Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of educators

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. As with most list vs category debates, this one was about even in terms of the weight of arguments, and this wasn't the overwhelming consensus to delete that I require to delete an article. Deathphoenix ʕ 20:11, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of educators

Already 45 kilobytes and growing. Someone put a lot of work into this, and it pains me to nominate it for deletion, but I fail to see the need for this list. The list itself is redundant to Category:Educators, Category:Educators by nationality etc. Each and every subsection already has a corresponding category, and it seems the list is organized and populated by mirroring existing categories. Ezeu 16:40, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

• Keep although there is some redundancy, the article seems more useful and organized than the categories.--Húsönd 17:17, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

The redundancy is not merely "some", but entire. --Ezeu 18:41, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

In fact, the redundancy doesn't exist, please see WP:LIST if you're unclear on this point. WilyD 18:45, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

The redundancy is not merely "some", but total. Do you really mean we should list all educators even though the term "educator" is ambiguous? Consider that the number of educators include Academics (PHDs and Professors), lecturers, primary school teachers, kindergarten and preschool teachers, and various other other disciplines all over the world. They are all educators, that is why we have Category:Educators.--Ezeu 19:17, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Ezeu, you do have some point. But I still think that your arguments are not enough to justify the deletion of this article. Besides, since we have to put up with all those sodding Pokémon character articles, this one is perfectly acceptable.--Húsönd 22:00, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the list passes the Pokémon test, but that is merely a Chewbacca defense. --Ezeu 02:08, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Hah! I should have guessed that this Pokémon argument had been used before, but wouldn't imagine that it even has its own Wikipedia guidelines. Outmaneuvered, I change my stance to Neutral.--Húsönd 02:50, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

• Keep - no valid argument presented for deletion, please see WP:LIST if you don't understand the point of lists, and why they do not duplicate categories. WilyD 17:32, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Could you explain why in this case you feel this is a useful complement to a category? except for a few redlinks, I don't see this as exemplifying any of the advantages of lists, and this seems to have the disadvantages mentioned. Thanks, William Pietri 23:46, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Well, the storage of redlinks is one of the purposes of lists, yes, known as the development purpose. The list also provides for navigation and groups things together in a way that provides information. In essence, it serves a number of purposes, some of which can't be served by categories (i.e. development) and there's no real reason to delete beyond I don't like lists presented here at all. It's verifiable, encyclopaedic (and actually a half decent article). WilyD 18:00, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
      • Having read the material, I believe understand the theoretical advantages. However, in this specific case, I don't see them as applying in a substantial way. Do you have reasons why this specific list is practically more useful to a degree that outweighs the additional maintenance burden over categories? I have the impression this is more a general thing for you. Thanks, William Pietri 19:06, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
        • Yeah, I generally defend verifiable, encyclopaedic lists at AfD - I have no real specific attachment to this list. As for the Burden of Maintenance" it's obvious to me that someone has taken that burden upon themselves, thus for the Wikipedia project as a whole, it's essentially zero maintenance. The list and category aren't redundant, so the existence of one doesn't argue for the deletion of the other, the category can exist in parallel, and do well what it does well, and poorly what it does poorly. To delete this when its in good shape just because Well, one day it could become a problem seems unconvincing. WilyD 20:42, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per WilyD Jcuk 23:16, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per WilyD Hello32020 00:28, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete as per nom. Good effort, but the page seems to replicate what category pages already do better. Visually, this page is much less user-friendly than the category pages. You could sort the names in a more spatially understandable way, but you'd probably just end up with something like a whole bunch of category pages stuck together. The only advantage I can think of is that you could do a name find across all the educator names on the same page, but sincec wikipedia already has a search engine this is redundant. Bwithh 01:32, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Not only can categories not replace lists, but are in many ways worse. Please see Wikipedia:Lists are extremely valuable. Stop thinking you can replace them with categories - any more than a cursory glance will reveal this to clearly not be the case if this point is unclear. WilyD 11:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Hi. As you can see from my (unanswered) question to you above, I gave more than a cursory glance, and am not yet seeing the mysteries you allude to. If you have an actual argument, please make it. I don't appreciate the pressuring of participants or the failure to assume good faith. William Pietri 15:28, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
      • I'm not really interested in pressuring participants - the point of responding to presented arguments is so that the closing admin will realise they're faulty - part of the concensus procedure. Transparently false arguments (such as lists being replacable by categories) need to be recognised as the fallacy they are and called on it. No sense in deleting verifiable, encyclopaedic content for no reason. WilyD 18:03, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom and Bwithh. Glad to change my mind if I see some value that outweighs the maintenance burden. William Pietri 01:53, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Listicrufts. It duplicates information of categories. This list which is going down the road of indiscriminate information. There are infinite ways of slicing the matrix, and I can see where this is going: there will be interminable sub-sub-categorisation of the lists, and will end up with indiscriminate slices and subsections like "Educators' subject by ethnicity and sexual preference" or "Educators' subject by religion, etc, etc, etc. ;-) Ohconfucius 02:41, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, wholly redundant to the categories. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 03:04, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Please read WP:LIST before making verifiably false statements. WilyD 11:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
    • There is nothing false in that statement. WP:LIST is a guideline on the layout and formatting of lists, and is irrelevant to this discussion. This list is unmaintainable, it is redundant to the categories and is entirely unnecessary.--Ezeu 14:51, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
      • If you'll read WP:LIST you'll find that not to be the case. It is neither unnecessary nor redundant with categories. As for unmaintable, being too lazy to write an article is no rational for deletion. WilyD 17:57, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
        • By unmaintainable I mean it is borders on the ridiculous, how many educators can there possibly be? Just like "List of bands" and "list of schools in China", this should be deleted as well. --Ezeu 13:21, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - It fails WP:V since it fails to cite sources and it is redundant to a category (the only possible advantage it has here is a list of redlinks, which could be better maintained as a list of educators lacking articles on Wikipedia). Having somebody working on it doesn't mean it is maintainable - in a dynamic list like this they would have to re-check every record every day in order to ensure its accuracy. Yomangani^talk 10:10, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

 AFD relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
 Please add new discussions below this notice. Thanks, Ezeu 19:21, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. Lists are useful when the set of items to be listed is strictly limited, and when there's some value in listing them even if they don't have an article. Neither of these appears to be the case here - as others have pointed out, there are a lot of preschool teachers in the US. Categories appear to be the superior solution here, especially as nearly all of the educators listed already have articles. Zetawoof^(ζ) 03:59, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Lists with such broad subjects are almost entirely pointless, and have no place here. As User:Zetawoof said, lists should only be used with a reasonably limited set of items. "Educators" is a humongous category of people; there are tons of them around the world and throughout history that are not, and never will be, included in this list. There is no point in having such a list here, unless we plan on becoming a White pages directory someday. Groupings like this are best left to the Category system. WarpstarRider 09:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Useful list, for all the reasons lists are ordinarily useful. Despite the claims that this is identical to the category, it's obviously not, based on the most cursory of inspections. No category presents all these names on one page for simple browsing; no category includes the redlinks that might tempt someone to develop an article. Christopher Parham (talk) 00:32, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
  • The issue for me is not utility alone, but the maintenance burden versus utility. Could you point us to some other very large list pages that you find useful and are well maintained? Thanks, William Pietri 01:22, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
    • I'm not sure what you mean by the maintenance burden--how is it greater for this page than any other? Anyway, there are tons of large useful list pages, see e.g. List of anarchists or List of atheists just from the A's. Christopher Parham (talk) 02:17, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
      • Category pages are automatically maintained, while lists are manual; that seems like more work to me, especially if the categories already exist. Maybe I'm underestimating the number of anarchists or atheists out there, but those lists seem much smaller in scope than the domain carved out by a list of educators from Socrates to Barbie (Teacher Barbie, I presume). I guess I'm still not seeing the potential for this article to be a gem. Thanks for the response, though; it was helpful to hear your perspective on lists. William Pietri 07:32, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
        • The maintenance difference is overplayed; articles have to be added manually to both types, both have a page that needs to be kept free of vandalism, and both need to be watched for false entries. The last point is actually infinitely harder with a category since movement of articles in and out of a category cannot be watched, so far as I understand. Christopher Parham (talk) 13:35, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
          • Interesting. I guess it seems like twice as much work to me then to maintain both. The watching of categories, though, is a great point, and one I hadn't considered. Thanks. William Pietri 17:11, 28 September 2006 (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.