Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of female directors

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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 no consensus. Per WP:NPOV, concerns about gender bias or similar political/societal considerations are not relevant for the decision whether or not an article should be kept or deleted. Wikipedia is not a soap box and its purpose is not to bring attention to gender or other society issues. On the relevant question whether being a woman and a film director is a notable intersection of categories, people disagree.  Sandstein  08:26, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

List of female directors[edit]

List of female directors (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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Gender bias. We dont' have a List of male directors so why should we have a female one? Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • (Otters want attention) 02:55, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Obvious keep. Far fewer female directors than male, institutional bias against female directors makes the topic worthy of a list. (Although I could wish the list had a little more information, like maybe one film by each director on it - but that's not a matter for AfD.) Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 04:11, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, inappropriate cross-categorisation. Nyttend (talk) 05:17, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - see WP:LISTPEOPLE - membership in the group itself is notable. There is no understanding that a person is notable purely for being a female director. I grant Roscelese that it may be notable for the more well-known female directors, but this list implies that anyone who just happens to be female and in charge of a movie is notable. Lastly, the fact there is no list for male directors demonstrates the clear un-needed nature of this new list. Cheers! -- Lord Roem (talk) 05:27, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep we have a category so why not have a list. It meets the requirements of a list. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 06:59, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, indiscriminate list. I don't see gender as having a fundamental role in the profession of film direction. And we don't have a list of male directors. JIP | Talk 08:29, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment If kept, this should be moved to List of female film directors. I assumed it was about films, and not company directors, but others may think the opposite. Lugnuts (talk) 09:57, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete—This list provides little information besides the name and nation. A category is sufficient for this grouping. If we need more information on trail-blazing female directors, then it can be put in an article.—RJH (talk) 18:52, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per JIP. Although the highest-grossing directors list is encyclopedic, this one isn't. Absent a clear rationale for what, if any, role gender has in one's ability to direct a movie, this is no more valid a list than one of red-haired directors or right-handed directors would be. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 19:01, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep We have this list because being a female director is still a notable intersection. Book length treatments over the past 15 years shows the ongoing notability of the subject. Jim Miller See me | Touch me 00:24, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. -- Jclemens-public (talk) 00:44, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Actors and filmmakers-related deletion discussions. -- Jclemens-public (talk) 00:45, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep This list was made in first place because female directors are not much in the norm in the entertainment industry as male directors. And to cry sexism because male directors are not given the same treatment is little juvenile don't you think. QuasyBoy 0:20, December 31 2010 (UTC)
  • Keep - unlike being a male film director, being a female film director is (sadly) still significant, and a notable subject for an article or list. (e.g. It took until this year for a woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director, and when she did, it prompted much media discussion about female directors, and whether discrimination still exists against them.) If kept, this article should be renamed to List of female film and television directors, to make the subject of the list clearer. Robofish (talk) 02:56, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per WP:AOAL. That there are far fewer notable female directors than male makes the topic worthy of a list, and in this case, gender is THE fundemental and discriminating factor that sets this list apart. And in NOT being indescriminate, this article meets the criteria at WP:LIST... through WP:LISTPURP in being a valuable information source with internally linked terms. And important to remember, lists and categories are not interchangable and redundancy of lists and categories is beneficial because the two work together in enlightening our readers. And most important, lists are more readily navigable by readers, while categories are less navigable and cannot be edited directly to add or remove entries. I agree that for the sake of clarity (unless this article is intended to later inlcude notable female theater directors), a rename to List of female film and television directors will better serve our readers. And to the nominator, arguments about what we do not have is a better reason to create content than to delete. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 00:14, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Okay, here we go:
  1. Almost every reason to keep you mention is so broad that it would apply literally to any list you could possibly imagine. I agree that, in general, lists are good. But only the first sentence really applies to this list in particular.
  2. Many people here have said that there are "far fewer" female directors than male. Now it wouldn't surprise me if it were true, but does everyone have a reliable source to verify this claim?
  3. Assuming it is true that there are far fewer female directors than male, why does this make a list of female directors notable? There are relatively few male nurses; we even have an article on Men in Nursing. Would you consider a list of male nurses to be notable? Or a list of male professors of women's studies? Generally, when there is few X, that is an argument for X not being notable. Why is the opposite true here?
  4. WP:CREATIVE, which includes filmmakers, lists four criteria for notability. To be sure, there are lots of female directors who have individually satisfied one or more of these criteria. However, the state of being both female and a director does not satisfy any of the criteria.
  5. WP:NOTDIRECTORY states "Wikipedia articles are not lists or repositories of loosely associated topics such as... persons (real or fictional)." The status of being female and the status of being a film director are only very loosely associated, if at all.
  6. WP:NOTDIRECTORY also states "Wikipedia is not a directory of everything that exists or has existed." If the existence of List of female directors means that List of male directors could also be created, we will end up listing every single film director who has ever walked the earth. How is that notable? YardsGreen (talk) 04:17, 2 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Response to User:YardsGreen:
  1. We are not discussing "every list", only this one about notable female directors.
  2. Such a discriminate list does not mandate that someone find out if someone else has written specifcally about there being fewer female than male directors, as the bluelinked names on the list show the notability for the individual so linked. And while I do not have personal access to the list of filmmakers at the Director's Guild of America to then myself count the number of men versus women, the topic of female directors in relationship to their male counterparts has been covered quite extensively in books[1] and news articles[2] so the topic itself is notable, just as is the qualifying intersection.
  3. A list of notable female directors is useful for the furtherment of our reader's knowledge of the uniqueness of the topic and, with its many links, allows a reader to then look to other articles in their quest for information. The list is for the readers, not the editors.
  4. As with any list that offers a beneficial intersection, the descriminate qualifiers are in being 1) a notable film or TV director, and 2) being female. Either one alone means less than the two together. The discriminate state of being both a notable female and a notable director satisifies the criteria. See WP:LIST, WP:LISTPURP, and WP:AOAL.
  5. This list does not fail WP:NOT, as it is not a repositorty of "loosely associated topics". Quite the opposite, as it shows a discriminate and notable intesection... and there is nothing "loose" about it. A director does not merit inclusion on the list unless a notable female and a notable director... two unique circumstances that, if met, have a notable intersection.
  6. And while "Wikipedia is not a directory of everything that exists or has existed", we are not arguing that it should be, nor arguing for everything that exists or has existed. All we are discussing is one discriminate list that meets inclusion criteria. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 08:39, 2 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Responding again:
  1. You're right that we are not discussing "every list", which is exactly why so many of your original reasons do not apply. When discussing whether this particular list should be kept, arguments about why lists are good in general should not be accepted.
  2. According to WP:N, the topic of a list is notable "as long as there are reliable sources that are independent of the subject that discuss Xs as a group." The criteria is not simply having bluelinked items on the list, since the notability of each individual article cannot be assumed to extend to the list in general. That said, I had asked for reliable sources, and (without having read the books you link to), there seems to be enough published material to consider this list notable, at least in passing. That was all I was looking for.
  3. The remainder of my points were an attempt to find some other notability justification in the absence of reliable sources. With reliable sources, they are no longer necessary.
  4. How do you define a "notable female"? Is it simply a notable person who happens to be female? In my opinion, for someone to be described as a "notable female", they must be notable for some reason that is closely associated with the fact that they are female. For example, Sally Ride (the first US woman in space) and Sandra Day O'Connor (the first woman on the US Supreme Court) are "notable females" because their notability is very closely associated with the fact that they are female. If it is enough to be notable and female to be considered a "notable female" then we could take literally any trait of a "notable person" and construct a list out of it. If there is "notable person" who "loves peanut butter", would it be appropriate to say they are a "notable peanut-butter-lover"? Of course not, unless that person is notable for running a peanut butter factory, for example. You say that, "Either one alone means less than the two together" but if "notable female" means just someone who happens to be both notable and female, that is clearly not the case.
  5. Nom is correct that the existence of this list and the nonexistence of the male counterpart is gender bias. However, since Wikipedia must be based on secondary and tertiary sources, and is itself a tertiary source, Wikipedia will necessarily be biased in the same direction as the general secondary and tertiary sources covering a topic such as this. While unfortunate, if we stick to notability and other policies, it is unavoidable. YardsGreen (talk) 23:20, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per WP:AOAL and for the sake of egalitarianism. I consider this to be a very important stand. Evalpor (talk) 06:38, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete A category of notable female film directors would be appropriate; a list of all female film directors is not. Even if there are "far fewer" female film directors than male film directors, this does not make every female film director notable. There are also far fewer female economists than male economists, but this doesn't mean that Wikipedia needs a list of female economists. YardsGreen (talk) 11:35, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Lists and categories are not interchangable and the sometimes redundancy of lists and categories is beneficial to the project because the two work together in enlightening our readers. And most important, lists are more readily navigable by readers, while categories are less navigable and cannot be edited directly to add or remove entries. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 08:56, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per MQS' comments above. It may be unfortunate that being both film director and female is remarkable, but it is nonetheless something like a fact. MQS raises a number of other compelling policy-based reasons for keeping as well. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 17:00, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • There are literally hundreds of names on the list, many that don't even have associated articles. Assuming that all of them actually are female film directors, how many hundreds or thousands must there be before there's so many that it's no longer "remarkable"? As for MQS's arguments, my response grew rather long, so I put it after MQS' post above. YardsGreen (talk) 04:17, 2 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Understand the concern. I think MQS addresses this quite well in his response above. The list ought to be restricted to notable female film directors, per the "intersection" MQS mentions (which is an editorial concern). ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 18:28, 2 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • [ec] Responded after YardsGreen comment above. The few red-links out of the hundreds of blue-links is a call for new content, but not for deletion of a descriminate list of a notable intersection. Per WP:MOSLIST, a list is allowed to be dynamic... changing as the subjects they cover change, and per guidleine might never be completed... so it is apparently recognized that there is no expected size limitaion on lists... but addressing your hypothetical might be a question for Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (lists). In meeting WP:SAL, "Every entry meets the notability criteria for its own non-redirect article in the English Wikipedia. Red-linked entries are acceptable if the entry is verifiably a member of the listed group, and it is reasonable to expect an article could be forthcoming in the future." In meeting WP:SALAT, the list is not too general or too broad in scope, nor has it "little value". Its value is in its discriminated intersection of two related notable critera. In meeting WP:LISTPEOPLE, the person listed meets the Wikipedia notability requirement, the person's membership in the list's group is notable, and the person's membership in the list's group is established by reliable sources (found in the linked articles for that person). And agin, just how many items might be included on a list is an interesting question, but seems to make my point for me... as I have found no discussion anywhere that states a list can have only some finite number of items. A list is an attempt to organize items for easy navigation by our readers. Naturally, the more items to be navigated, the longer will be the list.... but per applicanle guidelines, this one is nicely organized and easy for our readers to navigate... just as it should be. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 18:32, 2 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • MQS, you misunderstand my point. I am not saying that there is or should be some general size limit placed on any list. Clearly, some lists will be extremely long, and we should not arbitrarily limit their size. That said, the primary justification for keeping this list advanced by others here is that the number of female film directors is small. Yet there are hundreds listed, and we have every reason to believe that the number of female film directors will continue to grow as time goes on. By definition, when considering any "list of X", there must be a point where there are so many Xs that it is no longer "remarkable" or notable that there are so few of them. I am not arguing for a specific size limit to be set for this or any list. I am merely questioning whether the justification used above is applicable. This is not a size limit, as there very well may be other justifications for keeping the list. YardsGreen (talk) 23:20, 4 January 2011 (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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