Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/List of Roman Catholics (2nd nomination)

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Firstly, the argument was not mine but that of Dpbsmith (although I agree with him). Secondly, you argument does not hold up. some of the articles you cite should be deleted IMO, but not all. The number of Zoroastrians or fellows of the Royal Society with a WP article is, I would think, managable for a list, and most of the entries will be at easier possible to verify. Further, as being in one of those categories of people and being notable enough for WP is somewhat rare, the list has some interest. Probably 10-20% (or perhaps more) of Wiki-bios will be somehow associated with R.Catholicism (lapsed, or by bith, or profession) - who will check them all?. The work of verifying this waaay outways any possible utility. List are complex, and although some guidelines have been developed - there is really no escaping a case-by-case examination. Anyway, the argument keep this - or you'd have to delete all of this doesn't really impress me, this article should stand (or preferably) fall on its own merits. --Doc ask? 19:04, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • My argument is not "keep this - or you'd have to delete all of this", it's "either keep this or delete all of this"; I'm not threatening you with a huge workload, I'm trying to clarify and figure out what you guys are suggesting we delete, and what you aren't suggesting we delete. There seems to be far too little perspective and broad observation of Wikipedia's many lists for such a significant, enormous-in-scale deletion drive. If this article is to be deleted because of qualities X, Y, and Z it has, then every other article that has qualities X, Y, and Z should also be deleted (hence my listing a few of them above), unless you can identify some other definite quality that would change such a list from "must be deleted" to "OK, let's keep it". While several Jewish and Roman Catholic lists are now up for VfD, not a single Muslim or Hindu one that I've seen is; are Islam and Hinduism, the two second-largest religions in the world, "unusual" enough that a list of their practitioners is A-OK? Where do you draw the line between when a religion is so common as to be assumed, and when being a member of a religion is unusual enough to merit a list? My problem with the argument "there are too many Roman Catholics to have a list of the most noteworthy Roman Catholics!" is that this whole affair reeks of cultural bias; because of the specific areas most native English-speakers live in, we're used to taking certain religious beliefs for granted, and used to considering other religions "exotic" or "noteworthy" whenever someone believes in them, even though in other parts of the world the opposite situation exists, and it's a Roman Catholic that would be considered highly noteworthy and a Muslim that would be considered so common as to be a meaninglessly large list. I don't see any rhyme or reason in this; why should one significant religion not merit a list of its practitioners, and another significant religion merit such a list? The only difference between the two lists "List of Roman Catholics" and "List of Sikhs" is that one is longer than the other, and length is not a valid reason for deletion! So please explain this a bit better to me; I'm willing to change my vote as soon as anyone provides a consistent explanation, rationale and plan for what lists will and won't be eliminated as a part of this deletion campaign. -Silence 19:27, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Consistency, foolish, minds, little, hobgoblin of: see Emerson, Ralph Waldo, also WP:IAR. Wikipedia is inherently inconsistent, particularly in borderline areas; it comes with the territory. The case-by-case nomination and deletion of these lists is one of the ways we find out whether there's consensus on them and what that consensus is. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:35, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Please leave out the irrelevant indirect personal attacks right now; I'm trying to have a conversation with you, not with Ralph Waldo Emerson. I oppose arbitrary and meaningless attempts to make articles more consistent with one another when doing so does not benefit the specific articles in question, just as you presumably do; I encourage new experiments with Wikipedia article layout and style, which sometimes provide fruitful and effective results (though failed experiments are certainly fair ground for reversion). But this is not an issue of trivial consistencies, this is an issue of completely arbitrary, almost to the point of profound religious bias, attempts to delete articles without any conception of what to do about all the other articles of an exactly identical nature. Article content may not have to be consistent, but we most certainly should be consistent about what types of articles and lists are to be permitted on Wikipedia!! A large-scale, centralized vote for deletion seems quite clearly to be merited if there's strong support for deleting such a massive number of lists, not a slow, week-after-week or even month-after-month spamming of the VfD page with countless articles that are being argued for and against for the exact same reasons. Since article content is largely irrelevant in determining whether to delete a specific article topic, and only the subject matter is directly relevant, there is absolutely no benefit to stretching out and subdividing a single vote into hundreds of individual, totally unconnected votes. And there are many disadvantages. Again, until I get the rationale and clear plan that I have requested several times now for this elaborate VfD campaign, I will continue to fight for some actual sanity to be injected into this process. -Silence 20:53, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Wow. Someone who accused someone else of having a weak argument, who turns around 5 minutes later and uses the two weakest, most self-contradictory (and clearly misinterpreted in their above usage) arguments in the history of Wikipedia: "Don't be consistent!" and "Don't follow any rules!" Any two arguments that can be used to counter every reasonable, helpful, and good course of action in the history of Wikipedia are clearly of severely limited value, especially when there is a total failure to explain why a certain rule must be broken and why being consistent would be harmful rather than helpful in this specific case. The point of those two maxims is not to say "never be consistent" or "never follow rules" (if you think Wikipedia lacks any rules or consistency whatsoever, you haven't visited even a single article yet), but to let people who see a harmful attempt to over-fixate on consistency and a harmful misuse or overuse of a rule to further justify his reasoned, explained-out objection to this error. Just using a link and a quote without the required accompanying reasoning is totally ineffective because it's an argument that could be used against almost any conceivable course of action: including against itself (why is consistency consistently foolish? why should I follow a rule that says to ignore all rules?). You might as well just use the classic catch-all pseudoargument and keep things simple: "Because I said so." No need to feign philosophical superiority or rules-adherence just to get that simple nonpoint across. -Silence 21:01, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I have put List of agnostics on delete page. It's not showng up yet, but I did. I admit in part that was churlish and one of the rare times I did something nearing bad faith, but to be honest the reasoning I can give is about identical to this one being listed. Many estimates indicate that 100 million to 1 billion people are agnostic so it could have the "too big" issue. Also the verification issue. Although my intent was annoyance it ultimately fits the reasons this was done. (It's only bad faith because I feel the reasoning given here is invalid and so accepting it anyway is de facto invalid. It's also even a bit suspicious as Hinduism or Islam are about as large as Catholicism while List of neo-conservatives is far less verifiable.)--T. Anthony 23:06, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm glad you nominated that article because it's indeed a high-quality, well-described list that could be very useful but has the exact same problem as the Roman Catholic lists. In fact, if anything it's worse than the super-long lists of Christians, because the only reason that it's shorter is because less work has been put into looking for and adding new entries (or it's just more difficult to do so; "agnosticism" has dozens of distinct meanings)! Do keep an eye out for WP:POINT, though, considering that you yourself seem to disagree with the VfD. I think we need to stop rushing to delete everything immediately and actually have a calm, rational discussion on exactly what lists we do and don't plan to delete. -Silence 23:20, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

As for "its own merits" it is actually possible to fix things with a little work. The List of Catholic artists article was, I agree, terrible when I saw it on deletion. Now it's almost respectable, or so I like to think. At present this article just links to lists of Catholics. So if it were renamed "List of Lists of Roman Catholics" it becomes more manageable. You just fix the individual lists. I think this is a case where deletion is being used when clean-up would make more sense.--T. Anthony 23:11, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Subset of the List of Christians sounds good by me. Also maybe the surviving Catholic lists can just all be placed in the "Category: Lists of Christians"--T. Anthony 23:53, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'm still strongly for keep, but if a Category is preferred then it'll be Category:Lists of Roman Catholics, correct?--T. Anthony 14:11, 21 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
(I mean category as in a subcategory of Category:Lists of Christians of course.--T. Anthony 14:13, 21 November 2005 (UTC))[reply]
I believe Category:Notable Roman Catholics or Category:Famous Roman Catholics would be preferable names. Just my opinion, however. → Ξxtreme Unction {yakłblah} 14:35, 21 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, but that would be a bit silly especially as I was meaning a Category of lists. Anyway Category:Muslims isn't Category:Famous Muslims, nor is Category:Bahá'í individuals isn't Category:Famous Bahá'í individuals, etc.(Oddly there's isn't a Category:Hindus, but there is a List of Hindus. Although there is Category:Musicians by religion, there's also a Category:Roman Catholic musicians which includes people like Mick Jagger who'd likely not be acceptable on any List of Catholic musicians now. Or for that matter Back when].--T. Anthony 16:18, 21 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
"Lists of Roman Catholics" would be 80% acceptable. "Famous Roman Catholics" or "Notable Roman Catholics" would be 0% acceptable. Wikipedia Lists and Categories never include "famous" or "notable" or "noteworthy" or "important", because (1) they're value judgments, (2) they're totally unnecessary because all Wikipedia lists, (3) they're cumbersome and almost every list and category on all of Wikipedia would need. Just think about it. We'd have to replace "1835 deaths" with "noteworthy 1835 deaths". How many hundreds of thousands of pages do you think we'd have to rename to include "famous" or "notable" everywhere it implied? Anyway, the only reason I gave Lists of Roman Catholics a "80% acceptable" is because I don't think there are enough such lists to merit a distinct category; those lists would work just as well within Category:Lists of Christians itself. But it's up to you. -Silence 03:28, 22 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not strong on it. Even if it were a Category I think it should be as a sub-category of Category:Lists of Christians. This list, or the lists it contains, being in Category:Lists of Christians is also okay. Naming Categories "Famous XYZ" strikes me as very silly and unworkable though.--T. Anthony 04:11, 22 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]


Vote Count[edit]

  • For my own edification, the vote count at this time is 23 Delete, 14 Keep and 1 Merge.  RasputinAXP  T C 16:34, 22 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

List clutter?[edit]

If "listmania" stuff really bothers you(plural) I'm sure there's plenty of things at Wikipedia:List of lists/uncategorized that many of you could categorize or delete to get rid of any list clutter. It's a pretty big backlog. Category:Lists did not look as cluttered to me as there's a fairly solid hierarchy which this article is in.--T. Anthony 16:50, 22 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Or you can help put things in Category:Incomplete lists, which is way overcrowded, into subcategories.--T. Anthony 17:04, 22 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

List of Catholic Wikipedians[edit]

I bumped into a list of such but cannot find it again. I am torn about this decision here , thinking that by allowing faith based info into the open , at least it becomes visible , and trackable . I as editor have been forced to claim that at least one very active and extremely clever editor here is a vatican agent. Of course this honest opinion rather conflicts with good faith principles , with obvious result (Arbcom) . I am on record as warning Jimbo that good RC's are under order to subvert the WP , which he kinda has to ignore(I told him there had to be snag with his WP concept) . So , I really don't know what is the best in this case or in the above I'm locating . It is rather sad that the church should have need to fear facts that the WP system filters , and rather a shock to our supposedly secular modern world , to think that by means of WP email , that such subversion can prosper . EffK 09:13, 25 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm assuming this is a joke. I don't know of a list, but there is Category:Roman Catholic Wikipedians. I imagine some Catholic Wikipedians aren't listed there and that some Catholics listed there are quite lapsed. There's also Category:Quaker Wikipedians, Category:Born-again Christian Wikipedians, Category:Pentecostal Wikipedians, Category:Latter Day Saint Wikipedians, Category:Scientologist Wikipedians, Category:Free Zone Wikipedians, Category:Jain Wikipedians, Category:Atheist Wikipedians, Category:Marxist Wikipedians, and so forth. I'm a tad skeptical that all categorized users really are of the category they claim, but yeah it's there. And we don't need a list if we have a category:)--T. Anthony 10:52, 25 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Sadly it is not a joke , yes that was what I was looking for. it is also not a joke that TV Euronews reported the vatican spring 2005 conference , in which a zillion folk were ordered to intervene online to defend the faith from calumny . I refer you to read the edit I made on talk page Ludwig Kaas just now-not at all funny . Jokes are banned , too . Thanks EffK 23:47, 25 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I see. Well this explains some odd things on Wiki, but not the way you mean. I hope that you regain a sense of balance someday and peace to you.--T. Anthony 03:18, 26 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

And anyway religion may not effect the voters that much. User:Silence has often voted in favor of either keeping Catholic related lists or merging them into Christian lists rather than deletion. However s/he's in the Category:Atheist Wikipedians. For a variety of reasons I've chosen not categorize myself as much of anything. Although I recently did so for world music as no one had picked that category and it's reasonably accurate of me.--T. Anthony 05:51, 26 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

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