Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lists of solo piano pieces

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. While I agree that the sub-lists by genre are shaky at best, they should be separately (and collectively) nominated, with no effect on this list. The ability to organize this large body of work with an index is exactly what a digital encyclopedia is all about. As was pointed out below, redlinks are where (at least some) articles are born. I note that my personal opinion is often to delete indiscriminate lists, but I also note that this list does not appear to be indiscriminate, and the consensus below does not support deletion. Finally, I think this encyclopedia will never be done - but that's not a reason to stop trying. This list is an effort at furthering the encyclopedia; if it hasn't received the attention it deserves, perhaps that is a reason to template it with a request for expert assistance, or possibly even rescue.  Frank  |  talk  16:50, 19 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Lists of solo piano pieces (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

There are millions of piano pieces. There is no reason to have this article, especially when most pieces themselves are not notable enough to have a wikipedia entry. In addition, the sub pages (solo piano pieces from France, etc.) have no business being on WP. Timneu22 (talk) 23:22, 14 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete--per nom. Drmies (talk) 00:29, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per nom. There are millions of these, and I played over 9000 of them when I was a piano student. Most of them were just one-offs by most likely red link composers. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP)} 01:45, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - just about all the links on this page are links to other pages that should also be deleted, in my opinion. What is the process? Does each page have to be individually nominated for deletion? This seems like an awful long process — I don't know how these pages got started but this is certainly not wikipedia's standard practice. Timneu22 (talk) 09:53, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. I frankly see no reason to delete this. The nominated page is an organizational page for a series of lists. Picking a letter at random, it leads to List of solo piano pieces by composer: H. On that page I see no red links for "non notable" compositions; and frankly I suspect that most of Haydn's piano sonatas have enough published commentary that they'd all potentially meet our criteria anyway. Nor do I see minor composers appearing on the sublists either, none that I've visited at any rate. I frankly do not understand the problem. The nomination appears to relate to a series of articles other than the one you actually see here. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 15:04, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  The nomination is based on the fact that this article is a list of lists. Further, what is the criteria for getting on this list? Should we go through every solo piano album ever produced? I just cannot see how this article or the articles in its contents are relevant for Wikipedia. If anything, there should be a category that includes this, but certainly not an article. Timneu22 (talk) 19:12, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this is a list of lists. I still don't understand why that makes it worthy of deletion.

Criteria for getting on the list seems to follow from the content found on the sublists. Those lists appear to list the solo piano compositions of notable, article worthy composers, organized first by composer, and then alphabetically and by country. The nominated article collects links to those subpages

Again the nomination and comments seem to be addressing some hypothetical list of all solo piano pieces, instead of the actual content on these pages. I agree that an attempt to list every piece for solo piano ever written by hundreds of forgotten composers might be a daunting task to maintain (though even that may not make it worthy of deletion). But this is not that list. Moreover, notability is assumed: a title like "lists of solo piano pieces by notable composers" is unnecessary. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 19:56, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete, severely indiscriminate list. Stifle (talk) 15:47, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per Smerdis. There seems to be a misunderstanding - this isn't a list of all solo piano pieces ever, merely the notable ones. And there is nothing wrong with organizing notable piano pieces. --GRuban (talk) 18:05, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep as a useful navigational list that helps readers find information. This is perfectly acceptable per WP:LIST, and is discriminate in that the eventual targets of the links are notable solo piano pieces, not the millions of unnotable ones. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:07, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  What determines if a piece is notable? Timneu22 (talk) 19:14, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • The notability guideline. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:53, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • I understand WP:N, but I am saying that the qualifications for a Solo Piano Piece's notability is really quite subjective. Do you list every Beethoven sonata? Every Chopin polka? Only the popular ones? What is popular? I think this page lends itself to lots of wikijunk. Timneu22 (talk) 21:13, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • Wow. I think describing Beethoven sonatas as "wikijunk" just tripped the Wikipedia equivalent of Godwin's Law or something - one pool of hungry crocodiles awaits. For what it's worth, we have a whole Category:Piano sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven, complete, with a full article for each one. And a template for them, Template:Beethoven piano sonatas. I strongly don't recommend you nominate them for deletion as well. Mercy. --GRuban (talk) 19:01, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • The GRuban comment takes MY previous comment completely out of context. I'm saying that people will list all sorts of random pieces and junk up wikipedia. As an example, do we add every piano piece by these pianists? I don't think there is a good spot to draw the line when it comes to this list. You cite the Category:Piano sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven category and I believe this is correct Wiki behavior; why do we also need to have a list of pieces if we have the category? But really, my question centers around where do we draw the line. Every piece by all those jazz pianists should not be on wikipedia, but this list and its sublists suggest they should be. Timneu22 (talk) 19:53, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
          • Because a category organizes things one way, and a list another. ... these methods should not be considered in conflict with each other. Rather, they are synergistic, each one complementing the others. There's a whole guideline about that. There are plenty of more lists organizing the same pieces, by the way: List of compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven, and List of sonatas, just to name two. We have no shortage of space. If the information is notable, organizing it in multiple ways is perfectly fine. As for the list lending itself to cruft, every article on the Wikipedia lends itself to cruft, all the time. Any proud Austrian kid can at any time go to the Ludwig van Beethoven article, and add multiple sentences about some restaurant that proudly bears "Beethoven ate here" on a sign on its wall, and another few about his uncle Johann's story about being Ludwig's eighteenth great-grand-cousin-twice-removed. If lending itself to junk were a reason for deletion, we'd have to delete the whole Wikipedia. --GRuban (talk) 23:26, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
          • I just disagree. There is no way this list or its sublists will ever include every relevant piece of solo piano music. I cannot think of a time when someone would be looking for this information, either. Timneu22 (talk) 11:20, 17 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Music-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp | talk to me 00:01, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Per the arguments of Phil Bridger and GRuban. Although I generally cringe at lists, and lists of lists as a concept somewhat unnerves me in an M.C. Escher meets The Twilight Zone way, I think the goal behind this particular instance is very worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia -- in fact I'd go so far as to say that this sort of list is one of the many reasons why non-digital encyclopedias are so inferior to Wikipedia: namely, the ability to be a concordance AND an encyclopedia at the same time is unwieldy in a physical format, but here we have the joy of digital storage. Cheers! JasonDUIUC (talk) 01:25, 18 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep; the lists on this list contain the redlinks by which articles are born, and this is one of the purposes of lists; another is that they can annotate in a way categories cannot. Did I read that not every Beethoven sonata is notable? I hope that was a misprint. Oh, and if Chopin wrote any polkas, that would be notable indeed.  :) Antandrus (talk) 01:34, 18 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Well it is clear now that the lists will probably be kept. Good luck policing all of them. No one has yet answered where the line is drawn. (I never suggested that Beethoven's sonatas did not belong.) I just ask this... let me pick a random artist: is every Jim Brickman piano piece notable, and why? This is just a single example of a fairly well-known artist who has released a number of albums. I want to know how this will be policed. Timneu22 (talk) 11:53, 18 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per all of the keep arguments above, especially that of GRuban. Cosmic Latte (talk) 09:38, 18 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Another hodgepodge, randomly assembled list. Ecoleetage (talk) 00:37, 19 October 2008 (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.