Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of notable LiveJournal users

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. --Core desat 03:14, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

List of notable LiveJournal users[edit]

Listcruft. Some (though by no means all) of those on the list have evidence to support their 'notability', but the real question is why should we have such a list at all? It has no particular value in and of itself, and (since it is not included in the main article) does not serve to assist in asserting the 'notability' of LiveJournal itself (not that it is needed for the latter purpose anyway) Cynical 12:20, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. What's next, "List of bands with a MySpace"? Let's not even go there. MER-C 12:30, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. There have been multiple people asking if there's any famous Wikipedians. It stands to reason that people have the same interest on other websites. LiveJournal is notable and as long as the individuals discussed can be shown to be notable themselves, I see no reason to delete it. It serves a need. - Mgm|^(talk) 12:56, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Anything containing the word "notable" in the title automatically falls foul of POV issues. Who decides these are notable? As such, this is unmaintainable in any realistic or encyclopaedic form. Grutness...wha? 13:03, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The inclusion of the word notable in the title is probably an attempt to avoid the spam that would occur in a list called "List of LiveJournal users". It's nothing a renaming couldn't fix. - Mgm|^(talk) 22:35, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Question: would it be better renamed as "List of LiveJournal users with Wikipedia articles"? That precondition means that all persons on the page would have to pass WP:BIO and therefore satisfy notability. Vizjim 13:15, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would prefer to stay away from self-reference Just remove the notable from the title. People need to be notable to be included on a list by definition. - Mgm|^(talk) 22:35, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep Appears to have been created as a fork from Livejournal under WP:SUMMARY. Remove "notable" from the article name (it's a tautology) and prune it down to just those people with Wikipedia articles of their own. (In answer to Grutness, the existence of a Wikipedia article on someone is prima facie evidence of notability.) Demiurge 13:18, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom and MER-C. Yeah let's make a list of people just for the fun of it and then throw in a criterion like notable user of LiveJournal. What could possibly go wrong? <--- insert sarcasm ---> MartinDK 13:56, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep: I want to keep it mainly becuase it can be interesting. Though I don't think that that is a good reason for it to be of any use in an encyclopedia. Shamess 15:19, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Wikipedia decides everyday whether or not a person is notable enough for an article here. If they have an article here, or COULD have an article here they can be kept on the list. Perhaps a name change, or cleanup is in order, but the list has value.--Crossmr 15:42, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep Livejournal is clearly a notable site. Some of its notability comes from the notable people using it, or from the notable events that have come from it. Thus it is useful for Wikipedia to have that information. There's no vandalism that I could see on this page, no content concerns at all really. At the worst, rename it to something other than notable LJ users, even though I think that's unnecessary to change, I won't object. FrozenPurpleCube 15:46, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete we don't need this article. At all...--SonicChao ^talk 15:49, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Care to explain why?- Mgm|^(talk) 22:33, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Looking at the article, I don't agree that this can be categorised as "listcruft". The article is of a decent size (not too big, not too small), is well annotated elevating it above the normal "just a list" articles so despised on Wikipedia, certainly verifiable using the external links, and actually quite interesting. It's also a bit ironic that some Wikipedians are saying "classification as notable is NPOV"... on AfD no less! --Canley 16:23, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Mr. Manticore and Canley. For the record, I think LiveJournal is a waste of everyone's time, but that doesn't stop me from recognizing its notability and the list's usefulness. Chubbles1212 16:46, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. This list basically consists of original research and is inherently non-neutral; it doesn't belong here. If people really want to know this information, then I'm sure someone could easily do it on Livejournal.com. This isn't the place to find out if your favourite celeb or online hero has a Livejournal. --Wafulz 18:05, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- Please tell me how finding that somebody has a Livejournal account is original research. Then tell me what neutrality principles are being violated. FrozenPurpleCube 21:05, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Finding out if someone is notable is not original research. - Mgm|^(talk) 22:33, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I believe going out and trying to find out if a figure on Wikipedia has a Livejournal does consist of original research on some level. I don't mean guys like Billy Corrigan; smaller figures, such as minor entertainers or politicians who have a blog, might not want others knowing about them and having them linked from this article. If we take WP:BLP#Presumption_in_favor_of_privacy, which is an official policy, into account, then unless the user is famous for their Livejournal, I see absolutely no purpose in listing its existence. Given that there really aren't that many people who are famous solely for LiveJournal, I think they could be included in the main article.

If we decide to begin including every Wikipedia figure on this list, then we will eventually run into problems with verifiability (ie which blogs are real). As the list grows, there will also be a problem within what "belongs" without violating WP:BLP, which ends up being decidedly non-neutral. As far as I see, this list is just an arbitrary listing of factoids. If the user is notable for their LiveJournal, mention it in the main article. I certainly wouldn't want to see List of MySpace users. --Wafulz 05:11, 24 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to be confusing "original research" with "looking something up" or "reporting a known fact" . They are quite different. The prohibition against original research is against theories and ideas, not so much against facts (though there are facts that might qualify, this isn't one of them). So, you check to see if somebody famous has a livejournal. That's just "research" and is no different than say, watching a movie, noting who is in it, and putting that information on Wikipedia. Your concerns about privacy are not something that can be addressed here. If a famous person doesn't want their livejournal known to the public at large, they should consider using LJ's privacy features. Besides, that would be more of an individual problem than an article one. Given that as far as I know, none of the famous people listed in this article have tried to hide their livejournal (in fact, several of them link to it from their official websites), I don't see it as an immediate concern. Can't understand why you even begin to suggest including every Wikipedia figure on this list, that would seem to be odd. And I don't know about you, but I could get behind a List of Famous people who use Myspace or some such list. FrozenPurpleCube 06:24, 24 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My concern is that it will eventually lead to sleuthing to find LiveJournals. Personally, I wouldn't mind having a list of people who are famous for their LiveJournals- the problem is that this list would be so short that it would be better off in a main article. In my opinion, having a list like this is pretty much the same as having a list of famous people who drive BMWs, or a list of famous people who like toast. Yeah some people might find it interesting, but it's just so trivial. --Wafulz 06:47, 24 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Famous people are already searched for, in all sorts of ways and places. If you think Wikipedia is a major factor in that, you might as well be arguing for the deletion of any article on a living person. Yeah, there are things we need to watch out for (like personal phone numbers, addresses (though there are exceptions to this, like Neverland Ranch and Bill Gate's House) and emails ), but if someone puts their livejournal up publically, and it is found out about, deleting it is iffy, though we could do it if requested and they took obvious steps to make it private. To you, this may be like a list of famous people who drive BMWs, but perhaps you might want to look at lists of people. There's a fair number of lists in there which I would regard as more important than this. At least, until everybody and their brother gets a livejournal account. In which case, this list could indeed be deleted, and replaced with a list of folks without one. FrozenPurpleCube 15:43, 24 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're making a bit of a stretch there by equating my position on this article to my position on every biography article we have. The only thing I'm concerned about privacy-wise is that it creates the possibility for editors to go out and find LiveJournals that haven't been declared publicly. Regarding the "lists of people article": The way I see this is list is it's just completely arbitrary in what the criteria for inclusion is, and it's essentially trivial information. This doesn't touch on the fact that it acts as a directory of famous peoples' LiveJournals too by simply listing their name, profession, and URL. I can't see List of people with websites being any different. --Wafulz 22:48, 24 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry if I'm being unclear, but I trying to point out that you could potentially make the same argument about having biographical information about any living person. You can't make a broad statement that it could be a problem and blindly act on that, you have to make the decision on the individual case. If people want to go out and find non-public livejournals, I doubt they'll be inspired by Wikipedia. They'll do it, because they want to do it any way. Not because they want to put some information on Wikipedia. Even if they did, deleting this article would't help, they could still put it on the individual person's article. That's why I don't find that aspect of your argument convincing. Taken to its logical conclusion, it produces something absurd. Even if you limit it to just concerns about livejournals, it doesn't work too well. There are many celebs who publicize their livejournals. As such, including them would be appropriate. If there are any that request privacy, again, I say the first burden is on them to just Livejournal's privacy tools. If for some reason that doesn't work, then we can see about it when that does happen, on an individual scale. FrozenPurpleCube 04:16, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Now as for the second part, that's much more of an argument. Indeed, I don't think an article of lists of people with websites would be workable. That's too broad a category. Though I think this is a useful category Category:Celebrities who personally authored their official sites. Now Livejournal is a website, but it's a subset that is reasonably particular. Currently. For example, if you look at the lists of people, of similar content. Take a good honest look at it, and all the sublists. Like List of celebrity guest stars on Sesame Street. Perhaps one day that'll change, but not so far. FrozenPurpleCube 04:16, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, because I think I'm notable enough to be included on that list. =^_^= --Dennisthe2 23:18, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I agree with Mr. Manticore and Canley, such a list can have added value and be well maintained, when limited to people who already have articles.-- danntm ^T _C 03:33, 24 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per FrozenPurpleCube. Danny Lilithborne 03:49, 24 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment -- Upon first reading the debate, I was gonna say Speedy Delete easily, due to POV issues. But, I think the articles name needs to be changed. "List of notable LiveJournal users" implies people who are famous for having LJs. How about "List of notable people who have LiveJournals" or something similiar. The latter is more descriptive of what the article is. JPG-GR 05:22, 24 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete I don't want to end up seeing List of Famous MySpace users or List of Famous Facebook Users. Rever e ndG 23:59, 24 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep or Merge back into main LiveJournal article. And neither the existence of a List of Famous MySpace users or List of Famous Facebook Users would bother me if there were enough of either to make an article appropriate. Davidkevin 10:02, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep Is this less notable than the considerable number of lists of people associated with a particular town or university? GabrielF 06:48, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Too vague. Yankee Rajput 02:44, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Grutness. WMMartin 17:59, 28 November 2006 (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.