Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of cancer patients

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 of the debate was delete. Neutrality^talk 15:31, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] List of cancer patients

This list is accurate but cancer is the most common death and that list names all the cancer patients which is way to many and that list is even probaly a stub.See Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/List of famous pneumonia suffers Delete --Aranda56 01:58, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

• Delete: I'm not a fan of these kinds of infinite list articles to begin with, but if the article is kept, it ought to at least be limited and changed to, maybe, "Famous" or "Notable cancer patients". Even then, the list could possibly grow into the tens or hundreds of thousands. — Cory Maylett 02:27, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete or make into category. The main advantages of lists over categories are (a) redlinks can be added (but in this case, only bluelinks should be allowed to maintain verifiability) and (b) lists can be annotated, but I can't see much use for annotation here. So this would be an OK category but not much of a list. — Phil Welch 02:41, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
• Phil makes a compelling argument. I think the list should be categorified, deleted afterwards. --fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 03:15, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
• Make into a category and then delete --Icarus 05:20, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete unencyclopedic, unmaintainable list. I don't think that Category:People who died of cancer would be a good idea, either. DES ^(talk) 05:31, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
• Make into a category. I like lists, but this particular one can grow beyond large. Shouldn't we merge the edit history to show who added people to the list/category? - Mgm|^(talk) 09:16, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I don't think you can do that -- a category has no history connected with the individual items in the category, that history is entirely in the individual items. DES ^(talk) 11:55, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete as per Cory Maylett and Aranda56. Don't make a category. What good is a category listing half the people on Wikipedia? -- Kjkolb 10:16, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Completely indiscriminate collection of information that serves no purpose. Categories could help. Please note that many of these people did not die of cancer (it's possible to have cancer for decades and die from a motor crash or heart attack). JFW | T@lk 11:50, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Well, IMO Category:People diagnosed with cancer is of even less use, if that is possible, than Category:People who died of cancer. DES ^(talk) 11:53, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Unmaintainable. Could potentially have millions of names on it. Even a list of famous people with cancer would be unmaintainable since there are so many. 23skidoo 16:42, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
• Make into "cancer patient" category and then delete per Phil. Completely unmaintainable as a list. --Blackcap | talk 19:45, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete (what is with this listmania) . ≈ jossi ≈ 21:36, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete big lists. Do not make into a category. That would be even worse. I'd rather see this page stick around than such a category tag applied to hundreds and hundreds of articles. What other categories can we think of? "Men with male pattern baldness?" "Cities with beaches?" Bunchofgrapes 22:40, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Completely idiosyncratic non-topic. Dpbsmith (talk) 22:58, 19 September 2005 (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.