Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of LGBT Jews

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. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-12-27 06:04Z

[edit] List of LGBT Jews

List of LGBT Jews (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Categorize - There is no need to list LGBT Jews by their occupation, which seems to be the only reason this list is even maintained. This should be converted into a category to better organize its contents per Category:LGBT Christians. Kari Hazzard (T | C) 04:24, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment: A list allows for a brief, one-line bio, which can help readers find the person they're looking for. A list also allows for the inclusion of red links to be filled in later, while a category does not. I do not have a vote one way or the other. — coelacan talk — 04:37, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - list is better than a category because such a compilation requires sourcing. That should happen in the individual articles but people looking at the cat cant see sources. savidan^{(talk) (e@)} 05:21, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - The number of additions which are sourced is less than half and with a category the relevant citations would be in the articles in the category anyway. Kari Hazzard (T | C) 06:10, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment With lists such as these, there are always thorny issues about categorization. For example, I was very surprised to discover that H.L.A. Hart was a homosexual, until I made the further discovery that he was married with four children and that it is some unnamed, unsourced "biographers" who claim that he's gay. I'm not going to do anything about it because doing that would involve a revert war and most likely some nasty attacks on my own motives. I would like it if someone would properly source this list and indeed leave out the ones whose sexuality is based on conjecture, or by a claims made by a minority of their biographers (who after all often make such claims to generate attention; if you don't believe me think of Albert Goldman's scandalous biography of John Lennon [which ironically enough accused him of homosexuality-- add Lennon to the list of LGBT Britons!]), but this is wikipedia after all and it is expecting too much for people to follow historical methods. Allon FambrizziAllon Fambrizzi
  • After looking further at the list, I'm changing my vote to Delete because many of these people are not sourced (Jonathan Taylor Thomas, etc.). Sourcing should be mandatory in this situation because of the markedly personal nature of claims about people's sexuality. And to be frank, how would you react if your sexuality were unfairly miscategorized like this? Allon FambrizziAllon Fambrizzi
    • Indeed. WP:LIVING applies here. Kari Hazzard (T | C) 07:31, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 06:15, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Well, it can be expanded and cleaned up. There have been far less notable lists that are still here on Wikipedia after passing AFD. S h a r k f a c e 2 1 7 06:53, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep and cleanup, such lists do have encyclopedic value. Terence Ong 07:56, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. The nominator asks for this to become a category, however it does not meet the criteria mentioned in our guidelines at Wikipedia:Categorization/Gender, race and sexuality#Special subcategories which says that Dedicated group-subject subcategories, such as Category:LGBT writers or Category:African American musicians, should only be created where that combination is itself recognized as a distinct and unique cultural topic in its own right. You must be able to write a substantial and encyclopedic head article (not just a list) for the category — if this cannot be done, then the category is not valid. I don't think there is anything distinct and unique about being LGBT and Jewish, and I speak from personal experience. Categories have entries without citations, and categorization policy general guideline (#8) says, "Categories appear without annotations, so be careful of NPOV when creating or filling categories. Unless it is self-evident and uncontroversial that something belongs in a category, it should not be put into a category. A list might be a better option." This guideline was written for examples such as this case. -- Samuel Wantman 08:00, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm surprised you can't think of anything distinct and unique about being LGBT and Jewish. Have you seen Trembling Before G-d? There are gay synagogues, such as Beth Chayim Chadashim. In recent decades there has been a lot of controversy within Judaism about LGBT issues. While some of this is similar to the controversy in Christianity, there are also substantial differences. Dfeuer 07:12, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. ditto Rearden Metal 08:15, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete or at least substantially prune because most of the list is unsourced and in the same time it is about biographies of living persons (WP:LIVING !). Therefore for every person in the list we need a proof (=reliable reference) that he/she identifies as 1) Jew and 2) LGBT - otherwies it is libel and WP:OR.--Ioannes Pragensis 11:59, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. As people can see from the page history, there has been an effort to work the source problem for this list. If someone wants to prune the names for whom there are no sources while references are found, fine. I'm focused on sorting ref problems on other similarly unsourced lists and just haven't got round to it. But I think a list is more useful than a category- a category would simply give each person's name. This list provides brief information about each person (and hopefully a quickly checked reference), without having to visit each person's article in turn.- WJBscribe ^{(WJB talk)} 12:13, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes I tried it for the first three paragraphs. More than 50% deleted because of WP:LIVING (I checked also their WP articles for sources and references and found no relevant ones for at least one of the two claims). And most of the rest are dead persons, very often still with WP:V issues (I added the cn tags). My conclusion is that the list in this form is very bad and should be quicly pruned or deleted - WP:LIVING is really an important issue.--Ioannes Pragensis 21:45, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Wait, so would you have a problem if I simply went through and delete all the unsourced ones? Because right now only about five of them are sourced. This is crazy; the list will never be sourced properly. Also, I am concerned that Wikipedia should not be a forum for outing people: the risk of error in such assessments (esp. by activists who are not disinterested observers) is much too high. Allon FambrizziAllon Fambrizzi

• Keep. Source better. Haiduc 12:27, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per WP:LIST WilyD 16:45, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per Terence Ong - Nico2001 22:01, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. This kind of list-making is too easily abused by those who wish to promote, vilify, or "out" people — depending on one's agenda — regardless of unbiased evidence of this socially powerful categorization. One major benefit of using Wikimedia categories instead of lists is that the claim for inclusion or exclusion is made in the subject's article (with the cat tag), not an external list. This means that the people most likely to have sourced information to confirm or refute this categorization will see the claim as it is made or removed. The usefulness of this approach renders the "list can include source info" argument, which is already largely bogus, superfluous as well. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 23:34, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

As someone who hangs out at CFD, this amuses me because CFD has been moving in the direction of getting rid of categories like this because they cannot be sourced. Jeffq wants to get rid of the lists because people who edit the articles won't see the information posted in the list. So nobody really wants to deal with this problem. I see a few possible ways to solve it:

• Avoid having lists OR categories for controversial subjects that require verification. This option probably has no possibility of garnering community approval (I wouldn't support it either).
• Change the WikiMedia software so that lists can be created dynamically from database entries, and those entries would come from any article. So in effect the list entry for a person would be maintained in their article, and anyone looking at the article would see all the information that is posted about that person in lists.
• Keep the info in lists.
• Keep the info in categories.

Since the first option is unlikely and we'll have to wait for the second, that means either lists or categories. The big advantage of lists is that there is a history, you can see the citations, and the history shows who was added and who was removed. While it is possible to dig and find who added someone to a category, it is near impossible to find out who has been removed from a category and by whom. The relevant citations might be buried in the article or talk page. For these reason, I'd say, keep this info as a list and not a category. Require citations and remove anything that is uncited. This is how Films considered the greatest ever has worked for over a year without any major problems. -- Samuel Wantman 23:57, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Lists seem to me the way to go. They allow for a brief reason for inclusion and a reference backing it up. The problem here isn't the topic or the list, its the fact that people have been added without references. WJBscribe ^{(WJB talk)} 00:02, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Do you assume good faith, Jeff? Kari Hazzard (T | C) 17:55, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

For the most part, yes. But I am highly skeptical of the agendas of folks so very interested in categorization by sexual preference, especially since much of the vandalism I revert at Wikiquote appears to be from people who perceive homosexuality as a slur on a person's character. I've done a lot of research on people for articles on WP and WQ, and while I find their professions, their nationalities, and sometimes their ethnicity and gender important, the only people for whom this tidbit seems important are people on the forefront, voluntarily or not, of the pro-homosexuality/anti-homosexuality melee. Is there some encyclopedic purpose for identifying the sexual preferences of all Jews covered in Wikipedia?
If so, I think a category would be easier to maintain (and prevent vandalism or unsourced rumor-mongering), because the people who know the subject best will see the addition, deletion, and alteration of this information.
Samuel Wantman's point of the source of this information being "buried" in the article actually bolsters my argument, as the cat tag would be in the place where the sourced data is, rather than having to duplicate the source in both the article and the list for each and every person. His no-history point is only valid if you assume the people maintaining this information are list watchers, not subject watchers. It's like assuming that you need a list for trumpet players because the editors working on each trumpet-player article can't be trusted to categorize their subject, when the reverse is actually more accurate: subject editors are far more likely to command accurate information than list editors. But I appear to be in the minority on this opinion. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 07:43, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

• keep per smauel wantman & list also allows redlinks, (there are a few there as it is) also people sometimes 'randomly' remove certain categories from articles, less likely to do so from a list? obviously has to be sourced & verified (this is policy, remember?)  ⇒ bsnowball  09:49, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment I think this list is too difficult to source because the classification of so many on the list rests on usually unverifiable claims made by biographers of homosexual liasons. Also, I find the definition of Jewish POV: is it an ethnic or religious definition? I think this list, finally, forces Wikipedia to take a position on Outing. Is it morally justifiable to "out" people who don't want to be perceived as gay? How much should we respect the decision to "stay in the closet." When Wikipedia lists men and women as "gay" (without the context and qualification provided by a full biographical article) who wished to keep their sexuality a guarded secret, I think WP is sending a message that sexuality is inevitably a public affair and that it is okay to "out" people. Allon FambrizziAllon Fambrizzi

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.