Wiki143:Articles for deletion/List of user interface markup languages

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was KEEP. Postdlf 02:21, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

List of user interface markup languages

I believe that this piece of information is best served with the User interface markup languages category. So, for redundancy's sake of redundancy, I propose that this article is deleted and all the references made by it may be preserved by the inclusion of the articles in that category. Mecanismo 11:21, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

• Strong keep. Nothing wrong in this article. An article gives a different (more flexible) view other category. If we delete this article, all the articles in Category:Lists of software need to be deleted as well. No. --minghong 11:24, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. I don't see anything wrong with this either. — JIP | Talk 11:43, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. The article is redundant. Wikipedia has it's way of creating lists which has the ability to automatically group new articles in a category. Because a wikipedia's category can also serve as an article (it holds text and automatically groups the articles), the hand-made lists are a very poor way of doing things. So, to enforce wikipedia's way of doing things and to clean it up in the process, the deletion of this article in favour of a category listing is the right thing to do. --Maciel 11:47, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
  • This is the same person that wrote the original request. Not everyone may notice it, because he altered his signature. At least I didn't until now. -Hapsiainen 13:21, May 2, 2005 (UTC)
    • I didn't altered the signature. The signature appears this way by default. I just press the "your signature and timestam" and the signatureappears this way. And, if you look carefully, why would I want to conceal my identity while signing all the posts with a reference to my user page? And on top of that, the administrators can compare IPs and my entries are all made by the same IP. --Maciel 18:02, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Sorry, this is my fault. Mecanismo wrongly put marked the page as "pending delete" and speedy deletion. I corrected that and created an entry here, signing using Mecanismo's name instead of my name as I thought Mecanismo won't comment here again. I was using the name Mecanismo, which is clearly wrong. --minghong 18:13, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
      • OK. I didn't look at the first edits. And I added more wrong-looking signatures for Maciel, because I used the first signature as a model. -Hapsiainen 19:52, May 2, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Categories can't contain nonexistent articles or links about articles. -Hapsiainen 11:51, May 2, 2005 (UTC)
  • Non-exitent articles, if they are indeed relevant, should be created as stubs and added to it's respectful categories, which brings added value to wikipedia as a whole. Therefore, the "red link" argument is a non-argument. -Mecanismo 12:08, May 2, 2005
    • But you can't get read those (sub)stubs in the same page, if you only put them to a category. -Hapsiainen 13:11, May 2, 2005 (UTC)
      • You can't? Are you sure? You create an article, you add it to a category, you mark it as stub and there you have it. What's the dificulty in that? --Maciel 16:01, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
        • When you go to the category page, you can see only the titles of its articles. You can't see the article contents, so you can't read the them. Reading a book title isn't the same as reading a book. -Hapsiainen 16:16, May 2, 2005 (UTC)
          • Well, I believe you are wrong. The category pages are just like the article pages, with the added bonus of organizing the lists automatically. The category page can have an article if you write one there. Plenty of category pages have articles written in them. Therefore, a category page is better suited for list articles than a regular article. Nonetheless, the list article in question doesn't have content in it, which makes this a non-issue. --Maciel 17:54, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Yup. Besides, one can also put a short description behind the item. This is not possible using categories. --minghong 18:10, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, I can't copy and paste a category. Kappa 12:06, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
  • You can edit an article and add the category, which is easier and works better than adding it to the article. -Mecanismo 12:08, May 2, 2005
• Keep. --Viriditas | Talk 12:07, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 12:57, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, lists and categories can exist simultaneously. Lists can sort info in more ways than just alhabetically (like this one does). Can add birth dates in case of people. Non-existent articles should be created. But it's always better to create articles than mere stubs. If a link is blue, people expect an article, not just a few lines of text. Mgm|^(talk) 18:24, May 2, 2005 (UTC)
  • Yes, in some cases simple list articles can coexist with category listings and in some cases they are even better suited. Still, undoubtedly category pages are better suited for this kind of list. Regarding the "better nothing than a little" point, I believe that you are wrong. If an article doesn't exist, people move on but If an article exists even in a stub form, the user has some information available. On top of that, the user can pick up where the article was left and bring in a small contribution, which is frequently done. Besides that, the stub articles are listed in a stub category, where users browse to see where they can contribute to developing articles. Therefore, there is only advantages in the "mark article as stub and add it to a category" way of doing things and so, this list (and others) is better suited as a category page instead of a simple article. --Mecanismo 08:06, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. We obviously need to document the past discussions of lists versus categories better. We repeat this discussion here regularly. Andrewa 21:08, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Lists and categories have different functions. RickK 23:36, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

It is already settled that category pages have better list functionality than regular pages. So, in your oppinion, what can a simple page do that a category page can't ? --Maciel 06:04, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Regular pages can list things which don't have their article, see the redlinks on the article? Sjakkalle 07:38, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

• If you wish to list an article that doesn't exist, create it, add it to the category, mark it as stub and move on, which is extremelly trivial thing to do and this has already been stated. On top of the strong points which make this the right thing to do, an article marked as stub gets the attention of contributors (being automatically listed in the stubs section), while a red link doesn't bring any added value whatsoever. --Mecanismo 07:54, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

• When you create an article as a stub, some person has to look at it, and recategorize it as a specific type of stub. Also the only type of stub that is really easy to create is substub definitions, which are not encouraged. Kappa 08:55, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

• The recategorization of a stub is a non-problem. But if someone believes it is a huge impediment, they should know that it is only made if the article is marked as a common stub. In the case of this article, that isn't needed. Please take a look at category:Computer language stubs --Mecanismo 11:19, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

• Lists can include red links. Lists can include more information than a category does, such as birth and death dates, nationality, a little bit of information. Do you think we should get rid of January 1 because we can create a category:January 1 and add it to every page linked from the January 1 article? Look at all of the information that would be lost. And are you really trying to encourage the creations of thousands of substubs? Do you know how many people would come down your head because you created a tiny article for every redlinked entry in every list page? RickK 22:16, May 3, 2005 (UTC)
• I already refuted those points in the past. Please read the comments above. And I'm not claiming that every list created in a simple article page should be converted into category page. Only the lists which are, like this one, better served with a category article should be converted/removed in detriment of the category article. We, as wikipedians, should strive to add value to wikipedia, whether it is by the introduction of information and cleaning up the "bazaar" mess. --Mecanismo 02:06, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

• Keep -- useful list - Longhair | Talk 02:18, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
  • No one is saying the information that the list holds isn't usefull. The whole pointis that, because of the existing category and the nature of a category page being better suited for this kind of list, this article is redundant and should be removed. This is a cleanup issue, not a censorship issue. --Mecanismo 02:06, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, as per Rick. Megan1967 04:29, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Discussion

• according to WP:CLS, in order to a list article not to be redundant, it has to do significantly better job of presenting the articles than the respective category. This list article doesn't do that. Therefore the elimination is well deserved. --Mecanismo 20:20, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
  • This article is better organized than an alphabetical list would be. Kappa 12:12, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.