Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of churches in Greater Manchester

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The result was keep, withdrawn. Core desat 04:06, 6 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

List of churches in Greater Manchester[edit]

~~Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information.~~ • Freechild'sup? 18:46, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Wikipedia is not a directory. Malinaccier (talk • contribs) 18:52, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Withdrawn per Pit-yacker's comment below. This article has more content than a simple list, and could/should grow with more substantive information. • Freechild'sup? 22:35, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete I created this to prevent Greater Manchester articles being cluttered with lists of churches, but now I agree the lists don't really belong anywhere on Wikipedia. Epbr123 19:21, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just because a list can be made does not mean it should be. A list of churches in Manchester is not inherently any more valuable than a list of pizza parlors in Manchester, per Malinaccier. • Freechild'sup? 19:25, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per Smerdis of Tlön and Malleus Fatuorum. If this is deleted, the lists will just end up back in the individual articles, which is against Wikipedia:Embedded list. Epbr123 20:15, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Even given that only notable churches should have articles, and that non-notable churches should not be redlinked, this is nevertheless an obviously useful indexing page. - Smerdis of Tlön 19:23, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I do not believe that this list is in any way in breach of the WP:NOT#DIR policy and, as Epbr123 pointed out above, it was created to remove clutter from Greater Manchester articles. If the consensus is to delete, then I'd request a reasonable time period to copy the relevant sections back into the relevant articles. But I do not agree with the argument that a list of churches (or schools) is the equivalent of a list of pizza parlours, on the basis that pizza parlours are commercial organisations, whereas churches are part of their local infrastructure. --Malleus Fatuorum 20:09, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Changed to keep. In WP:NOT it states: Wikipedia is not the yellow pages. A listing of places (like churches in my opinion) in a city would qualify as this. Despite this, the argumentst presented by all above have persuaded me to ignore this, and change to keep. Malinaccier (talk • contribs) 20:56, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The arguments of all the previous respondents who have indicated "Keep" are most telling, whilst the arguments of Freechild would, if adhered to across the board, mean almost all "list of..." articles would be deleted from wikipedia. The deletion that might occur in that last case would be a great loss generally, and most specifically in this case. DDStretch (talk) 21:37, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Note. This article adds no substantive value to WP, and WP is not a Yellow Pages. Simply listing all of the churches in a city devalues the potential of WP; there needs to be some notable information here that goes beyond simply listing the churches. For an example, see this. WP must have higher standards than simple lists that have no value unto themselves. • Freechild'sup? 23:32, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Reply. You have to consider what this is a list of; it is a list of places of worship, not a yellow pages directory. Places of worship are a part of our local infrastructure; each one of them doesn't need to be notable. If this list did not exist, then exactly the same information would be repeated in every Greater Manchester article. As I note that it is already in the Shaw and Crompton FA, but re-formatted as a table. --Malleus Fatuorum 23:58, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Note. This list replicates the Category:Churches in Manchester and does not add any notable content. • Freechild'sup? 01:30, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Reply. First, Manchester is not the same as Greater Manchester. Secondly, the claim of replication misrepresents the situation. This list contains many more churches than are given in the category, because the category only contains churches for which an article already exists. To immediately forestall a response al;ready given in a number of your other similar nominations at the moment, one can add that the absence of an article for a church does not guarantee an absence of notability. So, the article is more comprehensive than the category. Thirdly, the two things serve different purposes, as others have already pointed out, and so all your counter-arguments fail. DDStretch (talk) 11:30, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep A good set encyclopedic information befitting WP. The only thing indiscriminate here is the deletion nomination and the additional misrepresentation of the facts regarding the content of the article. Hmains 03:19, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Reply. No, it does not. Manchester is not the same as Greater Manchester. The first is a city and a metropolitan borough, the second is a metropolitan county. --Malleus Fatuorum 04:55, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Reply. Further illustrating the point that everything included in this list is already detailed in the category, you are right: Category:Churches in Manchester is a subcategory to Category:Churches in Greater Manchester. • Freechild'sup? 05:42, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The purpose of categories is different from the purpose of lists. Categories exist to provide metadata, lists exist to provide information. --Malleus Fatuorum 05:55, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Freechild's point fails also on points raised above by myself. DDStretch (talk) 12:18, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. The list probably needs more explanatory text on the development of churches from various denominations in Manchester. However, it contains information not available from a category such as denomination, date of foundation and location so it is worth keeping. Capitalistroadster 05:58, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Okay, there's no sources, but that doesn't mean deletion. It's just an example of a list that has been neglected, I'm sure once this has finished it'll be back to normal activity, and verifiability won't be a problem. — Rudget _{contributions} 11:22, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - I am confused by the proposers assertion that this article should be deleted yet Churches_in_Omaha is ok. If we deleted every article that didnt come up to FA status after its first edit, their would quite literally be nothing left on Wikipedia. Surely, the above mentioned articles survival of an AfD sets a precedent? Whilst it would be nice to be able to write fully fledged articles in one go, some of us have lives in the real world or dont have access to all the information we need immediately (Wikipedia is also a world of infinite amounts of work, I have no shortage of things I am working on, finding time to do them all is a different matter entirely) . This article is certainly a very good start of an article (beyond a stub) and should be kept. Pit-yacker 11:46, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Response. Churches in Omaha has substantive content beyond this simplistic list. • Freechild'sup? 22:47, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Given the time to grow, this article will also contain substantially more information than it does now. I think the trick when thinking about lists is to consider what information might usefully be added to the list. For instance, what could be added to a list of record companies whose names don't begin with an alphabetic character? As compared to a list of churches in Manchester – or anywhere else – where it's fairly easy to imagine all sorts of information being added about the arrival of various religions, the first church, and so. Just my two penny's worth. :) --Malleus Fatuorum 23:11, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - However, this article has had a substantive amount of time to grow from its initial inception. The simple fact of the matter is that in its current form the article is less than significant. • Freechild'sup? 23:16, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      - So if your view is that this article ought to be either expanded or deleted, then why did you not tag it as such instead of initiating an AfD? It's very difficult not to come to the conclusion that you are being disingenuous. --Malleus Fatuorum 02:28, 4 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- (edit conflict) So, why is this deletion proposal not one which falls into the same class as Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of churches in Venice‎? To recap, when pressed you said that the AfD you initiated was really a kind of plea to improve the article, and yet, when criticised for this by two editors and questioned you said it did not apply to the other AfDs for lists of churches which you had initiated at roughly the same time. When pressed further, on the basis that identical arguments in favour of deletion had been advanced by yourself in all the AfDs you had proposed, which meant one could interpret each of your proposals as being a attempt to get people to improve the articles, you backtracked a bit, and said that the Venice list deserved deletion as it stood, and that I should discuss each AfD separately. Nevertheless, they can be linked together, and I therefore claim that this AfD, along with all the others you have proposed, should be rejected as we can no longer rely on them being anything other than a plea to improve them. DDStretch (talk) 23:18, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - ddstretch, please be civil. Continuously badgering will not change the point that each nomination is unique, because each article is unique. This article had previously existing information that makes it a more substantive contribution than the others. • Freechild'sup? 23:22, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - I am being civil. I am "badgering on" with the same points, because I am replying to the same arguments advanced by yourself that occur in identical ways across all the list of churches articles you proposed for deletion. It is useful to point out these parallels to people to inform the debate. I apologise for not agreeing with you, but a lack of agreement and being assertive does not constitute incivility. Neverthekless, since it seems that my contributions may cause you some problems, I will stop now, as I think all that needs to be said has been said on the matter at the moment. DDStretch (talk) 23:26, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - In my view DDStretch was being perfectly civil, and was not badgering but simply expressing a different point of view. Disagreement is not the same as "uncivility", as too many on wikipedia appear to believe. May I suggest that you listen to his point of view, and in future consider posting some kind of a tag on those lists that you consider to be without merit before nominating them at AfD? --Malleus Fatuorum 02:43, 4 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. It is becoming tedious in the extreme to duplicate identical counter-arguments in every similar instance where Freechild has proposed regarding lists of churches. I suggest people look through the other nominations and note the general issues regarding deletion that people have raised there. In fact, I suggest all of the nominations areb immediately closed and the nominator invited to resubmit them as a "job lot", so they can be considered together. There are about 6 or so of them. DDStretch (talk) 12:25, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: per User:Hmains. -- Jza84 · (talk) 21:38, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. If this article is to be deleted, then perhaps we should also delete the list of acts of the uk parliament? Parrot of Doom 21:20, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. These churches are as notable as the list of tracks in an album of any song. They are just as essential as the list of denomiations of churches. I also agree with the person above. JamestheJust 21:20, 3 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.153.90.104 (talk) [reply]
keep in accordance with WP:CLS and Wikipedia:Lists. --Paularblaster 02:06, 4 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
keep This list will be a valuable resource for people across the world researching their family history but it needs to be more comprehensive and needs some more sections as mentioned above. Richerman 17:13, 4 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Note Whilst I have repealed my nomination, I still think it worthwhile to mention that since there are no citations on the page and there is no content that has notable references, this list also violates WP:V. • Freechild'sup? 17:15, 4 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- If you consider it lacks citations, then issue the appropriate template. An AfD was an extreme first step to take given any of the reasons you advanced. I suggest you consider carefully the other AfDs you initiated for deletion in the light of pit-yacker's very apt comments, since they can be applied to each and every AfD for lists of churches you initiated. DDStretch (talk) 18:17, 4 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - A tag has been put on the list which claims that it lacks notability. In the course of this, a tag (which I had added) inviting people to expand the list has been removed. Since the AfDs for churches in Venice and churches in Florence now claim that the lists are deficient in as much as the churches listed n them areb not notable, it is useful to place this refutation here about the relevance of this argument: The article topic in this instance (and all the other instances of the AfDs initiated for churches) are not the individual churches, but it is the list of churches, and this can be verified. This can clearly be done by referring to various ecclesiastical sources, amongst others in order to construct the list. It does not require that the individual churches themselves be notable. Thus, this claim should not be used to influence matters here. DDStretch (talk) 22:59, 4 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - ddstretch, please note that I removed the incomplete tag that I placed there - the one you inserted is still intact. Also, special thanks to Malleus Fatuarum for working so hard on this list. • Freechild'sup? 13:09, 5 December 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.