Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of African musicians

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 Keep Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 07:51, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] List of African musicians

Categorize Absolutely nothing here that could not be handled with appropriate categories. No indication of why these particular musicians were selected for inculsion. Some lists are useful, but this one isn't. Caerwine 04:19, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

• Keep, this way users can see a whole continent at a glance, instead of having to click on 50 categories. Kappa 05:59, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep However a Category for African musicians sounds like a good idea. An advantage with this though is all the red names can hopefully inspire someone to "turn them blue." Usually a list with a great many red names I think is a bad sign. However African issues are so poorly dealt with at Wiki anything that encourages better coverage I think is a good idea. All the names there needing to be filled could do that.--T. Anthony 06:00, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Category:African musicians exists. There doesn't seem to be a Category:European musicians though. Kappa 07:17, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Good catch, I have just created Category:European musicians and have started adding Category:Austrian musicians, Category:Belgian musicians, etc. to it. Andrew Levine 00:11, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Two reasons for keeping this list: 1) The red links are suggestions for new articles, as Anthony said. 2) If you want to search in Category:African musicians, you need to browse all the subcategories as well to find a musician if you don't know his or her nationality. Riki 12:54, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep being African has a fair chance of having influenced how they play music, whereas ebing Jewish has little chance of influencing how you play chess. -Doc ^ask? 20:17, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep per Riki and Doc. Andrew Levine 00:06, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep per Kappa and T. Anthony. You can't categorize red links and we need them to improve coverage of African music. It also makes searching for a musician a lot easier if you don't know where they live. Lists and categories serve different purposes, and I think the use this list serves is clear. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:57, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep per Riki, Doc and WP:CLS. No problem with keeping the cat too, though. Jacqui^★ 15:21, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
• Speedy keep this list is useful. That Europe does not have an equivalent list is not an adequate argument – there are lists that adequately accommodate even the most non-notable European garage band (eg. List of death metal bands). Removing this list will only lead to the need for 42 eternal three sentence stubs like List of Benga musicians, which will do nothing but exacerbate the existing bias. / Ezeu 05:12, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
• Comment Given that the only thing these lists have at the moment are names, one wonders why the search box in the sidebar won't suffice. The only other reason I've heard expressed for keeping this list and the other one that I proposed for deletion is not that a reader will find the list useful in its own right, but that it will somwhow act as a spur to improve the coverage of this area of knowledge by Wikipedia. Exactly how this magic is supposed to occur is never explained, but I'll assume for the moment that it will somehow occur. If that's the case, why shouldn't this list be moved to Wikipedia:List of African musicians that Wikipedia needs articles on or more normally Wikipedia:WikiProject African musicians? Caerwine 07:03, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

"Exactly how this magic is supposed to occur." You get new people interested in African musicians. If this is placed in the category of that name all the better. Anyway I have an interest in China. I think I found List of Chinese painters because for a time I had a Chinese involved category on my watchlist. All the red names I saw on the list did inspire me because I had information in my own books that could add those names. There might be an article on Mi Fu without that list, but it would've been done later and the list gave me a job to work on, with pleasure, for a time.--T. Anthony 01:39, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

That said if a Project is preferred for that okay. The thing is not all of us are as social as others. I don't follow projects very well or go to the community portal that much.--T. Anthony 01:42, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

• The search box would suffice if the search result could yield a list of African musicians sorted by country (now, that would be magic). This list, like every other list on wikipedia, is a compliment to the search box, and a compliment to categories. With your argument, all lists should be deleted. According to Wikipedia:Lists, Some lists are useful for Wikipedia development purposes. The lists of related topics give an indication of the state of the 'pedia, the articles that have been written, and the articles that have yet to be written. This and other examples of why this list is useful is given there. / Ezeu 14:02, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
  • There are three purposes Wikipedia:Lists gives for lists, Information, Navigation, Development.

    Information Unlike a List of Academy Awards ceremonies, List of Baku metro stations, or anyother number of lists on Wikipedia where there is some reasonable prospect that a person would seek the list as a whole and thus as information, why would anyone seek this list as information in its own right and not as a aid to navigation or development? By its very nature it is inherently incomplete and can never be completed. There is no indication of why these African musicians and not others have been included. Considered only as information it is at best a collection of indiscrimate information, not worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia.

    Navigation There is nothing in this list that is an improvement over the ability to navigate provided by the category system. It lists its entries in alphabetical order for each country, the same as is provided by the category system. Considered only as an aid to navigation, it is not an improvement over categories (at least in its present form) and thus not worth keeping.

    Development I will concede that this list is potentially useful for development (if we can find someone who is willing and able to do the development), but since it has no other apparent value, it belongs in the Wikipedia namespace, not the main one. Caerwine 16:54, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

• You said "if we can find someone who is willing and able to do the development" - do not patronize those who have contibuted to that list. What will you crusade against next, List of African writers (by country)? / Ezeu 08:52, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Possibly it could be divided into East, West, North and Southern Africa. My interest in African music is mostly Southern and West although I like Souad Massi a fair amount. Alternatively if it lives maybe we could divide the nations up that way instead of alphabetically. Or I'm just babbling due to the hour.--T. Anthony 09:42, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

• At the risk of repeating myself, this list offers the navigational advantage over the category that users can see every member without having to click on a separate link for each country. From the point of view of information, it has the advantage of including an alternate name for Steady Bongo, which a category cannot do. From the POV of development, we are much more likely to find someone who is willing and able to write articles about African musicians if these people actually find this list, which is much more likely if it's in the main namespace, linked from other pages and google-able, than if it's buried in the wikipedia space. Kappa 09:50, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

• Keep — RJH 16:13, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 09:15, 23 November 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.