The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Here User: Mgiganteus1 should have argued why he thinks why they should be merged, since he did not do that I will argue why they should not be merged:

• Not merge: See WP:OLWHY, It states: "Outlines are a form of list, and lists are easier and faster to browse than the text (prose) in articles. Links take longer to identify and click on in articles (they're spread out more). Articles are intended for explaining, while outlines are a type of tree structure optimized for navigating and depicting taxonomic information rapidly. Outlines are more effective at covering the entire scope of a subject, and outlines are not limited by the size restrictions that the see also sections of articles are. It is awkward to present as many links in an article, and embedded links tend to be arranged much more chaotically or even randomly throughout an article's prose. The links in an outline are much more organized for ease of understanding.

In addition to being a type of article, outlines are also an important part of Wikipedia's contents system, and serve as tables of contents or site maps for their respective subjects." --Stefan ^talk 05:52, 30 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Outline" is short for "hierarchical outline". There are two types of outlines: sentence outlines (like those you made in school to plan a paper), and topic outlines (like the topical synopses that professors hand out at the beginning of a college course). Outlines on Wikipedia are primarily topic outlines that serve 2 main purposes: they provide taxonomical classification of subjects showing what topics belong to a subject and how they are related to each other (via their placement in the tree structure), and as subject-based tables of contents linked to topics in the encyclopedia. The hierarchy is maintained through the use of heading levels and indented bullets. See Wikipedia:Outlines for a more in-depth explanation. The Transhumanist 00:03, 9 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]