Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of LiveJournal users

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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 delete. Per WP:SNOW. Bishonen | talk 20:20, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

List of LiveJournal users[edit]

List of LiveJournal users (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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It is unref'd and this is not really fixable: it's been unref'd for over a decade and is basically unreffable. It opens "Some users of LiveJournal, or the journals themselves, have become famous for their especially interesting content..." but there is no ref for any of the entries. Each entry would require a reliable notable source saying "Smith's LiveJournal page has attracted a lot of views and notice" or something. Absent these refs (which mostly probably don't exist) 99% of the entries have to be deleted anyway.

Or if the intent is just "Here are some bluelinked people, and their LiveJournal links" then it's just cruft. And here we have a BLP issue with someone wanting to be removed, and having to fight for it. Not worth it. Herostratus (talk) 14:16, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

N. B.: Its been up for AfD before:


  • Comment: This is the third time this has been nominated for deletion, so I'm wondering if this AfD page name should reflect that. -- Marchjuly (talk) 14:17, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Right. The article name was slightly different then, which is why this didn't go in a "third nomination". I listed the previous two at the end of the nom. Herostratus (talk) 14:23, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Unsourced articles that fall foul of the BLP policy don't belong on Wikipedia. Exemplo347 (talk) 14:19, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Non-notable, uncited fancruft; does not even remotely pass WP:GNG or WP:LISTN. Looking at it (even the article title), I have no idea why it exists other than as promotion for LiveJournal. We don't have a viable List of _____ users for any other item/brand/website that I am aware of, and the article gives zero indication that these people's use of LiveJournal is in any way encyclopedically notable any more than any notable person's use of any product, blog site, micro-blog site, website, or web host is notable per se. Softlavender (talk) 14:22, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • The notion that User:Rootology created this article to promote LiveJournal (or that it has been maintained for that purpose) is risible. —Psychonaut (talk) 14:35, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge into List of blogs. I suspect that the general subject of LiveJournal users doesn't meet the notability guideline (even considering this as a standalone list forked from the indisputably notable LiveJournal article). If any blogs in this list are independently notable, these could be moved to List of blogs and given appropriate secondary referencing. —Psychonaut (talk) 14:29, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    What justification do you give to merge an unsourced list of people into an existing article? Exemplo347 (talk) 14:35, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Did you miss the part of my comment about checking each entry for independent notability and adding appropriate secondary referencing? —Psychonaut (talk) 14:39, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    No, I'm asking why you want to merge when you could just add the information you want to add (after you've found the sources) to the List of Blogs article. Exemplo347 (talk) 14:41, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Is there a difference? —Psychonaut (talk) 14:45, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    There's obviously nothing to merge, nothing has independent notability or independent citations. See WP:INDISCRIMINATE. -- Softlavender (talk) 14:49, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    How much checking did you do? Ten seconds of Googling brought up a Wired article all about George R. R. Martin's LiveJournal: [1] What makes you think it's inconceivable that there exist reliable sources for some of the other blogs? —Psychonaut (talk) 14:55, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    You are talking about one item; if you want to try to add that one item to another article, with a citation that you believe supports its addition, go right ahead. As for this current article, in its current uncited condition, there is nothing to merge. Softlavender (talk) 15:03, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    No, I'm talking about doing this methodically for all the items, and I'm pretty sure that more of these blogs are independently notable. To give another example, Google Books shows several sources that discuss Cassandra Clare's LiveJournal in depth. —Psychonaut (talk) 15:14, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    And yeah but the article was created in 2006 and has been up for AfD twice before and nobody has added any refs. One outcome of AfD discussions is an editor(s) volunteering to fix the article and saving if. If you want to generate a list of refs and ref the entries, great, and right now would be the time to get busy. I myself have neither time nor interest in doing something that nobody has cared to do for ten years so far.
But if we quickly generate a list of refs, and an editor will, or will promise to, add the refs and trim out the unref'd entries, that changes the game very much. It would still be reasonable to hold that article is cruft, but the deletion argument would be a lot weaker.
If nobody want to do this now, then it'd be reasonable to vote "Delete, with no prejudice against the article being re-created if and when someone ever wants to generate a properly ref'd article". Herostratus (talk) 15:09, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Herostratus, I don't know what you mean or who you are talking to. Adding citations that someone's LJ exists does not make this list notable; see WP:LISTN. It's still going to be WP:INDISCRIMINATE fancruft with or without citations. Mention of someone's notable LJ blog belongs on the article of that person, not on a list of users of _____; the same applies to users or owners of anything. This is all above and beyond the fact that, as someone else has mentioned here, LJ itself is pretty much no longer heard of these days. Softlavender (talk) 15:16, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Enh, WP:LISTN is ignored a lot and rightly so. I mean List of statues of Queen Victoria doesn't need to source to a book saying "Hey, all thost statues of Queen Victoria, taken as a class and considered together, is a really notable phenomena!". And so forth. We're encouraged to make lists as an alternative to categories. And so on. For my part, if someone wants to generate refs for the entries, that's good enough for me. Herostratus (talk) 16:23, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Oh good grief, are you really equating List of statues of Queen Victoria with List of MySpace users or List of Ford owners or List of WordPress bloggers? Softlavender (talk) 16:31, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I guess I am! Herostratus (talk) 19:10, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
This all made me curious and led me to find Powell, Jennifer (2011), "The Dissemination of Commemorative Statues of Queen Victoria", in Curtis, Penelope; Wilson, Keith (eds.), Modern British Sculpture, London: Royal Academy of Arts, pp. 282–288. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:22, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Promotion for Livejournal, unsourced and certainly not what the notability of the various list members is dependent on. -Roxy the dog. bark 14:31, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete A list of users of a social media website should only be compiled based on what secondary sources say, as to avoid primary sources and potentially original research to deduce the connection of a user account to a real person. While this might be possible for something like Twitter or YouTube, LJ is effectively long-since dead in the water before social media took off, and I have never seen LJ accounts talked about in an type of fashion. Softlavender also does have a point that without secondary sourcing, this can appear promotional. --MASEM (t) 14:32, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. I disagree with the merge proposal, basically per what Exemplo has said (nothing really to merge). Fails WP:NLIST, but I wouldn't really call it promotional, though I can see how others might interpret it as being along those lines. Anarchyte (work | talk) 14:44, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete -- Masem's reasoning is correct: this isn't the sort of thing that comes with secondary sourcing, and our notability standards require this. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 14:53, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete As per nom and Softlavender's analysis. The previous AfDs were so long ago (~ten years!) that they are irrelevant as far as consensus goes. All the previous arguments for deleting this listcruft still apply. — O Fortuna semper crescis, aut decrescis 15:11, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete the everloving shit out of this. This is not encyclopaedic material and is useless listcruft. Also, per all of the above comments about NLIST and GNG. Mr rnddude (talk) 15:23, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment All things being equal I'd say the list could be repaired with the addition of secondary sources establishing that these LJs are considered significant in some manner. There appears to be some argument that at least some of these entries could be preserved on that basis. That being said, I wonder whether there'd be enough to justify this list's existence in the end, or whether it would be best to mention the significant journals at the article for LiveJournal itself. I guess this amounts to a very, very weak keep, as I really don't especially care either way. DonIago (talk) 15:52, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Please check WP:LISTN. A list article meets notability if the group or set has received significant coverage in multiple reliable sources that are independent of the subject. The fact that a single (or more than one) individual's blog, which may happen to be on LiveJournal, may possibly have significant coverage in multiple reliable sources that are independent of the subject does not make this list notable, it simply makes that blog notable, and it should be listed on that person's article. Softlavender (talk) 16:02, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Are you saying that notability of the list will be established if there exist multiple, independent, reliable sources that cover LiveJournal blogs as a group? —Psychonaut (talk) 16:13, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know what he's saying, but I'd say it. LiveJournal is notable, and therefore almost by definition the class "LiveJournal users" is notable, since that's all LiveJournal really is notable as: a collection of user accounts. Selecting a subset of this clearly-notable class, where we have a ref saying "Smith's LiveJournal page is really notable since many people view it and it has materially assisted his notability as a public figure" is at least arguably justified IMO. Herostratus (talk) 16:34, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
"LiveJournal is notable, and therefore almost by definition the class 'LiveJournal users' is notable, since that's all LiveJournal really is notable as: a collection of user accounts." That is incorrect. Notability is not inherited. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Wikipedia is not a catalogue or directory. By your logic, we would have List of Facebook users, List of MySpace users, List of WordPress bloggers, List of Google+ users, List of Blogger users, List of Tumblr users, List of Instagram users, List of SnapChat users, List of Pinterest users, and so on ad infinitum. Softlavender (talk) 16:55, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Well, its a tough question. To some extent it comes down to opinion. Certainly this article as titled is problematical. However, if it were retitled to something like List of notable LiveJournal accounts... or even maybe better List of notable LiveJournal accounts of notable people to ensure that all the entries were both bluelinked AND had refs showing that their LiveJournal accounts were notable... that could be OK. And my understanding is that's what the article is, or is supposed to be, according to its lede.
So by a similar token we are not going to have List of Facebook users, but I suppose we could have List of persons famous for their Facebook accounts or something. If we wanted to, which is questionable but possible. Herostratus (talk) 19:09, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
You're still not getting it. Notability is not inherited. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Wikipedia is not a catalogue or directory. We are not going to have a List of notable Facebook users, List of notable MySpace users, List of notable WordPress bloggers, List of notable Google+ users, List of notable Blogger users, List of notable Tumblr users, List of notable Instagram users, List of notable SnapChat users, List of notable Pinterest users, or anything like that (even if worded "famous for their ... accounts"), because of all the polices I just mentioned. Softlavender (talk) 19:18, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete NOT INDISRIMINATE. And do not merge. There are no references in the list except links to their sites, there is no evidence in the list not in most cases in the articles, that the individuals' livejournals are of any particular significance either among Livejournals, or even among the individual's various social media. Live journal is notable, but that doesn't make a list of users notable any more than Wikipedia being notable makes a list of Wikipedia editors notable. We do have a list of Wikipedians with articles, Wikipedia:Wikipedians with articles, but its in WP space--it would be immediately deleted in article space--and it rightly says its not authoritative enough to use as a reference in WP. Nor can we say that using Livejournal lends any particular notability or prominence--according ot the article on it, there are 10 million users. We might almost as well have a list of Facebook users, including every celebrity with a Facebook account, or a list of gmail users. I find it almost incredible that wt was kept in 2008, and I am particularly startled to see that I !voted weak keep at the time. All I can say in my own defense is that I am glad to know that since then my standards have risen along with WPs. DGG ( talk ) 18:08, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as nom. Don't count me twice, I'm adding my "vote" here to clarify that I still think the article should go, even though I've argued above that if you added sourcing then you could consider the article OK. You could, but I don't. I don't think it is going to be ref'd (we've had ten years) unless somebody does it right now (count me out), and even then it'd probably be unnecessary cruft and problematic on WP:BLP grounds. Herostratus (talk) 19:17, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Struck !vote from nominator -- your nomination counts as your !vote and therefore nominators do not get to !vote; see WP:AFDLIST. -- Softlavender (talk) 19:41, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note Even if someone can provide an independent, reliable source that says people use LiveJournal, and provides their user names... so what? Maybe it can also be proved (how?) that their use of LiveJournal is notable, but... so what? That won't make this article suitable for inclusion - it will still just be an indiscriminate list. Exemplo347 (talk) 19:48, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
This discussion is only about this particular article. Per WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, there's no value in discussing other articles during an AfD discussion. Exemplo347 (talk) 20:29, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS does not say that. (In fact, it contains a pretty large section on example cases where it is valuable to reference precedents in other articles.) Regardless, I am not arguing that the article should be kept because other stuff exists. I am trying to point out that your particular argument is doesn't seem to be grounded in the notability guideline for lists. —Psychonaut (talk) 21:09, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
No. Those items are selected, paid for, produced, curated, edited, and sequenced (or most of the above) by the company in question. Softlavender (talk) 20:32, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
None of which was mentioned in Exemplo347's argument… —Psychonaut (talk) 21:09, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
It didn't have to be. You asked a question; it was answered. Softlavender (talk) 21:15, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Not an encyclopedic topic for an article.Knox490 (talk) 00:37, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. /wiae /tlk 22:12, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Internet-related deletion discussions. /wiae /tlk 22:12, 15 April 2017 (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.