Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of literature on political science

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. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 09:09, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

List of literature on political science[edit]

I had initially typed a {{prod}} rationale for this article but decided, upon reading it, to bring to AFD instead. Better safe than sorry, and all that.

This seems to be the only list of its kind ("literature on [subject]") and it is a hopelessly incomplete one at that ("literature" includes both books and articles). However, those aren't really reasons to delete an article. Arguably, this might be better handled by a category, but that too is largely a personal preference on which I'm loathe to base deletion. I think this list violates the spirit, if not the letter, of WP:NOT#DIR. The best way to express my sentiment is this: Wikipedia is not a syllabus.

For the sake of avoiding instruction creep, please do not add syllabi to WP:NOT. Like I wrote, this is the only such article I was able to find; there's no need to create a separate rule to cover just one article. -- Black Falcon 05:49, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And I just now realised that my request itself violates the essay I've linked to. :-| -- Black Falcon 05:52, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. See Category:Lists of publications in science. --- RockMFR 06:30, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks, I don't know why I missed that. The articles in that category differ from this one. They ony list publications that are central to the discipline; the books listed in this article are textbooks for public administration and American government, but are not the most central ones (at least in the latter category, I know little about public administration). A List of important publications in political science may be a viable article, but it would not gain much from this existing article. I will see if I can start that article today or tomorrow. Thanks again, Black Falcon 15:46, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and put the important publications in and change the title if necessary. All editing decisions. DGG 02:01, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I don't think a literature list for political science is comparable to lists in Category:Lists of publications in science. The central publications for subjects like mathematics or physics are essentially the same across the world. Euclid and Newton will be studied in every mathematics and physics program, respectively, but the content of "political science" programs differs from country to country. Political science programs in every country include their own "Country government" subfields (e.g., Canadian government, Indian government, Zimbabwean government). Any "list of literature on political science" could not plausibly include all of those. If the subfield of "national governments" is dropped, we are left with "political theory", "international studies", and "comparative politics". A list could be made for these three, but it could use nothing from this existing article. Again, a List of important publications in political science would not use the items noted in the existing article. Cleanup and renaming are possible, but it would involve rewriting the article in its entirety; it would be no different than starting a new article. -- Black Falcon 22:36, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that the title would include the word important, as each item in the list would only be included if it were notable. In any case, I lean towards deletion of this list per a rewrite would be no different than starting a new article. That is unless someone (perhaps from the poli sci wikiproject) wanted to clean it up. By the way, as for a list of publications in the social sciences, there are often published bibliographies on subjects from which we could cite notability of books. There are also statistics of most cited works, which would also allow us to say certain works are notable. Smmurphy^(Talk) 16:58, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 16:28, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Delete, and kill it with fire. No hate towards the subject, but I'm pretty much against the whole "List Of" thing. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 164.116.253.7 (talk • contribs).
delete as overbroad, by the topic itself it ought to include several thousand entries at minimum, everything from Plato's "Republic" to my political science 411 textbook. I don't see how this could ever be comprehensive list, or even address a modest part of the topic. perhaps a list of *notable* or 'influential' works could be made, if referencing could be found for the importance of the topics (IE lists of influential works that have been published or the comments of notable political scientists) that would be different, but as is it's indiscriminate and far far too broad. Wintermut3 06:30, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Too broad, unmaintainable unlike lists of hard science books. Pavel Vozenilek 23:31, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Keep' Other such lists referrrd to here have clear criteria for inclusion; this does not. for a meaningful article, it should--but that is really an editing question, because it is possible to do so.DGG 23:51, 12 April 2007 (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.