Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of fantasy novels

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The result was Keep, nomination withdrawn Mandsford 23:54, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

List of fantasy novels[edit]

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Delete per WP:NOTDIR. List which has potentially tens of thousands of entries, even if only notable books are included. Category:Fantasy novels is much better suited for this job. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of books by title: 0-9 (2nd nomination) for a related AFD.

Note I am also submitting the subpages

Yoenit (talk) 08:41, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

WP:CLN is the relevant guideline here; read the second paragraph. Basically, Category:Fantasy novels is all very well, but a list can be sortable (by title, by author, by date of publication etc.) A list can also be watchlisted leading to better scrutiny. And nothing in the nomination gives a pressing reason for deletion.—S Marshall T/C 12:21, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- This list is not sortable in any way and does not contain date of publication (yet). The workload of creating (and maintaining!) a proper list is staggering. I have no problems with a more managable list such as List of fantasy novels released in 2009, but all this is likely to do is waste editors time. My reason for deletion is that it violates WP:NOTDIR, please explain if you think this is not a valid reason for deletion. Yoenit (talk) 12:46, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I see it more as a navigation aid than a directory. Hopefully, now that Wikipedia has the capacity to make sortable tables, someone can revamp this. This was fairly good at the time that it was created, listing title and author information, and to try to describe the subgenre of fantasy fiction represented would pose OR problems. The idea that there must be a choice between a category or a list isn't consistent with WP:CLN. It's fair to say that listmakers find categories to be an inefficient way of searching for information, while category fans see lists as unmaintainable. There's room for good category systems and good lists, and there's always room for improvement in both. Mandsford 12:53, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just to expand on Mandsford's excellent explanation, a good example of a very large list that co-exists with a category is the List of minor planets (which actually co-exists with quite a number of categories). These lists take the place of Wikipedia's missing contents and index pages—they're there to help end-users find content, and so their purpose isn't to be a directory but to enhance the encyclopaedia. As for the point that it isn't sortable in any way, the counter to that is that AfD considers whether a valid list could exist with this title. It doesn't consider whether this list is satisfactory, because AfD accepts that Wikipedia's a perpetual work in progress and anything in it can be improved.—S Marshall T/C 13:02, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, but I'd like to see more information added to the list, like dates of publication, country of origin, language, etc. to make it more useful. I support retaining the list for the same reason why we have both List of symphonies by name and Category:Symphonies. Categories are great for organisation and exploratory browsing, but they simply do not offer the context, information, or elaboration (beyond a link to the entry) that a list can. Also, a list can contain redlinks, which is important, since many titles by notable authors don't have their own articles.-hkr Laozi speak 13:04, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 17:02, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 17:02, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as lists of lists are permissible, there's no policy-based reason for deletion articulated. Jclemens (talk) 17:10, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep lists are good navigational devices and do what categories cannot--in this case, addthe author, for ease of browsing, a legit function of encyclopedias. There's no reason why we cannot handle a list with tens of thousands of items-- or for that matter, 100s of thousands. That's what alphabetic subdivision was invented for--and its a problem that is much more cumbersome in categories. The deletion of List of Books was in 2007, & I think consensus has changed there also. (& even if it has not for such an extensive list as that one, this is just a relatively small subset.) DGG ( talk ) 17:16, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Withdrawing nomination, Some very good points where raised in the keep arguments, which have convinced me the article should be kept. Can the next person through please close this? Yoenit (talk) 22:21, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Consider it done. Mandsford 23:54, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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.