Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of atheists (surnames A to B)

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 speedy keep per withdrawal of nomination with no one advocating deletion. Non-admin closure.Deor (talk) 13:03, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

List of atheists (surnames A to B)[edit]

Silly to introduce pages to list atheists by name; that's what categories are for. Mr. Vernon (talk) 11:17, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Lists are normal on WP, like them or not. And since there are probably 1 to 2 billion professed or real atheists in the world, breaking down the list into 10 or so parts seems like a reasonable thing to do. Northwestgnome (talk) 11:34, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: Indeed, Mr Gnome. The chap is way too quick off the mark. It's not so silly if he'd checked the Talk page for the Lists of atheists first, where this was already agreed.
It's the first one in the series designed to replace (most of, perhaps) the present Lists of atheists, divided by 'field known for', which has proved hopeless and confusing -- the more so since the (originally single) list had to be split due to size. I've been transfering (pretty bloody laboriously) all the entries into the table format in my user area; A to B was done so I thought it ought to 'go live'. Would it be better to do it all in my sandbox, then do it en masse? I don't really care, but this is meant to be to replace what's already in existence with something better, not something additional. Sheesh.
And yeah, categories are fine too. Indeed, used properly, we could do away with just about all lists, eh? But categories do not offer the topic-specific additional information about the person that the list does -- stuff that's often so tangential as to be irrelevant for the person's main page, but relevant (and substantiated) in the context. Go take a look.
Oolon (talk) 11:41, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment / swipe: Heh. I just re-read Mr Vernon's opening comment. "Silly to [...] list atheists by name". Erm, I guess it would be hard to check a talk page, as I suggested, if one is oblivious about the existence of the pages it talks about. We've had a List of atheists for at least a year (probably much longer, but that's all I can vouch for), and I have personally doubled its length. Do feel free to scrap it, though, as long as you transfer all the information to each of the 850 people's individual entries first. What we've got here is celebatheists.com done to WP standards, with proper referencing and not just 'celebrities'. People seem to think it's a good idea. Oolon (talk) 12:30, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Per Oolon's point. Lists are everywhere, if we were to delete this one for such a reason there would be thousands more PROD. Mattie ^TK 12:31, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment OK, these are all valid points. I withdraw my AfD. Do I have to wait for an admin to do this? --Mr. Vernon (talk) 12:32, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Thanks Mr V, and I apologise for my 'swipe' (though the points in it remain valid I think). If you'd spent as long as I have transferring just those 117 into the table, you might be a bit miffed too! (Feel free to help with the remaining 86% still to do :-p :-D ) Cheers, Simon (Oolon) Oolon (talk) 12:39, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment: I just might do that :-) No worries, I completely understand. --Mr. Vernon (talk) 12:43, 20 August 2008 (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.