Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of churches in Sweden

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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 keep. The consensus is towards the keep option ever since the first relist. (non-admin closure) Jovanmilic97 (talk) 10:04, 31 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

List of churches in Sweden[edit]

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List of churches in Sweden (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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This is an odd list with thousands of churches in a country listed individually, almost all of which are red links which are unlikely to become articles. And there is almost no information included about each church building, most of the entries don't even list which city the church is located in so I'm not sure if the list could be broken down into useful smaller categories. Most lists of churches on Wikipedia are broken down by locality/city (see Category:Lists of churches in Denmark) or are lists of cathedrals or basilicas, not every single church building in a country. I'm not sure that this list serves a function that couldn't be obtained by looking in a phone book (they still exist, right?). Liz Read! Talk! 22:08, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 23:23, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 23:23, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sweden-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 23:23, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. No objection to breaking into smaller lists but the deletion rationale is ridiculous. That it needs breaking into smaller lists is not an argument for deletion, it is an argument for keeping in another form. I'm not sure whether I should take the comment about being able to use a phone book instead seriously or not, but I'll respond anyway as it is the only actual deletion rationale in this nom. In my country, there is no phone book that covers the whole country and that probably applies to Sweden too. I only have a local phone book. My yellow pages does not have a section for churches. Even if it did, that would not help me find, for instance, churches in Birmingham. The very idea that something should be deleted from Wikipedia because the information can be found in a book.... well, where do we start—is there any information on Wikipedia that can't be found in a book? Probably only pages that should be deleted. SpinningSpark 00:41, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Okay. How about WP:NOTYELLOW, WP:NOTWHITE and WP:NOTDIRECTORY. Wikipedia articles are not simple listings without context information. Examples include, but are not limited to: listings of business alliances, clients, competitors, employees (except CEOs, supervisory directors and similar top functionaries), equipment, estates, offices, store locations, products and services, sponsors, subdivisions and tourist attractions. Information about relevant single entries with encyclopedic information should be added as sourced prose.. This seems like a textbook case of a page that is a directory listing with no context.
Have you looked at this page? It is simply a list of the names of churches in Sweden in alphabetical order. For most of the list, there is no city or location listed. The vast majority of churches on the list do not have their own entry. If this was a list a of churches in Sweden who have a Wikipedia article, it would be a curated list of major church facilities/cathedrals instead of the mess this list is. I don't know how this page would be subdivided when there is no basis to know where most of these churches are located. I don't know if even Swedish editors would know where all of these individual churches are.
And I don't know where you live, Spinningspark but where I've lived in the U.S., you can go to your local yellow pages (when these were commonly around) and find lists of churches (by denomination) and synagogues in the area the directory covered.. It was very convenient if, like me, you study religion and like to visit different churches. It was very handy. But it was not encyclopedic. Liz Read! Talk! 05:13, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
AfD is WP:NOTCLEANUP. Yes, this list is difficult to use. Yes, it's deficient in referencing. But if we are going to accept lists of churches as valid entries then this one should be accepted too. By all means clean up, but you are on the wrong venue for that. Your yellow pages still won't find you churches in Birmingham unless you actually live in Birmingham. It certainly won't find you churches in Sweden. SpinningSpark 09:38, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
And in case no one has noticed, all three of the policy links go to the same place, so all equally inapplicable. Repeating the same thing over and over does not make it any more convincing. SpinningSpark 17:16, 15 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, but clean up. Delete all the redlinked entries (plus the utterly generic Baptist Church) and add the lists in category:Lists of churches in Denmark Sweden, which are far from comprehensive (for example, the first two bluelinked entries are not in any of the lists). At some point, someone may come along and create lists by county, at which time this could be renamed Lists of churches in Sweden. Clarityfiend (talk) 07:49, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @Clarityfiend: Denmark? SpinningSpark 09:38, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete there may be a useful list here, but this needs to be rethought before anything else. What is a church? Do we count only congregations having some sort of official recognition? While much of religion in Sweden is through the official Church of Sweden, there are many other Churches. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Sweden has 40 congregations. On the other hand, just looking at the current article there are links that do not even lead to articles that have anything to do with this subject. Wikipedia is not meant to be a collection of directories. This article is not within the scope of Wikipedia's purpose. Something limited to Churches of the Church of Sweden might work, but even then I am not convinced that every congregation of that Church that ever existed is worth including in a massive list.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:07, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - the page as it stands is not very useful or encyclopedic: while almost all of the entries refer to church buildings there are also a few that are congregations or even denominations. I agree with John Pack Lambert that this needs to be re-thought, but I think that a list of notable church buildings (or a set of such lists, divided by province or county, given that there are potentially many hundreds of such buildings) would be much more encyclopedically relevant than a list of congregations - that is, maybe such lists would also be notable but it's a different thing. I'd like to copy this list to my user space, remove the entries that are obviously denominations/congregations rather than buildings, and work on sorting the existing list entries by county. In the current list, some entries mention the municipality, some the province, and many don't give any indication of where in the country the church is locatd... it really is a mess. --bonadea contributions talk 21:14, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Userfy. I agree with Bonadea that the list in its current form is not useful, but that a properly-curated set of lists of notable church buildings in Sweden would be an asset to the encyclopedia. In my opinion their offer to rework the list is a generous one and we should take it up. Skimming through the list I blue-linked Dalby kyrka by adding a redirect; I mention this as a caution that there may be other churches for which we have an article which is not correctly linked in the list. Wham2001 (talk) 06:51, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete There are many buildings in Sweden that can be listed , hospitals,universities, schools, restaurants,. . .it is not an article.Alex-h (talk) 21:07, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per WP:NOTINDISCRIMINATE. There are literally thousands of churches in the country, we don't need to list them all. It would be more suited to have more specific lists, by region, of notable ones only, but not a countrywide list. Ajf773 (talk) 00:05, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Architecture-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 13:56, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment The scope is at least too wide, notice that we don't have List of churches in England or List of churches in the United States, though there is List of churches in Pakistan. Also the Swedish Wikipedia its self doesn't have an article on this. If it is kept it should probably be broken down into smaller regions. Crouch, Swale (talk) 14:27, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - And re-format the List. As it currently stands it is not optimal. But that is no reason for deletion of a useful List. The WP:OTHERSTUFFEXIST rationales of some above in favour of deletion has no baring un Wikipedia rationales.BabbaQ (talk) 07:48, 13 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 10:51, 15 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Passes WP:LISTN per sources such as Nordic Folk Churches and Modern Churches in Sweden. See also WP:CLN which makes it clear that categories do not supersede lists. Andrew D. (talk) 13:13, 15 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep -- I would guess this is copied from the Swedish WP. I expect it has articles on many of them, which could no doubt be used to provide English ones. Organising the list by county (lan) might be helpful. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:57, 15 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You might assume that, but it isn't. It doesn't exist on Swedish Wikipedia, although strangely, it does exist on the Norwegian Wikipedia. SpinningSpark 17:11, 15 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - seems like a perfectly fine topic for a list, but it's currently running afoul of WP:NOT, being indiscriminate. Purge non-notable churches; retain the blue links and the list itself. It can be broken up, but there will likely be churches in areas that don't have a lot of other churches, so a centralized list for those that aren't spun out will probably make sense. Regardless, that can be handled on the talk page. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 06:36, 20 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and a good option would be moving to "Churches in Sweden" and addition of a few descriptive words for every church of the article. Ktrimi991 (talk) 19:28, 22 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment : Does Wikipedia have enough red ink? This must be a record for entries with red links. -The Gnome (talk) 10:57, 24 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    I wouldn't put money on that. In the early days of Wikipedia, creating long lists of redlinks was an accepted way of getting the encyclopaedia going. Not easy to find them now of course. There's not a "used to be red" colour for links. SpinningSpark 12:10, 24 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Vanamonde (talk) 12:57, 24 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep This needs to be cleaned up not deleted. I searched for Acklinga Church (second on the list). Wikimedia Commons has pictures of the church, Wikipedia Sweden has an article and references for the church, a search of google.se returned a site about the churches of Sweden published in collaboration with the Church of Sweden. I also found genealogical results for this churc — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aurornisxui (talk • contribs) 17:06, 24 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Note I have just started, but of the 4 churches I've looked at, all 4 have an article on wikipedia.se. I am adding a link to those articles as well as adding city names. Later, I can regroup the churches probably alphabetically by city then by church name. I will delete anything that isn't a church (someone mentioned congragations). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aurornisxui (talk • contribs) 17:34, 26 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Note I am now working my way through the list. All but one or two so far have articles on Swedish Wikipedia that I'm linking to. I have added places as well, but have decided to sort the churches by County, Municipality, Church/town. That will be easier and there will be fewer links. Working on sort list on my sandbox page. (sorry, I keep forgetting to sign this) Aurornisxui (talk) 21:05, 28 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Note still in the early stages, but many of the churches I have looked at are historical buildings, protected buildings, etc. Aurornisxui (talk) 20:39, 30 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep a valid list per above, but needs to be cleaned up. Eddie891 Talk Work 22:41, 24 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as an experienced editor has offered to clean up the list so that the nomination issues are addressed, regards Atlantic306 (talk) 21:23, 29 December 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.
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