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I hit the undo button on someone removing the self reference because I thought that I would have somewhere I could explain why I was undoing it, but it just went through. In my opinion, as this is a list of lists of lists, it should contain all lists containing other lists; and as the page does contain lists, it would be incomplete without itself. Is there a mention in a style guide somewhere that you shouldn't link an article back to itself or something? Will Hendrix (talk) 04:38, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This has been discussed a lot of times in the talk page archives. Example: here. The argument in favor of including it is 1. it's technically correct. this page is a list, and everything listed on this page is also a list, so this page is a list of lists, so it belongs on this page. 2. there is some encyclopedic value in linking to recursion (last I checked it linked to russell's paradox but recursion is fine too). 3. it's fairly long standing consensus to include it. Arguments against including it were gut feeling / taste / WP:IDONTLIKEIT. It could make sense to argue that it's a bit silly and therefore takes away from the seriousness of this page... but this page is silly to begin with, so it's actually a net positive in my eyes. Another argument against including it is WP:SELFLINK which says it's generally not recommended, but obviously WP:IAR because this page is clearly a special case (I can't think of any other page that rightly ought to link to itself). Leijurv (talk) 05:51, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I can tell, this page is purely for navigation. It only documents list of lists that exist on Wikipedia, thus its soul purpose is only to help in one's navigation of this website. To this end, documenting this article in itself is pointless and should be removed. Loytra (talk) 10:01, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think this page is pretty impractical for navigation. This page is a curiosity, a bit of silliness. I can't think of any practical reason why one would want to see a list of all pages that are two levels deep of lists. Even if you had such a reason, this page does count as a list of lists :) Leijurv (talk) 19:12, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The current list is getting too long to navigate comfortably so it seems inevitable. And even higher? Maybe in the next age. This would seem absurd, and these lists themselves aren't encyclopaedic but arbitrary categories, so I think technically it shouldn't fall into the same remit as the other Wikipedia rules. Lightbloom (talk) 22:16, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There is actually a potential practical argument here:
Let's say I am looking for some kind of overview about interesting topics related to Japan, then, using Ctrl-F "Japan" in this article is a decent option. More generally, this implies that splitting this article into smaller "Lists of Lists"-articles, one per potentially interesting high-level topic (like "Japan"), and then making one "Lists of Lists of Lists" article which lists all those "Lists of Lists"-articles, has some merit.