Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Glagolitic manuscripts

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. Consensus is that there is not a valid reason or need for deletion, but the list should probably be split as its current size significantly inhibits its usefulness. Details of that proposed split are best discussed on the talk page, they're not really a matter for AfD at this point. (non-admin closure) Actualcpscm^{scrutinize, talk} 19:12, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

List of Glagolitic manuscripts[edit]

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By far the longest article on enwiki, an endless list of every minor scrap of paper with this script. Either needs very severe pruning to include e.g. only notable manuscripts, or complete scrapping as unwieldy, excessively detailed, WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Fram (talk) 13:32, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Language, Literature, History, Lists, and Europe. Fram (talk) 13:32, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Yeah, this is a database dump, not a list. There is absolutely zero selectivity or encyclopaedic commentary. Large sections of it haven't been translated into English. I'm not opposed to a list of notable Glagolitic manuscripts, but you'd have to start that from scratch so I don't see the point in retaining this version. It's a shame, because someone's obviously put a lot of work into it, but they did so in the wrong place. – Joe (talk) 13:46, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
First, the size: it's a long list which is conveniently already broken up into several sections, so if it's a worthwhile list to have it's easy to just split it. Also, the reason it's such a large page (regardless of number of items) seems mostly because of the citations -- though it appears they're intended not just as citations but as a list of resources. e.g. Bibliography: [69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][8][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107][108][20][109][22][110][1][111][112][113][114][24][65] (!!!). That's, um, a bit much. It's worth noting, too, that this is the way it looked at the beginning of the year. About 1.2 MB of content was added since then. It certainly wasn't a list of notable examples before, so presumably it just continued down the same road? More on that below.
It doesn't seem like anyone's challenging whether it's an appropriate topic for a list (WP:SALAT/WP:NLIST), and indeed that's probably a given since it's a subject of obvious interest to anyone studying Slavic language/culture/history.
It's a list, so we don't actually need to include much "encyclopedic commentary" (referencing the comment above), but actually there is a ton of information in here compared to typical Wikipedia lists, e.g. Codex Zographensis. Folios 41-57 are a palimpsest of an earlier Glagolitic manuscript, part of whose text was published in Cyrillic transcription by Dobrev 1971. Partial facsimile in Jagić 1879, reprinted Graz 1954. Hand Zog-2 is dated 1046–1081, in contrast to the earlier parts. Transcription at TITUS, CCMH. is what immediately precedes the citebomb I pasted above. The author is clearly a librarian/archivist.
Then there's the inclusion criteria: exhaustive lists and lists of notable examples are both possible per WP:CSC. This is where my lack of knowledge comes in and why I'm not !voting at this time. Is an exhaustive list realistic? Are all known Glagolitic manuscripts documented and thus possible to include? If so, what kind of numbers are we talking about? Is this list already exhaustive, or is this a tiny fraction?
If this list is already exhaustive or nearly exhaustive, then I'd be tending towards keeping. Notability: check; inclusion criteria: check; ability to resolve issues like size, citations, style, etc. by editing/splitting rather than deletion: check.
If the list isn't exhaustive and/or the subject is not something it's possible to cover in an exhaustive way, that's when things get harder. Thinking about the reasons someone might be looking for a list like this, I don't know how useful a list of just notable examples would be (which isn't to say Wikipedia's policies wouldn't allow it, of course). If it came to that, I'd probably be inclined to suggest doing something else with this work before shrinking it: maybe sending it over to WikiBooks or perhaps it is a useful resource to retain for a WikiProject. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:13, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- I apologise for the mess. The long citation chains are not permanent. Anything covered in detail by that many sources deserves a standalone article or section, so the citations will be moved to the bibliography, keeping only the most important for the list. Most of the details can be deleted or relegated to footnotes once I have checked for duplicate entries. The parts that have not been translated into English are names and "names", without which there would be even more duplicates. My offline copy is in the process of being split. That is why I have not updated the page for months.
  Depending on how one counts, there are about 4000 manuscripts. But many of these have been collected in boxes or bound in fascicles and codices, so they will be merged. Most have been described, and most of those that have not are free folia in boxes in Zadar. There are already over 3000 on the list. You asked how useful a list of just notable examples would be? Most of the manuscripts from the 10th to the 15th century are notable on their own, and almost as many from the 16th century on are notable enough for a standalone article but the proportion decreases significantly. Many are in between standalone notability and section notability. For example, enough literature exists to write Glagolitic parish registers, but I doubt articles on individual parish registers would pass an AfD. Ivan (talk) 00:04, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep but perhaps pare back. I agree with many of Rhododendrites' points, but I lean toward keep because a significant minority of the entries link to stand-alone Wikipedia pages. (This is unfortunately not obvious; it would be better to have the links with their full page names rather than abbreviations.) If the index as it stands is determined to be overkill, I would much rather see it pruned back to just these notable entries and retitled "List of notable Glagolitic manuscripts" rather than deleted entirely. I'm unfortunately not an expert on the subject and can't answer what I think are the core questions, which are whether such a list can be exhaustive and, if it can, whether this IS exhaustive. If this is everything, keep it. If it isn't - either because the list isn't finished or because it can't be - then pare it back to the manuscripts with stand-alone pages and either dump the rest or pass it on to some more specialized project. Moonreach (talk) 20:18, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: Whatever decision is reached on this page should also be considered for List of Glagolitic printed works, a similarly large list on a related subject. Moonreach (talk) 20:29, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- I wish I had thought about placing the column with full page names second instead of with abbreviations earlier. On the other hand, some names are very long right now. I will make room for that when I delete the columns for folio count, folio size, columns x rows. Ivan (talk) 00:04, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Valid list. Deletion is not cleanup. First thing it needs is to be split. Srnec (talk) 20:26, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Judging by the talk page discussion the aim is to include all manuscripts. Various suggestions have been made there as to splitting the list by century, which would seem to address the major concern. I'm not seeing a deletion rationale. Espresso Addict (talk) 21:20, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This article is not ok. That's certain. But to delete it is just an extra step. All this information can be on wikipedia from what I have read of the article as it is notable enough to be mentioned in other articles and have various lists about the topic. Of course, the size of this article is not normal and it needs a huge scale-back. With that said, I am in favour of keeping the article (perhaps with a name change) to include notable scripts, and over time, spreading all the information on it arround related articles adding encyclopedic value to it. Lakwat (talk) 21:30, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Again, I apologise for the mess. A lot has changed since a friend and I began the list in 2017. But I do have a cleaning and splitting plan. It should be acceptable within about a year of our recent expansion. The list is notable and at least 10% of current entries are notable enough for standalone articles. Not every entry in a list has to be notable, but excessively long lists break the data dump rule. If this list were twice as long it would break it, but with about 4000 manuscripts in existence it merely "bends" it. Especially since many of those can be condensed into a single entry. Even split into separate articles for each decade, a List of Cyrillic manuscripts would be better off on WikiBooks, except for List of early Cyrillic manuscripts. But Glagolitic manuscripts are very rare, so the script itself makes the entries notable. At least notable enough to be listed. See List of New Testament minuscules (1–1000) for a similarly large corpus. Ivan (talk) 00:04, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep (valid list) but split with extreme prejudice. My laptop cannot load the article. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:48, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree there's no point in using Wikipedia as a database. I don't think the table format is useful because some columns have very small bits of info while the notes are quite large, and it looks ugly even at a large desktop resolution. The linking is also inconsistent, I noticed how the Istrian Demarcation is not linked in the first instance but somewhere later, also with a weird pipe link. This should not be kept as is. --Joy (talk) 11:00, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Those columns will be deleted. They are there only to prevent the creation of duplicate entries. Ivan (talk) 11:58, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  Which columns? --Joy (talk) 15:21, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  "Folia", "Dimensions", "Columns and rows". Such information is good for infoboxes of independent articles on manuscripts but excessive for List of Glagolitic manuscripts. But sometimes it is the only information available to differentiate between similar entries in catalogues. Ivan (talk) 12:27, 24 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
For the notes, most information will be transferred to standalone articles or relegated to footnotes. Ivan (talk) 12:31, 24 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Split into discrete articles and turn this into a disamb. page. It seems like there's a general consensus to start doing that now? SN54129 11:56, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A disambiguation page would mean creating List of undated Glagolitic manuscripts, but because the split is by century, most manuscripts will eventually have a "date" and the page would eventually need to be deleted. So for now I prefer a reduction similar to List of New Testament lectionaries. Ivan (talk) 14:28, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Could also just spin out the longer sections (basically that would mean leaving the first few in this article, and creating separate articles for the last several). e.g. List of companies of the United States by state. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:38, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is a good idea. I would have to add the links to the standalone lists to the top, though (15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, late). To make navigation quicker. Ivan (talk) 20:14, 27 September 2023 (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.