Talk:List of geology topics

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Wow. Sometimes Wikipedia really is just magical. I create a minimal list, go and have lunch, and now it's already five times the original size.

I'd like to make a suggestion, that we not include topics that are well-served by other lists. I know from experience with the List of mathematical topics page that if you're not careful with duplicating information, then the whole thing can spin out of control.

I would suggest we avoid overlap with these lists (except when it would be absurd not to):

• List of rocks
• List of minerals
• Periodic table
• Landforms
• Specific geographic features of geologic interest, like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, should have their own list. I can make one if it doesn't already exist. (I'm not sure what to call it, though).

Comments? Opinions? Random curse words? -- Walt Pohl 23:52, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No curse words, random or otherwise, from me -- thanks for starting it. I've done most of the work maintaining Lists of articles by category, which I like to think of as the mother of all the broad subject lists by subject. Eventually, I would like to see every article in Wikipedia to link here, or as least link to another list of lists (like Lists of people) that links here.

In order for all those lists to fit on one page, the lists would have to be very broad. If they were all about 100 items each like periodic table and landforms, it won't make it. However, periodic table probably belongs more to list of chemistry topics, and geologists should have the choice of adding it to their watch list separately.

Following the example of List of mathematical topics is fine as long as people observe the rule not to add articles that fall into one of the (currently) 30 subordinate lists, and when they create a new list, they remove those terms from List of mathematical topics. GUllman 02:15, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I was using List of mathematical topics as an example of what not to do. The math lists have all kinds of things irrelevant things mushed together, to the point where you couldn't use them for anything, even just as a watchlist. (For example astronomy used to be on the list.) By the way, we broke out the math sublists on its own page, List of mathematical topics (lists), so you drop the list of those you have. There aren't any plans to remove topics that are on the sublists from the main list, other than mathematicians. (The categories are too imprecise.)

From what you've said, I'm not quite sure what your goal is. My goal is to have a list that I can use for: a) seeing what geology topics are covered, and b) so that the "Related Changes" link is useful. To me, making one gigantic list of everything related to geology in any way does not seem like an important goal. (BTW, periodic table, minerals, and most of rocks look like they're already covered by the chemistry list.) -- Walt Pohl 03:29, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It seems that you have been more intimately involved with list of mathematical topics than I was, and know more about the benefits and disadvantages of its seletion and layout. I agree with the two main uses of the "list of ... topics" pages; a third one is that most people, when they first visit a new web site, want to know "okay, where's the overview of everything on this site, and is the subject emphasis strong in the subjects I'm interested in?" to help them get a feel for it.

Given the fuzzy-boundaried nature of knowledge, one geologist's list of interesting/relevant topics will be different than every other geologist's list. There are basically two solutions when attempting to provide the above three services for them. One is to make one large list of every article remotely related to geology, and you get a set of pages like list of mathematical topics which, although it duplicates many articles that are on other lists, articles that are not related to math will not show up on their watchlist -- the ones that do may potentially be interesting.

The other solution would be to create one list for the "core" knowledge in geology (basically everything one should have learned as an undergraduate student) plus many smaller lists for specialized fields, and fields of knowledge that draw from more than one unrelated field. This should help most people come close to the selection of articles that they would find interesting, but still provide a browsable hierarchy of topics. There will still be some inevitable overlap between lists, but hopefully much less. GUllman 23:37, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)