Talk:List of marine molluscs of South Africa

Splitting the list

The list is getting very bulky, and editing is getting painfully slow. Maybe it is appropriate to split the list into smaller and more manageable sections.

User:Seascapeza has suggested a split of the list as follows:

Gastropoda part 1

1.1 Patellogastropoda

1.2 Vetigastropoda

1.3 Neritimorpha

Gastropoda part 2

1.4 Caenogastropoda

Gastropoda part 3

1.5 Heterobranchia

The rest of mollusca part 4

2 Bivalvia

3 Polyplacophora

4 Cephalopoda

5 Scaphopoda

Each of these would contain its own citations list.

There would have to be a main list which would then be the introduction, links to the new sub-lists, and the existing sections:

• 6 See also
• 8 Further reading
• 9 External links

Questions

Should the sub-lists be full articles or sub-articles? (eg. List of the marine molluscs of South Africa/Patellagartopoda Vetigastopoda and Neritimorpha

Some research on long lists reveals that the sub-article option is not available on Wikipedia main space. -- Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 18:13, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Would it make more sense to split smaller? (eg. List of the marine molluscs of South Africa/Patellagastropoda, and List of the marine molluscs of South Africa/Vetigastropoda, etc...)

In this case part 4 would also be split into Bivalvia, Polyplacophora, Cephalopoda and Scaphopoda. -- Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 16:41, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Possibly List of marine gastropods (Patellogastropoda) of South Africa or just List of Patellogastropoda of South Africa etc. -- Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 18:29, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I think, this list is better as a whole for reader ("Readability is still the key criterion."). If the list is complete with 93 kb, then I would prefer to keep it in one. If it will expand much over 100 kb (or for any other reasons), then split like this:

• List of marine molluscs of South Africa
  • List of marine gastropods of South Africa

For making editing faster, feel free to add named or even unnamed sections like this [1], that will add additional edit buttons. --Snek01 (talk) 20:31, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, we can carry on with editing the list as is, but it isn't substantially complete, so yes, it will almost definitely end up being bigger than 100kb. Unfortunately, the bulk of the animals are gastropods, so splitting the list as you suggest will not help matters much.

--Seascapeza (talk) 03:30, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

How about splitting off Gastropoda as suggested by Snek01 as a start, then Heterobranchia can be split off that, which provides a logically consistant nesting of articles as follows:

• List of marine molluscs of South Africa
  • List of marine gastropods of South Africa
    • List of marine Heterobranch gastropods of South Africa

This gives the needed reduction in size of sections while retaining a logical structure.

The unnamed sections are convenient while editing, but unless they can be suppressed from the contents table, dont look very nice as a fixture. I would happily go with a deeper level of headings than currently used as this makes both editing and searching easier. I will do a little experimental work in this area. -- Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 07:53, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

You suggested nesting scheme works very well for me, anyone else's views?

Seascapeza (talk) 04:02, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

It was Snek01's suggestion, you like it, I like it, no-one has objected, lets do it. I suggest do the first split and cleanup before looking at the second split. I have just done almost identical split on list of marine fishes of South Africa. It is not difficult, but there are a few conventions to follow to keep the attribution record straight. Cheers, Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 19:32, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay.. I won't be able to get to it today, so will plan it for tomorrow's work unless you're inspired to do it today!

Seascapeza (talk) 05:40, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Done. I think I may have got all the attribution stuff right, but the explanations are not very clear. Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:39, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

The new list is still huge, so I will do the second split. Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 10:27, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Also done. Same caveat as previous. Looks OK, and should be down to manageable sizes. Gastropoda is largest at 45KB. Let's see how it goes. Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 11:43, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Excellent stuff! Will get straight into uploading more gastropods and we'll see how it goes.

Seascapeza (talk) 05:31, 8 January 2010 (UTC)