Wikivoyage:Avoid long lists
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This page in a nutshell: Long lists and large groups of items can be difficult to grasp. If there are more than nine items to group, consider subdividing into groups of 7±2 items. |
Wikivoyage is a travel guide, not the yellow pages. Long undifferentiated lists of hotels, attractions, cities, anything, are only marginally useful to the traveler — and can be difficult to grasp. Studies show people find it easier to handle lists of around seven items, so we have the 7±2 rule of thumb: most lists should contain between five and nine items. When they exceed that length it is time to consider breaking them up or pruning them. This may involve breaking the list into groups within the article, or creating separate articles.
The 7±2 rule applies to destination articles, but not necessarily to itineraries, phrasebooks and travel topics, where different rules may be more appropriate.
Groups of regions
[edit]Regions should generally have no more than nine cities/towns/villages and nine other destinations. If there are more, consider splitting the region or creating subregions. When dividing regions, use a breakdown that is most practical from the traveller's viewpoint and considers the guidelines for dividing geographical units. Changes to regions must be discussed on the article's talk page; changes that are not discussed will generally be reverted.
Common sense (and the traveller's viewpoint) should always apply, so if a region has more than nine cities in it and there's no helpful way to divide it into subregions, don't split it. This applies especially for bottom level regions.
Lists of Cities and Other destinations
[edit]The 7±2 rule is most stringently applied to lists of cities and other destinations for countries, continents and non-bottom-level regions. The maximum number that can be listed is nine and cities/other destinations should be chosen based on relevance to the traveller. When there are already nine entries present, changes must be discussed on the article's talk page; changes that are not discussed will generally be reverted.
On the other hand, in bottom-level region articles, all cities and other destinations in the region must be listed, as there would otherwise be no way to find them through the geographical hierarchy. If a bottom-level region article has more than 5–9 cities listed, it may be useful to group the list based on size or location.
Districts
[edit]The 7±2 rule does not apply to the number of districts a city can have. Very large cities such as London and Chicago have so much to them that we cannot fit it all into just nine districts. It is helpful to still group districts in a way that will be meaningful to the traveller when describing them in the Districts section of the travel guide. London, for example, uses geography and groups its districts by Central London, Inner London and Outer London.
Listings
[edit]Wikivoyage shouldn't be a phone book and list everything. To help people reading the guide and to make the information more useful, group listings of attractions, restaurants, hotel, bars, etc. into categories if there are more than nine items. Restaurant, drink and accommodation listings should be broken down by price range, subtype or location. Further subdivisions can be invented as you go along, whatever suits the location. Lists can also be pruned if listings are unreliable or unhelpful. Further information specific to each listing type can be found on its information page.
When using price to sub-divide hotel and restaurant listings, use the following templates to provide information about the price ranges covered by each sub-section: