Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of herbivorous animals

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. There are three guidelines relating to this topic, and all have been brought up in the discussion. WP:Source list indicates that lists should be sourced in the same manner as articles - while this list is currently unsourced, it is quite clear that as the list topic is factual and notable there will be no problem sourcing it, so therefore that it currently has no references is not a reason for deletion. WP:CLN was mentioned. That guideline provides no argument for deleting this list - indeed, it explains how such a list can work with the existing category, and gives a useful guide to the advantages of such a list. WP:SALAT does point out that lists which are "too general or too broad in scope" may not be useful, and then proceeds to indicate that splitting such lists into sections may assist the reader - and this list does have some sections, and the potential to be managed even further. That there is already an existing category indicates that the topic of this list is seen to have educational and research value. SilkTork *^YES! 14:59, 8 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

List of herbivorous animals[edit]

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Has category. Completely unmanagable. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 03:37, 31 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete though this is a good list for basic navigation. It is still subject to Verifiability and No Original Research which means that all entries should be sourced.--Lenticel ^(talk) 05:07, 31 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Nominator cites no policies that this article fails. Having a category is not a reason for deletion - lists and categories go hand-in-hand, per WP:CLN. Completely unmanagable?! It has about 30 entries! If it can be managed as a category, then a list should be no problem. Lugnuts (talk) 08:37, 31 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

WP:SALAT (guideline) Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 17:58, 31 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Not useful. There are actually millions of species that could be included. Wolfview (talk) 12:38, 31 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete The potential scope of the article (thousands, if not millions of species) make this impossible to manage and source. First Light (talk) 14:38, 31 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organisms-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 16:40, 31 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 16:40, 31 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. —Radagast 3 (talk) 10:00, 1 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete multiple problems, unresolvable. This is essentially an article for juvenile readers. the proper article would be "list of herbivorous branches of the taxonomic system", with species listed when their genus is not entirely herbivorous, genera when their family is not entirely herbivorous, and recursing up the taxonomic ladder. listing every species, of course, is utterly unacceptable, and if that is what this is trying to do, it needs to be deleted. this is a hand picked list of mostly common names for common animals. the category is not much better. maybe someone who cares could create a "list of herbivorous mammals", which would be manageable and may reflect actual interest in some people.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 20:44, 31 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep It's actually the category that would be too cumbersome in this case because a category with hundreds of thousands of articles in it does not seem practically useful. A list seems a better approach because it can be constructed in a more intelligent fashion by listing broad classes of animals such as ruminants, rodents, termites, fruit-eating bats, &c. Anyway, WP:CLS says clearly that we don't delete lists to favour categories. Colonel Warden (talk) 07:06, 1 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Mercurywoodrose. -- Radagast 3 (talk) 09:24, 1 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as per Colonel Warden. Edward321 (talk) 23:07, 1 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You're kidding, right? A proper list of herbivorous species would be impossibly large. On the other hand, this informal list has rather vague groupings, which leads to errors. The "kangaroo" category includes the extinct omnivorous genus Propleopus, for example. -- Radagast 3 (talk) 00:25, 2 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per WP:SALAT. It is way too broad to be usable. Tavix | Talk 02:26, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Categories and lists are complementary, and there is no reason not to have both. Lists have the particular advantage of providing some information about the material in which they appear, thus facilitating identification and browsing. Browsing is a key function of an encyclopedia. As a general rule, for topics like this, if there is a category, there should be a list. This is very broad in a zoological sense, but still helpful to some readers. DGG ( talk ) 00:57, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Using category hierarchies, we can easily have categories with millions of species, if we want them. Lists of millions of species (which is what this would be) don't work. -- Radagast 3 (talk) 09:02, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think the list topic has potential if it is structured properly. If entire orders or families or other groups of animals are herbivores, then it would be senseless to list individual species and easy to list the orders. If certain species are exceptions to the general rule that their order is carnivorous, then it's informative to list those exceptions. It is certainly encyclopedic to note that X number of all insect orders are herbivorous, or that Y species is the only member of Z family that is herbivorous. I'm not sure whether to !vote keep though, or delete without prejudice, given that the list in its current state is so haphazard and arbitrary as to be completely useless. It just reads like a child's attempt to write down all the plant-eating animals he can think of. Any reasonable list would have to start from scratch. postdlf (talk) 15:28, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Topic is notable, list just needs some organization to make it useful and maintainable. The Category arguments are bogus as always. Don't these people ever read WP:CLN? --Mike Cline (talk) 13:55, 8 August 2010 (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.