Talk:Lists of New Zealanders

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This article is written in New Zealand English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, realise, analyse, centre, fiord) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Categories[edit]

Kiwis and other friends who like putting articles in categories could have a look at the currently rather thin Category:New_Zealand_people. Some of the (currently ten) specific categories in this article are appropriate for creating more subcategories of that one (currently four). Individuals who really can't or shouldn't be thus categorised can be added to the bottom half of that category page, where there are currently only four, some of whom may well be as good or better in one of the subcategories. Confused?... Robin Patterson 06:11, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Sir Roger Douglas[edit]

Is there a reason Roger Douglas isn't on List of New Zealanders under 'politics' category? He's in the politicians section and there's an article on him. Surely he's more famous than Muldoon (and arguably a more effective influence on the NZ economy)

Done. Moriori 22:24, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

Getting too long.[edit]

This thing is getting a little long, especially all the architects, few of whom are really famous. I would suggest that:

This page perhaps be limited to 20 names per section
Only names with articles on this page.
We can have List of New Zealander architects' type pages with the whole list on them
Perhaps cut down a few sections
Literary should have some names in it. - SimonLyall 09:59, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am going to remove all the redlinked articles in a few days and move them to Wikipedia:WikiProject New Zealand as a first start to cleaning out this article - SimonLyall 01:34, 7 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I saved Robert Laidlaw (well Jesus did actually). Anyone want to save Lana Coc-Kroft? I see other famous redlinks there that deserve their own article. Perhaps seeing how many hits they get on Google could be used as a rough indicator of their notability? ^ross ^nixon 09:57, 7 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Remove after retiring[edit]

Is John Walker still a famous runner? Sarah Ulmer has just retired from all cycling? Should people remain on the list long after they stop participation? ^ross ^nixon 00:45, 27 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand you might argue that many people are not notable enough to be featured here until they retire and their careers can be judged on retrospect. dramatic (talk) 02:15, 27 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Purpose of this list[edit]

I think this list is of low value, since there is little enforcement that the names added are really famous, and there is no reason to believe that the list is at all comprehensive. This really was superseded by the category system.

I am aware that lists have uses that categories cannot replace - the inclusion of additional information about each entry, and the inclusion of red links. In the case of this list, I don't believe these uses overcome the disadvantages of the approach.

The equivalent pages for some other countries is to have a list of lists, ie Lists of Australians. Would it be worth breaking this list up similarly? The smaller lists linked to will be of varying quality, and will mostly have the same problem, but the chance of someone adopting a more specific list and making something out of it is possibly higher than the chance that they would improve a section of this list.

An alternative would be to nominate this list for deletion, but I thought it would be useful to get some informal feedback first.-gadfium 18:44, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree it's not working too well at present. I like the idea of turning it into a list of lists. Admittedly they'll be of varying quality, but that doesn't look as bad as one big list of variable quality. I also agree it should be easier to deal with smaller, more focussed lists. One concern I have is about what to do with some of the people in the "Other" section, e.g. the Wizard of New Zealand. It'd probably worth starting a List of New Zealand activists; there seem to be quite a few of them there. -- Avenue (talk) 01:26, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The list is not working as is, unless we have some sort of criteria to limit it to a couple of hundred entries. I think creating smaller lists and chopping this one until it just becomes a "list of lists" might work. - SimonLyall (talk) 09:09, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I do think that such lists are of very limited use, even including the added information Gadfium mentioned. Categories are a reasonable alternative. Ingolfson (talk) 07:26, 16 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see that List of New Zealand comedians is currently up for deletion. Although this is not split off from this article, it is fairly typical of the sort of lists we would end up with if we split this article up as I suggested above. So, if we split the list up, and many of the sub articles are deleted for being largely duplicates of categories, we either end up with this article having lots of links to redlink lists (which will encourage poeple to recreate the deleted articles), or we remove deleted lists, thus having some occupations not represented here at all. Maybe I'm overthinking this, and we should just try it and see what happens. If too many of the sublists are deleted, then it will be time to nominate the main list for deletion.-gadfium 18:04, 21 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've started splitting the list up - I'll do bits and pieces over the next week.-gadfium 07:55, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

At the moment only the Religion and Other sections are left. I should split off Religion sometime to complete the job, and if the Other section shows sign of growing, I'll split off any common groups from it.

I see that one of the list I split off earlier, List of New Zealand military people, has been prodded. I do not plan to contest this prod, but of course, anyone else can do so.-gadfium 17:30, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed move[edit]

As the splitting up of this list concludes, I suggest that it be moved to Lists of New Zealanders. (See Lists of Australians for a parallel (and an example of improvement which could be made). dramatic (talk) 09:59, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I support the move. I've done a bit of reformatting of the article to include multiple lists under some headings.-gadfium 18:31, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We'll need to split off or remove the remaining names under the Religion and Other sections first.-gadfium 18:43, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Religion[edit]

Any thoughts on a name for the Religion list? There are plenty of names we can add - a series of bios of Bishops of Auckland was created last week, etc. dramatic (talk) 20:02, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking of Lists of New Zealand religious leaders. Geering isn't really a leader though. List of New Zealand religious people seems a bit too broad. All the people on the list at present are broadly Christian, but I'd rather keep the list title generic.

I haven't found any very suitable parent cats either; Category:Lists of religious figures doesn't contain anything analogous, Category:Lists of people by belief doesn't either but is probably the best one.-gadfium 21:55, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Now split out. I'll start working on the names in the Other section - if there's no suitable list I'll just remove them.-gadfium 21:19, 5 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Remaining names[edit]

I've moved those I can from the Other section to existing lists. I don't feel it's worth creating new lists from the remaining names, since those lists would have only a few entries each, and not even begin to be comprehensive. I propose we simply delete the remaining names and then rename this article.-gadfium 22:57, 5 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done, and the article has been renamed.-gadfium 09:02, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]