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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.

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.

Scope

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A laundry list is a long or exhaustive list of people or things,[1] 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 to salvage usable content from those laundry lists into readable, encyclopedic text. A list is sometimes the best way of presenting detailed material; this project is not intended to remove such lists.

Goals

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  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.

Resources

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

Tasks

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Identifying articles to be cleaned

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When you find an article or section with a list that needs cleanup, add {{Cleanup-list}} to the top of it, which will add it to Category:Wikipedia list cleanup, and produce this notice:

Cleaning in progress

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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.

  • Akai
  • Occupational safety and health Very list-y in the "Roles and Responsibilities of Occupational Health and Safety" section as well as in "Common Workplace and Hazard Groups", with a couple other lists in the article as well as a massive "See Also" section including many external links.

Cleaned

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

The above dealt with -- Ohc ¡digame! 04:50, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • The World's Work ‎ (rem laundry list and linkspam)
  • Treasure ‎ (rem laundry list per WP:NOT#IINFO)
  • Transistor ‎ (list seems legitimate)
  • Shimonoseki ‎ (rem per WP is not a travel guidel)
  • Parole board ‎ (rem per WP:NOT#IINFO - it's sufficient to note that there are 52 parole boards in the US,)
  • Divine (corporation) ‎ (rem laundry list of non-notables)

The above dealt with -- Ohc ¡digame! 07:12, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Out of scope

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

Projects

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  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.

Similar WikiProjects

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Similar WikiProjects are:

Participants

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Definition of laundry list". Oxford Dictionaries. 2012-11-22. Retrieved 2012-11-28.