Wiki143:Articles for deletion/List of bands from England

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 as a valid list. Bearian (talk) 20:52, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

List of bands from England

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One of these lists in which a category is better served, and may never be complete Delete Secret ^account 01:19, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

• Delete Agree with nominee, far too broad a criteria, list could literally be thousands. Alot of the bands on there fail the criteria. --neonwhite user page talk 02:44, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
• Keep Not an indiscriminate list, in that it sorts the prominent (blue-linked) bands and artists by the city in England from which they hail (which a category wouldn't serve, unless there are lots of subcategories too). The "potentially endless" argument is kind of the counterpart to the "it's useful" argument when it comes to being not terribly persuasive. Mandsford (talk) 03:43, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
• Strong delete, far to broad in scope and likely to never be correctly updated. A category is far better. - Realkyhick (Talk to me) 03:49, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
• Delete. Unmaintainable, better served as a subcategory somewhere else, such as Category:English musical groups.-Wafulz (talk) 03:59, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
• I'd considered that, but the problem I see there is a bunch of subcats called Category:Bands from Bristol, Bands from Brighton, Bands from Birmingham, etc.; and then what do you do if you have a country band from Bristol, Tennessee or Birmingham, Alabama? For that purpose, it seems like a list would be more efficient Mandsford (talk) 12:56, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
• Keep per Mandsford. --Pwnage8 (talk) 19:30, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
• Delete. Better suited as category. --Funper (talk) 23:17, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
• Keep This is more of an index than just a list and it is interesting to see data arranged in this way. Skip1337 (talk) 23:25, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
• Addressing the points presented above - that a category would "serve better" is not a valid reason for deletion as it is not supported by policy or guideline. The relevant guideline is WP:CLS, which encourages redundancy between lists and categories (they're synergistic, and have editors and readers who favor each system). Sacrificing one system for the other is not good, it wastes useful text and links, it pits list-builders and category-maintainers against each other, and only hurts Wikipedia. (See WP:CLS for details). That a list will never be complete is also not a valid reason for deletion and it isn't supported by policy or guideline either - the main guideline on lists specifically allows uncompletable lists. Note that Wikipedia itself will never be complete. That doesn't mean it isn't useful. Regions have often been influential throughout the history of music, and so the place of origin of a band is significant (e.g., see British Invasion). The topic of the list is not too broad, as this is not a paper encyclopedia, and a list of thousands of items is relatively easy to compile (I've built several - they can be done in less than a day, and some editors have been known to work on a single article or list for weeks). Articles on Wikipedia are scalable and can be split as expanded. Lists are also easier to navigate: scrolling through a list is a lot easier and faster than clicking back and forth and up and down the structure of a category tree. Concerning maintainability, lists are easier and faster to maintain than categories. Lists are much easier to monitor. One problem with categories is that items can disappear from them and there's no way to tell unless you notice that they're missing. When items disappear from a list, this can easily be seen in the list's edit history and diffs. Changes to lists show up on one's watchlist, changes to categories do not. Editing a list is faster because you are working on a single page, which is not subject to compounded server delays as updating category tags is. Macros work a lot faster on a single list than they do on category tagging. And so on. Lists, even of great size, are eminently maintainable. See the huge multi-page list of mathematics topics, for example. Keep. The Transhumanist 23:34, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment: WP:NOT#DIR: "Wikipedia is not a directory of everything that exists or has existed."; It does not provide notability on all bands and a number of them doesn't even have articles. This is merely a list of more or less notable bands, sorted by various regions. --Funper (talk) 23:40, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
    • The list provides blue links, and that makes it an index of Wikipedia's articles. Navigation is one of the purposes of lists. The notability or includability of a specific band should be handled on the list's talk page. The Transhumanist 23:50, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
    • A list can work together with a category if it provides information that a category can't do, which doesn't seem to be the case here. If that's the case, I see no use for the existece of a category. As for WP:LIST, unmaintainbilty is mentioned there. Secret ^account 02:41, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
• Delete - WP is plagued by articles on NN music bands. The best use of lists is to identify articles that are needed (red links). However, this list will merely attract more redlinks for NN bands, and so encourage the production of NN articles, which them have to go through the AFD procedure. Categories fulfil the purpose much better than lists (except where there are useful redlinks). Peterkingiron (talk) 23:43, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Lists have many uses, one of which is navigation. No one purpose is "better" than the rest. See: WP:LIST. The Transhumanist 23:50, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
• Keep. The list is useful for navigation.--Michig (talk) 09:25, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
• Keep It's not a list of every band in England, its a list of those notable enough for WP articles. Yes, there are many of them. All the more reason to have a list , divided usefully by city. it could have other information too--dates might be helpful.; even members would be possible--there are lots of ways the article could be expanded. A few do not have articles yet--either they will be written and the articles will stick, or they will be removed from the lists by editing. There are many other reasons for lists beyond red link removal. Navigation is the main purpose of lists. DGG (talk) 04:56, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

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.