Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lists of flops

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The result was WITHDRAWN by nominator. I will relist the pages individually. szyslak (t, c) 19:34, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lists of flops

List of commercial failures in aviation (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

List of grocery products that were commercial failures (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

List of political flops (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

List of military disasters (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

(View log)

There have been many AFDs regarding lists of "flops", such as List of miscellaneous commercial failures, Lists of flops in entertainment and others. Here I'm nominating the remaining "flop" lists for deletion, except List of commercial failures in video gaming which was AFDed with a "keep" result a few months ago. All the pages in this nom are descendants of the old "List of major flops/List of commercial failures". Feel free to add other articles.

The same old arguments apply to these articles: they're indiscriminate, POV lists or repositories of loosely associated topics, and there's no solid definition of a "flop". szyslak (t, c) 06:42, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

• Delete - fails WP:V as a flop (etc) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rklawton (talk • contribs) 07:01, February 17 2007.
• Keep and possibly speedy close. I strongly disagree with the decision to list them together. List of military disasters, for instance, is sourced by two books which are specifically about "military blunders". The information contained in List of political flops is mostly true and verifiable (including the part about such incidents being classified as "political campaign[s] which fails disastrously in spite of high expectations"). I think {{unreferenced}} would be more appropriate for this case. At this time, I have no comment on the other two lists. -- Black Falcon 07:09, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

• As there has already been a "delete" !vote, I doubt this'll be speedy closed unless you can demonstrate that I have violated policy by listing the articles together. Besides, I figure the articles will all be AFD'd on their own sooner or later. szyslak (t, c) 07:17, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

• Yes, I noticed the delete vote when I received an "edit conflict" notice, but didn't change my comment (I have stricken it now). I don't think you've violated policy, I only called for a speedy close because I didn't think the same arguments applied to all the articles (especially List of military disasters, which is referenced). -- Black Falcon 07:31, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

• Absolute Keep - I think people are being incredibly sensitive with these. I liked commercial failures. I liked entertainment failures. True, the articles are (were :( ) amateurly written, for the most part - but the products within them were uniformly awful. I don't think it's POV to call a square a square. The only article that had troubles was the Video Game Failures one, and that was the result of a rather petulant group of self-appointed dictators who refused to allow the inclusion of any game that wasn't in Seanbaby's Bottom 20. (sorry, confused it with the Worst Videogames Ever article) It is (was :( ) articles like these that brought me to Wikipedia in the first place - the forgotten and failed, the dismal and pathetic, the OK Sodas and Turn Ons of the world. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, and niggling over objectivity in areas such as this is counter-productive to the utmost. --Action Jackson IV 10:11, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
• Comment. I think these articles would be better debated separately. There is a big difference between a commercial failure (which is verifiable), and a political flop (which is a matter of interpretation). Sam Blacketer 10:35, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
• I agree, list them separately. I think the grocery one should be deleted (unsourced, untrue for a few, poorly written, undefined), but not the military one (as per Black Falcon). Lrrr IV 11:15, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
• As per above, as I would never attempt to add 4 entries in one deletion nomination in this lot of AFD list massacre I seen within a month, all you get will be a keep answer by the end of it. The political one should be retitled though and the military to be kept. Willirennen 12:22, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
• Yes, list them seperately, these articles all have problems certainly, but each has it's own unique problem. Some might well be good candidates for deletion, but probably not all. I'd suggest an admin stop this AfD for a prodedural "no consensus" and send a note to the nom to relist these as individual AfDs. -Markeer 13:31, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep all except the grocery list Whilding87 15:00, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
• Strong Keep Most of the articles seem extremely weak on sourcing, but I see no reason to believe they can't find sourcing for nearly everything in them. Political flops are hard to source without either citing an election result (in which case they're easy to source) or perhaps poll results, although if enough highly respected sources can be cited, that article too should be possible to source in its entirety. Adequate sourcing should eliminate nearly all POV concerns. It seems to me incredibly useful to know the history of flops in a particular field. That doesn't seem indiscriminate at all, and it sounds very encyclopedic to me. Noroton 18:34, 17 February 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.