Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of military operations

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. W.marsh 20:53, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of military operations

Too long and impossible to maintain. Can be simply replaced by a category. --Ineffable3000

• Strong Delete as nom. --Ineffable3000 04:35, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. Very incomplete too. MER-C 07:27, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, can never be a complete list. Categories are better for such stuff. Terence Ong 12:19, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete useless and redundant. TSO1D 14:25, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Merge selected red links into list of requested articles. — RJH (talk) 18:34, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep I find it useful to be sorted by country, if it gets too big break it into smaller pieces. Its been very helpful in following the war in Afghanistan. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 19:12, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Useful list doing things categories can't. Subdivision probably called for, though. Rmhermen 00:39, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment - Read WP:SNOW. Articles (lists) that are impossible to finish should not be created. It is impossible to list all military operations on one page. The operations of the war in Iraq alone require their own list. --Ineffable3000 02:32, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
  • thats someone's essay, not a guideline. By that rationale there should be no lists of world leaders or popes. Every year or so there is another one. So logically, if time is infinite, no list will be complete.
  • Comment - The list is well within the realm of possibility for completion, and there are a great many lists on Wikipedia that are far more extensive than this. Check out the List of mathematical articles. That list is so gigantic that it has been split into dozens of sublists. Military operations is a tiny subject by comparison. Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, and therefore, article size is not a consideration here, since this valuable subject matter can be split into sublists when the time comes fairly easily.  The Transhumanist   09:18, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Categories don't provide the proper depth that a list does, especially in this case. Poor reasoning. --Hemlock Martinis 05:13, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep See WP:Deletion policy. Length is definitely not a reason to delete something, and maintenance would be easy. It's a list, maintenance is inherently very easy. Replacing it with a category would destroy the structure of the article which is presently very useful despite the length. Having all of this listed by region, and sorted by the date the operation was carried out, with indicators for the country of origin is extremely useful and something a category can't even attempt to replace. It reads well, and the content is very useful. I would suggest splitting it into sub-articles for length, and I can do this myself if we're going to keep it, but otherwise it's perfect. As there is no good reason to delete it, and the article is so well structured and useful, I must strongly recommend keeping it. -NorsemanII 07:08, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete or limit the scope to "Major 20th-century military conflicts", which is what the article currently is, anyway. Maintenance of a list of every military operation in history would most certainly not be easy. Size is indeed a reason for deletion when the nature of the list would practically make it an almanac all by itself. For anyone with an appreciation of how many military conflicts there have been throughout history, deletion should be an easy call. Djcastel
• Delete per nom, categorise. WP:BAI++. Angus McLellan (Talk) 19:54, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. WP:BAI has nothing pertaining to the current topic. --Hemlock Martinis 01:15, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - This is an annotated and a structured list, and Wikipedia's category system doesn't support either of these features. The annotations on this list make it much more useful than a category that just has a bunch of unexplained links. This list provides a useful summary of each major war (WWII, etc.), as each war is in large part characterized by the operations which took place during it. A very encyclopedic, informative list.  The Transhumanist   09:10, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep — per Hemlock and The Transhumanist. Dionyseus 02:35, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. A category could not possibly replace this article. --- RockMFR 04:35, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
• KeepI am really puzzled why some editors wantto delete lists that others find useful and are willing to maintain.DGG 07:53, 10 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.