Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Members of Congress who have represented Erie, Pennsylvania

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. – bradv🍁 06:22, 3 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

List of Members of Congress who have represented Erie, Pennsylvania[edit]

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No reason to have a list of members for one midsized city but none of the other US cities. There are websites where these things can be found, and most city articles have their congressional districts listed. Squeeps10 ^{Talk to me}_{My edits} 00:27, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Squeeps10 ^{Talk to me}_{My edits} 00:27, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. Squeeps10 ^{Talk to me}_{My edits} 00:27, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. Lightburst (talk) 03:10, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per nom. It's kind of synthy to say that these people were "representing Erie" specifically? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 01:21, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete to narrow and regional (doesn't appeal to broad audience) to qualify for a list article IMO. Plus, like said above there is already other articles that cover this type of thing perfectly fine. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:47, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The nomination does not provide a reason to delete. The argument about other cities is a form of WP:OSE and does not explain why this is a problem. Saying that this infomation is found elsewhere tends to justify the page per WP:LISTN. And there seems to be no consideration of alternatives such as merger with the page about the city. The issue which the page seems to be addressing is that congressional districts have been quite plastic and this is a way of providing some historical continuity. Why is this a problem? Andrew🐉(talk) 10:27, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete members of congress lists are grouped by district not by city.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:25, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per previous. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:241:301:4360:6C9A:42B2:C9B2:BEF4 (talk) 18:27, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - the list has a well-defined scope with clear inclusion criteria relating to a notable subject (Congressional representatives). This list serves a very useful purpose. Congressional district numbers often have no continuity across redistricting, which occurs every 10 years and sometimes more. A state's "1st district" might represent one side of the state one decade and the other side of the state the next decade. Such districts have nothing in common except an arbitrary number. Lists organized by actual community represented is a very welcome addition to the encyclopedia. Furthermore, the rationales of the nominator and Johnpacklambert should be discarded by the closing admin, because they are based on WP:OSDE, which is not a valid rationale for deletion. CJK09 (talk) 19:59, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Most cities in the United States (and Canada, and India, and Australia, and the United Kingdom, and France, and Germany, and Spain, and Italy, and I could keep on naming other representative democracies with elected governments until this comment was the size of a small novel) do not have lists like this, and there's no reason why Erie PA specifically needs special treatment that New York City and London and Los Angeles and Toronto and Paris and Berlin and Mumbai and Sydney aren't getting. Bearcat (talk) 22:46, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Then those articles should be created. "Other stuff doesn't exist" is not a valid reason to delete a page that meets Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion. CJK09 (talk) 23:04, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No, they really shouldn't. Sometimes other stuff doesn't exist for a good reason: having one of these for every city on earth would be literally unmaintainable, and the value in even trying would be literally nonexistent. Bearcat (talk) 03:22, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

We're not talking about every city on earth; just those in the US. There are only about 300 cities of this size in the US and that's not an unmaintainable number of pages.

Why would or should only US cities be eligible for this? That's the flaw in your reasoning: there may be only 300 cities in the US of comparable size to Erie, but there are literally thousands upon thousands of cities in the world of comparable size to Erie, and nobody's even tried to offer a credible reason why cities in the US should get special treatment that cities in the rest of the world aren't getting — literally all you've done is assert US-exclusivity as self-evident, without the first hint of a reason why it should be self-evident. Bearcat (talk) 20:49, 28 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, this fails WP:LISTN and WP:SYNTH, there is no reason to suggest that a list of congresspeople that happen to have had a minor city in their congressional districts is a notable topic. Devonian Wombat (talk) 01:43, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep passes our criteria for WP:NLIST aides the readers in navigation and information, and that is what this encyclopedia is about. Additionally the rationale for nominating is that we should not have this city represented because that other city does not have a list. Lightburst (talk) 03:15, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - A chronological list of Representatives of Erie is valuable whether or not someone else attempted it for Erie or elsewhere and cannot be rendered within Wikipedia using Categories. I would modify it to place the district name on the same line for instances where one city, like New York City, has multiple districts within its borders. I have often run into this issue of districts bouncing from one district number to another and would frankly see value in deleting district pages instead. They tell us nothing. The page will not require extensive maintenance and a broader application would depend on others adopting the model. Pnoble805 (talk) 04:55, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Duplicates United States congressional delegations from Pennsylvania which may be combined with maps (e.g. from [1] and [2]) to account for redistricting. This should not spawn countless articles covering any possible city in the country. Reywas92^Talk 08:10, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That other page doesn't cite any sources and seems more difficult to understand and use, especially if you need to cross reference with uncited external pages to do so. That page seems to need more work than the nominated page. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:34, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I can AWB these citations into these articles pretty easily. What would "need more work" is that we're missing "List of Members of Congress who have represented [Philadelphia][Pittsburgh][any other city in the country]" and this history is best presented with respect to the districts and delegations, not unlimited lists, since members of congress are elected by larger districts, not by city. Reywas92^Talk 23:21, 28 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete at the moment, appears to be WP:OR and possibly WP:SYNTH. SportingFlyer T·C 21:26, 29 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete for now as unhelpful. —GoldRingChip (it/they) 17:42, 30 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I think Andrew Davidson, CJK09 and Pnoble805 make good points which are at risk of being missed or misunderstood: listing members who represented congressional districts with an arbitrary number in common, regardless of the geographical location of such districts, as we do at Pennsylvania's 16th congressional district#List of members representing the district and 434 other such articles, is clearly unhelpful and confusing, and listing by geographical areas represented might be more productive. I don't think it's likely that there would be a consensus to delete those articles, since in spite of a lack of clear notability they've become part of the furniture, but I would probably support it if it were proposed. Keep !voters are also right that WP:OTHERSTUFF arguments are not compelling. But this list still has to satisfy WP:LISTN, and fails on that count – there's no indication the topic "has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources". – Arms & Hearts (talk) 20:37, 30 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I think deletion would be hasty given the unique nature of the article's presentation concept. Which experts would you propose should have been summoned? Wikipedia format experts would of course take refuge in the familiar and say the format is new therefore not in compliance. District chronologies are notable, especially when they are useful to those reaching for an encyclopedia. The need for this new format, and perhaps the lack of need for the current District format, is evident on its face. I appreciate you reiterating my point but don't see how at the same time you can propose deletion, which certainly doesn't move the ball forward. A more careful handling of this oeuvre is warranted. Pnoble805 (talk) 16:13, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I support deletion on the basis of WP:LISTN, which, ambiguous and variously interpreted though it is, is our only bit of solid guidance on the question of lists. I favour a stricter interpretation of the guideline than most: in my reading it means (or should mean) that we don't publish lists of things except when reliable sources have also published lists of those things or there's significant coverage of those things as a group. For example, there are probably books about mayors of New York City (not individual mayors, but about mayors of the city as a group), so List of mayors of New York City is a notable list. But there aren't, to my knowledge, sources about members of Congress representing Erie, so this list fails the criterion. (Although the necessity of sometimes splitting lists of officeholders from main articles per WP:SIZESPLIT, resulting in lists which don't strictly speaking need to be notable, muddles things further...) – Arms & Hearts (talk) 11:24, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I can imagine that there are references of representatives from a particular city or region (as I remember newspapers having weekly boxes of how your legislator voted). What is usually lacking in all articles about congressional districts is historical maps or descriptions of which cities were part of the district (and I am sure the same can be true about ridings and electoral districts in other countries). I only comment here because I don't really think that this squarely passes WP:LISTN, but I do not see the harm to this project if it is kept. --Enos733 (talk) 05:48, 3 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Wrong venue. scope_creep^Talk 10:59, 1 June 2020 (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.