Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Freedom of the City recipients

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. J04n(talk page) 16:24, 3 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

List of Freedom of the City recipients[edit]

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What could possibly be wrong with a list of people with the freedom of various cities, I hear you ask? Well, a couple of things.

Most cities confer freedom as an honour; there are in excess of 4,000 cities with a population of 150,000 or above (and smaller ones still confer freedom, e.g. St. Davids has a population under 2,000.
Some cities allow anyone to apply, including London.
A search for freedom of the city of London yields in excess of half a million names up to 1925, and many more have been added since.
Honorary freedom is not the same as being a freeman of the city, though they amount to the same thing in practical terms - the list introduction covers only honorary freedom.

In the end a series of hierarchical categories (by country and city) would do the same job much better. Guy (Help!) 19:07, 27 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 03:23, 28 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Strong delete Being granted the title of freeman in medival times is clearly not enough, on its own, to show notability. Even lists of all the members of the city council over time for even most cities in the US would be unjustified, this list is a lower inclusion criteria. This is the type of honor that cities are as likely to bestow to increase their prestige as for any other reason, that Cher was given it by a city in Australia adds next to nothing to her notability. It is so trivial for some people, it is not worth mentioning in their biography. For some other cities, we seem to have an incomplete lists that lacks anyone who is notable. This is not something that at all shows any level of notability.John Pack Lambert (talk) 07:04, 28 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete It is difficult to see how this list could ever be complete and could grow to an unmanageable size very easily. Many awards of freedoms of cities are to people for local work which is not likely to be considered notable enough to merit a Wikipedia article and I agree with the other points above. I think it is far better to mention such awards within individual's articles where they are notable (or in some cases they are notable because an individual declined or had the award rescinded). Dunarc (talk) 15:25, 29 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as it stands I don't know where to start with this, the inclusion criteria is rather woolly, everyone and every town and even districts are included it seems, plus a good portion of those added do not have WP entries. The list is very long and not very readable, it is very WP:LISTCRUFTY in this state. If this is kept the list needs to be split (into each country probably like has happened already with the Canada entry) and each of the list have much tighter inclusion criteria. I picked on Stoke-on-Trent reference at random and find the only source given is just the procedure on getting the award, there needs to be a lot more secondary sources to show that getting the award is a notable event. Not against userfying if someone wants to work on it Mattg82 (talk) 01:11, 1 January 2018 (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.