Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of American writers of the Baby boomer generation

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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 delete. Consensus is against having such a broadly defined list. This does not preclude a well-defined list that deals specifically with boomer lit. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:08, 10 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

List of American writers of the Baby boomer generation

List of American writers of the Baby boomer generation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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This article should be deleted because it is WP:LISTCRUFT definitions #6 and #12. It also fails WP:NOTDIRECTORY #7 which states "Simple listings without context information. Examples include, but are not limited to: listings of business alliances, clients, competitors, employees (except CEOs, supervisory directors and similar top functionaries), equipment, estates, offices, products and services, sponsors, subdivisions and tourist attractions. Information about relevant single entries with encyclopedic information should be added as sourced prose. Lists of creative works in a wider context are permitted." This applies to the article because it is just a list of authors with no context. It also fails WP:NOTDIRECTORY #6 because it is a non-encylopedic cross-category. -KAP03 (talk) 16:05, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 16:53, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 16:53, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 16:53, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think you understand the influence that being a part of the post-WWII baby boomers had on a generation of American writers. This is not some kind of WP:SYNTHESIS derived list, the influence of the post-war generation is well documented. Could we please try to give some WP:POTENTIAL and not WP:DEMOLISH things while they're being built. (edit: fixed the sentences)--Prisencolin (talk) 17:46, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I find the argument to be perfectly appropriate. There would have been no harm in allowing the article creator to work on it further before bringing it to AfD. WP:NEWARTICLE is an essay and I am not obligated to abide by what it says. Lepricavark (talk) 02:46, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete fails WP:LISTN in addition to the WP:NOT sections pointed out by the nominator. @Lepricavark: articles in the mainspace need to comply with policy all of the time. If users want to experiment on something they need time to bring up to standard, they can do so in the Draft or User namespace. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:17, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, it would have been better to start the article as a draft, but bringing it to AfD so hastily is an egregious overreaction. There is no harm in letting the creator work on the article in its present state. The nom has brought quite a few lists to AfD and his success rate strongly suggests that he does not have the competence to be nominating such articles for deletion at this time. Lepricavark (talk) 21:04, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Read that essay you just linked, specifically the section "What 'Competence is required' does not mean". There is "It does not mean we should label people as incompetent" and "It does not mean that Wikipedia's civility policy does not apply when talking to incompetent people". You are labeling this editor as being incompetent and you are being uncivil. DARTHBOTTO talk•cont 23:50, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
My intent is not to be uncivil. There are serious issues with this user's participation at AfD. Different phrasing might have been better, but I felt it necessary to emphasize my concerns with this individual's frequently bringing lists to AfD. As it turns out, this list is likely to be deleted, but I wonder if the outcome might have been different had the author been given more time to work on the article. Lepricavark (talk) 02:46, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Prisencolin, I just don't believe pursuing articles listing baby boomers is suitable for inclusion. We're talking about an entire generation, with each year alone containing numerous individuals of each category. I find it simply too unwieldy to have. DARTHBOTTO talk•cont 08:45, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I do agree it would be enormous and hard to maintain, so subdividing into further lists could be an option. Maybe something like "List of American writers of Generation Jones". Speaking of long lists of people, I'd like to bring List of 20th-century writers to attention.--Prisencolin (talk) 22:40, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 18:47, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 18:47, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • delete The notion that we can group all writers born in certain years who were Americans together is a bit much. Even if we can, no good reason to then sub-divide the lists.John Pack Lambert (talk) 22:36, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: These new list of baby boomer articles have next to no value, aside from being trivia pages that span a very wide time frame. This specific one is listcruft. DARTHBOTTO talk•cont 23:50, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - I can't see any reliable coverage from secondary sources to justify a stand-alone list Spiderone 06:42, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • delete So what exactly is the huge difference between someone born in 1964, and someone born the next year? Funny thing: people talking about the boomers as social cohort disagree on its end. We don't need this as a not-well-defined list. Mangoe (talk) 15:24, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Obviously the exact year cut-offs are trivial (maybe aside from the end of world war II), but it's meant to mark a general trend that exists. There a lot of evidence, contrary to your own personal observations that there are in fact common traits shared by people of this generation. Not saying you're views are irrelevant, but the researchers think it's a coherent group, but of course with everything there are outliers.--Prisencolin (talk) 22:38, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • It is not obvious to me, so it is not obvious. Categories are hard and bivalent, so the fact that the end of the period is not well-defined is a substantial problem. I do not agree that there is so strong a consensus about the group either. Mangoe (talk) 22:22, 8 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - If we were to have such lists, we would need to define a series of generations and have a succession of such lists. Furthermore, as I was growing up, though born in 1951, I was told that I was not part of the baby boom, which happened when soldiers returned from WWII and started families, resulting in a spike in the birthrate. Nevertheless, I accept that the term is now used for a longer period by social analysts. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:33, 8 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Merge to Boomer lit (see comments below) - if there's a literary movement/identity associated with it, no objection to merging into that article (or starting that article), and likewise no objection to touching on this in the cultural identity section of the baby boomer article, but this seems arbitrary (people born in particular years already have lists about them). — Rhododendrites talk \\ 17:38, 8 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • maybe keep I was all set to iVote: delete : Baby Boomers should get over themselves. Then I thought, AGF; be nice. And saw User:Rhododendrites comment, which I was all set to echo. But then I thought, wait, you can't just assert that unless you ran a search to see if it is valid, after all, maybe there really is a movement of Baby boomer lit. So I ran a quick search on: "Baby Boomer" + authors, and found all of this [1]. It starts with the Baby Boomers' we-have-ours-so-screw-you private club, the AARP, inviting Boomer Erica Jong to "select 10 essential books of the boomer generation." Next I googled "Baby Boomer lit": [2]. Here's an entire special issue of the Los Angeles Times book review that is more or less a List of American writers of the Baby boomer generation. Rhododendrites was just being clever, but it looks like this list really is a valid thing.E.M.Gregory (talk) 01:28, 9 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hmmm. Lo: Boomer lit. I was tempted to nominate it for deletion as a neologism (the sources, which are not that many, seem to be about it seem to indicate it's just about a big target market to be catered to, spanning many genres, rather than a literary genre in its own right), but there's one particular thing that runs through the sources that gives me pause: the idea of literature which focuses on, to use a goofy phrase from one of the sources, someone's "transition to second adulthood" or a coming of age story for when someone comes of a different age. So there's some cohesion to it. I'm not so sure it's notable, but it's enough to change my !vote. Not to keep, but to merge. And if someone does want to nominate the main article for deletion, we can explore more the merits of the concept at that point. As long as we have that article, I don't see any reason not to merge, though. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 01:45, 9 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Fails WP:LISTCRITERIA and WP:LISTN. Ajf773 (talk) 04:19, 9 January 2017 (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.
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