Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of African American women

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 Convert to category and then Delete.. v/r - TP 19:55, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

List of African American women

List of African American women (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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Delete as overly-broad and unmaintainable listcruft. Wikipedia is not a collection of links, either external or internal, outside of dab pages. This would be better implemented as a (self-maintaining) category. Cind.amuse 07:06, 4 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. No way to reasonably limit and is highly subjective. Moreover, it essentially serves a purpose that a category should be serving, so is largely unnecessary. In fact, this doesn't go far enough. User:Cindamuse should have nominated every article that is set out in the {{Americans}} template that is used in this article. Agent 86 (talk) 08:53, 4 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Where on earth would you draw the line with this? A definitive list would be ridiculously large. --Ritchie333 (talk) 11:12, 4 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete A comprehensive list would be way to long to be useful. A category is better. Same goes for the other lists linked via template. Steve Dufour (talk) 16:02, 4 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete I've decided a category probably would be more useful and as the user who created this page am willing to create a category of the same name: African American Women. This would also rid the problem of maintaining. I am aware of how to create a category, but I am not sure of how to delete a page, unless only a mod can do it.--Shakesomeaction (talk) 21:48, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 16:17, 4 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per nom. As an alternative, this page could be renamed to List of African American actresses -- almost everyone on the list is an actress. Not only is this list focused entirely on the entertainment industry, there are hardly even any singers on the list, much less politicians, novelists, activists, etc. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 19:54, 4 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am withdrawing my recommendation to allow for further improvement of the article and reconsideration of my previous views. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 00:21, 6 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment This page is meant to recognize African American Women of notoriety, it is a work in progress. I feel this page is important and needed, just as List of Native American women is an important page, as with any page to recognize accomplishments of women of color. My sources come from these categories: Lists_of_African_Americans, and by the standards suggested above, this category would be up for deletion, because it's way too broad. Well-known African Americans have been documented in Wikipedia in mixed gender lists, and compiling one gender for one view is hardly too broad. To argue that Wikipedia is not simply a place for lists; lists are contained all over the site. I also only began this entry yesterday, and to consider the name change to actresses already is hasty. If there were a draft mode for Wikipedia, that would have been my first use.--Shakesomeaction (talk) 20:57, 4 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Your recommendation is to delete, yet your statement reflects a recommendation to keep the article. Do you want to revise your recommendation? As far as draft mode, you can always create drafts of your articles in subpages of your user space. For example, we could easily move the article to Shakesomeaction/List of African American women. This process is referred to as "userfying" the article. This way, if the article is deleted, you will have a copy of your work. If you would like help with userfying the article or creating subpages to draft articles, just let me know. I will be happy to help in any way. Cind.amuse 02:22, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Make that User:Shakesomeaction/List of African American women. But, yes, if you want to put this article into what amounts to a "draft" mode, you can consult with Cindamuse or myself about userfying the page. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:27, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as an overly broad random accumulation rather than a substantive subject for a list. Carrite (talk) 06:11, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• 'Comment It is important to recognize women of color, and this will be a comprehensive list of African American women who have made their mark on society. To delete it would be ridiculous. There are plenty of people who will find it helpful to have such a list to browse. Maybe those in favor of deletion should explore the list, and perhaps realize its importance. Recognizing African American women's accomplishments is not too broad or vague!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.157.27.58 (talk) 14:16, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that they should be recognized and honored. However an encyclopedia is to give information to its readers in ways that are useful to them, and in this case the list would not be very useful with thousands if not millions of people listed. Steve Dufour (talk) 15:54, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

KeepThere are specific reasons why this list is important. African American refers to a subset of black people--those born in the United States. If you know the history of the term, you are aware of that. For another, this list is a culmination people from these categories: Lists of African Americans, African-American people by Occupation, and grouped by gender. Another, this is by no way meant to be a definitive list of every African American woman in the United States. Theoretically, any list can be limitless. Such as the category of Living People. Now were this changed to a category of African American Women, that sounds fair to me. But to say neither category or list should exist on Wikipedia, because it's a limitless list is illogical, because there are a lot of limitless lists on Wikipedia.--Shakesomeaction (talk) 18:16, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am in 100% agreement on a category for this. Steve Dufour (talk) 22:50, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Are we in the process of deleting an entire class of articles because they do not comply with this and that subsection or clause? I don't understand the Wikipedia bureaucracy, and it's a safe bet to say most Wikipedia users don't either; furthermore I have benefited from these collections greatly, and cannot possibly be alone. Whether they are individual entries named "List of ..." or categories or what have you, deleting them would be a great blow. I understand the rules governing Wikipedia are there for a reason, but when they have gotten to the point where these collections are deemed unfit, I start to have problems. The charge of un-manageability is not unfounded, but achieving complete objectivity is impossible. Not even "List of sword types" can be complete or closed for discussion, and we can say so at the top of these lists/categories. But whether it's sword types or nation-states (another: what precisely makes a nation-state?) or African-American women or Italian philosophers or what have you, people are interested in these things, and there should be articles to that effect. They can be perpetual works-in-progress, they can have perpetual discussion as to what exactly is worthy of going into the list, but they should not be deleted entirely.ninestraycats 01:51, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete as overly broad and inherently unmaintainable. This is a good topic for a category, though, However, IMO the category should consist primarily of other categories. For example, intersection of the existing category Category:Women in music with the existing categories Category:African American musicians and Category:African American record producers could define Category:African American women in music, which would be part of Category:African American women. --Orlady (talk) 02:40, 7 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete overly broad and unmaintainable. jsfouche ☽☾Talk 22:27, 10 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep I did not realize there are already so many lists of people in wikipedia by ethnicity. If that's the case, keep the black woman list. However I think all of these would be better as a category. Wxidea (talk) 04:56, 11 July 2011 (UTC) Delete - The scope of notable black women is vastly too large. Wxidea (talk) 04:55, 11 July 2011 (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.