Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/USS Illinois (BB-65)

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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 Keep, an overwhelming consensus that yes these articles meet the notability criteria. (closed by non-admin). RMHED (talk) 19:56, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] USS Illinois (BB-65)

USS Illinois (BB-65) (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)
  • I am nominating the following related page because, from the discussion that has already taken place the two articles are of near identical subjects : Gnangarra 14:29, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
USS Kentucky (BB-66) (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

This article just cleared WP:FAC after what would rightly be called a controversial second FAC. During the second FAC I recieved objections that the subject was not notable enough to warrent an independent article, complaints to which Raul654 replied were better suited for an AFD. As the nominator of the article for FA-status the second time I feel it necessary to list this article here for the sake of settling this issue. This afd seeks to establish whether or not articles on incompleted ships satisfy notability requirements on Wikipedia. Also, as I have not filed an AFD for some time, I respectfully ask that someone with more experience check to make sure I handled everything correctly. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:16, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Keep Sufficient information on inompleted ships can be found and added to the article in question, there is no need merge them into the class page or delete them. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:25, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep per Tom's entry. - BillCJ (talk) 08:53, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep per Tom. If we merged it into the class article...there would be enough there that someone would say 'Lets fork it off into its own article' and then we'd be back here again. As fun as merge-demerge ping pong would be, lets save ourselves the effort and not even serve. Narson (talk) 09:04, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep The real issue here is notability and the article meets that criterion in spades. Whether or not the ship was completed is irrelevant to its notability. --ROGER DAVIES talk 09:11, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • weak keep I think in general there is a tendency for military vessels, material, and units (especially US related) to write articles on the individual examples where there is hardly anything beyond the class/type. Therefore I am sympathetic to the issue whether to reduce these type of articles (ie the objection of notability). In this specific case I think that each of the (only 6) Iowa class ships has enough of a history of their own, to warrant separated articles. Illinois seems to have the least interesting history of the 6 but nevertheless I would say it is (just) notable enough for its own article. Therefor I would suggest keep. Arnoutf (talk) 09:23, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
    • weak keep I Agree with Arnoutf - this AFD is not without merit - this vessel is barely notable.--Kiyarrllston 00:28, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. —Nick Dowling (talk) 09:26, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep and comment this ship is clearly meets all the criteria at WP:NOTE. The fact that an article on a ship which was never completed can reach FA standard shows the advantages of Wikipedia not being a paper encyclopedia. That said, I hope that the outcome of this debate isn't that every warship which is laid down should have its own article - in many cases there will only be trivial references about the ship and it would be best covered in an article on its class (eg, the dozens of German and Japanese submarines which were laid down but not completed before the end of WW2 generally don't need their own article as its unlikely that there'll be much written specifically on these subs). --Nick Dowling (talk) 09:26, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep - interesting, informative and well referenced from scholarly sources. Appears to meet all the criteria to me. Gatoclass (talk) 12:57, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep. I must say, I've never had the chance to consider a featured article before that wasn't a bad faith nomination. After taking some time to look through it, notability is not the slam dunk I was expecting. The majority of the references refer to the entire Iowa class of battleships, not this particular entry. However, it certainly was mentioned repeatedly and nontrivially by reliable sources - not as much as I'd like, but enough to satifisy the notability threshold. The article itself is, to me, certainly worthy of its bronze star, and I think the WP project is better for having it. Xymmax (talk) 14:06, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep per Tom, Roger, Nick, and others. Also, as the nominator for the A-class review and first FAC, I may be a bit biased towards wanting to keep, but the arguments presented by others are solid. -MBK004 16:24, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep and close the discussion, no one here really believes that this article should ever be deleted. Coccyx Bloccyx (talk) 18:46, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep per above. Given the amount of information and sources, this is a no-brainer. Parsecboy (talk) 18:50, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Snowball Keep. Pile-on vote, I know, but this article seems to meet all the criteria I can think of by a long way and there seem to be no objections to keeping it. And it's an FA, and I'd say that only goes to our very best articles. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 19:04, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep - Wikipedia isn't paper. -- Schneelocke (talk) 21:56, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep - Just because it is an uncompleted ship, I don't see the controversy. If the fact that it was never commissioned is the source of debate, then we should delete North American Aircraft XF-108 Rapier, Convair X-6, any articles on buildings, stadiums, cars, roads, dams, bridges, movies, etc etc that were never finished or never got beyond the proposal stage.--Nobunaga24 (talk) 22:29, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Snowball keep — this nomination is clearly ridiculous ➥the Epopt (talk) 22:36, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Borderline Delete I appreciate Tom nominating the article here for deletion if, for nothing else, to clear the air and make its status more well known. As I stated in the FAC, the fact that it wasn't completed is not an issue, but the vast majority of the article refers to the classes of battleships this ship would have belonged to had it been completed. Most of the information contained in the article is already elsewhere (in the Iowa-class and Montana-class articles), or could simply be covered in those articles in a sentence or two or even a short paragraph. As an example, there is only one paragraph in the entire body of the text that is about this ship! The rest are about the class of ship and armaments/trivia. There are several unique facts about the ship, but that isn't what Wikipedia is all about.
The information should be kept, absolutely and without a doubt, but I just don't see a need for it to have its own page rehashing information already covered elsewhere.
This is not about deleting the article because it is uncompleted, not commissioned, lacking sources (which it has plenty of anyway), and the nomination is by the primary editor of the article (which I applaud his honesty). This article isn't your typical AfD, but its status as an FA shouldn't be the sole reason to keep an article. — BQZip01 — talk 22:57, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • For God's sake, Snowball keep per everyone else above; the ship is clearly notable and clearly meets notability guidelines. This one's a bit of an involved case, otherwise I'd have done the snowball closing myself. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • (Broken clamshells•Otter chirps) 23:36, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
    • Comment Whatever it was this was never a "ship", it was merely a stillborn anachronism in the age of aircraft carriers dreamed up by Admirals fighting the last previous war. Albatross2147 (talk) 02:26, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:43, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Afd isnt a vote please explain why Gnangarra 00:49, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Comment Too right it isn't a vote. We'll have a discussion but then some admin who will let their love of anything associated with their country overrule commonsense and will make a decision to "keep". Albatross2147 (talk) 02:41, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete the question being asked is This afd seeks to establish whether or not articles on incompleted ships satisfy notability requirements on Wikipedia since this is asking for a precedent on which to hang many articles. Every article should be assessed individually, when assessing this article as an individual it's both notable and FA worthy I have no desire to see such an article deleted. Yet this article should not be used as the basis for establishing notability for a bunch of other articles. Gnangarra 00:49, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
  • weak keep It isn't notable, it's really very dull, but there again I can't see any great benefit in deletion. This is never going to become an important or notable article, but on the other hand, presumably someone, somewhere, cares enough to have written it in the first place, and electrons don't add much to climate change. Excalibur (talk) 01:49, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
  • keep enough 3rd party cited information to make it notable. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:26, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge The subject matter is of itself is not notable enough for a stand alone article. This article on a incomplete project should be merged into the Class article together with all the other partially completed hulls. I too compliment Tom for his transparency in this regard. Albatross2147 (talk) 02:48, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep A featured article with two-dozen reliable and verifiable sources should be the last article up at AfD. Notability could not be more clearly established. This is truly the spirit of deletionism run amok. Alansohn (talk) 07:25, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
<sigh> perhaps you missed my post above. The person who nominated this article is the main editor. There is no "deletionism" agenda by the nominator. — BQZip01 — talk 08:02, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
How about this article Everything in it is well-sourced, 100% verifiable, true in every sense of the word, etc. However, it simply isn't needed. — BQZip01 — talk 08:07, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
  • <sigh> This was nominated by the article's creator not because he is a deletionist, but because of mounting pressure from a tiny handful of people who have decided that this article "simply isn't needed." This is the textbook definition of deletionism run amok. I don't need any of those Pokemon character articles, and I couldn't care less about any villages in Ecuador. All of that information is in other articles, so how about we start the orgy of deletion for those articles? Alansohn (talk) 15:11, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
  • <sigh> point taken ;-) — BQZip01 — talk 05:42, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Now that I'm not busy, here are a few more things to consider. The article isn't needed, but not because of notability (Pokemon characters I could care less about), but because most of the information (indeed all but four sentences) contained in the article is already in other articles. This is an unnecessary duplication. I'm not saying the information shouldn't be retained, but should be moved to the Iowa-class/Montana-class articles with a redirect to one or the other (links in the Iowa-class articles can certainly be added to the Montana class article and specific weapons). — BQZip01 — talk 23:55, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
    • Comment FAC should not be, nor should it be construed to be, an automatic dismal from the various guidelines and policies here. Moreover, if this issue is not delt with soon, we're going to end up spending a lot of time and energy dealing with consequnces, what ever they may be. Although a non-issue during the FAC, the results of this afd will automatically effect the battleship USS Kentucky (BB-66), along with the five incompleted battleships of the Montana class which will likely pull on information from rewrite I am currently working on. Then there are the dozens of people will apply the "If this, than that" argument to keep other incompleted ship articles here. My motivation in listing this article here is based on a similar incident: Some of you may recall that we once had individual articles for all of the pokemon species. Among these articles was Bulbasaur, which was featured some time ago. Despite the FA status and arguments to the opposite effect it was decided to merge all of these individual articles into lists. A similar effort is also underway to consolidate our individual tv episode articles into lists. While I admit that these examples are extreme in nature and off topic (this is a MILHIST article, the others are more or less FICTION articles) me concern is decidedly not without precident. I have no problems writing for or editting incompleted ship articles, and is evidenced by the FA tab on Illinois’s talk page neither does MBK004, but I feel that this needs to be adressed before I carry on. I do not want to spend my time bringing such articles up to FA status just to have them merged later on. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:14, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Please clarify which articles this discussion is about. If you want included the five Montana class battleship add them along with USS Kentucky (BB-66) but all previous comments should be ignored. Gnangarra 08:37, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
For the moment I prefer to limit this only to Illinois. The Montana-class ships should be dealt with independently since none of them were completed. My comment regarding the immediate effect the afd will have on Kentucky still stands, but that article's FAC never encountered notabilty issues. This AFD is solely for Illinois, and should not be construed as applying directly to any other articles :) TomStar81 (Talk) 08:49, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment. I did think about nominating it for AfD myself, but that would have been considered WP:POINT. There is no question it's notable enough to have an article. There is little doubt in my mind, that because all of this article can be covered in another Featured Article, it is not notable enough to be an FA. However this is a flaw in the Featured Article criteria, not the article. The Land (talk) 09:39, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
    • The rule, as far as featured articles are concerned, is that any notable article (that is to say, any article which can survive an AFD nomination) can become a featured article. FAC is not going to become a second AFD, where people can object to the subject of an article. And if you don't like that, well, that's just too bad. Raul654 (talk) 16:53, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I appreciate that's the current consensus. I disagree with it. I think that the class article could become an FA in itself including all material on each individual ship in this class. We will end up with five FAs which effectively duplicate one another. I think that is a good argument for amending the FA rules. Can you at least appreciate that there is a valid difference of opinion here? The Land (talk) 17:30, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Your argument is demonstrably false. Iowa class battleship is a featured article, and while there is some overlap with the USS Illinois article (as dictated by summary stile, which is part of the FA criteria) the overlap is not complete. Both articles rose to FA status on their own merits. Raul654 (talk) 17:44, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure that proves anything. The Iowas are arguably the most famous battleships of all time, with a 50-year service history. There is plenty to say about the class and plenty to say about every individual ship. It will be very difficult to have an FA on Montana class battleship without essentially duplicating (rather than summarising) all the material from each ship in the class - simply because there is so little to say about them. The Land (talk) 17:56, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
First you said that "I think that the class article could become an FA in itself including all material on each individual ship in this class." I showed that the Iowa class article is already an FA without including such material. Now you are asking about the Montana class - effectively moving the goalpost. You are saying that you don't think the Montana class can ever become a featured article, because it would duplicate material from other articles. This in itself is an argument from lack of imagination - you can't imagine it, so you believe it must not be possible. I don't buy it. Raul654 (talk) 18:08, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
No, I am not moving the goalposts. There is minimal content in the article which could not be accomodated at Iowa class battleship or Montana class battleship. Arguably, I missed an 's' out of my previous post. The only material I can see which does not clearly belong in these articles is the discussion of the ship's bell and the fundraising which contributed to her construction. Indeed, the only large section in this article refers you to not one but two 'main articles': the articles about the Iowa and Montana classses.
And my argument is, precisely, that Montana class battleship can become a Featured Article. In doing so, it would inevitably duplicate material about all the individual ships in the Montana class. What is so difficult to buy about the idea that there are some never-completed ships which little can be said about?
I do not object to these ships having articles. There are dozens of such ships and articles on them are interesting. What I object to is the idea that these articles can be examples of Wikipedia's best work. They will fundamentally be derivative of other, more comprehensive, articles. The Land (talk) 00:04, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Note as of this point based on the above discussion I have formally included the USS Kentucky (BB-66) which is the other incomplete Iowa Class battleship. Gnangarra 14:31, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Comment. For the sake of clarity, and for those who miss the mentions above, I note for the record that the USS Kentucky (BB-66) is also a featured article. UltraExactZZ Claims ~ Evidence 17:35, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Coment The fact that there's enough reliable sources to write a detailed history of the ship's abortive construction and the fate of the hulk clearly demonstrates that unfinished ships can meet WP:NOTE. --Nick Dowling (talk) 00:15, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep as per WP:NOTE and WP:NOT#PAPER. --Kralizec! (talk) 19:21, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge to Iowa class battleships. Although I hate to do this to FAs, I think the amount of ship-specific information is pretty small and would be better placed in the parent article, or a new List of Iowa class battleships. Karanacs (talk) 21:11, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep. Well sourced, well cited, well written, WP:NOTE, WP:NOT#PAPER, WP:RS, WP:V, etcetera, etcetera. Cirt (talk) 17:38, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep well sourced. Notable as millions of dollars were spent on the construction and planning as well as thousands of people employed in the construction. Millions in war bonds raised for construction as well. Certainly worthy of an article. --Dual Freq (talk) 18:04, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep - Meets WP:N as there appears to be several WP:RS with more than trivial coverage, and that's all there really needs to be. Aboutmovies (talk) 18:14, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep the article is detailed enough and the ship got very far along in the construction phase, more so than many other things articles on Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Noha307 (talk • contribs) 20:04, 29 January 2008 (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.