Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of polymaths

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 delete. Mailer Diablo 04:00, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of polymaths

This sourceless article has no encyclopedic value, for this topic is fundamentally unencyclopedic. Wikipedians have no right to label certain persons as being polymaths or not; We can't have this article for the same reason we can't have list of smart people. I have taken the liberty of adding a few names of what I thought to be quintessential polymaths to the Polymath article. Let us see if we can find a few indisputable polymaths, list them there and delete this mess. Rmrfstar 18:15, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to be picky, as I'd prefer to see the article deleted, but, unlike many "list of X" articles in this case there is an article on X. Since Polymath is an encyclopedic topic, it seems to me that a list of polymaths is encyclopedic. More correctly, a list of people who have been referred to as "polymaths" by sources meeting WP:RS is encyclopedic. I agree that the list should be in the Polymath article and should not be broken out until it becomes unreasonably long. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:41, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

You're absolutely right: it's not the topic itself that is unencyclopedic, but the format in which the topic was presented. See my response to you below.-- Rmrfstar 01:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

• Delete as unverifiable. No sources are cited on this page. Inclusion on this list seems far too subjective and open to interpretation. I have no objections to veriably sourced material being merged to the Polymath article, though. Scorpiondollprincess 18:43, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete as unverifiable. Can we get rid of List of Virgins and List of people believed to have been affected by bipolar disorder for the same reasons while we're at it? Crabapplecove 21:17, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete for want of criteria. Many of these entries are horribly exaggerated, as if Vladimir Putin being a politician, spy, and judo wrestler qualified him as a polymath. Gazpacho 22:32, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. If kept, move the unsourced items—that is to say, all of them—to Talk, effectively blanking the article, then monitor list to make sure that they are not reinserted without sources. To avoid utter subjectivity, the cited source must of course actually use the word "polymath." Experience has shown that the argument that "the linked article will have the sources" doesn't hold up in practice. For example, literally picking one at random, the article on Murray Gell-Mann does not describe him as a polymath, let alone cite a source. We can have a list of people described as "polymaths" by reliable sources. We can't have a list of people who, in the opinion of Wikipedia editors, ought to be called "polymaths" based on a list of their fields of accomplishment. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:36, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete for redundancy, amongst other things. I originally suggested a merge but the more I read, the more I'm in agreement with this instead - the Category:Polymaths does equally well, and this list has become little more than a populistic exercise for anyone who thinks their heroes deserving of additional recognition. A handful of names as polymathic examples in the Polymath article more than suffices. Gravelrash 14:44, 1 August 2006 (EST)
• Comment Discussion above applies to this version I've now moved the unsourced items to Talk, and reinserted a couple of them in the article with references.Dpbsmith (talk) 01:10, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
  • So is the question is whether those few names that can be verified deserve their own list... My inclination is to say, "no, at least for now"; let's just put those verifiable names in the main Polymath article and keep them there until it starts to get too large. -- Rmrfstar 01:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
    • Certainly works for me. I put the two referenced names in the current article. I'll personally put them into the Polymath article, and I'll personally move the huge unsourced list to Talk:Polymath to avoid any comments about "merge and delete" being invalid. Dpbsmith (talk) 09:37, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
• Merge the two verified names into Polymath. — RJH (talk) 14:29, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete as unverifiable, redundant, and for being based on what strikes me as largely arbitrary and POV-based criteria. Tgies 05:33, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
• Comment Participants in this discussion may also wish to take part in the discussion now taking place at Talk:Polymath#List of_Polymaths or Noted Polymaths or Quintessential. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:58, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - I would have said Merge per RJHall, but the two are already listed in the polymath article (along with other cited examples). Yomangani 19:00, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
• Comment I ask participants in this discussion to put Polymath on their watchlist... last night a non-logged-in user made a wholesale insertion of entries into the polymaths section of the article, in the same unsourced format as the version of List of polymaths which was nominated for deletion, without edit comments, and without discussion at Talk:Polymath. Dpbsmith (talk) 09:58, 3 August 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.