Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of viruses

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. (non-admin closure) Dori ☾Talk ☯ Contribs☽ 00:46, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

List of viruses[edit]

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This long-suffering page is unwieldly, poorly-maintained, and of dubious value. I don't expect any of those characteristics to change. ~~Serving a similar purpose, much more effectively, is Category:Viruses.~~ The page nominated for deletion is full of WP:redlinks, most of which are of no value and which include all of the vandalism that plagues this page. Scray (talk) 15:03, 13 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I realize that it might be sacrilege to delete a page created in 2005, but I thought this is worth discussing if only to determine how we'll ever make it useful. I have notified Wikiproject Viruses, Wikiproject Microbiology, and Wikiproject Medicine. -- Scray (talk) 15:14, 13 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy keep - No rationale for deletion presented outside of editing issues. This is not a highly publicized cleanup area, this is a place for determining the notability of topics under WP traditional practice, guidelines, and policy. Carrite (talk) 16:13, 13 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, and please accept my apology for using the wrong mechanism. What would be the right forum for discussing deletion based on content? I did not use PROD because I thought that was the speedier (and less-visible) process. -- Scray (talk) 16:16, 13 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per WP:DISCRIMINATE. Indiscriminate excessive list with no chance of a concise summary. -- Wikipedical (talk) 20:06, 13 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep - This list is so extensive that it serves practically no function to the reader beyond being interesting - it's good for pointing readers to a random virus article (which is good considering that a lot of readers use wikipedia for general reading, not just as a primary reference). However, I'm aware that "it's interesting" isn't a very good argument to keep. That said, I don't think the nomination statement contains any valid reasons to delete either, and the sheer number of redlinks makes the article somewhat useful for development, in that it may encourage editors to create articles on viruses that are redlinked here.

So to summarise,

Reasons to keep:

It's cool.
It encourages article creation.

Reasons to delete:

It's clutter.

Overall I think the poor reasons to keep outweigh the poorer reasons to delete. Basalisk ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 21:16, 13 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

After seeing Basalisk's feedback, I realized that I should try to find a more policy-based reason to delete, and verifiability is the most obvious reason - it's quite hard to find a definitive list of viruses. One candidate is the ICTV, which reports 2500(!) viruses, which if we tried to approach would invite huge management challenges (and if we plan for an incomplete list, how to decide and manage notability)? It occurred to me that it is much easier to verify the accuracy of a List of virus families, so I created that just now (it is complete, verifiable, and notable from the start). Does that help address the need without retaining an unwieldy list of limited value? Each family would then represent a manageable and notable article. --Scray (talk) 23:11, 13 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. This list is already useful but needs clean-up. It is a notable topic but requires referencing for verifiability. Axl ¤ [Talk] 21:41, 13 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Reluctant Keep because there is no shortage of space (as in a book), but what a mess! I was amused to see the "incomplete tag" - this list will never be complete as new viruses are emerging all the time. It's like adding an incomplete tag to a list of planets in the universe. I think I understand why this was nominated. Separate lists of animal, plant, bacteriophages, viruses of archae and mycoviruses, would be more useful. And, we don't need to list all the serotypes and genogroups of the same virus. But this forum is not about clean-up; it's about deletion, and I am not convinced (so far) by the arguments for deletion. A concise summary is possible, in that viruses infect all forms of life. For a single dedicated editor, cleaning up this would entail months of work, and creating the articles even longer. But a seemingly impossible challenge is not a rationale for deletion. Graham Colm (talk) 22:31, 13 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Per WP:NOTDUP, "It is neither improper nor uncommon to simultaneously have a category, a list, and a navigation template which all cover the same topic. These redundant systems of organizing information are considered to be complementary, not inappropriately duplicative. Furthermore, arguing that a category duplicates a list (or vice versa) at a deletion discussion is not a valid reason for deletion and should be avoided." Also, red links are functional to encourage the creation of new articles about notable topics. Northamerica1000^(talk) 22:38, 13 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. This page has content that can completely be covered with categories. It might be worth maintaining only if someone bothered to classify each virus according to accepted virological taxonomy (DNA vs RNA viruses, single- or doublestranded etc). There is already related virology content that achieves the same thing in a more approachable manner. Is this article actually of any use to anyone? I doubt it. JFW | T@lk 18:35, 14 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep the list does indeed include the ICTV entries. Most named viruses are reasonably notable - 2,500 is an almost vanishing percentage compared with the estimated "millions" of viruses. Wikipedia's coverage of viruses is still at an early stage, and as a result of enlarging this list I identified several confusions over the various mustelid viruses. Moreover the suggestion that it is replaceable by categories, while basically sound, is only true if all the red links are turned blue. Further it allows searching for, for example, "bunchy top" which finds items which would not be in the same taxonomic category. Further still categories tend to be (though they do not need to be) indexed by only one name, whereas a list can include both the common and scientific name, and indeed other items which may be helpful to the reader. Rich Farmbrough, 22:57, 14 October 2012 (UTC).[reply]

So, you favor multiple entries for the same virus? I thought this list was chaos already. -- Scray (talk) 23:57, 14 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The purpose is to help readers find articles. I would not propose a full synonymy. I am not sure why you say this list is "chaos". I removed a number of bad entries, added a significant number of new entries, and sorted the list properly with reasonably sensible column breaks. There are of course many ways at looking at a list, and if you are looking from a perspective where this list is "chaos" then what you need is a list which satisfies your desires for "order", perhaps your list of families, and ensuring each family has a list of genera, and so forth. Similarly there may be some benefit in a list keyed by abbreviation, or a list of current scientific names only, or a full taxonomy. Rich Farmbrough, 00:46, 15 October 2012 (UTC).[reply]

I want to emphasize that there is no "my" list. Ownership aside, it's clear that a page should have reliable sources, and I just don't see evidence that the list being discussed here can be consistently sourced. In addition, it's a flat list without structure to provide meaning (i.e. I am reminded of the "indiscriminate collection" criterion, and the presence of synonyms in a list with hundreds of entries invites application of that criterion). Without apparent consensus, it looks like this list may get kept, but I think that it serves WP poorly because it will never be complete, informative, or valuable. It's just a pile of mostly-red wikilinks. -- Scray (talk) 01:56, 15 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You don't need multiple entries to have the common and scientific name: you just need to have 2 columns, one with the common and one with the scientific name. I don't see how that would be confusing or add to the "chaos". --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:36, 15 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:01, 15 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:01, 15 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep It's a valid topic for a list. Of course it could be improved and subcategorised, but Wikipedia is improvable and it's a project for the long haul: entries aren't instantly perfect. WP:AfD says that if an article is improvable and is a notable topic, it shouldn't be deleted. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:31, 15 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep It's useful for figuring out which articles we're missing. The cat isn't good enough, because the cat doesn't contain the redlinked items. Readers could at least figure out that the entries are viruses, although I hope that the list will be expanded some day, perhaps to include links to the virus families. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:17, 15 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Rich Farmbrough and WhatamIdoing. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:43, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Graham and Rich. Mark Arsten (talk) 03:25, 19 October 2012 (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.