Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/List of people by name

List of people by name and subpages

Request - I would like to request a bot be used to list, on a single page all the articles listed on these pages (unless there are simpler methods). This would allow comparison with existing lists and categories, and allow gradual progression from this system to a more maintainable one that would, ultimately, use the transclusion list of {{WPBiography}} to generate an alphabetical index of all the biographies on Wikipedia. That index would then be our equivalent of the index found at the back of biographical dictionaries, such as the Dictionary of National Biography. While such discussions were proceding, these pages would be kept, as they are not actively harming anything. Once the new system was in place, these pages could be deleted or put up for MfD/AfD again. Carcharoth 14:29, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

~~Discussion Suspended~~

This MfD/AfD process involves procedural irregularities too extensive to either

tolerate in light of their potential for functioning as de facto precedents, or

enumerate clearly in the time i have left to edit in the next 24 hours or so.

Until i can find time to explain thoroughly and propose remedies, i am protecting this page, lest those too hurried to catch this notice, or too impatient to respect it, waste their own or others time and effort by continuing to pursue the discussion in this tainted present context.

Please keep the discussion of these measures on Wikipedia talk:Miscellany for deletion/List of people by name. Unsigned by User:Jerzy

Struck out; over-ruled. Sorry, but you cannot suspend an xfD which you are a participant in under poorly-explained "procedural" grounds and contextual objections. You protect the page for three days, promise to come back in 24 hours, but you do not even provide us with a brief summary as to what is going on?(!) Your comment below reads, in part: Procedural comment: It is quite true that the many Keep votes do not establish a binding precedent in the way that precedents function in Anglo-American jurisprudence. Nevertheless, if this process should end with a Delete result, i will insist on its review via WP:VPP, for the following reasons that AFAIK would each make this case unique on WP...[list follows] Well, procedural violations are contested on WP:DRV, and much of the rest of the comment is, frankly, somewhat less than intelligible. And what is up with the odd capitalization, by the way — would you mind using normal capitalization? It makes reading your thoughts difficults. At any rate, I am taking it upon myself to unprotect this xfD so as to permit the discussion to resume. I strongly caution against wheel-warring (I certainly do not intend to revert if the page becomes re-protected), but I urge Jerzy to re-evaluate his or her approach. Please limit discussion of this protection/suspension to the talk page, everyone. Thanks. El_C 10:47, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Since this is an index page rather than article content, I'm listing it on MFD (it's on AFD too). This page and its subpages purport to be a list of all people with articles in Wikipedia. In that, they're hopelessly outdated since, unlike categories, they need manual upkeep. In previous discussions, it was kept on grounds that it's useful and that some people like it, but as indices go we really have a lot better to offer than this. Wikipedia contains about 400,000 articles on people, making this list unwieldy at best and original research at worst. >Radiant< 13:50, 14 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete The scope of these lists is about 25% of Wikipedia, and if that's not indiscriminate (WP:NOT) I don't know what is. They are, however, nowhere near complete, making their usefulness moot and possibly even entering the realms of original research. --kingboyk 14:03, 14 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. It's a year later, we have 1.7 million articles, an index that needs manual updating simply won't work. -Amarkov moo! 14:52, 14 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete The page is extremely hard to understand, I agree with Amarkov's comments, it would be too hard to maintain if kept. Regards - The Sunshine Man 17:13, 14 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure I agree with the justification for listing this at MfD. Even though the main page is an index, collectively, this is a list not too much different (except in size) from other lists, and I tend to think that AfD would be a better place for the debate. However, whereever its debated, I agree that it's certainly unmaintained, almost certainly unmaintainable, and fully deleteable. Xtifr _tälk 00:25, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Since double transclusion hurts little, I'm going to go ahead and transclude this on AfD too. I leave it up to somebody else whether this should extend the closing date. -Amarkov moo! 00:32, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Delete - Delete At last guess-ta-ment I believe there were over 3 “Billion” individuals. Does Wikipedia have enough space to list everyone.Shoessss 02:07, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Of course it would not include everybody, only people whose inclusion is merited by notability guidelines. When I am adding people to the list, I consider anyone sufficiently notable to have a WP article that survives, is notable enough to be included in the list. --Slyguy (talk) 15:47, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete That's what the search bar is for ROASTYTOAST 02:22, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, no reason for deletion. The list is indeed useful to readers (let me know when we are no longer attempting to make a useful encyclopedia). This is a perfectly reasonable list of well-defined scope. It is no harder to maintain than any other article on Wikipedia. Christopher Parham (talk) 02:33, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- And the claim that this is original research seems utterly unfounded. Christopher Parham (talk) 02:36, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Of course this is harder to maintain. The pages required to host this list fill two pages of Special:PrefixIndex. And it's terribly incomplete. Few if any of the ancient Roman consuls are included, or the Chaplains of the United States Senate or any of probably a thousand other lists of people in the encyclopedia already. And that doesn't begin to touch all the one-off biography articles scattered about the article space. Simply, it is not successfully being maintained, and probably could never successfully be maintained to any degree of completeness in regard to the rest of Wikipedia. Serpent's Choice 02:51, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - If by "maintain" you mean preserve in an complete or close to complete state, then we aren't maintaining more than 1% of our existing articles. This page remains functional and useful despite being incomplete, just as history is useful despite being seriously incomplete and not very well done. Christopher Parham (talk) 03:01, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I know that a lot of work has been put into this, but the problems seem insurmountable. At its core, this does not meet the needs of Wikipedia's lists. From WP:LIST, lists are for information, navigation, and development. Because this system of lists includes roughly 25% of the encyclopedia's scope, it seems unlikely to serve a purpose for information. It is too close to being wholly indiscriminate. Because it cannot hope to be complete, even against existing articles, it is of questionable value as a navigation tool. Additionally, the category system already serves to allow navigation on a large scope. And both of these problems — incompleteness and scale — prevent it from being valuable for development. Additionally, there may be BLP problems. One redlinked entry from this sublist reads "American criminal". Maybe he is. Maybe he isn't. I have no idea how long it has been there (it predates the last subpage-shuffling on 24 Mar 2007) nor who added it. How many other entries present this same problem? How would we know? I'm not a deletionist, and I'm always hesitant to recommend deleting old or large content, and this is both. But I think its the right choice, for a lot of reasons. Serpent's Choice 02:40, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, per nom. Gobonobo ^T ^C 03:41, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment This has been up for deletion and kept at least 8 times. It appears that this page set is going the way of other perennially nominated pages and it will, eventually, be deleted simply as a matter of time. Radiant's bringing it here is pretty much a death knell for the page set as this is a highly respected contributor and admin. Therefore, though I personally find the pages useful in anti-vandalism efforts, there is simply no way it can be kept for the long term owing to continued attempts to delete by persons who vigorously oppose its existence. It is not original research, it is not useless, and it is not unmaintainable but it is unpopular - and that is the reason why it is ultimately doomed to deletion. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 04:10, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Honest question. How do these lists assist in anti-vandalism work? They are very, very large and change regularly, so it would seem that their related changes lists would be unwieldy? Is there some way to employ these for anti-vandalism that is more efficient or effective than watchlisting articles? Serpent's Choice 06:05, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

responding comment actually, the number of related changes is quite modest for each terminal page as biographical articles are not heavily edited as a class. There is a balance to be struck in keeping the pages to a particular size range that helps in this respect (though I've personally not given much thought to the mathematics that could be used to determine optimum size). Take a look at some of the related changes pages, such as Dj-Dn and Willa-Willh and San (these were chosen randomly based on using hte random_article feature); I find the related changes pages to be reasonably sized morsels for compartmentalized and directed anti-vandalism surveillance in an area - biography - where vandalism has a magnified impact. Thank you for asking for some explanation. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:52, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per my same argument in the last AfD at the end of December: Wholly indiscriminate list, completely impossible to maintain. Categories and lists of specific groups serve as a much better means of organizing and indexing articles about people on Wikipedia. Resolute 04:51, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - It seems to me that deleting pages such as this, which people probably put a lot of time into, and that could be seen as fitting into Wikipedia were some of you to have a different outlook and be more familiar with different guidelines, such as list guidelines, the community might not risk losing editors by deleting their good faith contributions. Furthermore, many of these pages have been updated recently. Additionally, there are not 6.5 billion notable people to list on Wikipedia. There are only so many notable people, and in fact, the list might actually be rather manageable, relatively speaking. It may not actually be as amorphous as some see it as being. Eventually, it could be relatively complete, or at least stable to the point of only newly notable people are being added and non-notable people being taken off. And as another user comments, it will be useful to at least one of the other, maybe 6.496 billion, non-notable — people probably many more. --R e m i 10:46, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Too grand to be useful. After eading all the comments above, I tested the pages with Neville Duke, a page that has existed since October 2006. No link. OK, that's only one, but if an article that is seven months old has not found its way how many others are there? Well, here's a few more Nevilles: Neville Cardus, Richard Neville (singer), Richard Neville (writer), Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury. That's six missing references found in less than six minutes. Unmaintainable. Emeraude 11:44, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Regarding the time-to-entry in this list, the earl's article linked above has existed since June 2003. Serpent's Choice 11:48, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, strongly. The notion that the fact that editors have found a page "useful" is considered by some to be a weak reason for keeping it is so wrongheaded that it shocks the conscience. It may be that the maintenance of these pages is a task best suited for a bot of some kind. But indexing and reader friendliness remain weaknesses of the project in general. Search functions not only eat up resources; they also are unhelpful to people who need to see a list in text to remind themselves of what exactly it was they were looking for. Lists like this serve that purpose. - Smerdis of Tlön 13:46, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- We could, in theory, use a bot to slap everything from Category:People onto a list. But that would be a much worse waste of resources than using the search function is, and we still wouldn't be able to get uncategorized articles, making people think that we don't have an article when we do. Oh, and I have never met anyone who honestly prefers to manually look though a big list, when they could type the thing they want into a box and have a computer look for them. - Amarkov moo! 15:14, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - There are many occasions where a text list is more helpful than a search function: it next to impossible to find "quahog" or "leukocyte" or "Psammetichus I" in a search engine unless you already know how to spell them, but on a text list you can recognize what you are looking for. If I'm trying to find out what's out there, I'd rather read a text index than try to formulate a search query that will call forth the desired result. - Smerdis of Tlön 15:28, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - The problem is that you will not necessarily find what's there; you will find what's on an incomplete list of things which are there. If someone actually got a bot to update the list, I might change my opinion, but I find it highly unlikely that such a bot would be allowed to run. Anyway, as it is, this list misrepresents what we have. -Amarkov moo! 15:34, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      - People who don't know how to spell something won't be able to find it in a list either. If you look in the list for "Cuahog", "Reukocyte" or "Sammetichus I", all perfectly plausible mispelings, you won't find them either. >Radiant< 08:51, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete on the basis the list requires manual updating, which isn't realistic. If someone created a bot to maintain this, it could be a useful navigational aid. Addhoc 15:22, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I am unsure how a list of this nature could ever truly be maintainable. Even then I fail to see how it is even remotely encyclopedic. Arkyan  ^(talk) 15:51, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom and per Serpent's Choice. wikipediatrix 16:06, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Strong keep. Two main points. As another user noted, this article (and those like it) has been up for deletion countless times in the past. Is there any sort of rule as to how many times an article can be proposed for deletion until it is finally decided that it will definitely be kept, or how much time must elapse from one deletion proposal to the next? (I did a brief search for such a rule, but cannot find one.) The last time this article was up for deletion, in December-January, numerous detailed, sound arguments were given for keeping in the discussion. Secondly, as for this list being "unmaintainable" manually, in the past few months I have added several thousand names to the list. Now, if at some point, we could get a large enough group of people to work together, the list could be populated relatively quickly (with names of people who satisfy notability guidelines and have an article on WP). Lastly, no one has yet explained how this is original research. --Slyguy (talk) 16:07, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- You do understand that WikiProject Biography has identified nearly 400,000 biographical articles, and that there's possibly many more than that? How could a list of that size possibly be maintained manually? What use is an incomplete list? Finally, it doesn't matter what happened in previous deletion debates; times change and the makeup of the community changes, and thus consensus can change. Probably now that we have some numbers people will see how unmaintainable this is. --kingboyk 17:01, 15 May 2007 (UTC) (e/c)[reply]
- There is no Wikipedia guideline or policy that limits either the number or timeframes for deletions. The only guideline I know of is that a FA cannot be nominated for deletion while it is a FA. Slavlin 16:58, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Really? I didn't know FAs were exempt... --kingboyk 17:01, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - He probably means that they are exempt in practice if they are being displayed on the main page. There's no explicit policy for this, but (again, in practice) all such nominations are bad-faith and are quickly closed (and the afd templates get taken off, since they are seen as vandalism). It's not blanket protection for all FAs; that's just imprecise language. Gavia immer (talk) 17:08, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I concur with the nominator and per Serpent's Choice above. There are BLP concerns here too. So let's delete it.--Doc^g 17:17, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nominator. Waiting for someone to nominate this. Didn't want to do it myself. Horvat Den 18:36, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. LaraLove ^T/_C 19:17, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as hopelessly unmaintainable. Spend your time adding to the encyclopedia instead. Punkmorten 20:17, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as per nom. Lemonflash ^(t)/_(c) 21:13, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep. The retention arguments i & others have made before are still valid, and i think it is appropriate to "include them by reference" here (see first box on Talk:List of people by name) and expect that unless each of them is specifically refuted by Del voters, the nomination will fail via ignoring of Del votes on grounds of low quality of their arguments.
--Jerzy•t 21:33, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Procedural comment: It is quite true that the many Keep votes do not establish a binding precedent in the way that precedents function in Anglo-American jurisprudence. Nevertheless, if this process should end with a Delete result, i will insist on its review via WP:VPP, for the following reasons that AFAIK would each make this case unique on WP:

A mandate for such a page that goes back further than WP:WikiProjects, and (tho i think it has been moved, or omitted in a rewrite of the page) was on record in Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography for years, from soon after the concept (of WikiProjects) was brought forward.
The number of non-Rdr main-namespace pages involved, which is approaching 1000 (including both name-bearing pages and pages that serve only for navigation within the tree). (One aspect is the effort required to cleanly delete it, or to restore it if undeletion should be mandated; in this regard one must note that while LoPbN's template-namespace infrastructure is also significant:
_ _ a couple hundred of them are lk'd from Template:List of people by name exhaustive page-index (sectioned) by (almost always) a minimum of three name-bearing pages,

_ _ nearly as many are (for now, tho they could be phased out at any time that that became a priority), and

_ _ another couple hundred template-talk namespace pages are important for supporting modification of their accompanying template pages to support growth of subtrees below their corresponding index-only pages.)
The number of LoPbN AfDs that have failed: a successful AfD would purport to have been the single process to make the right decision among a probably unprecedented number of deletion debates with the same substance; that would be an extraordinary claim that should require extraordinary evidence.
The quantity of content and effort devoted to the tree in good-faith edits.
The importance of its function of facilitating access to a central portion of the project: the bios
_ _ are (it seems safe to say) the single largest topic area at over 20% of articles,

_ _ tend to be significant tools for studying every area of human knowledge (and crucial for many important areas), bcz human knowledge is added to and structured by people, and

_ _ contribute to the connectedness among articles (an issue i haven't heard discussed lately, tho one whose importance was recognized early on and has not likely receded).

These are all factors not anticipated in the deletion policies, and rare enough that the failure to consider them has had little chance to be identified as a problem; it is fair to say that there is no settled policy that AfD is competent to decide this question.
--Jerzy•t 21:33, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment regarding maintainability: There are at any given time a (large but) finite number of notable persons in history. During any period of time, a small number of persons become notable. At present, articles on notable persons are being added to Wikipedia faster than persons are becoming notable. However, this trend cannot be expected to continue. Over time, the rate of new notable person articles will approach the rate of new notable persons. I submit that the rate of new notable persons is low enough that, although it may be difficult to 'maintain' this list now, in the future maintaining it will become trivial. — The Storm Surfer 00:10, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep And I want to point out that the nominator seems to have deliberately misrepresented the contents of the previous deletion discussions. Rather than take the noms word for it, I went through and read the discussions myself. There's a lot more than "I think it's useful" and "I likee" going on in those previous discussions, in fact these were very heavily discussed deletions with many valid and interesting points on both sides, and I think it was downright dishonest to suggest otherwise. This discussion amounts to "what are appropriate ways to index content in Wikipedia" -- this isn't just some list about Family Guy episodes. --JayHenry 00:28, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep for now - delete if and only if currently existing categories can be used to generate an equivalent list. Seriously, I see people saying that categories serve the purpose of this list. In fact, categories and lists have always been separate things. Can anyone, right now, create a full list from Category:People and its subcategories, or a list of all articles linking to the WP:WPBIO talk page template? If so, can they (a) post that 'category' list somewhere; (b) do something similar for the 'list' pages nominated for deletion here; (c) cross-reference the two lists. The annotations on this list can be deleted as far as I am concerned, but the fundamental reason behind this sort of list is the limitations of the category system. See what I did in the blurb at Category:Earthquakes. That is an incredibly clunky and outdated way of generating a list, but it was the only way I could think of listing all the earthquake articles in that category and its subcategories. Something similar needs to be done for the biographical articles. I agree the current set-up of pages is not it, but please preserve and compare the two sets of information before assuming that one duplicates the other. Carcharoth 01:58, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Strange. Is this really saying that {{WPBiography}} links to over 2,000,000 articles (see the "from=2052537" bit of the URL)? Regardless, can anyone tell me how many article talk pages transclude WPBiography, and how many people are on this list that is proposed for deletion? If not, then information is being lost. Carcharoth 02:06, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Until the Wikipedia search function is improved to find pages that users cannot spell correctly, this will be a useful list. It seems very tedious to maintain, but obviously there are people willing to try. The notability of biographies which are not yet included on the list will continue to decrease over time as we approach the deadline. The fact that new articles may not be included on the list for quite some time is not a reason to delete it. -Rustavo^{Talk/Contribs} 02:39, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- A list won't help users locate something either if they don't know how to spell it. >Radiant< 08:51, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom, kinboyk and Amarkov, among others. --Iamunknown 02:48, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Keep per Carcharoth's and Jerzy's concerns. Seems inherently incomplete and unmaintainable and indiscriminate to me, but the idea of deleting this kind of critical mass of good faith contribution is also boggling. And the fact that it's already survived numerous AfD's makes me reticent to vote for deletion. I get that consensus can change over time, but at a point I think repeated noms can kind of be like trying and re-trying a criminal for the same offense until you find a jury who'll convict. My larger concern is this: the idea that this list is useful to people on Wikipedia who can't spell is contingent on people actually being able to find this index. I've been typing away at Wikipedia a solid year now and this AfD is the first time I'm hearing such a thing exists. And I think it's safe to say that the same thing goes for the attentive wikipedians I know who can't spell their way out of a wet paper bag. I am in no way convinced that this index is even remotely useful, but I'm also not convinced that it's not. And in a case like this, I think doubt has to equal retention of the article. Ford MF 07:14, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - so, is anyone up to the challenge of making a single list from these pages and a single list from the category system and/or the pages transcluding {{WPBiography}}? Surely someone, plus a computer, can do this? It can't be that difficult can it? Carcharoth 09:46, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Way too long to be any use to anyone in finding a biography. Sam Blacketer 11:15, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - completely unmaintainable, and so unwieldly it's untrue. Users here are saying it's "useful", but there's very little insight as to what it is actually useful for. - fchd 14:54, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete it all as per above comments. Bearian 16:54, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, there is some additional information provided by the lists vs. a category "People", that is some immediate biographic detail: "German swimmer (b. - d.)" which is not possible in a category. Carlossuarez46 20:51, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. It would seem to me that the huge effort that would be required to make this complete (and maintain it as such) would be far better spent on the articles themselves. There may be some use to it but I think it is decidedly limited. Petros471 11:01, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nominater, too unpractical. Garion96 (talk) 11:02, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete this useless bunch of articles. Once upon a time they may have had a purpose but by now they are simply an unmaintainable morass that duplicates functionality much better served by subject-specific lists and categories. Guy (Help!) 12:23, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Amarkov says above "We could, in theory, use a bot to slap everything from Category:People onto a list" - I would love to be able to browse such a list, but unfortunately that is not possible at the moment as no-one seems to want to provide this funtionality for Wikipedia readers. As an example, consider someone who wants to browse the articles Wikipedia has on earthquakes. They can try and browse Category:Earthquakes, but the earthquake articles there are hidden away in separate subcategories that are many clicks apart. Now consider the (now-outdated) list I generated and deposited here. My point is that sometimes browsing a category is the best option, sometimes browsing a list is the best option, and sometimes browsing a set of search results is the best option. Now apply this to people. I would love to be able to click "X" in an alphabetical index and see a set of biographical articles on people who's names begin with X. Currently, that list is at List of people by name: X. The category system, however, can't (at the moment) produce anything like that. Carcharoth 13:57, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - too much effort for something marginally useful. Renata 14:58, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]