Talk:FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, 1990s

Untitled

Wow, the new table format seems to be a rather drastic unexpected change. It was a lot of work to set up, and it seems to be a bit complicated to try to edit properly. I would defer to the administrator who built the table, and I am being objective, though I did put a lot of work into the initial buildup, and was not quite finished yet, but I do have questions, and concerns: 1) Will every page be done this way? 2) The table stands alone on this page in this format, and is not in conformity with the other Most Wanted pages 3) some links to profile pages and ALL the thumbnail photos I added were stripped out 4) seems to be a lot of wasted space because of the column format, where some long columns only contain a number 5) editing is going to be so dificult that the table is likely to get tweaked wrong 6) table formats in html, such as here, are not intuitive for editing by non-experts (vertical writing becomes horizontal in display), thus discouraging many people from adding detail 7) the table format discourages adding info detail when there is just enough to be interesting, but not quite enough to build a whole separate profile page 8) tables are basically academic looking, and hence boring to look at, monotonous, etc. 9) each decade page will eventually have hundreds of mini-profiles built up on the page, which will make for a big long data table in this format, and nothing more, not really very interesting. I will of course defer to experience, and I am looking for reasons, rationale, discussion, opinions, etc., here about this new table format, before it gets too well embedded into the page structure. I was going to go ahead and add details here, but I am going to wait to see where this goes.Steven Russell 03:29, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

This page appears to be a list of top ten fugitives. Please take a look at Wikipedia:Featured_lists to see how some of those are done. My edits are to move this page in that direction. There are technical constraints on page size, so "hundreds of mini-profiles" might not work so well here. It is my suggestion that the broader details about each fugitive, along with their photo, could go in a separate article about that person. Maybe the articles would be just stub articles to begin with. That's fine, as someone else might come along later and expand them. It's possible, though, if we have enough photos to work them into the table here. The table is just a work in progress, testing different ideas for formatting. I'm open to improving it, or if others really dislike the use of tables then they can go. -Aude (talk | contribs) 13:53, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

As for how to edit a table, take a look at Help:Tables, and for broader formatting and styles, Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Even if you add something and don't get the formatting quite right (it's understandbly confusing for new users), it's no big deal and someone else will come along and fix it. Or feel free to ask me (or others) for assistance. And, being administrator only gives some added ability to deal with vandalism, but gives me no more status or say in things then anyone else. -Aude (talk | contribs) 13:53, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I just separated the list by year, to make it (hopefully) easier to edit, and to look at in more manageable "chunks". -Aude (talk | contribs) 14:01, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

As an example, here's an article on Leslie Isben Rogge. With a little bit of searching around, I think there's enough information out there for an article on each "Top Ten" fugitive. If we create stub articles, someone will come (perhaps myself) along sooner or later and add the info. -Aude (talk | contribs) 15:21, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I tweaked the table, to reduce number of columns, easier on the eye, less squished on right and less dead white space on the left. I re-arranged and renamed the columns as well. And added time spent on the list, which is interesting and useful, but I would hate to see it get moved into yet another column (which would be back to square one, uggh), so I put it under the date. Maybe that can be presented cleaner without adding another column. Also, I think we should break out the more famous people from this list, with pictures, and display them in the non-table format. It would be somewhat mixed and matched in format, but so what? It's more intersting to have an occasional break in the table, for displaying a highlighted mini-profile paragraph of an important fugitive, with photo. I would find that very prefereable to having to click into each fugitives full profile page, especially since I want to quickly scroll up and down the list here, to compare fugitives against each other. For instance, I want to see all the terrroists on this 1990's list, without having to leave this page, and without getting bogged down in bin Laden's huge overly cumbersome separate page, just to see how his Top Ten details compare to others here. So it's nice to read just a full paragraph summarizing bin Laden, which is substantially more than mere bullet points of a table, but also not scattered and buried deep within sections of a full article to be found elsewhere. However, this mixed table format with a few minor breaks for occasional longer paragraphs seems as if it is going to work best with the earlier pages (1950's, 60's, 70's and 80's), where less detail is known about each fugitive, fewer pics are available, and names are not as recognizable. So I will probably be heading those pages in that direction, I think.Steven Russell 05:08, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

While I think tables are easier to scan for info (and make comparisons), I'm going to defer to your preferences regarding tables. Ultimately, I think more of the details and story for each entry could go in an article on its own, leaving a briefer summary of when, why, how long they were listed on the FBI Ten Most Wanted list. These lists provide a good jumping off point for doing that, but it will take time to gather information on each of the 400+ that have been listed. -Aude (talk | contribs) 21:13, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Page move

I just moved this page from FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives by decade, 1990's to FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, 1990s. The use of apostrophes to indicate decades is deprecated; see WP:MOSDATE#Incorrect date formats. Also, saying "by decade" seems redundant to me, because the 1990s were a decade.

If no one objects, I will fix the links to the original name and perhaps move the articles for other decades as well. Wmahan. 19:59, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you! Your change is a good one. Sorry I discovered the MOSDATE too late, oops. :( Steven Russell 06:51, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

No problem. Nice work on the article! Wmahan. 02:00, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Appalling prose

Surely the whole page needs to be rewritten by someone with a better command of English? The entire text is peppered with muddled syntax and appalling prose. My favourite was "a Scotland prisoner".