Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of guitarists

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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 to delete. W.marsh 22:17, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of guitarists plus List of bass guitarists, List of contemporary classical double bass players, List of jazz bassists, List of double bass players in other popular genres, List of drummers

This list has a ridiculous scope: "guitarists for whom there is an article in Wikipedia, or who are mentioned in articles on bands". That's gonna be 100,000 people then? This is redundant to categories and is just clutter. Delete. kingboyk 10:24, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I would like to add to this nomination the following related pages:

  • List of double bass players in other popular genres (other than what if you come straight to this?)

*List of musicians and the myriad of other lists branching from this.

All of these (and I'm sure many, many others) suffer from the faults mentioned in the nomination. A list, to be encyclopaedic, must be exhaustive, it must have finite boundaries (e.g. List of the United States, or List of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates) so that every possible item is included. This cannot possibly happen with any of these lists. Delete. Emeraude 10:37, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

  • I vote delete. I like lists and lists of lists, but inside wikipedia this is what categories are for. Slavatrudu 08:26, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
    • I'm happy to have them added to the nom, but you'll need to get them tagged up with AFD notices pronto. --kingboyk 11:09, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
      • Some others added, but not List of musicians because this links to hundreds of other lists and the task becomes too big for one discussion. Emeraude 16:48, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep First non-exhaustive lists have a purpose. In certain cases they can be a tool for countering systemic bias. For some examples List of Brazilian writers, List of Indian architects, and List of Bangladesh-related topics. Second an advantage of Wikipedia, possibly the only one, is it's ability to do things encyclopedias would not. You're not going to find most anything in Category:Animated character stubs or much of what's in Wikipedia:Unusual articles in an encyclopedia. So the "this wouldn't be in an encyclopedia" is irrelevant. Third they can provide information on the topic categories can not. Fourth my encyclopedia has a list of naval terms and I don't think it's exhaustive, but I'll have to check. All that said List of double bass players in other popular genres should likely be erased as cryptic.--T. Anthony 11:02, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
    • Could you explain to me what you mean by 'they can be a tool for countering systemic bias'? I've looked at the examples you've quoted and I'm none the wiser. Emeraude 16:48, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
      • Certain subjects are going to be disproportionately less interesting to Wikipedians than they would to the public or encyclopedias. The articles listed for deletion here aren't good examples of that, but examples do exist. I gave examples of lists relating to Bangladesh, India, and Brazil because these are large nations with low internet access per capita. Although in retrospect Nigeria would've been a better example than Brazil. Anyway lists on those can be "worked on" allowing for expansion. In addition I think many nominate lists just because they don't like lists rather than for legitimate reasons to delete lists. (For example the list is based on a POV, the list is focussed on intersections that are never notable like say a hypothetical List of Lutheran ornithologists, etc) See Wikipedia:Lists (stand-alone lists) for when lists are accepted.--T. Anthony 16:57, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
See List of musicians for a list of mostly non-exhaustive musician related lists.--T. Anthony 11:15, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep See Category:Lists of musicians by instrument. Lists provide info without cluttering main articles, and per above -- ßottesiηi (talk) 22:39, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. I find these lists useful as an index, and I have been introduced to a lot of personages I hitherto knew nothing about as a result. Ralphroysterdoyster
  • Keep. As long as the lists are limited to those musicians for which a Wikipedia article exists, I find them useful. I read about, say, a jazz guitarist I like. I may then wonder what other jazz guitarists are covered here, I click the link, and I know instantly, and can read about any of them. It's a convenience that I see no reason to delete. --Alan W 00:02, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
    • This is what categories for. The lists are basically impossible to maintain, and don't offer any advantage over categories. Compare this with, say, a discography: a discography can be illustrated, sorted by year, and annotated. It has a function way beyond the simple automatically-generated-list of a category. These lists don't. --kingboyk 10:53, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
      • This is factually inaccurate. List of drummers already includes annotation about what genre they're in and what band they're associated with the most. Show how a category does that. In addition to that list of drummers is over three years old and has had almost 1500 edits. List of guitarists also lists bands the musician is associated with and has annotation a category can not do. List of jazz bassists is also 3 years old with annotation on birth year in several cases. Read Wikipedia:Lists (stand-alone lists) for more information on when lists are acceptable.--T. Anthony 15:42, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
        • List of guitarists (which is the only one I nominated) ought to be 10,000, maybe 100,000, entries. What use is such a woefully incomplete list, and how could we manage such a large list if it were completed? That, repeat, is what categories are for. --kingboyk 17:57, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
          • Ideally it's going by notability so there's not going to be 10,000 names. If it gets to huge you divide into sublists. Besides which even if you're correct do you think a category with 10,000 articles is any more workable? Category:American actor stubs has maybe 1,200 or so articles and it's on a "very large" warning. It even has subcategories.--T. Anthony 04:57, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. I agree with the objections, but I don't think they warrant deletion. People obviously find these lists useful. Wikipedia is not paper and the presence of these admittedly trivial lists doesn't affect the validity of the real, substantive articles about these musicians. Cribcage 06:40, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete This is what categories are for. Jay32183 23:37, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. As a reader I find lists like these useful, so as an editor I would support leaving it in. Vpoko 20:20, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. As a musician, both bass and guitar, I find these lists invaluable and easy to access. I have discovered some amazing artists through these lists that I would have missed entirely without them.Hollowbody49 22:27, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. Absolutely. Lists such as this one are the reason I use (and contribute to) Wikipedia. T. Anthony covered the salient arguments already. I move the discussion be closed and we move on to editing the article for style and content conventions. Thank you, Ekbeale 17:05, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. Consider the audience. Casual wikipedia users find these lists more approachable and readable than categories. Also, I personally try to keep them well pruned for notability.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 18:12, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete - seems like just a repeat of a category. It would be different if the article actually had more content than just a list of names by alphabet. --plange 19:14, 3 November 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.