Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of listed buildings in Dundee

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. The discussion on how to better organize this information can continue on some article Talk page or, even better, maybe a WikiProject Talk page. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:41, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

List of listed buildings in Dundee[edit]

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As noted by Dunarc on the talk page in Feb 2020, the listing of hundreds of listed buildings in the civil parish of Dundee arbitrarily divided between sequentially numbered sub-pages clearly violates WP:NOTDATABASE. For the US equivalents of the list of U.S. National Historic Landmarks by state, we divide the lists by state to give no page more than 150 entries, even dividing the New York list between the sites within and outside New York City to trim the list length. Similarly, we divide the United States National Register of Historic Places listings by county to avoid more than 200 entries per list. If the number of listed buildings in civil parish of Dundee is too numerous to fit in a single article, then it dilutes their claim to a gigantic list article under WP:NBUILDING. Thus, the fact that these sites are listed buildings should be reserved for Wikidata attributes, article categories, and infobox markers. BluePenguin18 🐧 ( 💬 ) 20:21, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am also nominating these six sub-pages for violating WP:SUB to host the contested mainspace content of Dundee's listed buildings across arbitrary divisions to avoid excessive length:

Lastly, under the same argument that if article creator Multichill could not identify a rational way to split the hundreds of listed buildings in the civil parishes of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, as they did when creating similar, smaller list articles through a combination of manual and bot editing in May 2012, then these massive list articles arbitrarily split across sub-pages should be similarly deleted. In talk page archives, Multichill received criticism from multiple editors for this approach to list creation, admitting that with hundreds of listed buildings in these four civil parishes, there is no clear way to present the content. None of these lists appear to be widely referenced in wikilinks, aside from their inclusion in their respective cities' navboxes.

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Scotland-related deletion discussions. BluePenguin18 🐧 ( 💬 ) 20:22, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You're comparing an European country with the USA when it comes to historic buildings? These are old cities with a long history and plenty of old buildings. Lists are more like List of New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan from 14th to 59th Streets.

Can you please clarify what part of WP:NOTDATABASE is "clearly violated"?

WP:NBUILDING seems to apply if an article about every building would be created. These are lists and not lists of all buildings, only the ones that are listed. Each entry links to a page describing why it's listed. Lists of historic buildings are notable.

So the only thing left is how it is split up, I have a link for that one {{Sofixit}}.

@Dr. Blofeld and Nyttend: I think you worked on this back in the day. Multichill (talk) 21:21, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

First, I cited WP:NOTDATABASE in regard to the arbitrary division of hundreds of listed buildings across sub-lists. Second, you are correct in arguing that WP:NLIST is more relevant than WP:NBUILDING, and WP:NLIST defers to the WP:LISTPURP guideline to keep informational lists. Whereas Manhattan is a rectangular island amenable to demarcating landmarks by their street number, the next closest geographic distinguisher for these four Scottish cities appears to be postal codes, which adheres to the relevant AfD precedent (see below). Do you think this would work? BluePenguin18 🐧 ( 💬 ) 05:21, 14 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Architecture and Lists. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 21:37, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Hello from Dundee! I would say that the arrangement of the Dundee lists really is pretty arbitrary - they bounce around the city at random, and they often don't use the common names for the buildings so it's hard to recognise what's what. Historic Environment Scotland is where I'd normally go to find this kind of information - it has maps, descriptions and often pictures. Maybe reducing the list to just the few buildings that are likely to have Wikipedia articles would make more sense? Adam Sampson (talk) 22:05, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy keep. These are part of a comprehensive series of lists, nationwide (I believe) or common throughout the country. Deleting the lists for just a few bits of the UK would be preposterous. Moreover, for US lists, we typically subdivide by neighbourhood, or (if nothing else will work) by first letter: "List of listed buildings in Glasgow: A", etc. Nyttend (talk) 22:36, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
First, thanks for the work Multichill and you did creating these articles on listed buildings! Looking through the AfD archives, I found WP:Articles for deletion/Listed buildings in Liverpool kept the list of Liverpool's >2500 listed buildings by splitting entries based on the city's 25 postal codes. The DD postcode area has eleven districts for Dundee, the AB postcode area has twelve districts within Aberdeen, the EH postcode area has twenty districts for Edinburgh, and the G postcode area has 57 for Glasgow and its surrounding towns. I think this approach to splitting will be more effective because many of the listed buildings are officially named with the address, rather than a distinct name of a former business or occupant. Thus, alphanumeric sorting and sub-division may result in confusion if consecutive entries between 1 Sample St and 2 Example Ave are on opposite ends of the city. Your thoughts? BluePenguin18 🐧 ( 💬 ) 05:05, 14 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The splitting is indeed not optimal (just last week, I added a few pictures for Edinburgh, and I had to spend quite some time to find in which lists the entries were), but this is not the reason to delete. I would advocate arranging the lists by street name alphabetically (smth like List of listed buildings in Edinburgh/A-B), and where it does not apply make a separate list. Ymblanter (talk) 06:45, 14 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If there is a decision on alphabetical reordering, I would be willing to help. Ymblanter (talk) 07:35, 14 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Per Nyttend. Listed buildings are notable and a tabled list is the way to go in cases where there isn't enough for an article. I would rather split the list alphabetically rather than number them though.♦ Dr. Blofeld 07:07, 14 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Strange. When we have articles on individual listed buildings we're told by some editors they should be redirected to a list like this. And when a list like this is created we're told by other editors that we shouldn't have lists like this. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:24, 14 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep unless replaced by a set of better organised lists - eg by council ward or Community Council Area. Alternatively could all the tables be put on a single page (not a single large table)? - but this may not meet other guidelines. These lists were very useful in the early days of Wiki Loves Monuments. Although there is now an upload tool linked to a map for the competition, it can still be useful to see listed buildings in an area (particularly in towns which only have a single list). AlasdairW (talk) 16:19, 14 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep for re-organisation – I had been planning to do so with Glasgow. Completely agree that the current divisions are arbitrary, illogical and do not aid navigation in any way. However, it is appropriate that such lists exist, and there are too many to keep them in a single article for cities of this size. I propose that these instead be split between council wards – not perfect as the boundaries can change (though there hasn't been much change since multi-member wards were created in 2007), and there will be great disparities between them (e.g a handful in Greater Pollok (ward) and hundreds in Hillhead (ward)), but it follows both consistency on this site, where non-urban areas have been divided geographically into civil parishes without much objection AFAIK, and on the British Listed Buildings website, which would in turn make it much easier to re-organise the entries with something to refer back to. There would also be a manageable number of articles. Open to suggestion on alternative criteria; alphabetical order is not ideal in my opinion as many of the entries begin with building numbers and are known by multiple names, in many cases it would still be very difficult for the average reader to find entries (or at least, it has been for me when I've had to do so), albeit I realise many also won't be familiar with what ward covers what area either, even in their home country / city. Crowsus (talk) 07:13, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My suggestion was alphabetical order of the streets (which is also not ideal, because there are sometimes multiple streets, and sometimes none, but better that it is now). Wards are also fine but then someone should go ahead and propose the structure, I have no idea about wards of Edinburgh for example. Ymblanter (talk) 07:43, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment @AlasdairW and @Crowsus, you both have suggested using ward boundaries, but I want to highlight that as recently as 2016, the Scottish government changed 25 ward boundaries, including in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. Thus, not only is it quite difficult to figure out the associated ward for the thousands of sites we need to sort, but we would also lack an easy way to tell which listed buildings shifted into another ward as their boundaries change.
@Dr. Blofeld and @Ymblanter, you both suggested alphabetizing by street name, but consider the two primary use cases for these lists. First, someone wants a directory of the listed buildings in Scottish cities where any sub-categorization method will suffice. Second, someone wants to know which listed buildings exist in their area, in which case we need a sub-categorization method forced on the site's geographic position. Thus, I want to reiterate that sub-categorizing by postal codes seems like the simplest solution because their boundaries have minimally changed, and even if they change, the mismatch between the list entry and updated maps would be immediately apparent for fixing. Given that these sub-lists already include the coordinates, it seems like a simple process to find their postal code on Google Maps. As previously noted, the listed buildings in Liverpool page showcases that this approach is feasible. BluePenguin18 🐧 ( 💬 ) 16:56, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But imagine I have a building in Edinburgh and I have the street address, can I easily convert it to a postal code? Ymblanter (talk) 17:07, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, at random I have chosen the 18th entry on List of listed buildings in Edinburgh/18, which is "St Bernard's Crescent 1 And 12 Leslie Place." Plugging the entry's listed coordinates into Google Maps, I get a matching pin over 1 Leslie Place that Google Maps tells me is within the EH4 postal code. BluePenguin18 🐧 ( 💬 ) 18:25, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In my opinion, using the postcode would be the slowest method, as the Historic Scotland listings do not include this so it would have to be done for every single building. By contrast, the street name is already in the listing in most cases so at least that would be quicker. For the wards, as I've said, British Listed Buildings already subdivided the buildings into council area, then into (post-2016) ward, so it would be a lot more straightforward to organise them. If the postcode option is favoured by the majority, I would suggest using those lists as a starting point as obviously most of the wards have some correlation with postal districts (I think Govan (ward) and the G51 postcode are pretty much the same boundaries) so it would make the task slightly easier than working through the randomised list articles we have currently. Crowsus (talk) 23:02, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That link is currently returning error messages for me on both Microsoft Edge and Firefox. Were you able to access it today? BluePenguin18 🐧 ( 💬 ) 01:28, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah it worked fine for me now (Desktop, Edge browser / link created from mobile, Chrome). Crowsus (talk) 06:40, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OK, the site is working for me now! For Dundee, it reports that 287 listed buildings are in the Ferry Ward, 404 listed buildings are in the West End Ward, and 471 listed buildings are in the Maryfield Ward. I think that 250 listed buildings is the limit of readability, so I would argue that sub-division by ward does not work here~~, but I suppose we need numbers for comparison, so I will try to see how Dundee's listed buildings split by zip code when I return from a trip tomorrow~~. Thanks for your input! BluePenguin18 🐧 ( 💬 ) 12:10, 18 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately the zip/postcode situation will be similar, Dundee only has 5 postcodes for the whole city and splitting them up into sub-codes beyond that (DD1 2--, DD1 3-- etc) would be bewildering even to locals IMO. Perhaps alphabetical would be the best option, as any geographic division in all cases would skew towards probably-unmanageably high numbers for the city centre, with other occasional spikes at other historic areas (e.g around University of Glasgow campus = 843 buildings in its ward, which is only covered by parts of 3 postcodes). Crowsus (talk) 13:35, 18 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Out of curiosity, I don't necessarily disagree with a 250 limit, but is that some kind of site technical/guideline or your own judgement? AFAIK, List of Category A listed buildings in Glasgow contains all the relevant sites, which according to British Listed Buildings should be 795. Crowsus (talk) 13:37, 18 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:SPLITLIST does not specify a limit, so I used ~250 as a rough threshold for readability when the individual entries are fairly short. While British Listed Buildings notes 795 Category A sites in Glasgow, only 282 of them are in the associated article, and if that article were updated/improved to include all of the Category A sites, I suspect there would be consensus to sub-divide it too. BluePenguin18 🐧 ( 💬 ) 13:56, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ah sorry, the discrepancy is probably due to that website counting each individual building that forms part of a listing, while the WP article goes by one entry per HES listing (which is the correct way IMO) - for example, #774 and #775 on BLB are both for Trades House, and the link for both entries ties to a common HES page, #LB32713. Not sure why they have done it that way, surely its more straightforward for them to stick with the divisions HES decided on?? Anyway, that's not our problem, although probably makes it slightly trickier for us as otherwise it's a useful cross-reference for these lists. PS Sorry just spotted this was now closed. Crowsus (talk) 22:59, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep A mess, but a fixable mess. I think there is a community consensus that these types of lists are generally notable for geographic regions with significant historical records. // Timothy :: talk 16:24, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep even if not all listed buildings are notable these lists seem appropriate per WP:NLIST and provide us a place to discuss listed buildings that aren't notable enough for their own article and yes the fact the likes of Dundee have been split are simply because these parishes contain many listed buildings so would be too large for a single list. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:28, 16 May 2024 (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.