Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of statutory instruments of Scotland, 2024

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Keep AfD is not the place for a referendum, as noted in OwenX's relist, however consenus for anything other than retention is not going to emerge here especially due to size and challenge navigating this discussion by both humans and scripts. Should an RfC happen that indicates another course of action for all those affected, this close should not preclude it. It's not necessarily a keep forever so much as a keep until further discussion, which may well back up the keep. Star Mississippi 02:04, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

List of statutory instruments of Scotland, 2024

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Page has only primary sources, and is not informative about the pieces of legislation themselves. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DotCoder (talk • contribs)

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Law, Lists, and Scotland. Shellwood (talk) 08:19, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete or draftify: given they have not been discussed in reliable sources as a group, as far as I know, I think they fail the list notability guideline. It says lists can be kept for informational purposes, but this is mostly a list that includes things like closing roads, so probably should be deleted per WP:NOT (an indiscriminate collection of information). Suggesting draftify if there is any hope because a lot of work seems to have been put into it. Mrfoogles (talk) 10:19, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Other lists of delegated / secondary legislation that I think should be considered jointly.

Extended content

DotCoder (talk) 10:29, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. The data in these lists is organized by year and number -- not in a way that would be useful to most readers. Basically, if you know the year and number of a statutory instrument, these lists will tell you what its title was and provide a link to the content at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ . Of course, if you already knew the year and number, you could just go to https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ and look it up yourself. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 14:17, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Year and number is the only useful way to list the instruments. Any other way is chaos and impossible to navigate. Legislation.gov.uk is a largely useless website for our readers. It is missing notable or important instruments, and we cannot add the missing items to that website. It contains inadequate commentary on the instruments it does have, and we cannot add better commentary to that website. It does not summarise the commentary in paywalled independent secondary sources, such as Current Law Statutes (to pick a random example), and we cannot add such summaries to that website. Our readers cannot use Legislation.gov.uk to navigate Wikipedia: Our lists already have many blue links. Any website that we cannot edit is largely useless for our readers. James500 (talk) 00:21, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Literally none of the pages contain commentary.

There are 158 pages in total and none of them contain commentary.

Some of them have been on wiki since 2006.

The issue is that 99% do not have commentary to write.

List of statutory instruments of the United Kingdom, 2016 does not link to The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016. Any attention given to statutory instruments just is not happening through the list articles; it's happening through people writing about them on their own. DotCoder (talk) 07:40, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I can see, these articles have mostly been maintained by the three of you.

Can you explain how these articles meet the criteria of Wikipedia:NOT, specifically the "Wikipedia is not a directory" and "Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files" rules?

Can you explain how these articles meet the rules regarding not exclusively citing primary sources?

Can you explain how these articles meet the rules regarding notability?

Thank you. DotCoder (talk) 15:43, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:ATD says "If editing can address all relevant reasons for deletion, this should be done rather than deleting the page". There is no even theoretically possible WP:NOT argument that cannot be addressed by adding additional commentary and sources to the lists, and creating articles and redirects for particular instruments. The instruments have an enormous amount of coverage in an enornous number of sources (so you can add commentary and sources), a lot of them individually satisfy GNG (so you can create articles), and the rest can be redirected to article on the Act of Parliament under which they were made, or the area of the law to which they relate, and covered in the redirect target. James500 (talk) 23:28, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For the avoidance of doubt, these lists are *not* mostly maintained by me. My involvement consists largely of the previous AfD. My name would not show up prominently in the page histories of these lists, so you clearly did not get my username from those page histories. James500 (talk) 00:57, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per the discussion in all the previous AfDs including Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Statutory Rules and Orders of Northern Ireland. Satisfies GNG and LISTN. Statutory instruments in the United Kingdom have received significant coverage, as a group and individually, in books and periodicals. In fact, they have extensive coverage in just about every law book, legal treatise, legal encyclopedia and legal periodical ever published in the United Kingdom from the passing of the Rules Publication Act 1893 and the Statutory Instrument Act 1946 onwards (so more or less every law book published after 1893). In fact, there is, amongst other publications, actually an encyclopedia of statutory instruments called Halsbury's Statutory Instruments. That should not be surprising because this is a proposal to delete much more than half the legislation of the United Kingdom, and completely disrupt all coverage of UK law on this project. The nomination is by a WP:SLEEPER with no or virtually no edits for nearly ten years, and then a massive spike of edits in the last two months. James500 (talk) 22:53, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How are the lists not directories? DotCoder (talk) 07:12, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The policy WP:ATD says that if a list can be expanded beyond a directory, you have to expand it instead of deleting it. James500 (talk) 08:05, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it can be expanded beyond a directory. DotCoder (talk) 08:21, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What is stopping you from adding the commentary in Halsbury's Statutory Instruments and Current Law Statutes and all the other law books? To take a random example, page C6-1 of volume 3 of Current Law Statutes 2004 contains a detailed commentary on the Health and Social Care Act 2001 (Commencement No 6) (Wales) Order 2004. What is stopping you from going and adding that information to the relevant list right now? James500 (talk) 09:09, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For one thing, I don't think a commencement order should be written about before the article about the primary legislation itself and as you can see for yourself, it does not seem like it has an article about it List of acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 2001, Health and Social Care Act 2001.

For example, I have written most of the articles about actual primary legislation in Category:Acts of the Northern Ireland Assembly. I wish there were more articles about primary legislation.

I do think there should be an article about notable statutory instruments for each legislature. Unfortunately most statutory instruments are so non-notable that I don't think them being separated into 158 disparate different pages is really informative. DotCoder (talk) 10:27, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(1) There is no policy or guideline or consensus that says that we cannot cover a topic unless an article on its parent topic has already been created first. There is no reason to do that. (2) Notability guidelines apply to the creation of standalone pages. They do not apply to the inclusion of content inside pages (WP:ARTN). (3) The test for notability is the amount of coverage the topic has, not whether you consider the topic to be "important" in your subjective personal opinion. (4) These instruments satisfy LISTN as a group, therefore they are entitled to have a standalone list. (5) Many of these instruments are individually notable, and many others have coverage that ought to be included in this encyclopedia. It is not helpful to use hyperbole that looks like fake statistics such as "99%" or "the vast majority" when you actually have no idea how much coverage there really is, and the rest of us have actually read publications like Halsbury's Statutory Instruments and many others. (5) Redirects should be included in lists to facilitate navigation (LISTN). (6) It is possible to remove individual entries from lists on various grounds, but we do not do that by deleting the entire page, and AfD is not an appropriate venue to discuss issues with article content that are not grounds for deleting the page. (6) I do not think that anyone here is going to create an article on the Health and Social Care Act 2001 if they suspect that someone might respond with an immediate tit for tat AfD nomination. (7) You only created three articles in Category:Acts of the Northern Ireland Assembly, and we have no guarantee you will create more. (8) To be entirely blunt, UK-wide statutory instruments are likely to receive more coverage than Northern Ireland Acts, and are therefore more likely to be individually notable. James500 (talk) 18:34, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
1) You asked me why I didn't write commentary, and I gave my personal reason for my personal thought process. I did not imply anything about all people on Wikipedia.

2)WP:NLISTITEM does cover items within lists and there is no "due weight" and "balance" argument for pages that are only citing primary sources.

3) The topic does have coverage in the media, and there are news articles about a law being commenced, and there are articles about regulations and their articles about road closures, among other things. Unfortunately the lists don't cite them, so I don't think that's relevant.

4) I disagree, that is the point of my AFD.

5) I did not see Halsbury's Statutory Instruments cited on any of the pages, so I don't see the relevance. You keep mentioning this as an important source for understanding the instruments, but it isn't cited in any of the pages, which seems contradictory.

6A) ignored.

6B) I will.

7) Not relevant. But I stress that it is much easier to discuss secondary legislation in the context of the parent primary legislation. I don't think you can discuss Commencement Order No. 5, without the context of Commencement Order No. 1, Commencement Order No. 2, Commencement Order No. 3, Commencement Order No. 4.

8) Given that none of the coverage has been cited, I don't think this is relevant.

How would you discuss a commencement order when it puts certain provisions of primary legislation into force if there's nothing on Wikipedia about the provisions themselves? DotCoder (talk) 20:59, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For the avoidance of doubt only: (4 and 5) Halsbury's Statutory Instruments, amongst other publications, contains significant coverage (WP:SIGCOV) of statutory instruments both as a group and individually. Therefore statutory instruments satisfy both GNG and LISTN. A copy of 13 volumes (and there are other volumes) that coverage is here: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]. The fact that those scans exist on the Internet Archive, is final and conclusive proof that statutory instruments satisfy LISTN. It does not matter whether that coverage is cited in the Wikipedia lists, because notability depends on, and only on, the existence of coverage outside of Wikipedia. If Halsbury' Statutory Instruments is never cited in those lists or anywhere on Wikipedia, the statutory instruments will continue satisfy LISTN forever, because significant coverage exists in those scans on the Internet Archive. WP:ARTN clearly states "Notability is a property of a subject and not of a Wikipedia article. . . ., if the source material exists, even very poor writing and referencing within a Wikipedia article will not decrease the subject's notability." The existence of those 13 scans on the Internet Archive conclusively proves that "the source material exists", therefore the topic is notable. I did not say that Halsbury' Statutory Instruments is important for understanding the instruments, I said that Halsbury' Statutory Instruments is an independent reliable secondary source that contains significant coverage of statutory instruments as a group, which means that statutory instruments satisfy GNG and LISTN. James500 (talk) 23:41, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If there statutory instruments are so important, why does the page on List of statutory instruments of the Welsh Assembly, still refer to the "Welsh Assembly", when the name was changed in 2020 (4 years ago)? DotCoder (talk) 00:04, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Because the Wikipedia community is too lazy to update the article. James500 (talk) 00:12, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A) You say that the articles may be improved re only citing primary sources at some distant point.

B) You say you don't maintain these pages any more (at the beginning of the discussion).

C) You also characterise the Wikipedia community as "too lazy" to maintain a large chunk of the articles in this AFD.

This is all characteristic of WP:NOWORK, specifically

>>>>I know I can improve it, I just have no time now to explain how. DotCoder (talk) 00:31, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:NOWORK says the opposite of what you seem to be implying: the point it's making is that you should avoid making the argument that a lack of recent progress justifies the deletion of articles. You also need to assume good faith (see WP:AGF): at no point did James500 say they don't have time to improve the articles. Theknightwho (talk) 01:44, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No. They did say that they had stopped maintaining the lists, and also described the Wikipedia community as "too lazy" to maintain the articles, which implies that the articles cannot be improved by their logic, which contradicts their assertion that their suggestion that the articles would need significant improvement to no longer be directories.

It only violates the rule in combination, but it is quite clear in combination. DotCoder (talk) 01:52, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@DotCoder If I understand you correctly, your argument is:
James500 believes these are directories.

They also believe the Wikipedia community is too lazy to ever improve the lists.

This therefore justifies the deletion of the articles, because they will never be improved beyond directories.

Even if James500's comment about the WP community being "too lazy" were totally literal and sincere (and not merely a throwaway comment about how things get missed sometimes), you can't take them as the sole judge of whether that's actually true, and I very much don't think it is. That's aside from the fact that James500 quite clearly doesn't believe that, going by the rest of their comments on this page. Theknightwho (talk) 02:08, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
List of statutory instruments of Scotland, 2011 has been on Wikipedia since 2013. 11 years ago.

It doesn't have any citations at all, let alone exclusively citations to primary sources.

I can understand why it's easy to /say/ that these articles could be changed to no longer be directories in the /future/, but I just want to argue with things as they are at this moment.

It is literally impossible to argue with something that doesn't exist.

I can understand the issue. Some articles only have one or two people maintaining them, and they update them every few years. I also think that 13 years is long enough that you can't vaguely describe the articles being fixed at some point.

The principle that "if the article could be fixed then keep" breaks down at some point. I am not an expert. This line may be 8 years. This line may be 10 years. It may be 20 years. It may depend on context.

I personally think 13 years is enough. The reality is that many many lists in this AFD have the same issues. DotCoder (talk) 02:25, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@DotCoder That is all just WP:NOWORK. Wikipedia doesn't work like that: Content shouldn't be removed just because no one has improved it yet; that would prevent editors from improving it in the future. Theknightwho (talk) 02:32, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Under that logic, when would a directory ever be removed? DotCoder (talk) 02:43, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@DotCoder Deletion is not the only solution available if something goes against WP:NOT, and I don't agree these lists do in the first place. Theknightwho (talk) 02:49, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think they should be draftified. DotCoder (talk) 02:52, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, because it's totally infeasible to review them all within 6 months. Theknightwho (talk) 02:57, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Roughly, how many could be reviewed within that period?

I will do this again with a more specific subset. DotCoder (talk) 03:08, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Presence on Archive.org does not mean anything re notability. Anyone can archive anything.

For example, Health and Social Care Act 2001 has an external link to a PDF on archive.org that I archived.

I think if these things are important but can't be cited then they should go at the end of the article in an "external link". DotCoder (talk) 00:10, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Halsbury's Statutory Instruments is a printed book published by Butterworths, who are one of the most reputable publishers in the world. That is not "anyone". The scans on the Internet Archive are obviously genuine, having been uploaded by the Kahle/Austin Foundation etc, but if you doubted their fidelity to the printed book, all you have to do is go and get a printed copy of the book from a library or a book seller. You will find the book in every university library in the country and all good book sellers. James500 (talk) 00:18, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I question the importance of Halsbury's Statutory Instruments when it is not mentioned once in Statutory instrument (UK). The Halsbury's Statutory Instruments page is only a stub. DotCoder (talk) 00:37, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@DotCoder You cannot use another Wikipedia article as a measuring stick for the notability of a source, or another article. Theknightwho (talk) 01:35, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry. I apologise. DotCoder (talk) 01:47, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The vast majority of the lists regard things like individual road closures, so they don't meet the notability criteria.

There are 14 articles on Wales statutory instruments, but there are no articles on what a Wales statutory instrument is, unlike Scottish Statutory Instrument. I think that would be more informative than setup. DotCoder (talk) 07:18, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: The lists need adding to, rather than removing them in their entirety. We also need editors to create dedicated articles for the more important secondary legislation. Then there will be more live links rather than just the S.I. number and year. SpookiePuppy (talk) 23:14, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How would this not be a directory? DotCoder (talk) 07:20, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as per SpookiePuppy, and the fact that this is essentially a rehash of the last AfD of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Statutory Rules and Orders of Northern Ireland. Theknightwho (talk) 00:20, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
> You are using "NOTDATABASE" and the other shortcuts as a WP:VAGUEWAVE. WP:ATD specifically says "If editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page". That is clearly the case here.As for LISTN, you can start with the coverage in the Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, the Digest of Northern Ireland Law, the Irish Law Times, and the Irish Jurist, amongst others

Many of these pages have not been significantly improved since then, so I assume significant improvement won't happen in this case. DotCoder (talk) 08:02, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are thousands of pieces of legislation, and only so many editors. The fact that not all of the lists have been improved in the last year doesn't indicate that that will remain the case indefinitely. That's aside from the fact that there's a lot more interest in UK law in general than Northern Irish law specifically. Theknightwho (talk) 15:26, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have looked at them all and none of them have been improved. DotCoder (talk) 18:08, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That is not factually accurate. Northern Ireland lists were improved, by the addition of sources and blue links (which are annotations), and the removal of superfluous text. It is true that more improvements may be desirable, but there is no policy, guideline or consensus that says that an article may be deleted because someone says they are WP:IMPATIENT to see improvements, especially when they refuse to make any improvements to it themselves. In the time you have spent making arguments in this AfD, you could have made plenty of improvements with Halsbury's Statutory Instruments or the like. James500 (talk) 18:45, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The addition of the blue links do not change the nature as directories.

The list articles were improved as directories but not beyond that. DotCoder (talk) 23:33, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A blue link is not a "simple listing" within the meaning of WP:NOT. A blue link is "contextual information showing encyclopedic merit" within the meaning of WP:NOT. James500 (talk) 23:45, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed - at this point, it feels like DotCoder is arguing against the concept of list articles as a whole. Theknightwho (talk) 00:35, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No other list contains such a large volume of non-notable events, only citing primary sources, without providing any further commentary in most cases, while also, it is being suggested that the lists may be improved further at some point, but that the Wikipedia community is "too lazy" to maintain them and make the improvements. DotCoder (talk) 02:00, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly suggest you read WP:AGF at this point, instead of insinuating that another editor is knowingly contradicting themselves. Theknightwho (talk) 02:13, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am not saying the contradictions are intentional, I am saying they are unintentional. DotCoder (talk) 08:52, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It may seem like I am being hostile, but earlier it was suggested that I would be too afraid to write an article because of a hypothetical tit-for-tat AFD.

>>>>>I do not think that anyone here is going to create an article on the Health and Social Care Act 2001 if they suspect that someone might respond with an immediate tit for tat AfD nomination.

I wrote the Health and Social Care Act 2001 article partially on the basis that I wanted to make it clear that I trust that James500 would not do that, because they are arguing in good faith. I had been interested in that because it came up in a book that I was reading about that period, so I had wanted to do it for a while.

I am 100% confident in James500 arguing in good faith, but I think contradictions cannot be ignored. DotCoder (talk) 09:47, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@DotCoder It's a completely unreasonable interpretation of what they said, given it's directly contradicted by the fact that they say the lists can be improved elsewhere. Quite obviously there are other interpretations that don't lead to contradiction, which is why I'm saying you need to assume good faith. Theknightwho (talk) 13:04, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The SSI Articles list and match all years from 1999-present and if the should be deleted then so should all articles dealing with laws (UKSI,NISR, NIA, ASP, UKPGA, ACTS OF THE US CONGRESS ETC,) I created the 2024 article to match the others i also created the 2023 articles even though the articles have not be updated in a wee while (because of personal reasons) they match all other articles this is not the only nitpicking from certain users about the law articles i never created the original articles that started listing the laws i just continued creating them and listing the laws its easier to find a law on wikipedia for a year that look on legislation.gov.uk and have to troll through list of laws just to find the one you are looking for, if the articles shall be deleted then so should all articles dealing with any law including US Congress Acts better still you might as well delete the whole site as wikipedia is supposed to be about finding information. Demonguy1990 (talk) 07:27, 31 August 2024 (BST)
Keep not seeing a valid reason for deletion as it is possible to add content and information on some of the entries in each list so that database concerns are countered in my view, Atlantic306 (talk) 18:28, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete I don't find a lot of sense when it comes to how these articles have been organized. A single proper article with summaries would be better. Zakaria ښه راغلاست (talk) 20:25, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The latest edition of Halsbury's Statutory Instruments alone has 38 volumes, not including the looseleaf updating service, the index and the citator. That is tens of thousands of pages of coverage. And that is just the introductory work to this subject, which you will find treated in most law books published for more than a century. You cannot fit a topic with that level of coverage into a single article. That is like saying that the topic of Belgium would be better treated in the single proper article Belgium, and that all the other pages in Category:Belgium, such as all the lists in Category:Lists of buildings and structures in Belgium, should be deleted. It goes without saying that such an approach is not compatible with the guideline WP:LISTN. I should point out that the policy WP:PRESERVE directs that encyclopedic content should be preserved by "splitting the content to an entirely new article" if it will not fit into the parent article (subject to the requirement the new article satisfies the relevant notability guidelines). That policy is meant to stop you from deleting content just because you want to delete all information that you personally don't want to read. Because Wikipedia is not just for you. James500 (talk) 05:14, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Merge and rescope to only cover independently notable statutory instruments. Sure, the concept of "Scottish statutory instruments" (or UK, or Welsh, or Northern Irish) probably passes LISTN. But even if something passes LISTN, that very much does not imply the resulting list should be exhaustive. To take the canonical example from LISTN, "Norwegian musicians" is a notable grouping, but we don't put every verifiable Norwegian garage band on the list, just the notable ones.

Reading through the lists, it's clear there are many instruments our sources will never have much to say about. Instruments like The A82 Trunk Road (Spean Bridge) (Temporary Prohibition on Use of Road) Order 2024 (S.S.I. 2024 No. 27), which closed said road for one day.

I took a look at the scans of Halsbury's Statutory Instruments James500 linked and they don't provide the significant coverage of individual instruments he is claiming. The publication seems focused on exhaustively reproducing or summarising the instruments' text without giving its own input. – Teratix ₵ 03:11, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Even if we were to remove all instruments that are not individually notable, we would still need all of these lists, because the number of individually notable statutory instruments will not fit in anything smaller than an annual list. That would probably be true of any other topic that is also the subject of a 38 volume encyclopedia and is central to a particular academic discipline. Halsbury's Statutory Instruments provides significant coverage of individual instruments and gives its own input. And there are a lot of other books. James500 (talk) 17:02, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

the number of individually notable statutory instruments will not fit in anything smaller than an annual list I see no reason to think this is the case, given how trivial many of the instruments are.

the subject of a 38 volume encyclopedia and is central to a particular academic discipline That obviously does not imply we should exhaustively cover every statutory instrument ever enacted. Musicians are also the subjects of large encyclopedias and are "central to a particular academic discipline", but it would obviously be silly to argue we should therefore have giant lists of every musician that verifiably exists. Instead, we only list notable musicians. We should do the same for statutory instruments.

Halsbury's Statutory Instruments provides significant coverage of individual instruments and gives its own input. I checked, that's false.

And there are a lot of other books. I don't doubt there are other books on statutory instruments. What I'm doubting is whether these books actually provide significant coverage (i.e. actual discussion, not mere reproduction or summary) of all or even most of the statutory instruments in question, rather than a subset. Nothing I've read in this AfD has suggested this is the case. – Teratix ₵ 03:25, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I see no reason to think this is the case, given how trivial many of the instruments are.

You appear to be admitting that you have not done a WP:BEFORE search. You are cherry picking the most "trivial" examples. You are literally providing single carefully cherry picked examples of the most "trivial" instruments you can find on the list. You have not even counted how many "road closure" orders there are. You have not even proved that such instruments constitute even 50% of the list. Seriously, if even a mere 10% of the 3000+ UKSIs passed in a year were important enough to include (and I think the proportion is higher than that) you would still need annual lists. You are ignoring the large numbers of really important instruments. (I am tempted to point to something like the Criminal Appeal Rules 1968, and their coverage in "Archbold", but I don't want to condone the cherry picking you are engaging in by advancing single examples). Do I have to go through all the important instruments one at a time and give a blow by blow account of how much coverage they have? Do you realise what that would entail?

I checked, that's false.

I read the book as well, and what you are saying is false. You obviously have not read the whole of 38 volumes during this AfD. I have spent years reading those volumes and other books.

not mere reproduction or summary

Halsbury does contain commentary that goes beyond summary. That is the whole point of the annotations and preliminary notes. In any event, "summary" is capable of constituting significant coverage. There is nothing in GNG that says that "summary" is inherently insignificant.

What I'm doubting is whether these books actually provide significant coverage

Again, you appear to be admitting that you have not done WP:BEFORE and asking me to cite thousands of books to prove significant coverage of thousands of instruments. It is not clear how I am supposed to type up thousands of citations during the 7 days of an AfD. It looks like you are asking me to do something that might be physically impossible. James500 (talk) 04:48, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You appear to be admitting that you have not done a WP:BEFORE search I haven't "done a WP:BEFORE search" in the sense that I haven't personally checked each and every statutory instrument on these lists for notability, but I'm sure you'd agree that would be unreasonable. I've done enough BEFORE to be confident there are probably enough non-notable instruments on the list that rescoping to cover only notable instruments is warranted.

You are ignoring the large numbers of really important instruments. Arguing "but there are lots of really important instruments!" means nothing here. Of course there are some notable instruments – I support having articles on them and I support having lists of them. What I don't support is including non-notable instruments on the lists – and, as S.S.I. 2024 No. 27 demonstrates, there are certainly some obviously trivial instruments.

You obviously have not read the whole of 38 volumes during this AfD. I didn't, naturally. Obviously it would be absurd to require AfD participants to read all 38 volumes. I read enough to get a good idea of how the source tends to cover statutory instruments.

That is the whole point of the annotations and preliminary notes. I read these – they don't give significant coverage for every individual instrument.

There is nothing in GNG that says that "summary" is inherently insignificant. My particular concern with the summaries is they can be so close to the instruments themselves that they're not actually independent sources. To take an example, compare the Halsbury summary of the UK SI 2000 No. 2984 (p. 294-295 here) with the instrument (and its explanatory note) itself

asking me to cite thousands of books to prove significant coverage of thousands of instruments No, of course I'm not asking you to do that. If another editor is asking you to do something that seems comically unreasonable, you're probably misinterpreting them. I would merely want to see some sort of overwhelming tendency for statutory instruments to receive significant coverage. I think there are at least two easy ways you could demonstrate this:

Pick several of the most trivial instruments and demonstrate they have nonetheless received significant coverage (since if the most unimportant instruments get significant coverage, it should follow that more important instruments will receive at least as much coverage)
Pick a randomly selected sample of instruments (the more the merrier, but let's say 10) and demonstrate such a large portion (let's say 80% or higher) get significant coverage that there wouldn't really be a point in cutting out non-notable instruments.

– Teratix ₵ 14:38, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

as S.S.I. 2024 No. 27 demonstrates, there are certainly some obviously trivial instruments

That is still only one example. What is needed is something resembling statistical evidence. Let's look at the list for 1989. There are more than 2500 instruments, some of which are missing. The page is more than 227kB long. I looked at all of the first 200 instruments on the list. I did not find a single temporary road closure order in that sample. From that sample, I infer that the proportion of road closure orders on that list is probably 0%. If we remove that 0% of the instruments on that list, we will reduce the length of the list to less than 228kB which is still WP:TOOBIG to merge. I see no reason to believe that these lists, and especially the UK-wide lists, will ever be small enough to merge, even if you were to remove (just picking a random number) 90% of their entries, and especially if you want to add commentary to the list. It is the "merge" part of your !vote that concerns me.

it would be absurd to require AfD participants to read all 38 volumes

I disagree. In order to argue that a topic does not have significant coverage, it would be necessary to read all of the coverage. There is no other way to prove that particular negative.

not actually independent sources

"Halsbury" is not produced by the government. Butterworths is not affiliated with the government. I am not convinced that merely being "close to the original" is ever capable of causing a work to be produced by the government. You have only provided one example, it is not as close to the original as you seem to imply, and it is certainly not so close to the original that it could be accurately said to have been produced by the government. James500 (talk) 19:25, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I looked at all of the first 200 instruments on the list. I did not find a single temporary road closure order in that sample. Yet there are certainly a good deal of trivial instruments in that sample, even if they are not "temporary road closure orders" specifically. Just from a quick scan through, I see S.I. 1989/87, S.I. 1989/124, S.I. 1989/130, S.I. 1989/131, S.I. 1989/198, S.I. 1989/199 and S.I. 1989/200 (road-related instruments); S.I. 1989/41 and S.I 1989/121 (borehole-related instruments); S.I. 1989/33 and S.I. 1989/34 (submarine-pipeline-related instruments); S.I. 1989/25, S.I. 1989/31, S.I. 1989/52, S.I. 1989/84, S.I. 1989/92, S.I. 1989/112, S.I. 1989/139, S.I. 1989/146, S.I. 1989/157 (minor amendments to existing instruments); and S.I. 1989/23, S.I. 1989/78, S.I. 1989/79, S.I. 1989/116 and S.I. 1989/141 (pure revocations of existing instruments) as extremely unlikely to be independently notable. I'm sure there are many more non-notable instruments in that sample, those are just the ones that stood out to me on a first pass.

to argue that a topic does not have significant coverage, it would be necessary to read all of the coverage No, this is not always true – you merely need to read enough to reach a sound conclusion about whether significant coverage exists. This is how reference bombs are defused – if someone turns up at an AfD with 100 sources, but you read their best five and none are any good, then it's fine to refuse to exhaustively read the other 95 sources and conclude significant coverage doesn't exist. Otherwise AfD would be completely unworkable – editors could just force articles to be kept by linking unreadably large numbers of sources, regardless of quality. (For clarity, I'm not accusing you of doing this).

I am not convinced that merely being "close to the original" is ever capable of causing a work to be produced by the government. I'm not saying the Halsbury summaries are literally produced by the government. I'm saying they appear to be so close to the actual instrument their content isn't independent. Analogy: sources particularly prone to churnalism will sometimes write articles that are essentially some company or organisation's press release very thinly rewritten. When these come up at AfD, we don't accept these to be independent – even though they haven't literally been produced by the company or organisation itself, their content is very closely based on something that has. (For clarity, I'm not saying Halsbury itself is churnalist or otherwise low-quality. I'm saying the summaries it produces are not independent of the instruments they summarise for similar reasons that churnalist pieces aren't independent of the press releases they're based on).

It is the "merge" part of your !vote that concerns me. OK, so why don't we meet in the middle? We clearly have quite different senses of what proportions of statutory instruments are notable, and thus whether mergers are warranted – but can we at least agree on rescoping the lists to cover just the notable statutory instruments? Look at it this way: if you're right and there really are too many notable statutory instruments to justify merging the lists, then the lists will stay in the same structure as they are, they'll just be covering the statutory instruments we can actually find adequate sourcing for. – Teratix ₵ 06:09, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per James500 — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 08:43, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per all the above, and past discussions. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:42, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just a note that if you haven't, look at the collapsed Extended content because this is a gigantic bundled nomination. In fact, it is so big that no matter what the consensus is, XFDcloser will not be able to handle this closure and it will have to be taken care of manually by the closer which should take quite a lot of time. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:52, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed List of regulatory reform orders from this list as it was not tagged as being part of this AFD and I imagine the article creator was not notified of it being part of this discusion. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:09, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Fair notice that I started some of the pages which are nominated. Nonetheless, statutory instruments are often notable even though they are generally specific and specialist in nature. These lists, I believe, have the potential to be much more than a directory of external links (indeed, I think they could end up with a great deal of useful content) and as such I think it would be a mistake to delete them. Although I'm not totally against the idea of entries being limited to those being deemed as notable, I don't think it would then function well as a list of SIs in practice. Better to expand the context on these pages so that users have informative content than get rid of it altogether. Gazamp (talk) 15:51, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: While consensus seems to be trending toward Keep, this discussion involves a major change in scope, affecting not just the 157 nominated pages, but hundreds more of the same type. I believe it requires, as a minimum, a broader debate, perhaps on Portal:Law, and ideally an RfC to determine general inclusion criteria for this type of list. I don't see it as appropriate to adjudicate this based on the views, valid as they may be, of the 13 participants in this AfD. I'll relist it for now to keep it open, in the hope that it will be overtaken by events involving a broader discussion, making this decision both easier and less prone to relitigation. Can one of the participants here please take the lead on a discussion/RfC at Portal:Law? Thank you.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Owen× ☎ 22:08, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This does not require broader discussion, especially not if the objective of such discussion is forum shopping to overturn the clear consensus established here. The consensus is unambiguously "keep", because there are no policy, guideline or consensus based arguments for any other outcome, since LISTN is impossible to dispute and you cannot merge a page that is more than 200kB long. The question of whether any particular piece of information should be included in any particular list is outside the scope of AfD. The page size of the lists would have to be reduced before any merger proposal could be made, and we cannot provisionally agree to merge a page after a proposed rewrite if we do not know how large the page will be after the rewrite. The ideal solution would be for this to simply go away and stop wasting community time with proposals that have no realistic chance of consensus. Portal:Law is not a forum for the discussion of particular articles. Discussion of these lists goes on their own talk pages. James500 (talk) 01:43, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with James500 - it seems very odd to me to keep this discussion open or even widen it when there seems to be a consensus to keep these pages. I think preempting relitigation with an RfC (surely a relitigation in itself?) would be a waste of everyone's time; I know that there are things I'd rather be doing than rehashing all of this somewhere else. Gazamp (talk) 15:10, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure I understand the urgency. The articles do not contain any offending material that requires them to be deleted right away, and are right where they'd be if they end up being kept. We're discussing the fate of 157 articles that editors spent thousands of hours creating and copyediting. I see nothing excessive in wanting to solicit more than the 13 participants who voiced their opinion here before making such a far-reaching decision. Frankly, I find the requests to hurry the process to be tendentious. Owen× ☎ 15:32, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.