Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Binaca Geetmala 1971

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 no consensus, defaulting to keep. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 21:01, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Binaca Geetmala 1971

Delete - Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information? nonsense? cruft? There is a whole series of these articles, but I am following guidance at WP:AFD to list one article here first before bundling. --Brian G 04:01, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

• Delete Individual radio program's charts, while interesting, are not encyclopaedic. A link to an offsite repository of these can be linked from the Binaca Geetmala article. GassyGuy 04:20, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
• Neutral for now. Frankly, I think that this has no business on Wikipedia. But I am worried about systemic bias: do we really think that this would get the axe if this was an american radio show's list? I see a lot of lists concerning Bilboard hits and no one is putting these into question. (although maybe one should) Pascal.Tesson 04:34, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment This isn't really comparable to Billboard. Billboard is the major national chart of the United States. If this were a national Indian chart, I would vote to keep it. This is more like a chart issued by a local US radio station, though. To be completely fair, however, I will disclose this information: I recently voted to delete a comparable American radio chart summary at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/KROQ Top 106.7 Countdowns for similar reasons, but that one ended up kept, so if you're looking at thisprecedent alone, it'd be a weak keep. I don't know if other ones exist. GassyGuy 04:40, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Addendum If I am misrepresenting the BG charts, somebody with a better understanding please correct me. GassyGuy 04:43, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

In which case I would have to change my vote to a very reluctant weak keep because of precedents. I'm baffled that the KROQ countdown would survive an AfD, but thanks for honestly sharing that information. I'll be ready to vote for deletion once we start having more systematic standards against listcruft though. Pascal.Tesson 04:52, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

To be strictly accurate, the result on KROQ was No Consensus, not Keep, partially based on some "Keep because we kept it the last time" votes. Just because we made one wrong decision doesn't mean we should repeat it for consistency. Fan-1967 15:28, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. Criminey - the KROQ countdown was a "no consensus"?... Tychocat 11:51, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. Local interest listcruft. Not even sure about the parent article Binaca Geetmala but given the built in bias in the Net it's hard to tell --Peripitus (Talk) 12:24, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per GassyGuy, though I am a little bothered with the inconsistency of that KROQ one being kept. If this is kept (and its dozens of brothers), would it be too much to ask that there be a header line to explain what it is? IMNSHO the entire set could be speedied as db-context. There is no way from the article to even know that it's a list of songs. Fan-1967 14:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. --PresN 15:18, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

COMMENT: Gassy Guy let me correct you. Binaca geetmala is NOT a chart issued by a local radio station - rather it is an old program that used to play in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the middle east through radio stations in Sri Lanka and then India. The program played every week from 1952 till mid 1994. The annual charts were a summation of the weekly charts. It was the ONLY countdown show of Hindi film songs in South Asia and the Middle East during its times with many millions of listeners every week - in other words it was definitely comparable to the Billboard charts. The historical significance of everything that I (and others) put up in these pages are immense for the many South Asian heritage readers that you have and will have. And yes, history whether it be musical history as represented here, or movie history or political history or military history is always encyclopaedic and deserve a place on Wikipedia - irrespective of whether we are talking of US history or the history of some other nation. And by the way - it is NOT an indiscriminate collection of nonsense as observed by one very wise (?) commentator here - For everyone's information, the cultural history of some country other than the US does not make it indiscriminate nonsense !!!--Ghoshi 17:45, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment - Ghoshi, please do not take offence to my nomination of this article. Quoting from WP:GD - "Please do not take it personally Please remember that the deletion process is about the appropriateness of the article for inclusion in Wikipedia. A deletion nomination is not a rejection of the author or an attack on his/her value as a member of the Wikipedia community. When I first saw these articles, there was no context for them, and my lack of knowledge of the proper language honestly made it appear to me as gibberish. I never meant to imply that non-US culture was either indiscriminate or nonsensical, but rather, I could not make any sense of the article when I read it. Respectfully --Brian G 18:27, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Please do, however, consider WP:OSTRICH.Hornplease

• Comment Can you at least add some explanation into these articles? Imagine an ignorant Westerner (me, for example) stumbling onto this article. What is it about? No way to tell. All I see is what looks like a list of foreign words or names. Nothing says it's a list of songs. Nothing tells me what the entries mean. Is "Zindagi Ek Safar" a song title or an artist? What about "Andaaz"? "Shankar-Jaikishan"? It's like some of the articles we see about an episode of a television program that forget to mention what the program is. The article needs to provide context. Fan-1967 18:25, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
• Comment Maybe we can put this group of articles under some suitable Hindi Film Music or Bollywood film music topic - I will search for something like that - I'm sure it exists on Wikipedia. It will take a while for me (and others) to put in all the information and explanations - so please be patient - I promise at the end of our project everything will be well explained. Please do not delete the group of articles - i will keep adding info, and find a suitable topic under which we can place it . Thanks --Ghoshi 18:57, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

• Comment While I'm still iffy on whether the lists themselves have a place here, I do believe that the songs themselves deserve mention as popular songs. Is there any way to incorporate them into the years in music articles (1970 in music et al)? I just read the 1970 one and it has a horrible lack of material about non-Western music. Anyone have any thoughts into possible integration of the songs into articles of that sort? GassyGuy 23:32, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
• Comment boy... I can't believe I'm actually fighting to keep this article... I understand the argument that just because we made a mistake on the KROQ list does not force us to make the same mistake here but I will say this again: some people put a lot of effort in trying to develop the non-north-american content to Wikipedia and I think that we should think twice about holding different standards for other cultures. Of course, who's going to notice this article being deleted? One or two people if we're lucky. In contrast there will be a few dozens of KROQ listeners ready to step up and defend the "I know this radio station so this should be kept" line. What's the rush here? at least one editor seems to know what these lists are. Let's give it a few months to expand, explain the context and so on. If we conclude that the whole thing is still unverifiable cruft, then I'll be happy to delete. In the meantime I think this deserves a bit of a chance. Pascal.Tesson 01:43, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Keep and add context. JChap (Talk) 03:17, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Keep - You mean you only keep what the masses want? These poor people have worked on this article! Trunk 18:27, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Respectfully, I don't think that there is an issue will all the "poor people" that you are concerned with. It appears that the article was a simple copy/paste job and has no edit history to speak of. Of course, more work may have gone into it, but I don't see any evidence of that. At any rate, I'm not sure that this is relevant to the discussion to either keep or delete the article. --Brian G 19:02, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep. The Binaca Geetmala used to air on Radio Ceylon. Somewhat like the BBC Home Service at the time, All India Radio would play a very limited amount of popular music. Radio Ceylon was the sole outlet for much popular music, and the Binaca Geetmala its primary countdown show. Top ten lists from the Binaca Geetmala, the programme itself, and its legendary presenter Ameen Sayani are all encyclopaedic articles. At least, they are if Billboard is. Hornplease 05:26, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
• Changing my vote to definite keep as I think there is now sufficient indication that this is waaaaaaay more notable than the KROQ countdown! Of course, there should be an expand-tag added to the whole bunch of articles but they deserve their spot. Pascal.Tesson 05:54, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

• Comment First, let me say that I was never in doubt that the Binaca Geetmala itself was notable. Second, based on my understanding of this, this is a year-end chart of a popular music radio show. I'm starting to feel more that we should err on the side of caution and not delete this one, but first I would like to ask - was this a daily countdown? Weekly? Monthly? Currently, we have year-end charts from this show. If this chart is analogous to Billboard, is it possible to format it similar to the Billboard lists? For example, rather than a year-end chart, could there be a chart from each year showing the song that headed Binaca Geetmala's countdown week by week? GassyGuy 08:01, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment - While I did do some searching before I entered this nomination, reading more at WP:CSB and WP:OSTRICH have convinced me that perhaps I did not do enough. I'm still not happy with the lists as they are and hope that they would be cleaned up, and I do feel that this generated some good collaborative discussion about that improvement that likely would never have happened if I had simply posted a question to the talk page. At the same time, I must acknowledge that deleting this article is probably not the way to go and am leaning towards withdrawal of this Afd. --Brian G 13:22, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

• Keepper Hornplease. Angus McLellan (Talk) 19:20, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep but please provide context and more information, as commented on above. Should be tagged with Needs Improvement and/or Cleanup. Scorpiondollprincess 13:17, 18 July 2006 (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.