Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of slave owners

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. No consensus to delete, and while there is a strong consensus that it meets LISTN, there are articulated concerns that this list could be bordering on being unwieldy/too-broad and in needed for further organization/splitting/sub-division outside of AfD (non-admin closure) Britishfinance (talk) 19:52, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

List of slave owners[edit]

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Not a useful topic for a list - this could apply to almost any notable figure in many time periods and places. I think it would be difficult to redefine it in a useful way. Let's just get rid of it. Brianyoumans (talk) 15:59, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 16:16, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 16:16, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The topic passes WP:LISTN – see the scholar link above for many interesting papers. The "not useful" nomination is WP:NOTUSEFUL. Andrew🐉(talk) 17:23, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- The scholarly sources discuss lists of slaveholders at a particular time and place. (I believe most of the references are to a list of British slaveholders who received compensation on the abolition of slavery.) This is an indiscriminate list of all slaveholders, ever.Brianyoumans (talk) 18:40, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - The complementary category structure shows how it can be organized or subdivided. postdlf (talk) 18:47, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep as index of articles by significant shared fact per WP:LISTPURP and as complement to Category:Slave owners per WP:CLN. The nom’s only substantive complaint is just a question of development and organization, not deletion. postdlf (talk) 19:07, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - The claim that this could apply to almost any notable figure in many time periods and places strikes me as dubious. And as Postdlf mentions above, this could easily be broken down into sub-articles (and should be, as part of the process of expanding and improving the list. It falls well within the guidelines for lists, as mentioned by Andrew Davidson and Postdlf. Guettarda (talk) 21:06, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. If the nominator really believes that most notable people enslaved other (presumably nonnotable) people, then we could perhaps have a list of those few who didn't. pburka (talk) 22:47, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- I would not say that "most notable people enslaved other people", but I would say that is principally because of recentism. Slavery existed in China, it existed in ancient Rome, in the Ottoman Empire... etc. And it is documentable for many many people articles in Wikipedia. I would estimate tens of thousands of entries, but that's just a guess. Brianyoumans (talk) 02:39, 13 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - Sounds good. Round up the sources, bring 'em on. — Toughpigs (talk) 02:56, 13 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    - The list will probably need to be reorganized to accommodate that many documented slave owners. Oh well. pburka (talk) 03:28, 13 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: It needs more references and information, but it's a notable topic, and "let's just get rid of it" is not an acceptable rationale. — Toughpigs (talk) 00:44, 13 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The topic passes
Keep per WP:NLIST Lightburst (talk) 23:52, 13 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - GizzyCatBella🍁 02:27, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete a horrendous mess of unsourced rubbish. It misses people from many cultures that were very big slave owners. Is Tippu Tip who may have owned over 10,000 slaves even on the list?John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:01, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- This blanking is completely unacceptable. You've really made a habit recently out of taking wrecking balls to clearly fixable content, and showing up just to !vote delete for "problems" easily fixed. If an entry is missing that should be on the list, add it. If an entry lacks an inline citation, add it. If you are interested in doing neither, move along and let those who can edit constructively do so. postdlf (talk) 19:08, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - The burden is on the person who adds the entry to source it. The burden on anyone else is to remove everything that is unsourced unless they can find a source, but they have the responsibility to remove an entry if there is not a source. It is time we stop perpetuating these horrid lists.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:14, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    - Try reading all of WP:V: "Whether and how quickly material should be initially removed for not having an inline citation to a reliable source depends on the material and the overall state of the article. In some cases, editors may object if you remove material without giving them time to provide references; consider adding a citation needed tag as an interim step. When tagging or removing material for lacking an inline citation, please state your concern that it may not be possible to find a published reliable source and the material therefore may not be verifiable. If you think the material is verifiable, you are encouraged to provide an inline citation yourself before considering whether to remove or tag it." postdlf (talk) 19:22, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Every entry in an article like this should be sourced within the article. We should not have any blank accusations of slave ownership without any sourcing. This is just plain wrong. Lots and lots of these articles are ascribing all sorts of things without any good sourcing at all. It needs to stop and removing such things is totally justified. If the entries can be sourced than add sources. There is no justification for this inclusion of all sorts of people on the list with absolutely no sourcing.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:12, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- So fix it by adding sources. The other lists you've indiscriminately blanked recently all had sources for the entries in the linked articles, so those could clearly be migrated over to the lists just as here. As the internally unsourced entries in this list are dead and so not subject to BLP, there is no urgency and so no justification for blanking. If you think an entry is incorrect and therefore that the inclusion is unverifiable, that's a different story, but you just seem not to care either way because you're clearly not taking the time to actually see if it can be verified, not even by looking at the linked article. It's hard not to read that as intentional disruption and it will stop. postdlf (talk) 19:19, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - That's what we did with List of entertainers who performed in blackface over the last month, and I think that page is much improved. We're keeping a close eye on unsourced additions, and filling out the items with a bare source with more details. It's not rocket science, it just requires a few people who care to work on it and then keep an eye on it. — Toughpigs (talk) 19:22, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment slavery has meant different things in different times and places, a list like this treats as one phenomenon what is actually several different phenomenon which we inprecisely use the same word to describe.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:16, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Any hope that such lists can be kept to only sourced entries is a false hope because there are too many editors who will add entries without bothering to provide any sourcing.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:20, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Clear inclusion criteria of a notable topic. I picked ONE unsourced entry at random, and guess what, I found a source straight away. Much more productive to do this than wholesale disruptive blanking. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 07:20, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep (and -- of course -- improve), per WP:LISTN. -- The Anome (talk) 17:30, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment, have left the following on the article's talkpage that highlights the problem with having such a wikilist - "hi all, I note that presently there are around 230 people listed in this article, of those about 190 lived 17th to 19th cents, and yet, for example, there are 1000s of romans at the category:Roman people by century, the majority of whom were slave owners (let alone all the other ancient peoples), who have not been included. Why the undue weight?". Coolabahapple (talk) 13:43, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- That English Wikipedia has a bias towards topics related to English-speaking countries and recent history isn't undue. If you examine some of those thousands of Romans, you'll notice that most of their pages are permastubs because we know almost nothing about, e.g. Acidinus. We simply have access to more and better sources for 18th century people than 1st century people. pburka (talk) 18:22, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Notable topic with several available sources. I would suggest removing the unsourced entries and the mythological characters (Abraham) to clean it up. Dimadick (talk) 16:17, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Passes WP:LISTN. -- Dane ^talk 04:11, 18 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Preferably Delete -- This has the feel of ATTACK article. However I suspect that I am in a minority; so I offer an alternative, which is to split. Part of my reason for this is that almost every prominent person in the American South and West Indies will have owned slaves, so that this is too universal a characteristic for the list to be useful. I would suggest that this be split into separate lists for each American colony/state. In those areas, it would be more useful to categorise (or list) non-slave owners. I doubt it is useful to combine these early modern slave owners with those of earlier periods as "slavery" was a somewhat different institution. One might have slave -owner lists for those periods, but, again, it is likely that every prominent Greek or Roman had slaves. I thus doubt that such lists are useful. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:30, 19 July 2020 (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.