Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of villages in India

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 Reorganize. It's clear that there's no consensus to delete this outright. Even among the people arguing to keep, there's agreement that a single all-encompassing list is impractical. So, we're looking at some kind of reorganization, i.e. some kind of "list of lists" hierarchy. There's no agreement on the details of how that would work. The main reason for AfD is to decide if we should delete something, and we're clearly not going to do that, so the rest of the discussion should take place on Talk:List of villages in India. If, after sufficient discussion, there's no resolution, I would suggest treating this as No Consensus for WP:RENOM purpuses. -- RoySmith (talk) 12:47, 31 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

List of villages in India (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Way out of scope. This enormous list includes only a tiny fraction of all Indian villages we've got article about, in its incompleteness is actively misleading, it's a maintenance nightmare, and even if the Herculean efforts of making it complete are expended, it's unclear what purpose would be served. – Uanfala (talk) 23:18, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. – Uanfala (talk) 23:24, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of India-related deletion discussions. – Uanfala (talk) 23:24, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Just noting that deletion is only among several options; another one is to turn the list (back) into a list of lits, a metalist for Category:Lists of villages in India, though this is contingent on whether we do want to have the individual lists of villages in the first place. – Uanfala (talk) 00:13, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why wouldn't we? postdlf (talk) 02:02, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename and retarget to Lists of villages in India; it's not reasonable to have 500k entries on a page, but a list of lists could work. power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:30, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect to Category:Lists of villages in India. I agree with the nominator that it isn't really feasible for this to be a list, given the number of items any comprehensive list would have. We could return this to a "list of lists", as it has been in the past (not forgetting to list it at List of lists of lists!), but I don't see any particular reason why that would be preferable to just redirecting to the existing category – what could a list of lists include that the category doesn't? By way of comparison, we don't have a List of living people, because it would be a thankless and Sisyphean task, but we do have a redirect to Category:Living people, which we can reasonably expect to provide the reader with what they're looking for. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 23:39, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Category:Living people is a maintenance category purely for BLP reasons, as its description explains. So it is not a relevant comparison at all. Your comment is also contra WP:NOTDUP. postdlf (talk) 14:36, 25 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • If you'd like a more relevant (though probably less familiar) comparison, any of the 873 Category:Redirects to category space would do equally well, especially any of the 161 redirects in that category that begin "List of". WP:NOTDUP would perhaps be an issue if I were claiming that lists should in every case redirect to categories, but I'm obviously not. Instead, I'm considering that section's caution that "lists may include features not available to categories", and have concluded that this list cannot contain any such features – hence the rhetorical question, "what could a list of lists include that the category doesn't?" – Arms & Hearts (talk) 15:01, 25 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • It doesn't need to do anything that the category can't, the whole point of NOTDUP is that maintaining parallel forms of indexing is appropriate even without any such special pleading. BUT...a list could include everything on one page that the category structure divides into subcategories, provide alternate or even multiple methods of organization, and include annotations, such as brief executive summaries of each of the lists linked to (definition of district, count of villages, etc.). So even if you were correct in expecting that a list jump through extra hoops to justify its existence, this one can jump. postdlf (talk) 16:33, 29 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I agree that the list as it stands is completely impractical. I am undecided as to whether a category, a list of lists, or some other option is the next best thing. Vanamonde (talk) 06:35, 25 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• keep per Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features) + reliable sourcing. see also the bot created geo articles, such as this one Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dara-I-Pech. careful - your global north bias may be showing. Psyduck3 (talk) 14:12, 25 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just double-checking we're on the same page: the article being discussed is not about a single village, but about a list. And incidentally, cropping up out of the blue here in the "south" and accusing the editors who actually work in this topic area of "global north bias" might possibly be perceived as an instance of white saviour complex. – Uanfala (talk) 14:23, 25 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Psyduck3, please reexamine what you're written above. Not only is your rationale completely off base (WP:NGEO refers to individual places), it isn't biased at all to propose this for deletion, because the page is completely impractical. Indeed, the idea of such a list only makes sense if you're ignorant of the vastness of the Indian subcontinent: if there's any bias here, it's in the opposite direction. Vanamonde (talk) 14:53, 26 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • reread Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists. lists of notable villages are notable. it certainly looks bad, when we have list articles of every National Register of Historic Places in American with lists by county, but cannot have a list of Indian villages. "unwieldly" is an argument for splitting, not deleting.
      • as to bias, I checked mine with Siko, where did you do your implicit bias training? editors should be aware that academics are quoting 10 year old deletion comments, to pour scorn and derision, but hey, that is what anonymity is for. Psyduck3 (talk) 21:41, 30 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep But edit to make it a list of subpages such as list of villages in subdivisions of India. Renaming it as List of lists of villages in India seems appropriate so new editors add nothing but lists.

User:Fred Bauder Talk 14:27, 25 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. With thousands of potential candidates for list inclusion this topic is just too unwieldy for an article. I cannot find a suitable redirect target. Perhaps we could have Lists of villages in India and focus on the articles linked in Category:Lists of villages in India? Ajf773 (talk) 03:44, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lists of villages in India is currently a redirect. We would move List of villages in India to that title, leaving a redirect behind. postdlf (talk) 21:24, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per WP:CLN. We have lots of lists of villages for other countries, even List of villages in Europe. Any restructuring should be done systematically to avoid systemic bias. Andrew D. (talk) 20:42, 28 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Andrew Davidson: WP:OSE -- Europe's total population is much smaller, and more urbanized (read: less likely to live in settlements called "villages"), than India's, and that LISTOFLISTS is a garbage stub anyway, so presenting it as something to be striven for (why else would you link it?) is questionable. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 15:49, 29 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Rename per Power. Not that familiar with Indian geography, but while the OP's argument regarding the list in its present state is compelling, it could be addressed by creating separate lists for, say, each state, and turning the present list into a WP:LISTOFLISTS, which would be less useless than the present list. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 15:45, 29 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename and redevelop as list of lists per above. postdlf (talk) 16:33, 29 August 2018 (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.