Talk:List of albums released in 2007

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This article was nominated for deletion on 30 December 2007. The result of the discussion was keep.

[edit] Why Delete?

Why delete? Me and many others are always using this page!! Maged M. Mahfouz (talk) 11:46, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh yeah? Then name some of the others! Okay, just kidding. But actually, that's not really a good enough reason to keep the page in this encyclopedia. Please see the deletion debate, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Albums released in 2007. -Freekee (talk) 04:11, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Consensus to Keep, but where to from here?

Freekee wrote:

Thanks for your thoughts regarding the AfD of said article. You commented... The list (or is it a table?) needs expansion, including more notes, and may well become so large that it needs splitting. Wikipedia incorporates an encyclopedia of released albums, with some threshold of notability required. If you care to follow up on this, please feel free to leave a comment on the talk page, with more specific ideas for improvement. -Freekee (talk) 03:49, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Freekee,

I consider that wikipedia is currently weak in terms of robust navigation aids (as opposed to intra-wiki links) and that deleting either categories or lists is to go in the wrong direction. Categories and lists are similar, but different. Categories are easy to add to, maintain and search. However, if you don’t know what you’re looking for, they don’t help very much, especially if the category is large. Lists are valuable for the notes and organisation that they contain.

Accordingly, I’d like to see the list improved with the addition of brief notes on every album. I’m also surprised at how short the list is. Surely there are far more albums? However, we should be constrained by some notability threshold. Care must be taken to avoid violating WP:NOT#DIRECTORY. There must be some sourced commentary (not just data) on every entry. Self published albums with no evidence of having made an impact, or even of having achieved non-trivial sales, are an extreme example of the sort of albums that shouldn’t be listed.

I see no cause for concern about redundancy with 2007 in music. That article should be concerned with overall commentary and not with being comprehensive. The list should be comprehensive. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:33, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

For the record, I don't have a problem with the "keep" vote. When I nominated it, I was unaware of its history. I think it's Wikiworthy as it stands, but there's definitely room for improvement. So thank you for your comments, and I'd like to hear more from other people. This has set a precedent for this form of article. I'd love to make it a good one.

By rough count, this article has about 800 albums, and the category has 3400. Almost all album articles get added to the year albums cat, while relatively few people know about this article, or bother to check out the year in music articles. But 3400 is a long list. Should this really be that long? Most album articles pass notability requirements, but I did see a couple of redlinks on this list. Should we hold a tighter standard? 800 looks good, 1600 would be fine. 3400? 7000? I'm not sure.

What sort of notes should we include? Commentary seems a bit much for a 4000-entry list. Gold/platinum status, and number of copies sold make sense. Should that be in columns? Chart status? US? UK? What about a description, like studio/live/EP/comp/soundtrack/etc.? There are currently flags on the list. What do they mean? Should a record be listed on each date that it was released in different countries, or only its first release? I think that's enough questions for now. Anyone have any more? Or answers? Or opinions? -Freekee (talk) 02:18, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

With 3400 entries, chronologically ordered, it would be sensible to split into one article per month. Awards, like gold/platinum, belong. Associated country (country of release?) should have its own column, or be merged with artist, not lost in the notes. The use of the flag is a nice, space efficient, idea. Copies sold in its own column means that the list can be trivially downloaded and resorted. I think each album should have its own row. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:34, 11 January 2008 (UTC)