Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Shakespeare's works

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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The result was withdrawn by nominator. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 04:13, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

List of Shakespeare's works[edit]

List of Shakespeare's works (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Unsourced list of information already outlined on the William Shakespeare page, as well as the {{shakespeare}} template, which is posted on several Shakespeare pages. All in all, unsourced, redundant, no real room for or reason for expansion. Speedy Delete Wrad 23:01, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Withdrawn and Speedy Keep per recent changes and discussion. Wrad 02:28, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Speedy Delete Obviously redundant. VanTucky 23:09, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete or Merge per aboveJForget 23:51, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletions. -- John Vandenberg 00:01, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Isn't there already a list of Shakespeare's works on here? Mandsford 00:10, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete I agree. It's redundant. --Tea and crumpets 00:30, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete I agree. It simply repeats already listed information. Smatprt 01:03, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete- per all of the above. Eddie 02:24, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect to William_Shakespeare#Bibliography. Redirects are cheap, and this is a conceivable search term. (Indeed, I think I've used "List of Shakespeare's works" as a search term in the past, before the article was created.) Zagalejo 02:44, 18 June 2007 (UTC) Keep, per below. Zagalejo 21:28, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • That sounds reasonable. Wrad 02:49, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect per Zagalejo. Doczilla 06:24, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect as a reasonable search term (although using "shakespeare's works site:en.wikipedia.org" gets Shakespeare's plays as the first result). I'm surprised the bibliography is included on the main article, although it isn't really that long even with the apocryphal works. We already have several articles covering this including a chronology. --Dhartung | Talk 06:58, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect as per above. Lugnuts 07:30, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep the current MOS permits such lists. Although this could conceivably fit into the article, it is also useful to have one straightforward list by genre. Addditional bibiliographic information can of course be added.DGG 05:13, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • RedirectKeep per Zagalejo. Likely search term. List at William_Shakespeare#Bibliography is better -- more complete and has links. Given all the new information, my opinion is to let the author finish the article. Capmango 05:27, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy Keep or Redirect (FYI: It is generally considered good wikiquette to leave a note on the talkpage of the principal contributor, after making an AfD. I have done so for you.) Unless User:Editor at Large declares an intent to work on the article soon, redirecting this list to the more complete list per Zagalejo makes sense. Done so below. Changed recommendation to speedy keep. --Quiddity 07:32, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Since Shakespeare's article is one of the top fifty viewed sites at wikipedia, I do feel that his articles and subpages deserve careful consideration. It is unfortunate that this page is not yet a full bibliography, listing the various quartos, folios, and other important editions for each work, but that is beside the point. The question is whether the concept of the page is legitimate. Obviously it is; there are many such lists of works on wikipedia and the MOS even encourages them. We should not limit the editors working on Shakespeare to a simple listing of the plays. This kind of page, which is obviously a work in progress, can include much more information than the current William Shakespeare page and can be sourced to any number of Shakespeare bibliographies such as McManaway and Roberts' A Selective Bibliography of Shakespeare: Editions, Textual Studies, Commentary.
  • Shakespeare's plays is not a detailed listing of the plays and their publication history. It is an article about the plays themselves. Trying to integrate a detailed list of important editions would be disastrous.
  • Shakespeare's sonnets is also an article about the sonnets themselves, not a detailed list of all 100+ sonnets. Including such a list would strain the page.
  • Chronology of Shakespeare's plays – Oxfordian is a proposed chronology for the authorship of the plays, if they were written by Oxford, not a listing of publication dates and information about those publications.
  • Chronology of Shakespeare plays tries to sort out the mess of dating Shakespeare's plays. It is not a page about publication information.

None of these other pages has the same purpose as this one. I have not seen a convincing argument from those who want to delete that relies on wikipedia's deletion policy. Simply because the page is incomplete at this time does not mean it merits a deletion. The page's concept is legitimate and much more information can be added to flesh it out and make it useful. If the editors here who are in favor of deletion want to delete all incomplete pages, they should begin by eliminating all "start" and "stub" articles and demanding that any new article that is posted be relatively complete. I was under the impression that wikipedia was supposed to improve slowly over time and ideally multiple editors would contribute to each page in order to make it better. Deleting legitimate but incomplete pages does not encourage such practices. Awadewit | talk 07:43, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment from creator - whoa... I only got the notification this was up for AfD just now. This is a work in progress (which I unfortunately have had little time to get to recently) and I have a much better version in the works in a text document which I am not quite finished. My plan was to have the list (once much further expanded) replace or expand upon the section William Shakespeare#Bibliography. I'll outline my plan below so people know what it is going to evolve to beyond a mere list of titles;
  1. Better formatting, in a table; with information including date work is assumed to have been published, folios/quartos/editions of note, notes about authorship if warranted, etc.
  2. Addition of images, of which there are many high-quality ones available on the Commons
  3. Better sorting, including divisions into tragedy/comedy/historical
  4. Further details that may be thought of in the future or that other persons can bring to the list
As Awadewit stated above, the other four articles on a similar subject are not comprehensive lists of just the works. Although the bibliography section has much the same information, it would be nice to expand more and have a little more relevant information available in one place. The articles on his plays and sonnets have too much background information and take longer to sort through. I am going to make this list far more than it is currently, and other people adding to it will help it expand and grow; as it stands it is a pathetic little stubby start containing only the bare-bones information. It was not intended to stay this way for long. I ask that it be kept so that it can be expanded and built upon; if after a month or two it is still not satisfactory then another deletion request can determine if it is needed. -- Editor at Large • talk 08:53, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Actually I agree with the delete votes that point out that the article as it now stands (or stood when I last looked at it) is redundant; I don't support the existence of articles that are redundant but might well become worthwhile, instead believing that they ought to be worthwhile from the start. Editor at Large would have been wise to build it up in his or her userspace, and only when it had reached a stage where it was clearly worthwhile spring it on WP's dazzled and grateful readers. Still, an improved bibliography would be worthwhile, and Editor has clearly and convincingly expressed an intention to improve it soon. So let Editor (and others) work on it. -- Hoary 09:35, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete or redirect to William_Shakespeare#Bibliography. Wikisource has a rather complete list of his works at Author:William Shakespeare. I have noted on the Wikisource talk page that there are a few entries missing from that list. John Vandenberg 09:53, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It is not just about a complete list in Shakespeare's case. It is about adding all of the interesting information that the primary editor has outlined. The Commons page has none of that - is it heading in that direction? Awadewit | talk 10:01, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is much more appropriate that the intentions of Editor at Large (talk · contribs) are carried out on Wikisource, which is a project devoted to presenting the works of authors. In general I dont mind lists on Wikipedia, but in this case there is a more useful location for the list. John Vandenberg 10:17, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
See the List of Oz books, which is a featured list. Yes, having this information on wikisource is good; but there author pages are more about listing the person's works with links to their documents within wikisource, and some background information on the author. Here on wikipedia this list of his works will be more about having information and a comprehensive overview of the most important points about them, other than just dates and links. You are more than welcome to copy the list there once it expands, but when people are looking for a list of his works and information on them they will think "I'll look it up on wikipedia, where they have information on things", not "I'll go to wikisource where they host books". I am a contributor to Wikisource as well, and I know that it is more than that; but random people won't. Wikipedia = primarily information, Wikisource = primarily resources and documents. While you could provide a soft redirect to the wikisource page, if people are looking for information like will eventually be located on this list they will want to be on the encyclopedia, where they can also look at the information on the individual plays and sonnets and poems and the man himself. -- Editor at Large • talk 11:08, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have no objections to there being a list here if it is more useful than the Wikisource author page. At the time I commented earlier, this list wasnt developed beyond that stage. But, the list is now looking useful so ... Keep. John Vandenberg 01:31, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment from submitter Sorry I didn't notify the creator, but this is my first RfD (I actually looked over the editor's recent contributions, saw no Shakespeare-related edits, and figured he had forgotten about the article). Anyway, I like the idea of developing it a lot (in both senses), perhaps in a table format, with proposed creation dates, collaborative authors, revisers, early publications, classifications, etc. I also think it should be renamed to List of works attributed to Shakespeare, in order to acknowledge that his authorship of several of these works is in question. Wrad 18:51, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Although the current version (as of 19:22, 19 June 2007 (UTC)) seems to mostly duplicate content in William Shakespeare, I believe that this list could be further developed into something in-between a mere list and a full-fledged article on each play, something akin to the Featured list List of major opera composers. Perhaps this list could have brief, spoiler-free descriptions of each play, such as "Romeo and Juliet: Romeo and Juliet fall in love despite coming from rival families." OK, so that description needs work, but you get the idea: a brief, even pithy description of the initial plot, perhaps combined with best known dates of each play's premiere, etc. Something similar could be done for each poem listed. Admittedly, that would make for a very long article if each sonnet were described, but Wikipedia isn't perfect. A list like this, as far as I can tell, would not duplicate precisely anything on any Shakespeare page currently existing on Wikipedia. Please allow the page time to grow. --Kyoko 19:22, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Now that we have heard from the creator (no, not THAT one) about his plans for the page, and the eloquence with which he made his argument, I am changing from delete to keep. I agree with Wrad (above) that we should allow for time for the page to grow in the way described. One quick note - presently The Two Nobe Kinsman is listed under apocrapha instead of his accepted works, as it is generally agreed that he was a co-writer.Smatprt 19:38, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per DGG and Kyoko. —  $PЯINGrαgђ  23:18, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, but needs improvement, per above. Modernist 04:08, 22 June 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.
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