Wikipedia:WikiProject Laundromat

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A list of individual washing machines in Ontario would usually not be appropriate in the article on Ontario.
A list of individual washing machines in Ontario would usually not be appropriate in the article on Ontario.
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WP:LAUNDRY

This project's goal is to reduce the number of inappropriate laundry lists in Wikipedia articles. This page and its subpages contain their suggestions; it is hoped that this project will help to focus the efforts of other Wikipedians. If you would like to help, please inquire on the talk page and see the to-do list there.

For more information on WikiProjects, please see Wikipedia:WikiProject and Wikipedia:WikiProject/Best practices.

Contents

[edit] Scope

See also: Wikipedia:Embedded list and Wikipedia:Avoid trivia sections in articles

A laundry list is a lengthy item by item enumeration,[1][2] of items, typically in "bullet point" format, often of minutiae. Having lists instead of article text can in some cases make Wikipedia worse, not better. They sometimes can be hard to read, accumulate cruft, and tend to wander from list guidelines.

The goal of Wikiproject:Laundromat is to scrub laundry lists from articles when they detract from an article's usefulness, and salvage usable content from those laundry lists into readable, encyclopedic text. A list can also be the best way of presenting detailed material, and it is not intended to remove such lists.

[edit] Goals

  1. To identify non-list articles that are overbalanced with laundry lists. As a rule of thumb, if more than about 30% of a non-list article consists of a list, it may be a problem.
  2. To identify entries in lists that are nonnotable, nonencyclopedic, and unhelpful, and to remove them from both the list and the article.
  3. To identify entries in problematic lists that are notable and encyclopedic, and to remove them from the list and incorporate them into the article's main body flow, with appropriate text.

Laundromat is not primarily intended to address NPOV violations, poorly written text, or general style problems, although of course you should feel free to fix those while doing the wash. The goal of Laundromat is specifically to find "laundry lists"--inappropriate lists of miscellaneous items--, and salvage usable content therein and turn it into well-written text.

[edit] Resources

The following resources are useful for labeling articles with potential problems.

[edit] Tasks

[edit] Identifying articles to be cleaned

 This article or section seems to contain embedded lists that may require cleanup.
To meet Wikipedia's style guidelines, please help improve this article by: removing items which are not notable, encyclopedic, or helpful from the list(s); incorporating appropriate items into the main body of the article; and discussing this issue on the talk page.

When you find an article or section with a list that needs cleanup, add {{cleanup-laundry}} to the top of it. You may wish to list it at the bottom of the below; please date your entry with ~~~~~.

  • Architecture of Puerto Rico - Basically the entire article. Cheers. Trance addict 20:57, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Austrian nobility - The lists under "Noble Titles" really shouldn't be there. As is the usual practice, they should be made into separate List articles.
  • AVN_Awards Award_categories section is a huge laundry list by any other name. 02:18, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Braemar Hill - too many lists
  • Bubi - After I cleaned up the article, the original poster reinserted a list of sub-tribes that are not distinct enough to have anything on Google or in other encyclopedias about them, and also created a list of dynasts and kings that likewise is nothing but a laundry list.
  • Canada Post - too many lists 03:57, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
removed 'Major postal plant locations' section Ohconfucius 01:50, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Destroy All Humans 2 - article had a cleanup template, but wasn't listed here.
  • Dubai One Too many TV shows listed, probably best to only list the important ones. Cheers. Trance addict 02:57, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Earl W. Bascom - too many lists 14:38, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
  • El Paso, Texas - too many unneeded lists
  • FinnWars - basically a list of weapons and items in the mod. 02:47, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Global_Energy_Network_Institute - The current board members section is a detailed list which in my opinion presents too much detail in the context of an encyclopedia article.
  • Groupthink -- "See also" section seemingly contains every academic or colloquial term ever about the tendency for groups to affect individual decisions.
  • Glucose meter - a bullet-pointed "list of features"
  • History of Berlin - article is largely year-by-year bullet points
  • History of computer and video games -everything from 1998 on.
  • Million - contains a huge list of numbers and their names. No sources that they are correct, no assertion of notability, no way to even know they are real number names. The strangest thing (to me) is that the article is for the number 1000000, but the list of numbers are all only near to it. I have tried to argue the case in the talk page but was constantly reverted. Would like to take it up again as it is an ugly list on an article that would get a lot of views. Remy B 14:33, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Najica Blitz Tactics - too many lists
Note each of the voice actors listed also have lengthy laundry list of acting credits. Ohconfucius 05:26, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cleaning in progress

When you are starting to clean an article, move it from the above section to here. Other Laundromat members can help and monitor it for a while.

temporarily cleaned teams lists by hiding with comments
  • Al-Ghurair Group, more than half of the article consists of lists, especially a lot of link-spam. Link-spam deleted, but there still a long timeline there. Cheers. Trance addict 02:00, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cleaned

When a list is cleaned as much as it needs to be, move it here.

  • Cambridge City Council, England - the article is mainly a list of all the current councillors Already cleaned by 62.254.222.161
  • Xbox 360 - Overlong list of third-party games. Currently in revert war with tendentious anon. now removed from main article into separate list, which is out of scope. DGG
  • Dartmouth Crossing - mainly a list of stores in a retail area All minor stores deleted DGG 02:38, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Macy's South - again, mostly a list of locations Lists have apparently now been removed. DGG 15:10, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Walnut Street (Philadelphia) -Most of the article is a long unencyclopedic list of retail establishments. 16:34, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Thank you User:Chubbles!

perfectly normal lists in my opinion, no cleanup needed DGG (talk) 03:58, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I removed the blatant violations of WP:NOT#DIRECTORY, and it looks a lot more pleasant on the eye. I think the list is now within bounds. Ohconfucius 03:28, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
only list of locations left. Ohconfucius 06:27, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Gnome - Popular culture section
I believe this article is now within bounds. Ohconfucius 01:58, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Viral marketing - everything but the first two sections. small list, better left alone
  • Mona Lisa - "Role in popular culture and avant-garde art" section. formatted as customary.
  • Kit Kat - huge huge list of varieties of Kit Kats
115 lines of special or limited editions removed. The others can be left. Ohconfucius 02:18, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
Acceptable, best left Ohconfucius 02:25, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Heaven's Gate (cult) - A paragraph saying the cult has been parodied on television and movies should be sufficient.
  • Sandwich - too long list
Acceptable, best left Ohconfucius 02:25, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Tapping - More examples and guitarist summary list -sections


[edit] Out of scope

This section is for apparent lists that don't fit in the scope of the project, or are best left as they are.

not a list purge. Partially transformed, remainder tagged {{prose}} 03:30, 8 November 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Projects

  1. Fantasy Laundromat: Articles connected to fantasy and science fiction tend to collect listcruft. For example, fans of imaginary fantasy author J. Worthington Prufrock will know that he once mentioned a dragon in passing in one book, and will rush over to the Dragon article and add a line to "Dragons in Modern Culture" along the lines of "Famed author J. Worthington Prufrock's Raven Darktalon Blood saga has a Dragon character named Euphemistus."
  2. Trivia Laundromat: Trivia sections are to laundry lists what agar-filled petri dishes are to bacteria.
  3. Link Laundromat: Related to Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam. When cleaning laundry lists of links, use Wikipedia:External links as your guide.

[edit] Similar WikiProjects

Similar WikiProjects are:

[edit] Participants

[edit] Laundryrack

I decided to be a little bolder than usual, and added a template analogous to Template:Cleanup-laundry which I named Template:Cleanup-laundryrack where the suggested solution is to convert an ugly list into a table. This frequently applies to the many articles which list software programs where the lists tend to be annotated as free/proprietary, web-based or not, etc. MaxEnt 01:03, 18 December 2006 (UTC)