Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of battles (alphabetical)

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. Yanksox 19:59, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of battles (alphabetical)

This page is impossible to maintain. There are thousands of battles in human history and they would all be impossible to organize into one page. This page is only biased toward some of the most famous battles. Also, this page now includes many non-battles (sieges, etc..). Some battles listed in red font actually exist so this page is becoming misleading. All battles on Wikipedia are already contained in Category: Battles.

• Strong Delete as nom. --Ineffable3000 01:38, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. TSO1D 01:54, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment It may just need cleanup. Obviously, there are thousands of battles, but only the notable ones make it onto Wikipedia, so I don't think it would be too impossible to maintain. Of course, there is the problem of deciding which name of a battle to use when placing it on this list. If you're going to delete this one, though, take a look at List of battles. Gzkn 01:57, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - some lists in List of battles are very good. The page List of battles does need expansion however. Some lists of battles will be impossible to maintain and should be deleted. I work with Wikiproject Military History and it is our goal to add every single battle in human history to Wikipedia, no matter how big or small it is. All battle are inherently notable (as historical events). Creating a list of The Most Important Battles would violate WP:POV. A list of battles with the most casualties already exists. If this list of battles is deleted, I will consider nominating other obsolete lists for deletion. Categories work well for many of the battles. Lists are only required for Battles of certain characteristics (casualties, certain event, etc.) --Ineffable3000 02:01, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment. Please, please, please remember that WP:N would keep "every" battle from having an article, thus restricting the list to only the most important and historically notable ones. I cannot overemphasize that enough. --Hemlock Martinis 01:33, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment Oh I know. I probably should have clarified...I meant the alphabetical list is not really that much different in scope than say the geographic list; some users might find alphabetical listing useful. Gzkn 02:03, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
      • Comment - I do not agree much with Geographic list either. It omits a lot of battles. How would a user not find a good category or just search just as useful? --Ineffable3000 02:06, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment - I am hoping that this AfD would bring a new test which determines what battle list is necessary (and good) and which is just impossible to maintain and obsolete. Please give opinions on the matter. In my opinion, such a test would help idealize the Lists of Battles. I am acting in Good Faith and do not wish to cause any harm to Wikipedia by doing this AfD. I just want the lists of Battles to become good, and I do not think that some of the lists are good at this moment. --Ineffable3000 02:06, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Looks fine to me. List can be sorted multiple ways, and the red links let me know what articles still need to be written. Why is the excuse to delete a list always that a category exists, and the reason to delete a category is that a list exists? Both should always exist! --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 02:12, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Proposition - Battle List Test:

The following lists of battles are good necessary:

Distinguished battles (by number of casualties, by number of forces, etc..)

Battles of each country (List of Battles of Russia, List of Battles of USA, etc..)

Battles of a certain conflict (Battles of the American Civil War, Battles of WWII, etc..)

The following lists of battles are not necessary, impossible to maintain, and are confusing:

Battles by century/millenium/decade (Battles of 100-200, etc..)

List of all battles (List of battles (alphabetical), List of battles (geographical), etc..)

List of most important battles in world history

Please add to my proposition or explain your support/opposition to it. --Ineffable3000 02:10, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

dude, the "list of battles 1200-1300" is just a subheading in a "list of battles chronologiocally" page. It divides it up and allows you to jump to a particular time period. You can have them all in 1 big list with no divisions if you like, or you can dividde them by war, or into centuries, or by war, as well as by century. It just serves to make it more manageble. Some battles weren't really part of a major war, or perhaps a war only had one battle, so you'd only give the title of the war where there were an appreciable number of battles in it. Others would be group together.

I'm not sure why naval battles isn't an acceptable category for you, while "battles during ramadan" is. Does ramadan change the nature of the fighting considerably? How about "battles conducted on a thursday"? SpookyMulder 12:16, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• Application of Proposition - I have evaluated the Lists of battles using my proposition:

List of battles before 601 - NOT ACCEPTABLE
List of Roman battles - ACCEPTABLE
List of battles 601-1400 - NOT ACCEPTABLE
List of battles 1401-1800 - NOT ACCEPTABLE
List of battles 1801-1900 - NOT ACCEPTABLE
List of battles 1901-2000 - NOT ACCEPTABLE
List of battles 2001-current - NOT ACCEPTABLE
List of battles (alphabetical) - NOT ACCEPTABLE
List of battles (geographic), i.e., by country - NOT ACCEPTABLE
List of Chinese battles - ACCEPTABLE
List of Islamic battles fought during Ramadan - ACCEPTABLE
List of Japanese battles - ACCEPTABLE
List of naval battles - NOT ACCEPTABLE
List of World War I battles - ACCEPTABLE
List of World War II battles - ACCEPTABLE
Most lethal American battles - ACCEPTABLE
Most lethal battles in world history - ACCEPTABLE

List of orders of battle - ACCEPTABLE
List of wars - ACCEPTABLE
List of Routs - NOT ACCEPTABLE
List of raids - NOT ACCEPTABLE
The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World - ACCEPTABLE

What do you think? --Ineffable3000 02:13, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• Ammendment to Proposition

Lists of wars are acceptable.

Lists of battles listed in a book are acceptable.

List of sieges is acceptable.

Please comment. Thank You. --Ineffable3000 02:17, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment - I am just interpreting WP:LIST for the case of lists of battles. --Ineffable3000 02:18, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

after fourth edit conflict :) Hmmm, I do feel that a chronological list (separated somehow into different time periods) might be useful. But it might be a pain do decide how to break it up. Perhaps this might be better on a talk page somewhere, though, maybe the Military History project talk page. Gzkn 02:18, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

The AfD page is fine for discussion. We can always copy final policies. I will put up a link to this page on the Wikiproject Military History page. --Ineffable3000 02:21, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, AFD pages are generally pretty bad for holding general discussions, as they operate under a seven-day limit and force things towards an artificial keep/delete dichotomy. Kirill Lokshin 02:47, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment - I have put a link to this AfD page on the Wikiproject talk page. Hopefully some experts will come and speak. But either way, in my opinion, a list of ALL BATTLES, should not exist. --Ineffable3000 02:33, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• Delete I don't see an alphabetical listing as a particularly useful axis for navigation, especially when there are lists/categories that organize the material much more effectively. Carom 02:44, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• The alphabetical list is, admittedly, pretty useless, as it's redundant to the categories (which already follow alphabetical sorting) in the local sense and to Wikipedia's search function in the global one. As it's additionally fairly difficult to maintain, I don't see a problem with deleting it.

More generally, the intent of lists is to provide a form of navigation that categories and templates do not. For battles, navigation by country (via Category:Battles by country) and war (via Category:Battles by war and campaignbox templates) are done fairly well without lists; the lists of battles for each country and war are thus often redundant (although they may still be useful, in some circumstances). The major—and very obvious—form of navigation that categories do not provide, however, is the chronological; categories are sorted alphabetically, which makes it quite difficult to arrange battles in order when browsing them. Here, lists—in particular, the lists of battles split into centuries (which are really just chunks of a single timeline of battles that has been broken apart due to size constraints)—really excel; I think that this application of lists is the primary one that ought to be retained.

Which is not to say that the current form of these lists is the most useful, of course. In the long term, I think it would be best to combine these with the corresponding chronological list of wars to create a grand Timeline of military conflicts (which may need to be split into chunks) that would list, for each year, the wars and corresponding battles that took place. Kirill Lokshin 02:47, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it is a good idea in the long run. But for now, why not create categories for conflict during each time period? --Ineffable3000 02:50, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Um, because the articles within the categories would still be sorted alphabetically? The point is not to have the set of battles in the Xth century, in other words; but to have a listing of battles in precise chronological order (the century part merely being a convenient way of producing readably-sized pages, nothing more). Kirill Lokshin 02:54, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment - Let's get a consensus on which lists should stay and which should get deleted. --Ineffable3000 02:52, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
  • This nomination is only discussing one list; if you want to suggest that others be deleted, you'll need to make separate nominations. (Which I don't recommend, incidentally, until after there's some sort of general consensus on what sort of lists we want to work with.) Kirill Lokshin 02:54, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
    • That is what I mean. We can still discuss what other lists we would like to nominate for deletion later here. --Ineffable3000 02:57, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
      • Well, here's what I would suggest:
        • List of battles (geographic) - delete; classifying battles by the modern states where their sites are located isn't very useful (and was deprecated as a category option for just that reason)
        • Lists by country or by war - some of these may be useful; others are redundant with the categories and campaignboxes
        • Lists by period (battles and wars) - combine into a single timeline, as I suggested above
        • Lists of routs/raids/etc. - delete, pretty much impossible to determine neutrally what goes into these
        • Lists by casualties - possibly combine into the timeline through the new sortable table option; alternately, rework into articles dealing with the rich historiography of these topics Kirill Lokshin 03:07, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. --Dennisthe2 03:09, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment - Kirill Lokshin, I think that Lists of casualties should stay as an independent list or merged into an article on war casualties. I also think that Lists by period should be deleted for now. We need a verification of dates for many of them and it requires a massive cleanup. Also, when do you think the Wikiproject will begin working on the timeline? --Ineffable3000 03:32, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Also, do you think that List of orders of battle, and List of sieges should be put up for deletion? I am supporting the deletion of all chronological lists for now. We can do a better job creating a timeline later. Which Lists (by country) do you think should be deleted? --Ineffable3000 03:42, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

List of military routs, List of raids, List of battles (geographic), and List of naval battles are now up for deletion due to expert consensus. --Ineffable3000 03:46, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I have added a few others to AfD. Please express your opinion. --Ineffable3000

The mass nominations aren't helping things here; we haven't had a chance to discuss anything properly. I would strongly urge you to hold off on nominating more lists for deletion until we actually come to a consensus (read: lots of people in agreement) on what we want to do with them. Kirill Lokshin 09:16, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• Minor Delete/Other This is alphabetically sorted, thus little more useful than a category. The chronological list of battles and a category for battles could easily replace this article. A fair amount of time should be offered to make sure everything on this list is both in the battles category, and on the chronological list. Perhaps people could go through and delete the entries as they are confirmed to keep track of the progress. When the list is empty, post a redirect to the category and clean up anything linking to this article. -NorsemanII 05:15, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. MER-C 06:50, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep but clean and expand. We should not just delete any article because it doesn't meet one of the policies. However the article should be splitted into other articles of smaller size.--Meno25 06:59, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. Listcruft, unmaintainable, duplicates categorization. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 08:20, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, listcruft, never ending, cannot be maintained, categories will be much better. This needs a lot of work if its kept. Terence Ong 10:31, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. I'd like to pinpoint the existence of new MediaWiki feature, class="sortable" tables, which you can see in operation e.g. here. While it should be used with judgment, it makes a lot of List of X (sorted by Y) lists redundant, as the user is now offered a database-like view of long lists that can be sorted at will. Perhaps converting/merging some of those lists to this format would keep the best of both worlds—maintainability and clarity on one side, and comprehensiveness and easy navigation on the other. Duja► 12:00, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep and convert into the tables as above, perhaps merging in some of the smaller lists.--Jackyd101 12:46, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete there are simply too many of them. This is what categories are for. Guy (Help!) 13:46, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per WP:LIST - no reason for deletion, does not duplicate categorisation. To suggest it's "crufty" is absolutely absurd. If someone thinks it's "unmaintainable" - they don't have to maintain it. Merely being a list is not a criterion for deletion, but it's the only one anyone seems to be advancing. WilyD 14:41, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete No strong opinion, but most of these battles are well covered in lists in their respective wars. I'm really indifferent as to this particular master list, but would lean towards dumping it. Scott Mingus 14:43, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep all lists of battles, and suggest that a unified discussion be made for all of these several battle lists. I frankly do not understand the animus against lists myself. - Smerdis of Tlön 15:59, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. An alphabetical list is really no better than a combination of categories and a search engine, unless the list is expanded to include a brief summary of the battles, which I am not recommending here. The other problem with this list is its potentially huge size. There are many hundreds of battle articles simply in the American Civil War space. No reader could possibly find value in this list if it were expanded to be comprehensive. Hal Jespersen 17:00, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete There are already more focused lists to cover battles. --InShaneee 17:24, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Delete Any kind of battle categorizations would be unfeasible or biased (e.g., should absolute number of casualties be used as a yardstick, or should the proportion as a percentage of the army be used. Or perhaps as a percentage of the country?). Xiner 22:08, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete My main concern is that this topic is so staggeringly broad as to preclude it being ever completed or maintainable. Listing battles under their individual wars makes far more sense, trying to list what could be literally thousands of entries in a single category would make it an immediate candidate for subcategorization anyway. As it stands the list seems like an indiscriminate collection because it's just 'battles' coallated without context. Also, it begs the question as to what a 'battle' is in this context: only a pitched military engagement? What about longer engagements called 'battles' such as the Ardennes? What about the second battle of hastings? Also: I think this will invite inevitable POV battles over what events should properly be called 'battles', with POV pushers one way fighting for something to be called a battle and POV pushers the other way trying to get them reclassified as 'insurrections' or 'attacks' or 'massacres' or something simularly biased. It's unmaintainable, vauge, unworkably large, and bound to invite division and editor conflict. Wintermut3 22:10, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Categories do not replace lists - they are just another style of organization. Rmhermen 00:42, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Useful and encyclopedic list. Edison 00:46, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Useful for quickl comparing several battles —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 129.62.118.184 (talk • contribs).
• Keep. Size does not indicate uselessness in this case. --Hemlock Martinis 05:08, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete This category is overly broad and impossible to maintain. A better approach would be to have individual lists of "notable battles of the X War". This would restrict the database to notable battles of noteworthy wars, and eliminate confusion between multiple battles fought at the same site. Stand-alone battles that were not part of a broader conflict may merit their own article, if notable. Djcastel 19:00, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
• strong keep Verifiable. A very useful search tool. Without this list you will never find the Battle of Abikur ! Size is not a maintainability problem. (hint: List of diseases starting with I)`' The category:Battles is quite awkward for search by name. mikkanarxi 20:47, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
• DeleteThis list can almost certainly never contain ever single battle held in human history and with it being so large already it can also not bring any ingomation to Wikipedia that isn't held elsewhere. Aussie King Pin 22:11, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Yes it can. You are grossly underestimating wikipedia. `'mikkanarxi 23:39, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
  • That's why we have notability requirements. --Hemlock Martinis 01:10, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
• Very strong keep - highly encyclopedic, and very useful browsing tool. This is the very type of material Wikipedia was created for, and battles comprise a key component of human history. Wikipedia already easily supports lists much greater in scope and size than this. See the List of mathematical articles which has grown so large that it has been split up into many sublists. Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, and doesn't suffer from the limitations of such.  The Transhumanist   11:02, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
• Question - What does "unmaintainable" mean? Does it mean too long to check if it covers everything?
• KeepIt seems obvious from the discussion that some find the list useful and appropriate. Thats enough reason-- every one here finds some things not useful, so that's hardly a criterion. DGG 07:44, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep I don't see any reason onWP:LIST that is behind a deletion for this article. I feel that 'unmaintainable' isn't a reason -- if people find it useful, they will maintain it. MrMacMan 23:13, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per Kirill Lokshin (5 Dec input) ... argument makes sense that 'alphabetical lists' are largely redundant with categories, albeit without the red-link potential; however, red-links appearing in a more contextually relevant list are more likely to be targeted for authoring of new articles than those appearing in a purely alphabetical listing. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 04:07, 11 December 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.