Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of prehistoric mammals

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 main consensus here is that this article is in need of improvement and, perhaps, a split. But that is editorially work, not something I can enact in a deletion discussion. I hope there are editors interested in improving this article. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:31, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

List of prehistoric mammals[edit]

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WP:SALAT, I can't find good numbers for the total number of fossil mammal species, but to give an example, in the Miocene, an 18 million year time period, there are over 4,500 described mammal species.[1] Given that the history of mammals spans 200 million years 66 of which they have been the dominant terrestrial vertebrates, the total number is likely well over 10,000, which given the number of new mammal species described every year (see 2022 in paleomammalogy for an example) seems entirely unmaintainable. See also the results of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of prehistoric insects and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of extinct plants. Hemiauchenia (talk) 08:38, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Science, Biology, and Organisms. Hemiauchenia (talk) 08:38, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 08:47, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Split The current scope is unmanageable in both temporal and categorical dimensions. This should be split into separate lists - I would suggest by taxon rather than period, since we already have a few of those; e.g., List of extinct cetaceans, List of extinct rodents. This could be done for other extant high-order clades for which we do not yet have lists. Note that this is not required for fossil-only taxa (say, Deltatheroida) because the main article invariably already contains that list. Note also that this demonstrates that this catch-all list duplicates plenty of existing content, which is to be avoided. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 12:00, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I agree that creating a number of smaller lists is a good idea (per Elmidae. This list could then become a list-of-lists, helping readers to navigate to the appropriate specific list. My feeling is that "What extinct mammals existed in prehistoric times?" is exactly the sort of question an intelligent school-kid might ask, and it's our job as an encyclopaedia to do everything we can to help them find an answer. The topic is good, but the current approach could be vastly improved. Elemimele (talk) 12:42, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Category:Prehistoric mammals exist. Give ideas perhaps on how to sort it into smaller list. Wikipedia exist as an encyclopedia and an Wikipedia:ALMANAC, and size doesn't matter, WP:NOTPAPER. Dream Focus 12:59, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - does it need work? Yes. does it qualify for deletion? No way. "Impossible to maintain" is a personal judgment. Just because you don't personally want to maintain it or think it's bad doesn't mean it should be zoinked. leaving out shabby incomplete lists as bait to annoy autistic people and thus lure them into our trap ("ill just make these 12,582 little fixes and then get back my chores") is Wikipedia's stock in trade jengod (talk) 16:34, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Though a split of some kind seems right, this is never going to be a definitive list, so another option might be to pare it down to "notable" prehistoric mammals (which still might need to be split per Elmidae); "notable" being perhaps those species with a significant research record vs those whose info was recorded but then never studied in depth. Something that brings the topic down into the WP:SALAT range. - - UtherSRG (talk) 19:11, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep/Split and convert to list of lists. Definitely meets WP:NLIST. More importantly, the scope of prehistoric mammals is much narrower than prehistoric insects or plants, so we can rein it in and avoid running afoul of WP:SALAT. (Ideally we'll come up with solutions to those as well one day, but that's beside the point) This list is already in sections so it's doing well with regard to SALAT. I think some level of notability (blue links only, or blue links plus red links with SIGCOV but no article, etc) could possibly help as well. —siro χ o 22:20, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:31, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. It should probably be converted into a 'list of lists' by taxonomic Order or geologic Period (or both) but that doesn't require deletion. It has a sufficiently well-defined scope as to be, at least in theory, maintainable. Eluchil404 (talk) 02:43, 15 August 2023 (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.