Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of athletes from Chicago

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 no consensus. There seem to be more keep than delete votes but a plurality of delete votes exists (bias admitted) and neither side is spammy or bad faith in their arguments. (non-admin closure) Dronebogus (talk) 01:24, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

List of athletes from Chicago[edit]

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There is not much information in this list that merits a stand-alone article/list. It has no real purpose aside from containing links to athletes' articles who are from Chicago. I cannot easily find an equivalent article/list for any other major cities or metropolitan areas. A similar collection of links can be found in another Category: Category:Sportspeople from Chicago. StarScream1007 ►Talk 02:20, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. This could make sense as a category, but there's no benefit to having this as a list article. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 02:53, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Seriously? First, there are lists of athletes and others from cities, often embedded in "notable persons from city x" lists. For example in List of people from Detroit, and List of people from Denver, and List of people from Bangalore, and List of people from Quebec. And not just athletes, but other groups. For example, List of hip hop musicians from New York City, and New Yorkers in journalism, and List of LGBT people from New York City. Lmk if you need more examples. And otherstuffexists is not a counterargument - because this is not the only reason this should be kept. And third, of course, where lists are long, it is our policy to consider splitting the lists into smaller pages. Chicago is a big city, with a long list, and that makes sense. These city lists will only get longer in time (unless some vandal starts deleting names without good reason-always a possibility, as we have our share of those). And it will therefore make sense for more of these "notable persons from city x" lists to be split. The rationale for having lists of sportspeople from place x? It's the same as that for the dozens of lists of sportspeople from country x. As in Category:Lists of sportspeople by nationality. Or sportspeople from a state. As in List of athletes from Alaska, and List of athletes from Maryland A – M, and List of sports-related people from Mississippi, and List of athletes from Montana. Lastly, as far as the immediately above comment is concerned, it is well settled that "makes sense as a category, but not as a list" arguments are not valid. Because the two, though covering similar terrain, offer different information. This is discussed directly in WP:NOTDUPE. Obviously, the information in this list, for example, is not set forth completely in a category. 2603:7000:2143:8500:1CC8:B0E7:6B:CDF5 (talk) 03:31, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per WP:NOTINDISCRIMINATE. There are literally hundreds/thousands even, of athletes connected to one of America's biggest cities. A category is sufficient, and as the nominator says, there aren't many other examples of such lists for other cities. Ajf773 (talk) 08:48, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Lists of people and Illinois. Shellwood (talk) 10:39, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as wildly indiscriminate Dronebogus (talk) 10:47, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Agree with the idea of a category but, there is no reason for it to be an article. ScienceAdvisor (talk) 19:02, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Keep Lists of "People from ..." have repeatedly survived consensus debates and they proliferate both Wikipedia pages and as stand-alone articles (where longer lists merit their own article) per MOS:LIST. There have also been multiple RFC efforts to ban them outright, all of which failed to gain consensus. The most recent discussion over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lists involves a lengthy discussion about "Should List of people from place require blue links?", showing a united consensus of editors discussing how to make these lists better...not delete them.

The only debate I see here that doesn't violate MOS is if this list should be merged with List of people from Chicago or kept as a stand-alone. I again refer to MOS sub-article on Stand Alone Lists WP:SALAT "When entries in a category have grown enough to warrant a fresh list-article, they can be moved out to a new page, and be replaced by a See new list link." Which is what I did here in relation to List of people From Chicago and List of athletes from Chicago. Finally, lists and categories are not mutually exclusive. They serve different purposes. This list is simply unfinished (a stub of sorts) that lacks a good intro. If you want a good example of what this list (or the greater List of people from Chicago) should look like, I refer you to what I did with List of people from Park Ridge, Illinois. I encourage you all to review the MOS on lists and work to improve them instead of trying to delete them. Dkriegls (talk to me!) 00:25, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions. –LaundryPizza03 (d c̄) 03:00, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Dkriegls. Valid, reasonably sized subdivision of a very large list. –LaundryPizza03 (d c̄) 10:07, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, obviously, as a non-encyclopedic cross-categorization. If a list is so broad as to require subdivision in totally arbitrary ways, then it wasn't a valid list to begin with. And believe you me, this particular method of subdivision is totally arbitrary. You could have just as well done by state (which would have been better, although still not worth keeping, since at least that way you don't end up with microlists of people from a small town with a single entry). But you could have also divided by sport instead of birthplace. Or by birth year. ~~Or by closest radio station or something~~. In fact, there isn't even a clear parent list. Is it "list of athletes" or "list of people from Chicago"? Both of those are way too broad for a list with no natural way to subdivide. 35.139.154.158 (talk) 17:41, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:56, 14 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. This list is restricted to notable athletes from Chicago as it says in its first sentence. It is a navigational list of articles in Wikipedia as provided for in WP:CSC and it can very well exist alongside the corresponding Category:Sportspeople from Chicago as the Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates guideline suggests. There is relevent information in the list that cannot be contained in a category. It is arguable that unreferenced entries in the list should be removed although I would not support doing so and it would not be a reason for deleting the entire list. This list exists fully within our guidelines and, if these guidelines are unsatisfactory, we should seek to change them not just try to delete target articles. Thincat (talk) 10:47, 14 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
But this isn't a navigational list. It's an arbitrary intersection of two properties that have nothing to do with each other: "athlete" and "born in Chicago". There are millions of categories, and it's inappropriate to have a list article duplicating every single one of them. This is even a bad category. It highlights the broken way in which categorization is done on Wikipedia, with multiple arbitrary intersections of non-WP:DEFINING categories. But frankly, the category wonks are off in their own little enclave, and trying to make any inroads there is probably pretty futile. But not here...here we can make a stand. This list just is not going to help anyone find any encyclopedic information. 35.139.154.158 (talk) 15:37, 14 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
... but I'm not suggesting that every list is appropriate. I think that this one is. On a happier (or unhappier?) note I entirely agree with you that the denizens of WP:CFD, by looking down the telescope from the wrong end, have produced a practically unusable system, one best ignored. Thincat (talk) 09:59, 15 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep As Dkriegls and Thincat alluded to above, navigational lists with notable entries usually fall within Wikipedia's guidelines and are kept. Qwaiiplayer (talk) 14:01, 14 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep appears to satisfy WP:NLIST Bruxton (talk) 01:23, 21 November 2022 (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.