Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of best-selling music artists 2

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 of the debate was keep. - Mailer Diablo 01:39, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

List of best-selling music artists 2

First afd

This article is dreadful. It features on the list of most-revised articles [1], which is pretty bad for an article which is a list of supposed facts - 2928 revisions suggests something is wrong. It is pretty much permanently erroneous - fans put bands such as Led Zeppelin at the top of the list, then someone else puts The Beatles there. There is one user who simply replaces the band name with Cher.

Most of the sales figures are pretty much worthless guesses, based on original research - a quote by some lazy music journalist saying so-and-so has sold 100,000,000 albums in 1996, so let's randomly add 100,000,000 to an arbitrary guess at how many singles they have sold.

The article is unstable, constantly changing. It is original research, and largely worthless as a reference source. The 'facts' in it change all the time. It undoubtedly excludes popular artists from areas where sales figures are poorly collated. Delete!. 87.74.12.83 11:38, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. This article is very useful for people wanting to find out artists' total record sales. It is quick and easy. Most artists' sales on the list are accurate. Expecially Michael Jackson, The Beatles, Elvis Presley and Led Zeppilin who, if you go to the discussion page you will see, have been thoroughly researched and argued out until a very, very accurate record sale was found. Most of the top ten has been looked into and my opinion is that those artists have accurate record sales totals beside their names. You can't find an exact worldwide sales total for any artist, but you can get pretty darn close and this list, as it stands now, is pretty darn close. Street walker 12:31, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

• If there are no worldwide sales totals, only the top ten are accurate(we hope), and we can only get pretty darn accurate, this list is doomed to be both incomplete and permanently flawed. Therefore, better to delete. Superm401 | Talk 12:33, 13 November 2005 (UTC) (Vote removed; seems nominator was summarizing poorly. Superm401 | Talk 18:12, 13 November 2005 (UTC))
• Week delete - bordeline, if one can make a good argument I will change my vote. It's just a time bomb of edit wars. Maybe keep it listed by alphabet, not # of sales which is wildly inaccurate. Renata3 14:44, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. It's just a huge mess and utterly useless. Delete it. --Hollow Wilerding 15:06, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

• Keep As long as there is a warning to accompany the article, there is no reason for why it should be deleted. Over the past few weeks, this article has actually been greatly improved with the addition of new references as well as warnings that point out the fact that references are not being provided for certain artists. There are also a lot of interesting discussions that go on and it is good to see that the discussions are referenced as well.

• Keep, well-sourced and throuroughly discussed article. Just because people repeatedly insert misinformation is not a good reason to delete it. - Mgm|^(talk) 15:39, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep . Useful as long as the information stays accurate. 23skidoo 16:30, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep — Nominators arguments demonstrate a need for cleanup, not for deletion. Invalid AfD criteria — RJH 17:24, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep – Look, I'm going to vote keep for the simple reason that this article was vfd before, and there was no concensus. There has to be a stop to this at some point. I still concur that the information is subjective and needs a definitive source (such as RIAA) to verify any and all information. [[Briguy52748 23:09, 13 November 2005 (UTC)]]
• Delete Bad information can be worse than no information at all. Denni☯ 04:52, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep Wikipedia should try to provide this information, but if some of it is wrong, it doesn't matter all that much. CalJW 16:42, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I am biting my tongue very hard, trying to keep in mind WP:CIVIL. Yes, it does matter all that much. We want people to perceive us as a reliable source of correct information. If we say, "oh, some of it's wrong, but that's okay" and we can't even tell them what's wrong (or even worse, can't be bothered to tell them), where does that leave our credibility? In the toilet, that's where. We already have difficulty gaining acceptance among librarians, educators, and other user groups. Let's not make matters worse. Denni☯ 03:09, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep Everyone knows the article's limitations and they are clearly explained at the start of the article. Until someone can come up with a definitive list, this will remain as an interesting and useful article.
• Keep If some of the information is wrong, wouldn't it be easier to just fix it rather than delete it? There are plenty of sources which can be used and these are only estimates - no one would have actual figures as these artists have sold millions of records, and more are sold every day. Sarz 07:24, 15 November 2005 (UTC)]
• Keep. Now that the article features a prominent warning, and more of the figures have linked sources, it's much improved. The figures don't exist for a perfect article, but this is currently the closest thing there is to it, and hopefully it will continue to improve. Of course it attracts a lot of misinformation from fanboys, but provided that sources are checked, this isn't enough to provide cause for deletion. Hopefully we can reach a consensus on this.

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.