Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Greatest Hits (Kenny Chesney album)

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 on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was keep. – Rich Farmbrough 21:49, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Greatest Hits (Kenny Chesney album)

Greatest hits albums are inherently non-notable — see Wikipedia:WikiProject Music#Albums, bands, and songs: "Unless there's extenuating circumstances, greatest hits and compilation albums don't need an article". Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 10:15, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

• Delete, just to keep things clear. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 10:15, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete in agreement with Mel. Barno 18:09, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
• Comment: There are 274 articles in Category:Greatest hits albums, and another 90 in Category:Compilation albums. -- Reinyday, 21:19, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

  I know — this is by way of testing the waters before I start going through them. Some of them will be OK, but I suspect that most of them are just the result of fans' obsessions. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 21:33, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

• I would have said "merge" to Kenny Chesney, but it's nothing but a track list and an almost-empty infobox. If we're going to be strict about this Greatest Hits guideline, we should delete both the article and the album cover which will then have no fair use rationale. Jkelly 22:57, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, useful, shows which of his song have endured. Kappa 23:02, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

  Well, first, it only shows which of his songs were chosen to be on the album. Secondly, that could be mentioned in the article on him. That's why the Wikproject guidelines say what they do. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:16, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

• Keep per Kappa. As I understand it, the Wikiproject "guidelines" are just suggestions for the project itself, not 'pedia policy/guidelines. Regardless, articles specifically for greatest hits albums seem much better for information organization than in artist articles. — Lomn | Talk / RfC 18:59, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep' Kenny Chesney is a major artist. OmegaWikipedia 15:19, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

  But what does that have to do with it? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:30, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

• Keep, albeit reluctantly. I agree, these compilations are a problem. Essentially, there is nothing to put there except an infobox and a track list. OTOH, why should we exclude that information; it seems perfectly reasonable to expect people to look it up. I've been gradually working my way through the Frank Zappa discography, which clearly has a few of these compilations, and none of them worth their own page. But one of them's already got one. I'm thinking a reasonable compromise — inspired, incidentally, by Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Caruso recordings (various articles) — would be to create a single page, for such artists, to include all their compilations (or at least all the ones that don't contain original material) at, say, ARTIST NAME compilation albums. Any thoughts? In Chesney's case, this Greatest Hits album seems to be his only compilation [1]. And, moreover, it looks to contain 4 previously unreleased tracks [2]. So I'd argue that this particular album deserves its own page. Flowerparty■ 03:06, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

  In principle the Caruso model seems OK, but there's a big difference: all Caruso albums are compilations, and they overlap with each other to a large extent. I'm not really keen on the single article (it contains massive redundancy), but it's better than twenty or thirty individual articles, each one offering nothing but a track listing. One of Wikipedia's key policies is: "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Its goals go no further." As a corollary: "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of items of information." Hundreds of articles on greatest-hits compilations seem to me to go against both of those. When we consider what should be included, we shouldn't be asking "why not?" but "why?"; "why not?" leads to indiscriminate collections of information, while "why?" leads to an encyclopædia. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 12:07, 2 October 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 an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.