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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. A fair contingent of editors seem to believe that a list is a viable option here, and as such deletion does not seem the optimal outcome: lists and categories can co-exist, and particularly if improved this one may provide additional useful information. I would strongly advise that some thought is put into how this list can be made into more than a duplicate of a category - most of the keep arguments are rather theoretical in nature, and if this is to be kept in the long term the theoretical arguments need to be turned into actual improvements. Ultimately, this debate has been dragging on for a long, long time and it has to end somewhere: there is no sign of a consensus forming either way. ~ mazca talk 01:37, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]


List of education articles by country[edit]

List of education articles by country (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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  • Delete. This article is redundant to the related category. It adds nothing extra. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 22:19, 28 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as a list trying to imitate the function of a category. The self-reference makes the topic impossible to discuss from an encyclopedic perspective. ThemFromSpace 04:21, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete This is one of those rare cases where the category takes care of it all, and a list is unnecessary. In most cases, a list can do more than a category when it comes to providing discriminating information, but there's nothing that can usefully be added to describe the entries on this list. Essentially, this comes down to someone saying, we have an article called "Education in Afghanistan", and "Education in Albania", and "Education in Algeria", etc. etc.; and nobody is going to ask, "What's that article about?" Mandsford (talk) 12:54, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep This is a fairly well established type of list--and does give additional information, for example indicating the limitation at Liechtenstein, listing names where the actual article is at a different title and would not be easily spotted in a category, indicating a few redlinks (and there are a considerable number of other possible ones), and grouping some subdivisions, like Korea. None of these can be served by a category--especially the redlinks. DGG ( talk ) 23:46, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I only spot one real redlink, Education in Kosovo. The other two redlinks are cases of an incorrect title, since there are articles called Education in the Dominican Republic and Education in Papua New Guinea. The fact that there aren't very many redlinks and the fact that the articles have uniform titles is testimony that this list might have served a purpose at one time, but has outlived its usefulness. Mandsford (talk) 02:33, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
None of the additional information in the article is a rational for keeping it. The Education in Liechtenstein is incorrectly linked piped to one secondary school of a possible four. The redlinks are not of any use to a reader but are of use to editors. The Wikipedia:WikiProject Education can keep a track of articles that need creating. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 04:29, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
CLS never says categories do not supercede lists. Actually, they have different functions here and may complement each other, but never have to. Lists are encyclopedia articles, which have to abide by our policies and guidelines while categories are just collections of information that we use to organize material, the bar for the ways categories tie information together is much lower than it is for lists, as categories don't have to abide by policies like WP:N or WP:IINFO. ThemFromSpace 00:58, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein  05:51, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak keep, this does add a certain amount of value over the category, especially the Poland section. I am sure there will be more scope for useful formatting like this in the future. Nerfari (talk) 11:18, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The two articles should be linked for the Education in Poland article. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 07:05, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Indeed. And note that it links to the list in question (now that I have fixed the link). One list is organised alphabetically, the other by country. Perhaps they might be merged as a sortable index... Colonel Warden (talk) 17:36, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 03:03, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - I actually have to disagree with DGG here, because I think that a category would work just as well, or better, here. Bearian (talk) 17:22, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • this seems quite speculative and is not a reason to delete. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Note also that we have lots of such lists/indexes. There seems to be some inconsistency as to whether they are called indexes or lists but this is just an example of Wikipedia's half-built state.Colonel Warden (talk) 17:32, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment This article was deleted. However, after a debate on my talkpage, it was decided that it would be better to wait a bit more so that the consensus is clearer. Therefore, I am relisting the nomination. --Tone 18:39, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Tone 18:39, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep; WP:CLS seems pretty clear that redundancy with categories is not a reason to delete lists. "Developers of these redundant systems [lists and categories] should not compete against each other in a destructive manner, such as by nominating the work of their competitors to be deleted just because they overlap." —Smeazel (talk) 19:43, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The issue isn't that they overlap, but that the list is an article while the category is not. As such, the list has to not only fill up the function of the category, but go beyond it by presenting an analysis of the list as an encyclopedic subject. That is impossible to do with this list, as it is only a list of the articles which we have here on Wikipedia. We already have a place for this here, but as a category and not a list. Lists and categories aren't copy/paste images of each other and in order for a list to complement a category it must show that the grouping of articles is of encyclopedic importance and has been already done by reliable sources. As no such sources have commented upon the grouping of Wikipedia's education articles by country, no suitable material can be presented in the list so this particular list fails WP:LIST. ThemFromSpace 23:03, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, WP:LIST#Navigation makes it quite clear that we can and should have lists of articles just like this to assist editors in browsing and searching in a general topic area. There is no requirement for article content in addition to the list. Colonel Warden (talk) 23:15, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That is once the list itself is appropriate. Per WP:LIST lists are articles, and they abide by our content guidelines and policies such as other articles. For example, list articles still need to contain verifiable information about a notable subject. If a list cannot meet our basic article guidelines, the list shouldn't be here, just the same with each other article on Wikipedia. Also closely related to this is the fact that there are many possible list topics which are too broad to develop an article out of, per WP:SALAT. These are many of the topics which are suitable for a category and not a list, much like the topic of this article. ThemFromSpace 23:57, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Requiring a list to be verifiable doesn't mean the list itself should already have appeared elsewhere—it means that it has to be verifiable that each item included on the list belongs there. This is clear from the context of the statement in WP:LIST, and from the further explanation later on in that page: "Inclusion of material on a list should be based on what reliable sources say, not on what the editor interprets the source to be saying." (Emphasis added.) In this case, there's certainly no question that each item on the list is, in fact, an article about education. WP:LIST concurs with WP:CLS in that "Redundancy of lists and categories is beneficial because the two categories work together". Furthermore, as for WP:SALAT, I don't see how you could say this list is too broad—there are only so many countries, after all, so the number of articles in this list is inherently limited and can never be overly large. —Smeazel (talk) 03:04, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - it's one thing to have redundancy when the list provides additional information - for instance, the List of Presidents of the United States tells us when the Presidents served, their parties, their vice presidents and their rank, something Category:Presidents of the United States does not. But since Category:Education by country is almost exactly redundant to List of education articles by country, there's no reason to keep the latter. - Biruitorul Talk 03:31, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep A Wikipedia list aids in navigation. That's what this one does, listing blue links to all the various articles that are about the same subject. I find it much easier to read things in a list formation than in the categories. Dream Focus 14:02, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • This list helps very little, if any, toward navigation. The articles can be found easily through the associated category or by doing a search. All the articles have a very appropriate names and follow a pattern so searching is easy. This list is not one that needs reading since all the links are obvious. The question would be, what do the majority of WP readers prefer - a list or a category? -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 20:47, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • It would help you little towards navigation perhaps. I'd find it most helpful. Also, list like this show up in searches, while categories do not. When you are looking for something, you can find it in a list article, NOT a category. The only way to find a category is to first come to an article like this, and notice the link to it at the bottom of the page. So yeah, this list aids in navigation, it far more likely to get noticed than a category. And it doesn't matter what you believe the majority of users would like or not like. No way to tell without a Wikipedia wide survey. You can't delete something because you don't like it. See WP:IDONTLIKEIT. It meets all requirements that a list is suppose to have. Dream Focus 21:24, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • Categories do show up in searches. A search for "List of education articles by country" (which is a very unlikely search term) will give this article and a search using the more likely term of "Education by country" gives the category as the first result. Also, I am not using the WP:IDONTLIKEIT argument since I feel that I am putting quite rational reasons forward for deleting the article. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 09:08, 27 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. per WP:SALAT: "Lists of lists should also be available as alphabetical categories." See Category:Lists of lists for more. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:40, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • This page is not a list of lists. It is a very specific list of a specific set of articles. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 20:47, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Again the line is blurred between the denoted and the denoter. In any case, this is indeed a poor attempt at supplanting the function of categories, and it makes no sense whatsover. Dahn (talk) 04:10, 27 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. The AfD has been up for a month now and it should be resolved. Those arguing for deletion are not given any rebuttal but those who want to keep it have been given reasons why it should not be kept. To me this suggests that the arguments for keeping it are weak so therefore the AfD should lean towards deletion. I have just now twigged to the fact that the article is not a List of education articles by country it is a List of "Education in (some country here)" articles-- Alan Liefting (talk) - 03:51, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Your argument is that the list is redundant to the category. This argument has been rebutted by reference to the guideline WP:CLS. Q.E.D. Colonel Warden (talk) 08:03, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • And the use WP:CLS to justify this page has been rebutted. Also, note that I said the article "adds nothing extra" as well as saying it is redundant to the category. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 20:10, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, WP:CLS states, "Accordingly, these methods should not be considered in conflict with each other. Rather, they are synergistic, each one complementing the others. For example, since editors differ in style, some favor building lists while others favor building categories ... Many users prefer to browse Wikipedia through its lists, while others prefer to navigate by category; and lists are more obvious to beginners, who may not discover the category system right away. Therefore, the "category camp" should not delete or dismantle Wikipedia's lists...". This seems to destroy your argument completely. Colonel Warden (talk) 20:43, 1 November 2009 (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.
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