Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Dutch supercentenarians

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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 keep. Mr.Z-man 05:05, 27 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

List of Dutch supercentenarians

List of Dutch supercentenarians (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

I am also nominating the following pages for the same reason:

List of British supercentenarians
List of American supercentenarians
List of French supercentenarians

Examples of "non-encyclopedic cross-categorizations" which are specifically excluded by policy as Wikipedia is not a directory. None of the articles give any evidence that the linking of the age status and nationality status is in anyway notable. Guest9999 (talk) 00:37, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Agree Indeed, this article is actually only a few days old. It was made by a disinterested admin over a compromise over deletion. The head person in charge of this article is actually banned from Wikipedia. However, the starting admin didn't suggest editing/improving the article as an alternate, so it may very well be it doesn't matter if work construction for this article is under way. Neal (talk) 18:14, 20 November 2007 (UTC).[reply]
  • Keep There are 77 supercentenarians worldwide per Gerontology Research Group. They could be combined into a single article, or we could identify some other way to group them, but country seems as reasonable as any other alternative grouping. Alansohn (talk) 07:57, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Sorry, this article isn't exclusively about living supercentenarians. In other words, the Gerontology Research Group would have about a thousand dead supercentenarians worldwide. Neal (talk) 17:27, 20 November 2007 (UTC).[reply]
  • Keep. The subject is notable (supercentenarianism), and the list is clearly defined (older than 110, from the Netherlands), so I don't see how it's indiscriminate. AecisBrievenbus 10:34, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment List of living supercentenarians already exists and there are individual articles on all the notable people on the list. Are additional lists grouping these peopleby nationality really neccessary. There is no evidence of sources whihc show that the suybject of supercentenarians of any natioanlity is a notable one. All the articles can really be used for is including information on non-notability based on the idea that simply being very old and of a certain nationality makes someone notabile. [[Guest9999 (talk) 11:28, 20 November 2007 (UTC)]][reply]
Reply Sorry, List of living supercentenarians are for living people, only. Neal (talk) 17:04, 20 November 2007 (UTC).[reply]
  • How can this subject of supercentenarians be notable if not many people know about them? The problem is, the subject of people over 110.0 isn't as notable as we would like them to be. Neal (talk) 18:15, 20 November 2007 (UTC).[reply]
  • Delete all and split the articles mentioned. Brown Haired Girl created the articles because she though that they didn't establish their notability. They did. If this can become more than an indiscriminate collection of information with sources, then we can keep. ''[[User:Kitia|Kitia]]'' (talk) 16:53, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reply The problem is, not every individual is able to get their own article. Which is why the Jeanne Calment and such have a link to "main article." This is to give the oldest person in country a chance to get mentioned. In other words, some of these supercentenarians can have their own article that make up a sentence, so those individual articles will likely fail nobility. Neal (talk) 17:06, 20 November 2007 (UTC).[reply]
  • Why not just have a list of all supercentenarians with brief detals - nationality, age and date of birth (and death if applicable), linking out to full articles on notable individuals. It could be easily achieved simply by expanding List of living supercentenarians. Supercentenarians is clearly a notable topic, these cross categorisations are not. [[Guest9999 (talk) 18:45, 20 November 2007 (UTC)]][reply]
  • Reply I already see that 26 of the 105 living supercentenarians in list of living supercentenarians already link to their own article. Were you suggesting making more? The article already has date of birth, nationality, age, etc. Like I said, not all of them could pass AfD. Neal (talk) 20:38, 20 November 2007 (UTC).[reply]
  • Reply sorry a bit off topic there, my point was that notable SC's have their own articles and there already is a general list article for ease of navigation of these articles (if it is expanded to include the deceased). All that these articles seem to be is an attempt to lower the threshold of notability and verification by creating an unencyclopaedic cross catagorisation. [[Guest9999 (talk) 21:33, 20 November 2007 (UTC)]][reply]
  • Reply Hmm, well list of living supercentenarians could not be expanded to list the deceased (without an article name change). And I would consider that article to be a list or directory, not the ones nominated for deletion. Neal (talk) 20:53, 20 November 2007 (UTC).[reply]
  • I would have agreed, however there does seem to be an emerging consensus - from various AfDs - that lists of members of notable groups can be acceptable articles. This is somewhat supported by Wikipedia is not a directory, which states: "This provision is not intended to encompass lists of links to articles within Wikipedia that are used for internal organization or to describe a notable subject.". See Lists of Jews for an example of directory type article that survived AfD. [[Guest9999 (talk) 21:33, 20 November 2007 (UTC)]][reply]
  • Ah, so not every supercentenarian in this (4) AfDs have their own Wikipedia article, so it does pass the Wikipedia is not a list/directory policy (pass for deletion). Wonder if BrownHairedGirl (article starter) thought of that. Neal (talk) 21:55, 20 November 2007 (UTC).[reply]
  • Neutral, as creator of these articles. I will restrict my comments to explaining why I created these lists, and let others decide their fate.
As NealIRC has already explained, I created these lists to merge some of the many articles on supercentenarians which do not meet WP:BIO, and as already noted many of them are dead, and as such are not included in the List of living supercentenarians. Some of the articles were unreferenced, some had only one reference to non-trivial coverage in a WP:RS reliable source, and others had references only to the name-and-dates entries on the lists at http://ww.grg.org or to the archives of a closed (signup only with moderator's approval) Yahoogroups mailing list run by Robert Young (who vets new members in case they are "spying").
I am not by inclination a deletionist, and have believed that merger was acceptable an as a compromise solution in cases such as this, but am happy to be corrected if that is not the case.
There is a difference between the notion that an individual supercentenarian is inherently notable and the presumption behind these list, that notability may be more easily demonstrated for the subject of very old people in a particular country than for each individual. These articles do contain some substantial references, and more are available; but whether they are reasonably capable of meeting the notability standards is something which I will leave to others to assess.
I have, as they say, no axe to grind here, and I can live happily with either a keep or delete outcome. However, I will watch the outcome of this AfD with great interest. If these lists are kept, I will continue to merge those articles which do not yet demonstrate notability; but if the lists are deleted, I will {{prod}} or {{afd}} any articles in Category:supercentenarians which do not meet notability criteria in WP:BIO. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:52, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My comments Suppose these 4 articles gets keep.

Then they will need working on. The articles will need to be properly cited and clean up. The only user left is Bart Versieck. Out of the 800+ members from the Gerontology Research Group (whom specialize and contribute to this field), we got only 3 full-time members here on Wikipedia, with 1 of them being the leader. The rest are all meat puppets. So the other 2 are me and Bart Versieck, whom we have worked under Robert Young. Robert is now banned so there's only the 2 of us left.

My solution is to notify him of the 4 articles and he'll take care of it (user Bart_Versieck), like he has for the oldest people article and the hundreds of individual supercentenarian biographies. I'm not going to take lead since I don't want to be full-time on Wikipedia. I'll be his side-kick under his assistance, and will watch for his typos and mistakes, and possibly help defend him on rare occasions if necessary, or temporarily take over if he goes on vacation or something.

Suppose these 4 articles get delete.

Then we won't have to worry about it. Neal (talk) 07:19, 21 November 2007 (UTC).[reply]

  • Comment. I I read this right, Neal suggests that these articles can be cleaned up only with the involvement of Young, who is an indef-blocked editor who has a track-record of referencing articles to his own mailing lists. That sounds to me like a strong case for deletion. --13:18, 21 November 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by BrownHairedGirl (talk • contribs)
  • Well that's certainly the case if you think Bart_Versieck is RYoung122. Anyways, if I wanted RYoung122 to get involved in this article, that would be a poor excuse to want deletion. But I don't think that will be an issue since I don't think he will be unblocked anytime soon. Neal (talk) 16:14, 21 November 2007 (UTC).[reply]
  • Delete and create articles for those individuals who attained the highest age from their nation or were the oldest person in the world at some time. Article that is merely a catalogue of objects is both illegible and useless. In my opinion, it is notable if someone was the oldest person in the world; however, it's not the case if someone was 2nd, 3rd or 26th oldest. Similarly, it is notable to be 100m run world record holder but nobody cares who once had 2nd, 3rd or 26th time. Koristka (talk) 18:18, 21 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not entirely sure that they do meet it at the moment, but they are stubs in need of expansion. My understanding has been that notability could demonstrated by evidence of the notability of the subject of "British supercentenarians", "Dutch supercentenarians", etc ... and that this could be established though references to the subject itself, or to people within that category who receive substantial media coverage on grounds of their age. (e.g. List of British supercentenarians has three substantial refs]]). In other words, that people who do not individually meet WP:BIO may do so collectively in a collective article.
The reason for creating these articles was as a halfway house between the two poles of one one hand only listing these people in List of the oldest people, and the other of having under-referenced stubs for individuals of dubious notability. List of the oldest people would be overwhelmed if was expanded to include indidividual life stories, and it seemed most appropriate to group these people by nationality.
As I have said before, my concern in all this was to haul back the proliferation of under-referenced stubs on people whose articles might never pass the WP:BIO notability threshold, and to do so with minimal loss of content. I have no desire either to boost or reduce coverage of very old people, just to ensure that what there is respects the notability guidelines.
However, I'm surprised that this AfD has attracted relatively few participants, because it is is really about a wider question of whether Mergism can continue to exist as a middle-way between Inclusionism and Deletionism. The question here — whether mergeing non-notable stubs can, if handled appropriately, create a notable list — is one with much wider implications. I know of several wikiprojects using precisely this technique to clean up collections of stub articles. Should they continue to do so? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:15, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I view mergism as a sensible form of inclusionism. I also think some deletionist arguments are valid, so depicting it as an either-or choice is not helpful. It depends on the specific cases. Carcharoth (talk) 14:27, 23 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep all This is the right approach; many entries are referenced already (in the lists or their articles) & referencing will no doubt proceed. Johnbod (talk) 22:29, 22 November 2007 (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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