Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Australian novelists

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 Keep Gnangarra 13:22, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of Australian novelists

List of Australian novelists (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Nothing more than an alphabetical list that is less than the associated category, Category:Australian novelists. Unreferenced per WP:BLP; even for seemingly uncontroversial lists this is still a requirement. There are better places for redlinks such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/To-do Delete --Steve _(Stephen) ^talk 02:22, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Australia-related deletions. --   ⇒ bsnowball  09:10, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep am slowly adding dates, & note, no previous attempt has been made to fix the 'problem' by even suggesting changes such as periodising etc. this should have been done 1st. regards blp, irrelevant as 'novelist' is not a criticism.  ⇒ bsnowball  09:10, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

• Comment BLP is not "irrelevent". Every biographical fact we record should be backed by a reference. Who are we to say what is controversial or not? --Steve _(Stephen) ^talk 21:50, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

• Delete unless... another person or the author can verify & make the list more interesting than its category. See one of the best lists (;)) on Wikipedia as a guideline - List of dinosaurs. That my friend is a list! If this list can be 1) Cited. 2)Expanded. 3)Made interesting. Then I'd say keep, but until then, delete... Spawn Man 09:20, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

That's what a request for expansion is for - not an AfD. I'm sure people will do that if you support it, given bsnowball's pledge above. JRG 22:34, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

• Delete Category is enough. Adding dates and other useless info isn't really going to improve the usability of the list.--Dacium 10:16, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep There is an article for List of novelists by nationality so this article can be remained, but it should be improved.--Sa.vakilian(t-c) 10:40, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. Hardly a great list, but dates and redlinks save this from being entirely redundant with a category. The redlinks should be in the article space and not Wikipedia space, because if someone searches for "Russell Braddon" without any clue to who this person is, they should at least be given a search result (hope our search function is working) to this page where they will at least find that the person is an Australian novelist. It is sparse info until we can get a full article, but I think lists in article-space (viewed by many) are more fertile breeding grounds for new articles than a corresponding list in Wikipedia-space (viewed only by members of the Australia or literature WikiProjects). Sjakkalle (Check!) 13:01, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

• Comment But how would they know that Russell Braddon was in any way notable, and not just a vanity entry, and what references are there for him being a novelist? --Steve _(Stephen) ^talk 21:50, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

• Keep - with the caveats added above. --Martin Wisse 13:25, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete as there cannot be any reliable reference for the list. That means it attracts marginal cases and vanity edits. I know a "novelist" who once had a novel published on the internet (I think it was not self-published, but still not available offline). For the "Russell Braddon" example, the other 7 search results are more useful than this one. Bsnowball, if you're doing the research to fill out this table, why not write a stub for the article instead, citing the references you found? Is Arthur W. Upfield vanity or an important part of literary history - inclusion in this list doesn't tell us. --Scott Davis ^Talk 14:10, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
• comment how about what should have been done before afd? what would a 'proper' list look like? periodisation? (pre-fed, pre/postwar; i am prepared to do this if i know the list won't be deleted anyway) adding informative 'comments'? (also re scott, i'm maintaining the list, so at the moment i decide what's vanity ;) but as a rule of thumb, if they've got a few books in the nla catalogue i leave them in. what do you mean, stub for what article?)  ⇒ bsnowball  17:44, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Grouping by time doesn't make a difference to my opinion. It might for others. What I meant was to write a stub for the novelist at the time you've done enough research to verify their notability. A stub containing: Name (dates of birth/death) is/was an Australian novelist. Some key fact about their life or writing, bibliography, reference list, categories and stub template should be plenty to keep them from ending up here, demonstrates the notability, and gives other editors somewhere to hang any additional information they find. --Scott Davis ^Talk 12:06, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletions. --   ⇒ bsnowball  17:44, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep as useful list being maintained. I assume Arthur W. Upfield is a reference to Arthur Upfield who was a popular writer responsible for the Boney books. Capitalistroadster 01:20, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep compares well to List of English novelists, however it could be improved with additional summary information (date of birth/death, most notable title / genre)Garrie 01:41, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
  • There's WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS to refute that concern. --Scott Davis ^Talk 12:06, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
    • While that is true - IMO lists in themselves are only useful in comparison to similar lists. A list of Australian novelists - if it is the only list of novelists - is rubbish. As one of a group of novelists by nationality it becomes much more meaningful.Garrie 23:36, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per Bsnowball's pledge to clean up the article and reference it; and the fact that lists of novelists of other nationalists also exist which would make our Australian content worse than it is at present. This is not really an inexhaustive list: it takes a bit of doing to become a novelists well-known enough to have an article on Wikipedia. JRG 09:33, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per Scott.--cj | talk 13:00, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
• Rename to List of Australian writers. Generalize it. Usedup 22:56, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Bad idea, then it becomes even more impossible to make a comprehensive list. --Peta 03:38, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
    • What if novelists, literary critics, nonfiction writers and such were separated by section headings? Usedup 16:00, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, the list is defined and possible to complete. --Peta 03:38, 23 March 2007 (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.