Talk:List of people by name: name S

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[edit] Hang On!

First, this is not a page that meets the criterion cited.
Second, while pages entirely like this one have generally not been created until the last week or so, that was an abberation that is now being remedied: The creation of other kinds name-entry-free pages for LoPbN has been defended before and always been supported. (Citations will follow in a few minutes.) The difference between this case and the previous cases is that only the creation of LoPbN pages covering obviousgaps in the alphabetic sequence has been previously challenged, while this page is a subtle, non-obvious gap. (Details, or links to where the need to cover gaps has been made before will also follow in a few minutes.)
--Jerzy•t 04:04, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

First, i spoke hastily, and claimed no WP:CSD was met. In fact, apparently it at least technically is a case of A3, since

it consists entirely of links (with the exception of a section heading and the headings of the ToC and "Access points" boxes, which i won't argue make any difference to the criterion), and

altho it is a navigational page (and thus differs from true article pages in much the same way that Dabs do), it is not a Dab page.

While harm from deleting this talk page's LoPbN-tree page and List of people by name: name V would not come quickly, and their respective contents can be quickly regenerated using {subst:lopbn-pnmempty|S}}and {subst:lopbn-pnmempty|V}} respectively), the only harm that can come from retaining them pending discussion will be some degree of confusion about why they are being tolerated.

Thus i propose retaining these pages for now, and i am proposing replacing the last sentence of WP:CSD#Articles, point 3, with the following wording (bold part is new):

This does not include apply to disambiguation pages. Nor does it apply to an empty page, within a multi-page list on which new entries are expected to appear indefinitely, if the empty page declares itself as the proper location for a class of potential entries, which could not otherwise be expected to be correctly placed by some of the editors who have wiki-skills adequate for accurately adding equivalent entries on a single-page list.

The logic of this provision is that

1. Experience with LoPbN has shown that the LoPbN pages that are currently "Index-only" pages (List of people by name: B is a good example) cannot serve both the function of providing access to their child-pages (e.g. List of people by name: Ba and List of people by name: Bb-Bd) and the function of providing a place for Emma B's entry (which doesn't belong on List of people by name: Ba, bcz the surname "B" doesn't begin "Ba" and must precede all the surnames beginning with "Ba"). If it tried to do both, it would collect not just the surname B, but several of the much more numerous surnames in which an initial B is followed by additional letters. That situation snowballs: not only the next editor adding a B name, but those looking for names that are already on the list, are given good reason to believe that neither Bach, Beethoven, nor Bush is yet listed, and to stop looking for them, and perhaps to shift their attention to erroneously adding those missing names to the List of people by name: B page.
2. Bcz names are far from smoothly distributed among the various letter sequences, there is a general pattern of one or a handful of n+1-letter combinations each requiring a page to itself, while some others starting with the same n letters have, for the time being, no corresponding names on the list. The combinations Bb, Bc, and Bd ("obviously" permanently to be unused) shared an empty page allocated for them, for the 29 months following the point when Ba's need for its own page was acted on.
3. Forgoing the advance creation of that page could have any of three outcomes:
   1. Inhibiting the addition of the names now on it
   2. Misplacement of the names on an existing page(s) where many users would not seek them.
   3. Leaving it to a probably unprepared editor to (give up adding them, or)

      decide what the scope of a new page or pages for them should be;

      provide for the standard complement of links from it to the other B... pages, and to the 26 A to Z pages;

      provide for links to it from those other B... pages, and from the B index-only page.

I shall be proposing some such wording change in the next few days. I think the deletions sought can wait until the wording has been considered.

I also suggest (as i hinted above) review of previous deletion discussions on LoPbN pages, accessible through Talk:List of people by name#Full List of VfD/AfD Debates.
--Jerzy•t 08:35, 12 November 2006 (UTC)