. Anno Domini
2. Calendar
   1. Gregorian calendar
3. Century
4. Day
5. Minute
6. Millennium
7. Month
8. Time zone
   1. Daylight saving time
9. Week
10. Year

(Striked articles refer to articles proposed to be removed.)

I propose to remove:

• Century, Millennium - very small articles in all languages, you can read about century and millennium in article "Year"
• Minute - we have article "second"
• Daylight saving time - you can read about daylight saving time in "Time zone"
• Anno Domini - we already have an articles "Year" and "Calendar"

--.:Ajvol:. 12:52, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I argee with the above. In addition, I want to propose to remove Gregorian calendar as well. We have Calendar and I think it is enough already. -- Kevinhksouth 13:44, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I support the above suggestions. --Hoyannes 02:50, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure I support the above suggestions... During phase 1 we are wanting to keep Science relatively even, and Phase 2 was only removing 2. It would seem like if you were to remove this many, you'd want to replace it with something. That being said, for a long time I've been wanting to add "en:Pendulum" to the Science group. Maybe this is my chance! -- Yekrats 13:38, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I think en:Century is more important than en:Week. --MarsRover 23:01, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I support MarsRover; the other suggestions are reasonable.--Cato 21:42, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Removing en:Week is also fine. -- Kevinhksouth 14:00, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I would like to reintroduce Gregorian Calendar, as it is a fundamental "institution" with a noteworthy history. --Panairjdde 17:13, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Bad Voodoo entry

Should figure out a replacement for en:Voodoo since its really a disamb page. Need to figure out whether we want en:West African Vodun, en:Haitian Vodou or en:Louisiana Voodoo. --MarsRover 05:10, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't see how Voodoo might be one of the 1000 most important topics. All of its variants are significant only in relatively minor regions of the world, so I suggest just removing it. --193.2.89.2 12:03, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I think we can just remove it without any replacement. -- Kevinhksouth 13:59, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

The science section

The science section seems to be in disarray. "Molecule" is listed under "Physics", while "Metal" is under Chemistry, when it should be the other way around. "Phase (matter)" should probably also should be under physics, at least due to the subarticles – it's absurd to have "Plasma" under chemistry, when there by definition can be no chemical reactions in a plasma.

I'd also like "Theory relativity" to be split up into "Special relativity" and "General relativity", as these two are often kept apart in physics. On the other hand "Weight" could easily be removed, as it is not nearly as fundamental as "Mass".

Andejons 14:03, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree. There are other strange things in the list, but this should be uncontroversial changes. /Pieter Kuiper 09:29, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I would suggest flattening the list altogether so that there are no subsections or categorisations within headings. --Akigka 18:19, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Speed of sound

This article in physics feels a bit excessive to me as we already have sound, the speed of sound is not that special and is probably most often mentioned in sound anyway. I suggest we remove that one. What do you think? --Njaelkies Lea 08:06, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree, this number is not that important by itself. -MarsRover 14:10, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Authors, playwrights and poets 2

Proposal to reduce and balance the "Authors, playwrights and poets" section. I have tried to balance it with the number of speakers, but I have to admit that the list is still quite eurocentric: no vietnamese, no thai, no corean,...

Language	Authors	Number	Proposed number	Comment
Ancient Greek	Homer, Sappho, Sophocles	3	2	Sophocles should go to the philosophers; we could maintain Sappho, one of the few women in the list.
Arabic	Abu Nuwas, Mahfouz, Naguib	2	2
Bengali	-	0	1	I propose Rabindranath Tagore
Chinese	Li Bai, Wu Cheng'en	2	2	Maybe even 3?
English	Byron, George, Chaucer, Geoffrey, Dickens, Charles, Joyce, James, (Nabokov, Vladimir), Shakespeare, William, Twain, Mark, Wordsworth, William	7 (8)	3	Not quite sure who should stay.
French	Hugo, Victor, Molière, Proust, Marcel, Rimbaud, Arthur	4	2	Not quite sure who should stay.
Georgian	Rustaveli, Shota	1	0	Small language, in spite of long literary tradition
German	von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, Kafka, Franz	2	2
Hindi/Urdu	Premchand, Munshi	1	2	Maybe Amir Khusro?
Italian	Dante Alighieri	1	1	Important literature in Europe, but not many native speakers
Japanese	Bashō	1	1	Maybe 2?
Latin	Horace, Ovid, Virgil	3	2
Russian	Chekhov, Anton, Dostoevsky, Fyodor, (Nabokov, Vladimir), Pushkin, Alexander, Tolstoy, Leo	4 (5)	2	Not quite sure who should stay.
Persian	Ferdowsi, Khayyam, Omar	2	2
Portuguese	Camões, Luís de, Saramago, José	2	2
Provençal	Daniel, Arnaut	1	0
Sanskrit	Kālidāsa	1	1
Scandinavian	Ibsen, Henrik, Sturluson, Snorri	2	1	Not many speakers. Not quite sure who should stay.
Spanish	Darío, Rubén, Borges, Jorge Luis, Cervantes, Miguel de, García Márquez, Gabriel	4	2
Tamil	-	0	1	Maybe Kambar? I suggest Tiruvalluvar
Turkish	Fuzûlî	1	1
Yiddish	Singer, Isaac Bashevis	1	0
		Total	Total
		46	32

I would also eliminate the "bold" names; who says Pushkin is more important than Cervantes, or Shakespeare than Li Bai?

Let's hear the masses' opinion! Cheers, --Ecelan 07:18, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

My opinion is to give a larger preference to those literatures and authors with larger influeces. So, with respect to your proposed list, my slight changes are:

• 1 Arab (-1, Mahfouz)
• no Bengali (-1)
• 4 English (+1, Joyce)
• 1 Hindi (-1)
• 3 Russians (+1, Dostoevsky)
• no Tamil (-1)

for a total of 30. --Panairjdde 17:11, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

en:Sophocles a philosopher?? Please explain. /Pieter Kuiper 19:38, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry... I mistook him for Socrates... ^^; --Ecelan 18:13, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

If you can't tell Socrates from Sophocles, how much weight does your judgement on world literature carry, I wonder ...--84.190.34.236 21:08, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Of course, it's the people that DO things that make errors, the ones that just criticize, never... --Ecelan 05:11, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Good suggestion, although I'd suggest to keep Joyce and eliminate Twain. --Akigka 18:11, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Can we also do this for the artists? - that section really needs overhaul. --Akigka 18:12, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Akigka, I think we need at least one American English writer... I think Poe is more important that Twain, however. I also think Chaucer is more important than Dickens. -- 128.210.217.187 14:11, 14 April 2008 (UTC) (That was me Yekrats 16:17, 14 April 2008 (UTC)).

To keep Sappho, a poet of whose work very little survives, for the reason that she was a woman, as one of 2 representatives of arguably the most influential literature of human history, seems absurd. Are we applying retroactive affirmative action on writers? I think 2 Greeks is not enough (compared to 1 from very small literatures such as Bengali or Yiddish), but if this is the limit, then Homer should remain plus one of the following: Pindar, Sophocles, Euripides, Thucydides, Callimachus.--84.190.49.199 09:59, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

How about Herodotus, the father of history? Of the authors you mention I tend to agree more with you on Sophocles, Euripides and Thucydides. Of course Aeschylus ought to be considered as well. Homer, Herodotus and Aeschylus, in fact, makes a lot of sense. --140.180.53.120 15:58, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, regarding Roman authors, I can see why one would leave Ovid out and Vergil and Horace are obvious choices from Latin poetry, but there's no prose author represented; no Cicero, Sallust, Livy, Seneca, Tacitus. The strongest case could be made for Cicero, Livy and Tacitus and in fact I think that in Cicero's case it would be worth letting Horace go to make room for him. --140.180.53.120 16:04, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Herodotus is listed as a 'Social Scientist'. Among the three tragic authors, Sophocles seems to be the most 'classical' in terms of reception. As for the Romans, it is indeed odd that Cicero features nowhere on the list. If two are allowed, then my choice would be Horace and Cicero (over Virgil).--84.190.66.111 21:12, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Does this in any way contribute to addressing the eurocentrism of the current list? It is also noteworthy, to say the least, that out of all the women writers of all times there is only one mentioned here. --157.157.106.185 01:13, 4 May 2008 (UTC) sign. (sorry) --Akigka 01:14, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think there is consensus about the list being unduly eurocentric.--84.190.66.111 21:12, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

If you look at some of the discussion above, you'll see what I mean... --Akigka 01:33, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Hello, I would keep Dostoevsky rather Pushkin. I would also keep Joyce. Over all, this list is biaised towards hard science rather than other fields of knowledge (psychology, pedagogy, arts, literature, etc.), but that's a problem with Wikipedia in general since the beginning. Yann

Importance of living people

en:WP:ITN/C is a forum for proposing and developing a consensus on which news items should be included on the ITN template. Because of repeated disputes about objectively assessing the importance of a recently deceased person (specifically the non-inclusion of en:Edmund Hillary, en:Pavarotti, en:Arthur C. Clarke, en:Bobby Fischer) in light of the limits imposed by existing criteria, we are attempting to compile a reasonably authoritative list of important living people in connection with revising the criteria. The proposal is that if someone on the list died, that would warrant an automatic nomination at the very least. The list does not have a hard ceiling on size, but it is anticipated that, unlike recent deaths, there would be no more than on the order of 1 name per week (yes, it's morbid); thus importance might be calibrated to the 50 most important people who died in 2007. Given your experience with making evaluations on importance, your contributions and feedback to this list and its criteria would be much appreciated. 24.14.34.89 02:20, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

High Priority Geography

Looking at the list, I'm surprised that en:Egypt isn't listed as a "high priority" country. It's a regional power, but it also has a huge contribution historically (compare en:Greece). I guess that I'm also concerned that en:Israel is the only high priority country in that region and that may be perceived as bias.

I would probably also downgrade or maybe even remove en:Cuba. It's of regional importance to the 20th century Americas, but globally and historically it's not a major player. en:Venezuela is probably a better choice of a high priority country, though its influence is mostly a modern phenomenon. en:Portugal is probably also not necessary as high priority. It was a colonial power, but so was Holland, which doesn't even make the list, and modern Portuguese influence isn't significant overall.

I'd also suggest removing the en:Vatican City from the list. Having someone write an article about the Vatican instead of about en:Catholicism would be silly.

en:Zimbabwe and en:Somalia might be worth adding. They've both had a fair amount of news coverage lately and are likely to be of interest. Somalia's situation is farther from resolution, though, so between the two I'd consider it higher.

For cities, I'd probably upgrade en:Mecca (Critical to a major religion, compare Jerusalem), en:Moscow, en:Beijing, and en:New Delhi (Capitals of a recent superpower and two rising powers). I would drop en:Tel Aviv, en:Naples and en:Milan (not capitals, not largest city, not globally significant), and add en:Lagos (biggest city in Africa).

Summary of proposal- Somalia(n++), Lagos(c++). Upgrade Egypt(n+), Mecca(c+), Moscow(c+), Beijing(c+), New Delhi(c+). Downgrade Portugal(n-). Remove Cuba(n--), Vatican City(n--), Tel Aviv(c--), Naples(c--), Milan(c--).67.189.32.173 05:58, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Physics

It seems quite strange not to have a heading for Mechanics under Physics. --Redaktor 16:32, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree. People may be concentrating too much on the new and glamorous aspects of physics and neglecting the fundamentals.--Cato 11:58, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Should we just change Quantum Mechanics to Mechanics, or should we introduce Mechanics with subdivisions Classical Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics? --Redaktor 22:22, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

No, having just "Mechanics" is pointless. Both subfields (if they can even be seen as that!) are certainly important enough to defend their place on the list, and are different enough that they shouldn't only be included as one article. Compare en:Mechanics with en:Classical Mechanics and en:Quantum Mechanics.

Andejons 07:29, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Do we need this kind of lists?

I think the whole list, and the attempt to great one, is pretty much useless. A decision on topics that should be covered in all the Wikipedias is also very much against the principle idea of having a multi-lingual and –cultural project. Each language project should write primary articles on topics they find important. This way these topics are most likely important for all the speakers of that language, too.

I would present this list more in the spirit: "if you don’t come-up or run out of ideas of articles you could write in you Wikipedia, you may check this list for some ideas".

The title: "List of articles every Wikipedia should have" sounds very bad.

The good news is that whatever there is this kind of list or not, people in different languages will anyway write about the topics that are important for them. Still, it would be nice if the list is presented not with the words "should have" - some less-bold people may even take it seriously. --Teemul 23:09, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia, not only a regional one. This list reflects that by listing 1000 topics that are commonly considered the most important for the whole humanity. As clearly written in the intro, it's not the rule, but an advice what a general encyclopedia should have. Nobody will prevent you from writing about Leena Palotie instead of Charles Darwin, but I'm willing to bet that even in Finnish WP much more people will seek information about Darwin than about Palotie. And that's one of the main goals of any encyclopedia - usefulness as a reference. --Yerpo 09:09, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Kazakhstan

Location of the Kazakhstan on the World map

User:Yerpo in some day removed Kazakhstan from list with some kind of racial prejudice comment: ...its inclusion here is, frankly, ridiculous. Wikipedia Community, should country with 9th area (area is greater than Western Europe; 2nd uranium, chromium, lead, and zinc, the 3rd manganese, the 5th copper reserves, and ranks in the top ten for coal, iron, and gold. 11th proven reserves of both oil and natural gas; 7th grain producer; dominant state in Central Asia) in World discriminated by user from East Europa? — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 89.218.164.39 (talk)

As I said, the inclusion should be proposed first, which you finally did. It's hard to miss the "Important note" at the top of the page saying that. In this respect, it's your edit that could be classified as vandalism, not mine. Secondly, don't try to label my comment as racial prejudice, because I didn't say anything even remotely connected with race. As for your argument, I don't think area and natural resources are enough for making a country one of the 50 most important countries (or even 15, since the first time you bolded the entry). I'll leave the evaluation of regional importance to somebody with more experience in geography and politics.

As for "discrimination", my country currently presides the European Union and is the fastest developing country in the region. Despite that, I wouldn't even think about adding it to the list. Furthermore, it's a part of Central Europe.

So, I'm sorry if I offended you, but cool your nationalism down, and wait until someone more knowledgeable evaluates the proposition. I won't mind the inclusion if there's a good argument in favour of it. --Yerpo 08:27, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

So. Still You haven't good arguments for removal? Your charge for "nationalism" (say me wether "Kasachstan, Kasachstan über alles"?) no more reasonable than your "ridiculous" (is it your post-Boratistic syndrome?) as everyone may see.

I didn't proposal. I didn't include item. This is some another user with IP in my country, may be even foreigner (this is many international companies). Are You think that opinions not shared?

About vandalism: You begins "edits war", not me. About racism: from English Wikipedia "People with racist beliefs might hate certain groups of people according to their race, or in the case of institutional racism, certain racial groups may be denied rights or benefits". You denied "rights or benefits" with biased europocentric PoV. Do not so aggressive in propaganda of europocentric (=racial, =cultural) prejudice. (Please inform us: why you and you one there biased Kazakhstan? Have You personal negative impression connected with Kazakhstan?)--89.218.164.39 13:05, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

About vandalism: somebody included your country disregarding the rules, I just removed it, and I said I'm sorry if the comment offended you (and yes, I didn't see before that the IP was different). About racism: I definitely don't "hate" Kazakhstan or Kazakhs, I said I don't mind the inclusion if it's argumented. It just has to be argumented first and another, less important item removed. And just for the record, I didn't watch Borat. --Yerpo 14:12, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

9/11

I think en:September 11, 2001 attacks are much more important for modern History than en:American Civil War en:Spanish Civil War and en:Apartheid

This lists includes the 1000 most important topics of all times, not of modern history. --Yerpo 08:29, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

9/11 is certainly less important than those, but still one of the most remarkable events in the last 100 years so I think it should be included--Fluence 19:50, 28 June 2008 (UTC-5)

It does certainly seem significant now, but I don't think it (yet) stacks up against, say, an article on Nazi Germany. —Giggy 02:47, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree, and I think that it never will. As I see it the 9/11 events were just a consequence, and didn't change anything significantly (although they might have accelerated the turn of events). If you want to include an important topic they were a part of, you should put en:American Empire on the list, IMO. --Yerpo 06:58, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

More possible articles to be removed (very unpopular ones)

I created a list of articles sorted by popularity and found that articles that are so general to essentially be just definitions are not very popular across wikipedias. I think this is a sign they should be removed.

Examples of unpopular articles:

• en:Country
• en:Length
• en:Minute
• en:Sensory system
• en:Juice
• en:Female
• en:Wedge (mechanics)
• en:Male
• en:Pronunciation

--MarsRover 07:01, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Country is just silly – even the English article is short and in many languages the word is fairly synonymous with state, which is much more important and which we already have. (For example, the exact Finnish translation is "maa" which means land, country, soil, Earth (Maa) and is appropriately a disambiguation page). Pronunciation should definitely also be removed, it's more suitable for Wiktionary than Wikipedia and is bound to remain stubby in all languages. Not sure about the others – at least male and female seem fairly fundamental concepts. I also think that we should rename city > town as the latter seems to be a more generic word and the English article has about 90 interwikis as opposed to the 24 in city. Having city is just English-centric as clearly the preferred concept in a vast majority of Wikipedia languages is town. I also support removing deity, per above as it overlaps with god in many languages, and the article has few interwikis. For example, the Finnish article on god begins: "Jumala, jumaluus tai jumalolento on käsite, joka..." ("God, deity or [another synonym] is a concept, which..."). --Orri 18:59, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Also, I think there are problems with the list of countries. It seems arbitrary to have Belgium and the Republic of Ireland, but not Portugal or Sweden or Kazakhstan or Peru. Belgium is culturally sort of a mix between the Netherlands and France, and no mather how great Irish culture is I think that from a non-English-speaking majority view it should be removed. What we should add is Nigeria, instead of Tanzania, a huge African country. IMHO it's practically a crime not to have it. There are some problems with the cities as well. I think we should rather have Delhi than New Delhi – of course New Delhi is the actual capital, but it's pretty much a part of Delhi itself and Delhi is a much bigger city. Orri 19:47, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I strongly agree about removing these entries. Hogne 21:33, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Agreed on all counts. en:Male and en:Female are superfluous as well, because we have en:Sex which should explain both as biological phenomena and their interactions (in the biological sense). Only very specific information fit in there, such as the symbol for each sex and what kind of reproductive cells it produces. The "Sex determination" chapter has four copies right now, in both sexes' articles, in en:Sex and in en:Sex-determination system. This really doesn't make sense. --Yerpo 08:58, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I did a few changes:

• I removed Belgium and added Nigeria: I believe this is justified, because we already have France and the Netherlands and because Nigeria is a huge country, one of the most important in Africa. This also counters the Eurocentric bias.
• I removed country, because it's superfluous to state in many languages, short even in the English Wikipedia and has very few interwikis, so clearly it is hard to translate or not considered important in many languages.
• I removed deity, it's very much superfluous to god in many languages, and several people have talked about this before. It also has relatively few interwikis. I bolded god because of this.
• I also removed male and female. We already have sex, ad apparently also woman and man, discussing these concepts from a human point of view.
• I changed city into town, because this is the preferred concept in a vast majority of languages.

I'm not sure if I was too quick, feel free to discuss here or revert if necessary :) I think that one of the problems with this list is that it's not as universal as it should be – the English language should only be used as a means to an end, not the starting point. Country, deity and city are prime examples of this: those who have added these words were thinking from an English-language point of view and not checking whether these concepts have the best translations in other languages. --Orri 21:57, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

It seems that the city/town difference is the most difficult of these. In English, city is obviously the more important concept. There are a few languages that make the same difference: Japanese has ja:都市, Arabic has ar:مدينة (but it links back to town!), Latin has la:urbs, Icelandic has is:borg and of Chinese I'm not sure. Slovene sl:mesto, Spanish es:ciudad and Azeri az:Şəhər interwikis should probably be moved from city to town. Italian, Portuguese and Russian have the same interwiki in both articles. French makes the distinction between fr:ville and fr:cité, but the latter has a different meaning and ville seems to be the preferred concept. The rest seem to be pretty much in town. Of course, a possible solution would also be to move most of the interwikis into city. --Orri 22:24, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Karl Benz

I got surprised not finding Karl Benz's article on the list but Henry Ford's one. I agree they were both very important engineers in the automotive fields, but Benz is credited as the inventor of the first combustion engine-powered automobile, the 1886 Benz Patent Motorwagen 3/4CV. Also, Mercedes-Benz continues to be one of the leading luxury car makers. If Benz shall not be included on the list, then I'd suggest Nicolas Cugnot, creator of the first automobile ever, the 1769 Fardier à Vapeur (though Ferdinand Verbiest could also be credited with his 1672 car design)--Fluence 19:47, 28 June 2008 (UTC-5)

Changing "butterfly"

I propose changing en:Butterfly to en:Lepidoptera in this list. There are several reasons: butterflies aren't even a taxonomic group, so the definition itself can be problematic. Furthermore, they have several characteristics (morphology, ecology, life cycle, etc.) that can be generalised to the whole Lepidoptera group; having only a part of them listed as "important" promotes duplicating the data when editors feel that an article deemed important should be as long as possible (check the abovementioned pair of articles in english WP). Lastly, many Lepidopterans that aren't butterflies have a substantial impact on humans, mostly as pests. Not to mention that in many languages, the translation for the word "butterfly" includes all the species from the ordo Lepidoptera. --Yerpo 10:56, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Are butterflies that important? I would be in favor of removing it altogether. -- Yekrats 00:07, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I would be in favor of removing it or perhaps switching to a more important insect: en:Mosquito for transmitting diseases or en:Grasshopper for causing plagues. --MarsRover 04:35, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

The Lepidoptera are important as pollinators and pests, and (perhaps most notably) for promoting nature conservation. But I suppose replacing them with en:Mosquito wouldn't be bad, either, since those are responsible for transmitting one of the globally most serious diseases and several others as well. --Yerpo 09:55, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

São Paulo, Brazil and the Portuguese language

I really don't know how São Paulo, the seventh biggest city in and one of the biggest economic cities the world is not listed as one of the key cities in the list, the city was listed as a Global City Beta, the same as cities like Moscow, San Fransisco, Sydney, Madrid, Mexico City, Seul and others. About the portuguese language, it's the fifth most used language in world and it's not listed too. I know that it's almost only speaked at Portugal and Brazil, but it still have a big number of speakers. 200.147.172.23 18:20, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Denmark

I've added Denmark to the list. There are a couple of countries that are no more notable than Denmark, so logically Denmark should be there as well. --80.161.112.182 01:46, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. Notability is not a criterion for this list, importance is. If there's countries less important than Denmark on it, they should be removed, not Denmark added (we are trying to trim it down to 1000 entries). --Yerpo 10:26, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Confucius

Confucius is the most influential philosopher in East Asia that affect the life and moral codes in China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam and many other current and ancient East Asian states. He is regarded as the teacher of teachers and the founder of Confucianism. HenryLi 11:43, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Since the list is limited to 1000 articles, I believe having Confucianism and Confucius is too overlapping. --MarsRover 12:27, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

In Confucianism, there are many important philosophers like Mencius, Chu Hsi, Tung Chung-shu, Toju Nakae and many others. (Chinese Confucian Scholar (in Chinese), Japanese Confucian Scholars (in Japanese), en:Category:Confucianists by nationality). It is like the cases of en:Abraham(en:Judaism), en:Moses (en:Judaism), en:Jesus (en:Christianity), en:Muhammad (en:Islam), en:Buddha (en:Buddhism). HenryLi 13:01, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

For Actors, dancers and models

1. Bardot, Brigitte
2. Bernhardt, Sarah
3. Brando, Marlon
4. Chaplin, Charlie
5. Dietrich, Marlene
6. Marx Brothers
7. Monroe, Marilyn

All are Westerner and Western is completely over-presented. Brigitte Bardot, Marlon Brando, Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe are world famous. The others are much less. I remove Marx Brothers as the very limited importance to the world. I add Bruce Lee instead. He introduced new genie of martial art, namely kungfu, films to both Eastern and Western world. He is on the TIME Magazine's 100 Most Important People of the Century. HenryLi 04:59, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I absolutely agree. I'm of the opinion that Monroe should probably not be on the list. I'd also be willing to sacrifice the Marx Brothers for an actor/director like Orson Welles whose work seemed more substantial and varied. So, can we remove Monroe and the Marxes for Lee and Welles? -- Yekrats 00:53, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

How about en:Hayao Miyazaki instead of Welles for his work with en:Anime. This will make the list less western. --MarsRover 03:19, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Great. Most of the actors, dancers and models listed in the article are unfamiliar to non-Western peoples (I, for example, did not know that the people mentioned above , except Marilyn Monroe, have some degree of importance until I read WP:VA. And we can remove entries about most recreation biographies in the article then add entries about history, social sciences to counter systemic bias in many language editions of Wikipedia (Though I know this problem several years ago, it's very surprising to me that social phenomenon and violent crime has only two interwiki links, but William "Bill" Kim, a secondary character in Prison Break has 6 interwiki links!), since adding important entries which has only a few links to the list pushes many Wikipedias to focus on really important entries.

The following are the entries I consider important as most entries in the present list (which I once added to the list but later get reverted):

• Leopold von Ranke
• Historiography
• Interwar period
• Finland (for the now reputable education, see Education in Finland, which is an important article but only has 4 interwikis.)
• Sociology
• Pedagogy
• Idea
• Anarchy
• International relations
• Modernization
• Political science
• Westernization
• Social issues
• Social phenomenon

--RekishiEJ 21:43, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Once again, I would like to point out that the current list is already overcrowded. Therefore, if anyone want to suggest 1 article get in, please suggest some other (2 or even more) articles get out. For example, before considering adding the above 14 articles, please suggest arround 30 articles which should be removed. (I do argee that actors, dancers and models who are not internationaly notable should be removed, but this does not mean that we should add some other articles back to keep the list remain overcrowded.) -- Kevinhksouth 05:29, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, I think there should be 1000~2000 articles in the list. It won't be overcrowded (as long as we use the latest version of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera or Safari, editing of articles whose sizes are larger than 32KB is not a problem).--RekishiEJ 01:53, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Brisbane

I can't really understan why is en:Brisbane so important to be included on this list? --85.114.235.159 05:36, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

As a Brisbane resident I'm somewhat bemused too. It really isn't that important a place and three Austrailan cities is probably appropriate. I've removed it. —Giggy 09:44, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Cities

I'm beginning to get interested in this list :). I think we should improve the section on cities. There are several huge cities missing with a few relatively unimportant European ones included. Based on en:List of cities proper by population and en:List of urban areas by population, I would suggest the following:

• Include en:Lagos, en:Kinshasa (both with at least over 7 million residents) en:Kolkata (urban area of 15 million) en:Bogotá (over 7 million) and en:Dhaka (capital of one of the biggest countries in the world). This also counters the Eurocentric bias.
• Remove en:Dublin, en:Edinburgh, en:Naples, en:Tel Aviv and en:Melbourne and/or en:Canberra. I can't really think of a reason for including these: with Dublin we might as well have Helsinki, Copenhagen and Stockholm, Edinburgh really isn't important, we already have Jerusalem from Israel (which is culturally more important) and two cities from Australia is definitely enough if we are only going to have three from China (!!). Italy is great, but three cities is just too much. But this isn't only about size, which is why I'll rather have Kyoto than Osaka and Mecca than Riyadh because of the cultural importance of these cities.

--Orri 17:27, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Here is a breakdown of the list with the proposed changes:

Africa: 5 (Sub-Saharan 4).

Asia: 20 (Middle East 6, India 3, China 3, Japan 2, Indonesia 1, Bangladesh 1, Pakistan 1, South Korea 1, Thailand 1, Singapore).

America: 8 (South 4, North 4).

Europe: 12.

Australasia: 1–2.

I hope I counted correctly :) Actually now I think that we should remove both Canberra and Melbourne and also Beirut, as the Middle East is overrepresented. --Orri 17:44, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

An excellent effort. Thank you. -- Yekrats 00:44, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I completed the changes – I also changed Milan to Madrid, as we had nothing from Spain, Madrid is bigger, it's a capital city, and we had two cities from Italy. I we want to have another city from Italy, personally I'd rather have Florence or Venice due to their cultural importance. --Orri 16:13, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Itō Hirobumi

I suggest to add Itō Hirobumi (en:Itō Hirobumi) to the list. The reasons are:

• He was the Prime minister of Japan four times and the Chairman of the Privy Council - four times as well.
• He was the main author of the Meiji Constitution.
• He was the most important person in the processes of Ryukyu and Korea annexations.

Elmor 10:10, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Who would you suggest to remove? -- Yekrats 19:18, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

en:Florence Nightingale. In my opinion, she is less important for the world history than Itō. Elmor 06:51, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I highly oppose this removal, since it is widely known by many non-Western people (from biographies). --RekishiEJ 19:39, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, than, maybe en:Snorri Sturluson? Elmor 20:05, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Fine. Many non-Western people do not know who he is (including me). But I think Leopold von Ranke should be added to the list instead of Itō Hirobumi, as it is more influential on earth than Itō (Itō only influences the East Asia). Or, we can try to expand the list to 2,000 entries so that we can add more important historical figures , present politians, history of a certain country or region and academic terms commonly seen as news media (such as sociology, Westernization, modernization , modernity and postmodernity). Recreational figures should be reduced to 1 or 2 since many traditional encyclopedias rarely give they articles. --RekishiEJ 01:50, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Expanding the list is not a good idea. It wouldn't solve the problem of deciding which articles are more important than the other which has to happen with any limit (1000, 2000 or 3000). It will be more difficult since you will be dealing with lessor known topics and comparing more items. Also, to appear less POV we should try to select people from around the world. Leopold von Ranke may be important around the world but since he is from Europe he might appear to be yet another western person in the list. --MarsRover 02:20, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I can`t agree with you about adding Leopold von Ranke. We have already two 19-century German scientists in the list (en:Ludwig Wittgenstein and en:Max Weber), but we have no persons connected to the Meiji Restoration. Meiji Restoration had a great influence on the history of Asia and on the world one. So, in my opinion, we should add Itō Hirobumi to the list - as the most outstanding person of this period. Elmor 10:18, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Then, we need to add Emperor Meiji, another key figure on Meiji Restoration? And Emperor Shōwa, the Japanese Emperor widely known by the world? Also, if we try to combat Western bias in the list, then the list would be like NOXILO, a language trying to avoid all regional and ethinic bias, thus is a completely hodgepodge. Third, Leopold von Ranke did influence historiography in non-Western countries. But I do agree that the list should contain more non-Western figures, since some non-Western figures are often mentioned in world history books and magazines in the West (for instance, Lao Zi, Sun Yat-Sen, Bruce Lee and Hayao Miyazaki). --RekishiEJ 07:46, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, Emperor Shōwa and Bruce Lee are already in the list. :-) I would like to offer you a compromise: to remove en:Snorri Sturluson and some another less-important person (for example, Daniel Arnaut) from the list and to replace them by Itō Hirobumi and Leopold von Ranke. Do you agree? Elmor 13:03, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Snorri Sturluson should be removed because the occupation "lawspeaker" and the people are not familiar to many non-Western users. Arnaut Daniel should be kept, however, since he was praised by Ezra Pound as the best poet to have ever lived. --RekishiEJ 21:34, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, then, maybe en:I. M. Pei (zh:貝聿銘)? Elmor 08:22, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Snorri removed because his occupation? That's almost like saying that Einstein should be removed since he worked at a patent office! He is the source of most of what's known of nordic mythology – and he could just as well go under "historian", since he wrote that as well. Even though he is from "the western world", what he's written is in several ways distinctively non-western: a presenter of a culture that was very far removed from the Christian world (even if such themes has crept in). There are several more typically western authors that could be removed if the aim is to lessen bias. And this page is not about fame, but importance – otherwise it would be full of modern pop stars.

Andejons 13:25, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I only want to include Itō Hirobumi to the list, because he was the most important person in the processes of modernization and westernization of Japan, as well as in the process of creating Japan`s colonial empire. If you agree that he should be added but don`t want to remove Snorri, than, perhaps, you`ll be so kind to suggest another item to be removed? Elmor 19:52, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that I'm not entirely convinced that Itō Hirobumi fits, but if one has to remove a writer, there are no less than three classical latin poets. The trouble with this kind of list is, of course, that there are so much, so that no matter how you do it, there will be articles that didn't make it even though they might have if there had been another editor. What I'm trying to say about Snorri is that he is am important figure for understanding a ccertain part of the world for a certain period of time, and that he ought not be dismissed because he was as a lawspeaker or he is unknown to some people (there are certainly many persons on the list I don't know who they are, but that doesn't make them less important), but because his work is judged not to be important enough.

Andejons 09:34, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Maybe, we shall remove en:Sappho, if there would be no objections? Elmor 13:23, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, this ancient Greek poet is familiar to many non-Western users since she is mentioned in many world history textbooks published in non-Western regions, and the word "lesbian" originally means "of Lesbos", and since Sappho was homosexual and born in Lesbos, and is quite familiar to many Westerners, it has the meaning "of female homosexuality", so she should be in the list. If there're some articles to be removed from the list, then all recreational persons in it should all be removed, since en:Wikipedia:Vital articles doesn't have this kind of persons. --RekishiEJ 02:44, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I don`t actually think that being a homosexual female poet from Lesbos automatically makes a person extremly important for the world history. In my opinion, the poet should have a large legacy and a great influence on the literature`s history, like Pushkin, Li Bai and Shakespeare. Sorry, I don`t understand, who are the "recreational persons". Could you name them exactly, please? Elmor 19:00, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

People in the recreational business or highly involved in the entertainment-sphere, such as comedians, television and movie actors, models, movie directors, etc. General encyclopedias rarely give them separate articles (I think). By the way, Sappho is influential both in the literature history and LGBT terms (lesbian, this word sparked great controversy in Greece since one large female homosexual group want to register the name with "lesbian", and people in Lesbos have long been identified as homosexual, causing them great disruption, thus make a request that lesbian should return to its original meaning and that large group can not use "lesbian" in their name), so she is vital. --RekishiEJ 21:49, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Charles V

I suggest to add Charles V, Holy Roman emperor. Also I suggest to add Peter I, first Russian emperor.--Nxx 12:51, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

• Peter is already in the list. Elmor 17:40, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

• Why? And who do you propose to remove? -- Yekrats 00:43, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

  I suggest to remove Akbar the Great. Charles V was very important figure in European history. Under his rule Magellan's expedition was completed and conquered Aztec an Inca empires. He also declared Martin Luther heretic and instituted inquisition. He was also the last person to be crowned Roman Emperor.

  Well also I suggest to add Leonid Brezhnev because I think he is more important than Margaret Theacher.--Nxx 15:31, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

You should know that this list is already accused of western bias. Your proposal would only make matters worse (the first point at least). --Yerpo 17:59, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Ferenz Liszt

Why amoung musicants there are not Ferenz Liszt? I thint he must be there immedially! --— The preceding unsigned comment was added by 195.62.14.232 (talk)

Philately

I wonder why there's not such a popular hobby. Or at least the page about the postage stamp should be (as it is in many of Wikis there). — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Renessaince (talk)

Really not that popular, or important either, both of them. In my opinion, of course. --Yerpo 14:03, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Mathematics: Number

The list presented makes little sense. Complex number is listed but not real number! A reasonable list would be: 1. natural numbers 2. prime numbers 3. integers 4. rational numbers 5. real numbers 6. complex numbers Ross Fraser 01:00, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Since the list is limited to 1000 articles and should cover every concept, it hard to make any given one 100% complete. For example, we cannot include every country. Including six articles to cover the "number concept" is probably too much. --MarsRover 18:13, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

As long as we cut all the recreational figure articles in the list, it would not be a problem. In addition, I think it wouldn't be a problem if there're 2000 articles in the list, just like the combination of en:Wikipedia:Vital articles and en:Wikipedia:Vital articles/Expanded. --RekishiEJ 09:54, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry the number of articles in the two English Wikipedia namespace pages are approximately 3,000, not 2,000. But even if the number of articles in this page are 3,000 are also O.K.- just too long. 2,000 is O.K. --RekishiEJ 11:55, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Dolphins and Whales

As with en:Butterfly, en:Dolphin and en:Whale are also ones that don't resolve to a single scientific classification. Some languages don’t have an exact word for these articles. Really should be en:Oceanic dolphin and en:Cetacea. --MarsRover 18:21, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Microprocessor and CPU

Microprocessor is more specific term than CPU. Let us replace it with CPU --Ilya K 18:19, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. CPU is more commonly used than microprocessor. --RekishiEJ 05:52, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. I went ahead and made this change. (Microprocessor -> en:Central processing unit) -- Yekrats 13:53, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

About the places in the list

I noticed some cities were removed, they're curical, however, since Melboune is the second largest city of Australia, Canberra is the capital of Australia, Milan and Naples are quite familiar to non-Western persons, and Tel Aviv is the educational and industrial centre of Israel. --RekishiEJ 06:16, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I think it was explained above. But the arguments where too many cities in Australia and Italy. At the same time skipping some of the largest cities in the world. Tel Aviv is the second city for Israel. Most countries don't have even one in the list. Israel is a small country so that seemed unbalanced. --MarsRover 20:05, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, Israel is a crucial country in the world since non-Israeli new medias often report events there in international news section. Therefore, Tel Aviv is a vital article. Again, the list should contain 2,000 instead of 1,000 articles. --RekishiEJ 02:58, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Israel is on the list (bolded, even) along with its capital (bolded as well!), so it's pretty much covered there. It's important, but not so much to have even more at expense of other countries. If you want 2000 articles on the list (including Tel-Aviv) you're welcome to start a new one, but I think we agreed long ago to keep this one at 1000. --Yerpo 08:21, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Gregor Johann Mendel

Why isn't he on the list?

You should describe why he should be in the list and who should be removed to make room for him. --MarsRover 16:53, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Why 1000?

1000 is little, there are more than 1000 super-necessary articles, and removing Dostoevsky is comparable to removing Shakespeare.

Be welcome to create the 10.000 articles list! Hogne 13:57, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

• Don't laugh. I am creating a 10,000-list on English Wikipedia, but the problem is reversed: it is hard to find the 10,000 best topics (Do you know the world's top 300 scientists?). However, overall, it is amazing how much better & easier a large list works: just add the "top 100" of everything, adding 500 per week for 18 weeks. The extent of real information is awesome. -209.214.44.173 07:15, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

After reading through the discussion page here, cutting it back to 1000 seems psychotic. Why not bump it, eventually, to a slightly higher - or less arbitrary - number? 170.201.180.137 18:52, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Remember that this list is primarily meant to be a guide for small Wikipedias for what they should focus on to be useful as a reference. Covering 1000 topics from scratch isn't easy, covering more is more difficult still if you have only a couple of regular contributors. Nobody is required to follow this list. By the way, is there any number that isn't arbitrary? No matter how many you'd include, there would always be somebody arguing that there is another super-necessary topic to add. So the answer to the question "why 1000?" is simply - "why not?". --Yerpo 20:24, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

A smaller number would make the list easier to work with. 1000 is a good compromise. --Boivie 08:55, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Replace dictionary words with 1,000 real topics

24-Oct-2008: Note how the policy now is "Wikipedia is not a dictionary". So, the current 1,000 list can be redone: replacing the 200 trivial topics with real articles would make the current 1,000 much more tolerable:

• replace: map, town, continent, man/woman, child, sea, river, bridge, dam
• with Cartography, Continental drift, Iraq War, X/Y chromosomes, diurnal tides, drainage basin, Brooklyn Bridge, and Aswan Dam.

Then include President Lyndon Johnson and other topics not described in a dictionary. Once each article is treated as a complex topic, not a word in a dictionary, then hundreds of trivial words can be replaced by articles that didn't seem to fit among the 1,000. For example, take words like "Color" and replace with different articles: Color spectrum, Color blindness, Primary colors, and such. When reading about "Color spectrum", the reader could get the frequency ranges of the various colors that were formerly each considered a vital article. Avoiding dictionary words (as titles) will release a lot of article titles for more important topics. -209.214.44.173 07:15, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

1000 is just too few

24-Oct-2008: After studying the list for years, I finally realized that 1,000 articles is absolutely too small, and perhaps 5,000 would have been much better. A Wikipedia doesn't need all 5,000 articles immediately, but it would be a long-term goal. Why did 1,000 fail to cover the range? Because using only 1000 was like trying to represent a "football field" in "3 inches of soil". It might seem (at first) that grass is still grass in 3 inches, but only one yardline or goal-line could fit within 3 inches, and putting a goal post in there pushes a yardline marker out. Plus, those yardline numbers for 20, 30, 40, 50 won't fit inside a 3-inch plug of grass, and it can't show the "whole 9 yards" before the next first down. In this analogy, a football field could be better represented in a 10-yard segment (10% of the whole 100-yard field), showing 2 yardlines 10 feet apart, with the goal line, and a chain measuring the 9 yards until the next first down.  Likewise, for an encyclopedia, consider listing 10% of a large collection, such as 10% of 50,000 articles = 5,000 articles.

Because the English Wikipedia is so huge (2.6 million articles), I'm creating a list of 10,000 highly notable topics: those are the articles that should be improved above "good-article" level, because they are the core of a full encyclopedia. Among those 10,000 articles, will be:

• about 250 famous athletes among the top Olympic/sports figures;
• over 150 TV/film actors that represent long-term impact;
• over 100 major artists of ballet/opera/etc.;
• some of the top 50 racehorses of the past 200 years;
• many breeds of cat/dog/horse that appear in formal shows;
• dozens of food items (intended to span many food cultures);
• famous authors, journalists, and mystics around the world.

Each Wikipedia can reach an international audience, and for that reason, a large set of core articles should be written, long-term.

The problem has been a lack of scope to show people that the core list covers enough to track the overall progress of expanding the articles. In the past, there was no incentive to improve the 4 articles about actors, when more than 150 actors have had obvious impact in English films. Now, with a larger list, multiple people can divide the work, each improving "10 articles" in the total list, with the understanding that those are the articles that people will be reading, not just the 4 actors in the 1000-list. I, personally, don't care to push featured-article level, just improve those 10,000 articles to have sources & some significant details in each. If there are some awkward phrases or weak sections, that is close enough. I feel that the featured-article requirement, to expand all weak sections, can be overkill, if the basic details are already present in an article.

Anyway, the most important point is that the 1000-list is absolutely too small (someone tried a 1300-article list, but it got trimmed back down). Instead, list 5,000 or 10,000 major articles, and allow each Wikipedia to take years developing those articles as a long-term goal. Each Wikipedia could decide how to prioritize articles that have lower impact for their readers, but don't try to cram 500 years of stage acting into 4 people, or 4500 years of scientific progress into 30 people, etc. Quite honestly, the 1000-list approach is just plain "goofy" as a measure of information, or as someone above said, the effect "seems psychotic" because it's mentally unbalanced, like trying to cram the football field into 3 inches of soil (as a measure of "how to construct a football field"). More yards are needed, and more articles are needed to clarify what is involved in building the thing. -209.214.44.173 07:15, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

See my above reply. Any number we'd set would be completely subjective and not much less psychotic to conform to (especially when people decided to cram dozens of racehorses in). Remember, there's a difference between "important" and "notable", and what is hugely popular in the English-speaking world (or even USA alone) may be almost unknown in other parts of the world (such as baseball, rugby and racehorses), hence globally unimportant. Otherwise you have a point, but instead of trying to convert this list which everybody seems to want, why not just make another? Here, have a link. --Yerpo 07:52, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Too many biographies

I think that biography list needs to be shortened. Its filled with a lot of people who make no difference to a lot of people around the world esp the artist, author etc part which is filled with too many English/American people. I can assure you that most of those "successful" artists, authors etc are unknown to more than 90 percent of South Asia and India which makes around half of humanity. I think these people need to be deleted from the list. Instead we can add a few more scientists who matter more to the world, whether they are known or unknown. Thanks--Eukesh 16:51, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Brahmi script

Why is Brahmi script absent from the list of alphabets? It is the most prominent of abugida with its derivatives like Devnagari, Eastern Nagari (Bengali, Assamese), Western Nagari (Gurmukhi, Gujrati), Modi, Tibetan, Thai, Khmer, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Lao, Korean, Ranjana, Prachalit Nepal, Balinese, Kirat Sirijanga, Lepcha, Mithilaksher etc being used to write more than 100 languages (encompassing languages from Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Asiatic, Dravidian etc families).--Eukesh 16:58, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

So, unlike the alphabets listed. This one is not actively used for any modern language? Only it derivatives are. --MarsRover 18:00, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

It is not used in any modern language. However, it has profound impact on writing of more than 100 languages.--Eukesh 18:39, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Trimming of electronics section?

IMO, it is unnecessary to have all the basic circuit components (en:Capacitor, en:Inductor, en:Transistor, en:Diode, en:Resistor and en:Transformer) on this list. I propose to replace those entries with en:Electronic circuit which can serve as an introduction to the rest and is (again, IMO) more important than separate components. I'm not an engineer, though, so correct me if I'm talking nonsense. --Yerpo 11:04, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

There have been some significant trimming going on in science so not sure how much more we need. Might want to work on the biographies instead. But I noticed that the "over-view" sort of articles have problems across languages since its a little bit opinion how to group things together. (ex. en:Heart disease and en:Nut (fruit) doesn't always translate.) --MarsRover 17:15, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I know science is a bit malnourished here, so perhaps we should add up to five other scientific terms and continue removing biographies. As for the language issue, I think there should be no problem as electronic circuit is such a common term. --Yerpo 18:58, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Popular culture figures

Recreational figures should all be removed. They are much less important in world history than other types of notable persons. Other types of articles in the list do not have to be removed since they have high importance. --RekishiEJ 16:58, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean by "recreational figures". Can you give a few examples? Important artists should be in the list if you want a balanced encyclopedia. --MarsRover 18:16, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Singers, actors, comedians, models, and so on. These types of figures are usually well-known only in particular countries. And since this VA list can not be too verbose, it can not contain figures only having high fame in certain regions, especially popular culture figures. --RekishiEJ 13:08, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

The reason that high culture figures have more notability than popular culture figures is foreign culture figures are mentioned more often in world history and geography textbooks than popular culture figures, this is why I think generally recreational figures should not be mentioned in this list, especially when some regard the page too long. --RekishiEJ 13:19, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I kinda agree with removing representatives of western pop culture. Maybe we could leave the most famous one (Elvis or some other person deemed such), but yeah, this section is clearly superfluous and biased, especially if we take into account the too large number of biographies. --Yerpo 13:40, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Removals

After Yerpo's addition of 7 articles, and Yann's addition of 2 more, we are now up at 1038. So which 38 should go? I'll list some topics I believe might not be among the 1000 most important. I'm not an expert in all fields, so please correct me if you think some of these should stay:

Biography

en:Sarah Bernhardt, en:Pieter Bruegel the Elder, en:Donatello, en:I. M. Pei, en:Peter Paul Rubens, en:Abu Nuwas, en:Luís de Camões, en:Arnaut Daniel, en:Rubén Darío, en:Ferdowsi, en:Fuzûlî, en:Kālidāsa, en:Munshi Premchand, en:Shota Rustaveli, en:Isaac Bashevis Singer, en:Snorri Sturluson, en:William Wordsworth, en:Wu Cheng'en, en:Anton Bruckner, en:Gustav Mahler, en:Jean Sibelius, en:Bedřich Smetana, en:Alexander von Humboldt, en:Federico Fellini, en:Satyajit Ray, en:Orson Welles, en:Fibonacci, en:Ernst Haeckel, en:John von Neumann, en:Giordano Bruno, en:Francis of Assisi, en:David Ben-Gurion, en:Empress Dowager Cixi, en:Haile Selassie, en:Jawaharlal Nehru, en:Qin Shi Huang, en:Emma Goldman

Geography

en:Earth science, en:Map, en:North Pole, en:Rainforest, en:Delhi, en:Kyoto, en:Lagos, en:Aral Sea, en:Congo River, en:Ganges River, en:Great Barrier Reef, en:Great Lakes, en:Indus River, en:Lake Tanganyika, en:Lake Victoria, en:Niagara Falls, en:Niger River, en:Yangtze River, en:Rocky Mountains

Society

en:Behavior, en:Colonialism

Culture

en:Pottery, en:Literacy, en:Fiction, en:Arch, en:Canal, en:Giza pyramid complex, en:Folk music, en:New Age music, en:Playing card, en:Horse racing, en:Wrestling, en:Spirituality, en:Free will, en:Mind, en:Reality

Science

en:Endangered species, en:Domestication, en:Respiration (physiology), en:Colon (anatomy), en:Integumentary system, en:Sensory system, en:Reproductive system, en:Addiction, en:Disability, en:Hearing impairment, en:Mental illness, en:Headache, en:Heart disease, en:Malnutrition, en:Ape, en:Visible spectrum

Technology

en:Wedge (mechanical device), en:Irrigation, en:User interface

Foodstuffs

en:Sorghum, en:Nut (fruit)

Mathematics

en:Group theory

conclusion

Okey, that's alot more than 38. But it's only because I hope you will strike out those that should stay. --Boivie 17:48, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

You should just list the articles you want to get rid of. I sort of agreed with the choices but we should discuss anyway. --MarsRover 19:59, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

As I already said, all western pop culture icons can go from the biographies AFAIK; as for the rest, we should take care not to make the list too western-centric. I'd rather not judge the specific cases, because those are subjects I don't know much about. There was a lot of discussion about some other entries (towards the top of this page and in the archives), I think it should be considered as well.

I think most of the geography section of your list should stay, except perhaps en:Earth science and en:Aral Sea which we could do without. From the culture section, I agree with removal of en:Horse racing, en:Wrestling, en:Folk music, en:New Age music and en:Playing card. en:Behavior, en:Colonialism should definitely stay, IMO. Most of the science should stay as well, except maybe en:Integumentary system and en:Heart disease which is essentially a disambiguation (but we should have something about the heart disease in, considering how important cause of mortality in western world this is). en:User interface doesn't seem too important to me as well, and I agree with the choice of foodstuffs and mathematics subjects to be removed. --Yerpo 07:33, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I argee with most of the Yerpos' comments above, but for geography section, I think Kyoto can be removed, as we have Tokyo already (or if we need to keep the number of East Asian cities, I suggest replacing it with Taipei, the current capital of ROC (Taiwan)). -- Kevinhksouth 14:36, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

You're right, I missed Kyoto there. I agree that Tokio is enough. --Yerpo 19:00, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Now we're down to 1017. What more should be removed? --Boivie 06:31, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

en:Jean Sibelius, en:Orson Welles, en:Pieter Bruegel the Elder, en:John von Neumann and en:Heart disease if I had to pick from your list. Plus en:Marlon Brando, en:Bruce Lee and en:Brigitte Bardot. That makes 8, so we can keep one of them (von Neumann perhaps). --Yerpo 07:01, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I would suggest removal of en:Japanese yen. I can understand reasons for en:United States dollar or en:Euro to be included in this list, but as for yen, i don't see what makes it more important than for example, en:Pound sterling or quite many others. --Saə 12:49, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Idea about tracking reasons for inclusion

Can we include a comment after the article link that explains in a few words the reason it deserves to be in the list?
Example:

[[en:Augustine of Hippo]] <!-- important figure in the development of Western Christianity -->
[[en:Alan Turing]] 	  <!-- father of modern computer science -->
[[en:Congo River]]        <!-- the second longest in Africa -->
[[en:Tamil language]]     <!-- 66 million native speakers -->
[[en:Go (game)]]          <!-- played for at least two thousand years -->
[[en:Mosquito]]           <!-- most deadly disease vector known -->
[[en:Plough]]             <!-- basic instrument for most of recorded history -->

Would be nice to understanding why articles were first added especially when thinking of removing them. --MarsRover 21:58, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

That is a GREAT idea! -- Yekrats 13:48, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I really like this idea too. -- Kevinhksouth 03:13, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

I like it to argue why Sergei Eisenstein is more important than Lucas. Mashiah Davidson 04:17, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Increase to 2000 for easier calculations

24-Oct-2008: Back in March 2008, there was a call to shorten the list to 1000 for easy calculation (divide by shift .000), and people struggled to ax many notable entries down to 1009, but never dropped to 1000. Note now, Wikimedia can do calculations: code as "{{#expr: 50000 / 1009 round 2}}" (result: average notable articles omitted for each listed article: 49.55, rounded to 2 places). Remember, Wikimedia is a vast computing tool as well as repository. The MediaWiki software can perform thousands of calcs per second, and there is no need to shorten the list if Wikimedia does the calcs.

Listing 2000 is easier: However, we could add 1,000 entries (as 2,000 total), to allow mentally dividing by 1,000 and halving, as division by 2000. So, yes, 2000 articles would be easier to hand-calculate than 1009, and I vote YES to quickly expand the list to 2,000 for easy calculations. To pad as 2000 entries, insert the periodic table of atomic elements (or such) as filler, then delete elements from the end to keep the list as 2,000 when more entries are added. Certainly, every Wikipedia should have the (universal) atomic elements, but the end (radioactive) elements are not as notable, and easily deleted. I would also add hundreds of Nobel Prize winners, since that is a worldwide concern, and showcases world technologies and styles. Another form of quick filler could be a list of Olympic sporting events (which applies to the whole world), and then delete from that list as space is needed. Wikimedia is recommending only the minimum, and anyone can list ALL the atomic elements (or Olympic events) in their encyclopedia, even those not in a 2000-article core list. Beware that it won't take long to find 2000 world-wide important articles, so the next hand-calculation is 5000 articles: multiply by 2 and shift 4 places (.0000), to divide by 5000. -209.214.44.173 09:49, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

 Oppose, as per comment above. The ease of calculation isn't by any chance an important argument here IMO, eventhough it has been mentioned. Would be good to have another opinion, though. --Yerpo 11:36, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

 Oppose, if an expanded list is needed (which I don't think so) it should be seperate from this one. Articles have different importance. Something people have to accept for any size list to make sense. But once you accept that, its just a matter of sorting and truncating. But I believe we should leave it at 1000 articles. Its small enough to force people to filter the list by importance, large enough to be a starting point for balanced coverage, and yet a doable task for new wiki. -MarsRover 20:49, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

 Oppose I think that writing 1,000 articles is enough work for a new wiki. For example, in the Galician wikipedia, we have created more than 40,000 articles after five years; but there are still a few articles from the 1,000 list waiting to be written. Miguel.lima 16:19, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

 Oppose However, I would be in favor of a second list of articles as the "second thousand articles every Wikipedia should have." -- Yekrats 12:19, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

• 27-Oct-2008: Thanks, everyone, for your replies. I see now that the list can be interpreted as articles that a Wikipedia language "must have" (rather than "should have"), and the German Wikipedia had just 984 articles in their variation as the core list for German. I have only recently viewed the Absent-Articles listing (which limits reporting to those Wikipedias which have omitted fewer than 250 from the total list): if the list were much longer, then absent-article counts could exceed the 250 (dropping those Wikipedias from the list), and there would be less information about which articles are slow to implement. Currently, I see that "everyone" has the very-famous people, such as Beethoven, Dvorak, Puccini, Verdi, Einstein, Elvis, Marilyn, The Beatles, Spielberg, Fellini, Kubrick, Walt Disney, Florence Nightingale, Dante Alighieri and en:Omar Khayyám, plus common terms such as Week, Month, Year, Kilometre, Foot, Kilogram, Litre, Polytheism, Football, Baseball, Rugby & Game. Obviously, many Wikipedias omit the less-known people (such as American en:Walt Whitman, en:Satyajit Ray, or en:Abu Nuwas) and expensive activities (like en:Horse racing or en:Auto racing). However, the least-favorite articles include the abstract/broad concepts, such as Reality, Thought, Writing, Prose, Fiction, Behavior, Beauty, Truth, Morality, Domestication & Measurement. Perhaps keep the list around 1000-1200, but avoid abstract terms and unusual people, thereby allowing each Wikipedia to add their own notable people in their realm. Certainly, a list of 2000 would be too many when treated as the "required" core list. -Wikid77 12:57, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Whale is idiosyncratic to English

The term and concept whale in the list should be replaced with cetacea. Whale may be an important concept in English. But the definition in the article in the English wikipedia shows that the concept is awkward and arbitrary delinated. Notably it is not a taxon in Biology. It does not have interwiki link to Danish, Swedish or Norwegian (closely related to English). I think this is because these languages lack corresponding words. Cetacea, on the other hand, does have a corresponding Swedish word that seems to be ethymologically related to whale (val). --194.237.142.6 18:28, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

The term cetacea includes whales and dolphins. So, it overlaps with having Dolphin in the list. I would actually prefer having either en:Blue Whale ("largest animal ever to have existed") or en:Sperm Whale ("largest living toothed animal" and of en:Moby Dick fame). The en.wp cetacea article mainly lists the various species of the order which doesn't seem to be an article every wikipedia should have. --MarsRover 05:43, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Articles about cetacea are featured on four different language versions, so it's certainly possible to write good articles about the subject. Also, even en:Whale mostly deals with things that could just as well be in the article about the order (it even mentions dolphins as a type of whale).

Andejons 09:31, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the above and have made the change. --Yerpo 18:27, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Yerpo. Indeed, the English concept of 'whale', does present its problems as it's not a biological term, while Swedish 'valar' (plural form of 'val') is both about biology and general concept (ref. the old Swedish biological term 'valdjur' is not used nowadays, making 'valar' a term with at least two definitions). Same problems arise in languages such as Catalan (where 'balena' primarily means a baleen whale) and probably in Arabic, both Wikipedias carrying an current "Absent value" of 1 to 2. So, making English language/the English language Wikipedia the model for all Wikipedias does have its ups and downs. Then, thanks once more, Yerpo.--Paracel63 15:07, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

The final squeeze

According to the count, we are approaching our goal. Therefore I have made a quick review of the list and am now proposing 8 more removals, then we can make the version "official". Here there are:

en:Ernst Haeckel (his main ideas are outdated in modern biology)

en:Richard Stallman (we already have Tim Berners-Lee representing information age inventors)

en:Niagara Falls (globally important? I don't think so, and we already have the Great Lakes on the list from that region)

en:International Atomic Energy Agency (far less influential and therefore important as it should be, IMO)

en:Italian language (only historic cultural importance, and there is proportionally a lot of italian topics present here)

en:Fencing (I think I already said once that such an exclusive sport for the rich doesn't belong here)

en:Bahá'í Faith (minor religion)

en:Zoroastrianism (minor religion, although it could remain due to its historic influence)

en:Shinto (minor religion)

There, 9, so we can keep en:Zoroastrianism if you think it's important enough (I'm not really an expert on religion). --Yerpo 11:06, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. I would have kept Shinto instead of Zoroastrianism, but I don't mind losing any of them. --Boivie 16:03, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

How about removing these:

en:Che Guevara - over-hiped revolutionary.

en:Japanese yen - since have dollar and euro this less important

en:Measurement - merely a definition. better to have another example of a measurement

en:Wedge (mechanical device) - slightly more than a definition. but would always be a trivial article.

-MarsRover 17:27, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I went ahead and made the change. I kept en:Zoroastrianism for its heavy influence on modern abrahamic religions. Out of MarsRover's suggestions, I removed Wedge, others seem important enough for me to stay (en:Japanese yen, for example, is the third most-traded currency in the foreign exchange market, hence more important than pound). Because the count afterwards gave me 999 articles, I took the liberty of keeping en:Arabic alphabet which was added yesterday by an anon and which seems reasonable to me. Somebody please check if I made an error in counting. --Yerpo 12:58, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

I just noticed that en:Pythagoras is on the list twice (under "Inventors, scientists and mathematicians" and "Social scientists"). Any suggestions on replacement? Otherwise I'll return en:Ernst Haeckel as I feel I may have been too quick dismissing him. --Yerpo 08:58, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

There are already too many biography articles, so I think it would be unwise to restore a biography article. -- Kevinhksouth 15:26, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Okay, what then? --Yerpo 16:11, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

PS: make that two additions. No sense in having both en:Train and en:Rail transport on the list (just saw this). --Yerpo 20:27, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Looks like nobody has any ideas... How about en:Nature and en:Psychology to replace Rail transport and the second Pythagoras? Both are from Vital articles list on :en. --Yerpo 13:26, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

That's okay. -- Kevinhksouth 14:45, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Shift agriculture

This is not a request to remove or add anything. Instead I propose that Agriculture be moved from the section on business and economics, to the section on technology. Although the business and economic side of agriculture is very important, fundamentally agriculture concerns the production of food and other products of the land. It is true that business and economics were largely built upon a foundation of agriculture. However, agriculture exists outside of business and economics, subsistence agriculture still being a way of life for some. Agriculture, though, depends completely on technology, to plant, harvest and store crops. So, could we place agriculture under technology, where irrigation stands now, and have irrigation and plough as subsections of agriculture? Lloffiwr 19:08, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Sounds logical to me. I don't think anyone would mind if you just do it. --Yerpo 09:04, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

OK. Done. Lloffiwr 09:21, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Officializing?

So... there weren't further comments in the six days after The Final Squeeze, which indicates to me that you feel the list doesn't have major issues at this point. Perhaps there is and idiosyncratic term or two left, the section proportions aren't perfect (still too many biographies, for example) and some of the entries are too vague to have large articles on (especially in the Philosophy section). But instead of bashing our heads in attempt to solve this, I propose to make this version official (v1.1) so people can translate it to their own languages. Then we can start solving the problems which will take more effort, IMO. What do you think? --Yerpo 10:16, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

It looks good enough to be version 1.1 and it might be good to see how easy these are to translate to other languages. --MarsRover 03:22, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Any other opinions? I'll backup this version and make the version increment if nobody objects until tomorrow. --Yerpo 07:38, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't really understand why we would need officialized versions of this list. The first "version" was added by an anonomous user without any kind of discussion about it. But sure, if we should use officialized versions, now is a good time to add another one. --Boivie 07:35, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

No particularly serious reason that would imply anything, but people might be reluctant to localize the list while there's much change going on and might trust "versions" more. I just thought that the list is relatively stable at this point and that we have made significant progress with it which would warrant recognition. I'll change the wording of the introduction ("Any modifications after August 14th, 2006 is not officialized yet.") to be less formalistic about it. --Yerpo 07:49, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Religious figures

In religious figures the article of Lord Krishna should be there, as he is the well known figure in World's most historic religion, Hinduism. Unfortunately, Somebody deleted the entry here. Ravichandrae 05:49, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

What do you propose removing in order to fit it in? --Yerpo 07:51, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I am proposing this article to be included in the list of articles every Wikipedia should have under the category of religious figures. Ravichandrae 12:21, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

As clearly stated in the introduction, you should also propose some other, (by your opinion) less important article to be removed, because the list is full. --Yerpo 14:37, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Energy (society)?

I have just read the latest result of List of Wikipedias by sample of articles today. It seems that someone changed "Energy" (which has arround 100 interwikis) to "Energy (society)" (which has only 6 interwikis) on this list. As "Energy (society)" is a much more complicated concept, I do not think it is suitable to be listed on this list, so I suggest changing back "Energy (society)" to "Energy". Any comments? -- Kevinhksouth 15:21, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

en:Energy is still on the list under Physics. That put aside, I did notice that many wikipedias had problems with the concept as described en:Energy (society) and I had to clean a lot of wrong interwikis from that article which were pointing to articles about energy in the basic sense of the word (those, in turn, pointed correctly to en:Energy). Maybe it would be best to introduce something more universal. --Yerpo 16:45, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I would agree here, the concept doesn't look 100% clear. Maybe en:energetics? Mashiah Davidson 18:23, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

I went ahead and replaced en:energy (society) with en:energetics, if anyone objects go ahead and change it back--71.34.138.143 02:34, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

EUROCENTRISM!

This list is extraordinarily eurocentric. Take a look at the artists and architects: they are all European/American! (OK, Frida Kahlo is Mexican) So much to add to this list, and so much to remove! Granted, this list will be Eurocentric to some degree; the world is eurocentric, it's the way most people think, and it's the information most people want, even those speaking obscure languages that do not yet have wikipedia.... However, it would be worthwhile to still include a large minority of non-Western figures. Some examples...

• Arts/Architecture: Sinan (Ottoman architect of Istanbul)
• Writers: This list is better, but I might add... Lu Xun (creator of modern Chinese prose), Firdowsi (10th c. national poet of Iran), others
• Social Scientists: Muhammad Iqbal, Ibn Khaldun (14th c. muslim sociologist), Zhu Xi (theorist of yin/yang, state ideologist)
• Political leaders: How can politics be so Eurocentric! And the few non-Western leaders are lame, only present because they're famous in the West (eg, Saladin). Some better figures: Harun al-Rashid (caliph), Kangxi, Suleiman the Magnificent, Justinian, Taizong.
• Activists: Helen Keller and Emma Goldman? I'm a fan of the latter, but she's only there because she's American- Helen Keller likewise. Some better ones: Garibaldi, Saad Zaghlul (Egyptian nationalist), Hong Xuiqan (leader of the incredible Taiping rebellion)

— The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.58.115.49 (talk) 04:20, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, can't say you're not right, this list is a bit eurocentric. Unfortunately, most of us are westerners, so we are somewhat biased towards topics we know. Whom do you propose to remove (apart from the two activists)? Keep in mind that the biography section is considered too large and like you said, we should focus on information that most people will seek. I would support inclusion of Suleiman and the freshening up of activists section. Other than that, it's best that somebody else says something about it as well. --Yerpo 21:45, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Interesting suggestions. Other than Suleiman I cannot say I am that familiar with these folkes but they are very notable. But I would lean toward articles on concepts over biographies if possible. So, include en:Ying and Yang and en:Taiping Rebellion instead of Zhu Xi and Hong Xuiquan. Also, you need to clarify who you mean with en:Taizong. Before we include any of these, we need to figure out what needs to go. --MarsRover 01:22, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Timur

Is it ok that en:Timur is absent in the list? Mashiah Davidson 22:41, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, I don't know. Why exactly is he so important that he should be on and whom is he more important than? --Yerpo 19:02, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

He was the first who managed to overcome Chingiz-Ghane and he killed so many people that Stalin looks an angel near to him. I think he is much more important than Margaret Tetcher. Mashiah Davidson 14:49, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

So you suggest removing en:Margaret Thatcher and adding en:Timur? Sounds reasonable. --Boivie 09:16, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I just wait for more opinions, but that's exactly what I meant. Mashiah Davidson 16:30, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

The change is now made. Mashiah Davidson 17:44, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

EDISON

Let's bump Fermi off the list he just pioneered a way to control nuclear chain reactions, Edison invented hundreds of things. Anyway, if you want an influential Italian inventor what about Marconi? — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 74.72.199.84 (talk) 15:11, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

So you suggest removing en:Enrico Fermi and adding en:Guglielmo Marconi? Sounds reasonable. --Boivie 09:20, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

"jsut pioneered a way of controlling nuclear reactions"? I'd say that's no small feat! Also, Fermi certainly did more than just develop nuclear reactors. He is, after all, seen as the last great physicist who was both a great theoretician and a great experimentalist.

Andejons 11:01, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

The en:Radio exploration is still disputed, so I'm doubting about Marconi compared to Fermi. Mashiah Davidson 18:34, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Law maybe becomes "Law and Order"

I suggest that "Law" can be expanded to Law and order. Current items should not be changed (Law and Constitution is really vital). I suggest to add:

• Punishment, what can law do if there is no punishment? Not completely related to law, but strongly related to our daily live.
• Crime, why we have laws in the first place?
• Police, where is the most primary form of modern law enforcement?
• Social order, also known as Public order (not Public order in urban planning stuff of English wiki), probably not in "Law and order" area, but this term is very often used

--Kittyhawk2 06:11, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Changing the title is possible. But if articles should be added, some other articles have to be removed from the list (not necessarily within the same area). --Boivie 09:23, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

100, 10 and 1

I think it could be a good way to approach the real imprtance of each topic in the list if we try to create a list of 100 most important articles first. My view is we would be able to create certain criteria for inclusion for smaller list and then adopt this criteria for the list of 1000. Mashiah Davidson 14:53, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

The list of 100 could have been indicated in bold. Currently we have the following 231 items bolded:

bolds counting

• 
  Biography
  Artists and architects

1. Leonardo da Vinci
2. Michelangelo
3. Picasso, Pablo
4. Raphael
5. Rembrandt
   Authors, playwrights and poets
6. Cervantes, Miguel de
7. Dante Alighieri
8. Dostoevsky, Fyodor
9. von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
10. Homer
11. Molière
12. Shakespeare, William
    Composers and musicians
13. Bach, Johann Sebastian
    Beatles, The
14. Beethoven, Ludwig van
15. Chopin, Frédéric
16. Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
17. Tchaikovsky, Petr
    Explorers
18. Columbus, Christopher
19. Gagarin, Yuri
20. Magellan, Ferdinand
    Inventors, scientists and mathematicians
21. Archimedes
22. Copernicus, Nicolaus
23. Darwin, Charles
24. Einstein, Albert
25. Euclides
26. Euler, Leonhard
27. Faraday, Michael
28. Galileo Galilei
29. Kepler, Johannes
30. Maxwell, James Clerk
31. Mendeleev, Dmitri
32. Newton, Sir Isaac
33. Watt, James
    Social scientists (philosophers, economists, historians and thinkers)
34. Aristotle
35. Bruno, Giordano
36. Kant, Immanuel
37. Marx, Karl
38. Plato
    Politicians, leaders and aristocrats
39. Alexander the Great
40. Augustus
41. Bonaparte, Napoleon
42. Julius Caesar
43. Charlemagne
44. Genghis Khan
45. Hitler, Adolf
46. Lenin, Vladimir
47. Stalin, Joseph
    Religious figures
48. Abraham
49. Buddha
50. Jesus
51. Moses
52. Muhammad
    Revolutionaries and activists
53. Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand
    History
54. History
    Modern
55. Cold War
56. French Revolution
57. Industrial Revolution
58. World War I
59. World War II
    Geography
60. Geography
61. Town
62. Continent
63. Ocean
64. Sea
    Continents and major regions
65. Africa
66. Antarctica
67. Asia
68. Europe
    Middle East
69. North America
70. Oceania
71. South America
    Countries
72. Brazil
73. People's Republic of China
    Cuba
74. France
75. Germany
    Greece
76. India
77. Israel
78. Japan
    Italy
79. Russia
80. Portugal
81. Spain
82. United Kingdom
83. United States
    Cities
84. Berlin
85. Jerusalem
86. London
87. New York City
88. Paris
89. Rome
90. Tokyo
    Bodies of water
91. Amazon River
92. Atlantic Ocean
93. Indian Ocean
94. Nile
95. Pacific Ocean
    Mountains, valleys and deserts
96. Himalayas
97. Sahara
    Society
98. Society
99. Education
    Family and relationships
100. Family
101. Child
102. Marriage
     Thought, behavior and emotion
103. Behavior
104. Emotion
105. Thought
     Politics
106. Politics
107. Government
108. State
     Business and economics
109. Economics
110. Money
     Law
111. Law
     International organizations
112. International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement
113. United Nations
     War and military
114. Military
115. Peace
116. War
     Social issues
117. Capital punishment
118. Human rights
119. Slavery
     Culture
120. Culture
121. Art
122. Dance
123. Theatre
     Language and literature
124. Language
     Grammar
125. Word
126. Alphabet
     Letter
127. Writing
128. Literature
129. Poetry
     Architecture and civil engineering
130. Architecture
131. House
     Film, radio and television
132. Film
133. Radio
134. Television
     Music
135. Music
     Recreation
136. Game
     Olympic Games
137. Sport
138. Toy
     World view and religion
139. God
140. Mythology
141. Soul
142. Religion
     Specific religions
143. Buddhism
144. Christianity
145. Hinduism
146. Islam
147. Judaism
     Philosophy
148. Philosophy
149. Knowledge
     Science
     Astronomy
150. Astronomy
151. Big Bang
152. Galaxy
153. Moon
154. Planet
155. Earth
156. Star
157. Sun
     Biology
158. Biology
     Biological materials
159. DNA
160. Death
161. Life
     Biological processes
162. Metabolism
163. Photosynthesis
164. Evolution
165. Reproduction
     Anatomy
166. Anatomy
167. Cell
     Health and medicine
168. Medicine
169. Cancer
170. Disease
171. Health
172. Malaria
173. AIDS
174. Virus
     Organisms
175. Organism
176. Animal
177. Insect
178. Amphibian
179. Bird
180. Fish
181. Mammal
182. Human
183. Reptile
184. Bacteria
185. Fungus
186. Plant
     Chemistry
187. Chemistry
188. Chemical element
189. Periodic table
190. Gold
191. Hydrogen
192. Iron
193. Oxygen
194. Molecule
     Weather, climate and geology
195. Climate
196. Geology
197. Mineral
     Rock
198. Weather
     Physics
199. Physics
200. Atom
201. Energy
202. Color
203. Force
204. Mass
205. Sound
206. Speed
207. Time
208. Phase (matter)
209. Metal
     Measurement and units
210. Measurement
     Timekeeping
211. Calendar
212. Day
213. Month
214. Year
     Technology
215. Technology
216. Agriculture
217. Communication
218. Information
219. Computer
220. Energy (society)
     Beverages
221. Milk
222. Water

100 sounds like a reasonable target for bolding. Be bold and remove the bold marking from entries you don't think belong to the 100 most important subjects. --Boivie 09:28, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

It might be not so easy... However, I've striked the two unbolded in the list abouve, so everyone can participate. The task could be revised, to reduce from 229 to 200. According to en:Pareto principle 20% are of 80% importance =) Mashiah Davidson 22:14, 1 January 2009 (UTC)