Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/African lion


 * 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 redirect to Lion. There's consensus to not keep this as a separate article.  Sandstein  08:00, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

African lion

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

This article is superfluous to our current profusion of lion articles. As well as lion we have pages on the two main subspecies. This page does not correspond to any taxonomic entity, but covers about 98% of all lions (i.e. all but a tiny population in India). If it exists at all it should be at "lions in Africa" but even then realistically almost all the information should be elsewhere on wikipedia already. These articles are often degraded with many well-meaning edits by people using poor-quality sources as well so often end up being detrimental to the project as a whole. Any excess information that can't fit on the parent page (lion) could go on one of the subspecies pages (now being determined by a merging process. See Talk:Lion Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:08, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Africa-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 20:31, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Animal-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 20:32, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Agree. Page title can be used to redirect to main lion page, as in this diff of March 2009. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 21:21, 6 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Comment I think that this page should be redirected here. — Punetor i Rregullt5ALBAN (talk) 05:45, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Good idea!! -- BhagyaMani (talk) 07:59, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * How's that supposed to happen? The information here is huge, and it's much more than just about distribution. Leo1pard (talk) 08:05, 7 November 2018 (UTC); edited 08:07, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * THIS page is not the purpose of that discussion about how to integrate the info. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 08:12, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Then why did you mention it? How are you going to do that if you don't know how to? Leo1pard (talk) 08:27, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Continue at Talk:African_lion. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 09:10, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I was already there, but you didn't go there. Leo1pard (talk) 12:36, 7 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep, this is a highly WP:Notable topic that has been covered in various WP:Reliable sources and contains a lot of information that would be difficult to merge in other pages, which renders this article's nomination for deletion a case of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. For example, the Cat Specialist group, which revised subspecies in 2017, continued to use the name "African lion" to describe the genetically diverse population of lions in Africa which are split up to northern and southern subspecies, as it continued to use the names of other notable populations that aren't recognized by them as subspecies anymore, and admitted that there was uncertainty over their reclassification of the subspecies, due to a lack of morphological analysis, and the fact that two recently recognized subspecies of African lions apparently overlap in northern parts of East Africa, which is based on the work of Bertola et al., who showed that African lions are divided not just into northern and southern subspecies, but also that these subspecies are divided into different clades, such as snortheastern and southeastern clades within the southern subspecies, which had members that migrated to places where other clades are present to form mixed populations in different parts of Africa. In addition, different results from genetic analyses, such as on lions in Central Africa, show that the division between the northern subspecies isn't always clear, because, for example, though one assessment grouped lions in the northern part of this region, which are supposed to belong to the northern subspecies, separately from lions in Southern Africa, which are supposed to belong to the southern subspecies, another assessment grouped certain lions in northern Central Africa with lions in Southern Africa. This isn't in the main page Lion. Leo1pard (talk) 07:41, 7 November 2018 (UTC); edited 12:36, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The extra material relevant to genetic mixing between the two subspecies can be summarised on the lion page easily. What specifically else are you saying couldn't be placed elsewhere? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:28, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Casliber, you would refer to certain details that I added to the main article 'overkill', so I wasn't interested in keeping it there. Leo1pard (talk) 12:36, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Where did I say this was overkill? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:03, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Or not 'overkill', my apologies if that was incorrect, but "over the top". Bearing in mind that genetic analyses have been conducted on different populations, including those that used to be treated as subspecies, do you remember what was said about not keeping that much detail in the main article over here, but to leave it in another article, or articles where this is more relevant? Leo1pard (talk) 13:11, 7 November 2018 (UTC)l edited 13:12, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I said that in response to this level of detail on former subspecies. A concise note about genetic mixing in 2 or 3 sentences is not overkill. And is all that is needed. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:08, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Not as per the reliable sources, which talk about more than just issues like overlap. Another issue that I mentioned us that of migrations of lions belonging to different genetic groups to different parts of Africa, including from the time after the Cat Specialist Group revised subspecies with a note of uncertainty regarding lions in places where different genetic groups are present, and there is more to the African lion than just that which was covered in reliable sources which isn't quite elsewhere, such as what Chardonnet et al. said about lions in a particular country. Leo1pard (talk) 01:22, 8 November 2018 (UTC); edited 02:01, 8 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep We have numerous pages about other types of animal and plant. For example, the nominator has created numerous articles about different varieties of Banksia.  There are numerous books about the African lion and so the topic is especially notable – a list of titles follows.  Relevant policies include WP:ATD, WP:BITE, WP:NOTPAPER and WP:PRESERVE.  Andrew D. (talk) 10:55, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The African Lion
 * Conservation of the African Lion
 * Lions of Africa
 * The Biology of the African Lion
 * In Search of the African Lion
 * ''Africa's Lions'
 * All about the African Lion
 * African Lions
 * Andrew, the African lion is 99% synonymous with lion (apart from a tiny Asiatic population). You get that, right? So what would there be that could only go on an African lion page and not lion nor one of the subspecies? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:28, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Casliber, the Cat Specialist Group expressed uncertainty over their classification of subspecies, and it's more to do than just genetic mixing. The fact that the two subspecies share the same continent, and migrate to different parts of it here and there means that the division between the subspecies was shown by genetic analyses like this to be blurry, and you had referred to information that was similar to that as 'overkill'. Leo1pard (talk) 12:36, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The lion page is quite broad in scope and, at over 100K, is arguably too large and in need of splitting. Lions once roamed all over the world and so there seems to be plenty of scope to discuss them in a geographical and historical context – see American lion, for example.  Any development or restructuring should be done by ordinary editing per WP:PRESERVE and so AfD is not the place for this per WP:NOTCLEANUP. My !vote stands. Andrew D. (talk) 13:42, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * FWIW, splitting this article into its earlier constituents (which is probably not something that can be decided here anyway) would actually address the article length issue better than what's proposed above. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 22:05, 8 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Redirect to Lion Both the "keep" !votes above seem to have completely ignored the OP, both being based on discrediting a "lack of notability" argument no one made. This behaviour is disruptive, and should be stopped. Obviously this page should exist as a redirect, disambig page or some such, and my money's on the former, per CL. At the very least, if the current article is kept, the title needs to be changed to Lions in Africa, as the current one is misleading and implies something equivalent to African elephant. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 12:43, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * And WP:BITE is not a policy, does not apply to an article created by someone with more than 18,000 edits, and is far less relevant here than WP:BRD: six months ago created a standalone article out of a redirect that had been stable as such for more than 11 years. Additionally,  may be interested to know that Leo1pard unilaterally merged several other previously standalone articles into this one, either without providing attribution (required by Wikipedia's copyright policy, with the exception of the few where they were the sole noteworthy author) or by removing the contents from the live version of Wikipedia altogether and simply redirecting, which actually runs completely counter to the spirit of WP:PRESERVE. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 12:50, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * It has already been explained that this is a highly WP:Notable topic that has been covered in various WP:Reliable sources and contains a lot of information that would be difficult to merge in other pages, and the article makes it clear that it's not a single species or subspecies, but a genetically diverse group which are recognised as being divided into different clades and subspecies, with the relevant material, so your argument is a case of WP:IDONTLIKEIT, hence disruptive in itself, and as for the issue of attibution, after being talked to about it, I decided to be more careful about that, and I warn that it was after someone else made an article that was similar to existing articles and refused to listen to what was in discussions that this got created, and I had mentioned this in relevant talk-pages. I have been careful to justify in relevant talk-pages about what I do (see this version for example), and that includes what I did here. Leo1pard (talk) 12:54, 7 November 2018 (UTC); edited 13:19, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Your entire response to me was already discredited by my own initial !vote, and actually by Cas Liber's OP comment. Additionally, justifying yourself on the relevant talk pages is no good without broad community consensus, and even with community consensus does not justify the lack of attribution. Nowhere in the page history does it say text was merged from elsewhere on Wikipedia. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 13:01, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Wrong, I did become careful about attribution in this article: . Leo1pard (talk) 13:11, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * What about the text written by, et al. at  and , or Bhagyamani at  and ? Was that text just removed from the encyclopedia when you redirected the pages? Andrew Davidson might have something to say about that, since this is a rare case when the editor with the "deletionist" position is the one arguing to keep the article currently at AFD. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 13:28, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing this out, !! I just counted about 4 dozen contributions I added to the Central African lion page, before it was redirected on 7 August, and large parts of this was also copy-pasted into [African lion on 15 September]. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 13:57, 7 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Redirect to Lion. The current verdant proliferation of lion articles has upsides in that WP by now contains a wealth of interconnected information on the fine-grained genetic and historical research on the species. On the downside, there's a substantial amount of duplication and splitting just because someone wants a separate article on their pet topic. The present instance is sort of the crown species of the problem; nothing that I could see would be lost by consolidating or outright redirecting to Lion. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 15:33, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Shall I tell you the fuller story that hasn't told you? Earlier, the articles included Asiatic lion, Barbary lion, Cape lion, Congo lion, Masai lion, Southwest African lion, Transvaal lion and West African lion. Then in July 2017, BhagyaMani made a number of massive removals or reductions of referenced content like these, without any justification in the talk-page. In response, I decided to use referenced material that was deleted in West African lion to turn Central African lion into an article, but then BhagyaMani came after, doing the same kind of thing that he did earlier , without any justification in the relevant talk-page, until I complained to him about what he was doing, and then he [made a justification for his edit, but he made an allegation that the name wasn't used in any reference], which I debunked by using this reference (which says that Asiatic lions are approximately the same size as Central African lions in body weight, using head-and-body measurements of 6 ft for two Asiatic lions, with tail-lengths of 2 ft and 2 ft, and total lengths of 9 ft and 9 ft), but then BhagyaMani denies what is in the reference by saying that it doesn't talk about body size, and that is an example of what happens when BhagyaMani realises that certain things that he does contradicts relevant sources. More recently, due to a discussion on subspecies, I decided to create Northern lion and Southern lion, merging information from other articles to them like this, and even BhagyaMani supported that at first , but then, without justification on any relevant talk-pages, he changed his mind, and turned Panthera leo leo from a redirect to Barbary lion into an article of its own, using some information which was more or less already present in Northern lion, even though I had, during that period, tried to talk to him about what he was doing, but that did not stop him from doing something similar to Panthera leo melanochaita, which used to be a redirect to Cape lion, before BhagyaMani used some information that was more or less already present in another article, and that is not all that BhagyaMani has done which has made people like me and  complain about him, or led to serious issues with pages on lions. Leo1pard (talk) 16:07, 7 November 2018 (UTC); edited 16:20, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Honestly - not my circus, not my clown car. I lack the stamina to dig through this tit-for-tat epic. I'm currently only commenting on the issue at hand, which is whether African lion appears surplus to current requirements. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:15, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * A bigger issue at hand is that BhagyaMani likes to ignore what others say to him in discussions, and keep pushing his POV here and there, even if it disregards what is in WP:Reliable sources, and worse, he can be rude to others, but people, even administrators, may help him in what he does. Leo1pard (talk) 16:20, 7 November 2018 (UTC); edited 16:22, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * AFD is not the place to hash those kind of disputes out. If your argument keeping this article hinges on BhagyaMani being a terrible person, or whatever, then the article cannot be kept. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 20:15, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Then you should not have brought up the issue of what has been going on all along in these pages on lions, if the AfD is not supposed to be about that. You asked a question about pages like this, and their relationship with different editors, and I answered. Leo1pard (talk) 01:22, 8 November 2018 (UTC); edited 02:01, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Umm ... what!? You either merged or redirected a whole bunch of other articles, not all of which were written by you, into this article, then tricked poor Andrew Davidson into thinking this was a WP:PRESERVE issue, when in fact the policy PRESERVE is on the side of this content being returned to its original articles pending consensus for such a merge. If you are challenged in your unilateral action by a single user, the onus is on you to get others to agree with you; you could just say that other user is a disruptive presence and needs to be blocked or TBANned, but do that before the AFD, at one of the other appropriate fora; don't try to do it at AFD. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 06:15, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Do not make allegations such as that I have tricked anybody here, where I had to make major changes like shifting other people's articles to here, I would notify them about it, or if they are inactive, mention it in relevant talk-pages, unless it has already been discussed, and I have already made complaints when necessary if other editors made disruptive edits, including at the ANI, but that did not always stop others from doing the same thing over and over again, and this AfD happened to come up whilst discussions on other articles were taking place, despite warnings that focusing on this article in addition to the others would lead to complications. Leo1pard (talk) 08:02, 8 November 2018 (UTC) edited 08:09, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Do not make allegations such as that I have tricked anybody here I'm not going to blame you for not reading the currently live discussion of Andrew Davidson at WP:ANI, but even reading my comments on this AFD would have told you that tricked poor Andrew Davidson into thinking this was a WP:PRESERVE issue was meant to be taken facetiously: I know Andrew is well aware that PRESERVE doesn't apply here but rather would favour restoring all the articles you redirected/merged into this one, and is just pretending PRESERVE (and GNG and all that other stuff) applies here in order to "win" another AFD, and did not mean to imply he had been "tricked" by your not disclosing the history of the case up-front. Your saying things like Then you should not have brought up the issue of what has been going on all along in these pages on lions, if the AfD is not supposed to be about that, on the other hand, is difficult to take as a good-faith joke: I never said any such thing, but rather said you should not be trying to say that since the editor who cast the second non-keep !vote was, according to you, a problem editor whose fault it is that this one article didn't exist years earlier, or whatever it is you are claiming, that this article should be kept, and that such allegations are better taken to ANI. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 08:37, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I see. Leo1pard (talk) 08:41, 8 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep this is a population of lion in Africa that is divided in Panthera leo leo and Panthera leo melanochaita subspecies. A lot of authors have used the term African lion much more than Lions in Africa. It contains a huge information (like said) about the taxonomy of leo and melanochaita, that the main lion page (even Panthera leo leo and Panthera leo melanochaita) doesn't contain that much. If this page needs to be deleted, than I think that we can merge it here (as I mentioned above). — Punetor i Rregullt5ALBAN (talk) 16:46, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete. The argument to delete this isn't about notability, and those arguing to keep on those grounds are completely off the mark. The question is one of organization. We have a page about the species; Lion. We have a page about each subspecies (yes, I know there's disagreements about what those pages should be, but we're certainly not looking at less than one page per subspecies). We have pages for the two populations that are biologically distinct; the Cape lion and the Asiatic lion. Lions in Africa, taken together, are not a biologically meaningful category. The African lion page serves no purpose, and if there is in fact information in it that isn't present in the pages about the subspecies or the Cape lion population, it should be merged there. Vanamonde (talk) 01:43, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
 * There are various WP:reliable sources that deal with the subject that establish the subjects WP:Notability, including the very organization which reorganized the list of subspecies, with a note of uncertainty regarding particular African lions which are not of any of the specific types that you described here, for which subspecific classification was difficult due to their complicated genetic makeup, but continued to use the name "African lion", as explained already. Leo1pard (talk) 01:59, 8 November 2018 (UTC); edited 02:16, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Hijiri88: Both the "keep" !votes above seem to have completely ignored the OP, both being based on discrediting a "lack of notability" argument no one made. This behaviour is disruptive, and should be stopped.
 * Leo1pard: It has already been explained that this is a highly notable topic that has been covered in various reliable sources.
 * Vanamonde93: The argument to delete this isn't about notability, and those arguing to keep on those grounds are completely off the mark.
 * Leo1pard: There are various reliable sources that deal with the subject and establish the subject's notability.
 * Leo1pard, this level of IDHT is extremely disruptive. If you keep it up much longer you're going to be TBANned or blocked. This is not a threat, but a warning: I've seen far worse result from less. This article won't be kept if "notable notable notable" is the only argument you can muster, but more importantly than that if this behavioral problem continues elsewhere I have serious doubts about your ability to continue contributing to the encyclopedia. I suggest you give it a rest and actually read the comments to which you are responding.
 * Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 06:11, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
 * If it can be guaranteed that relevant material supported by WP:reliable sources can be kept, either here or elsewhere, then I would support the outcome to have this page changed, depending on what the outcome is, because notability was not the only thing that was discussed. Leo1pard (talk) 08:02, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
 * There you go again, talking about "notability", as though it has anything to do with this discussion. Are you doing this on purpose? If so, you need to stop. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 08:37, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Alright. Leo1pard (talk) 08:41, 8 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Support redirect - every possible grouping of lions doesn't need an article. FunkMonk (talk) 03:39, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment. The term African lion is ambiguous. Lions in African include a number of distinct populations, which if given taxon status would be paraphyeltic with the Asiatic lion. If the article is about lions in African, then the article should be titled Lions in Africa or something similar. Given the overlap between lions in general and lions in Africa is 99%, I'd ask what should be in this article. It could have extra information about the traditon subspecies or conservation efforts on particular populations, but I think this is better covered in two articles on the currently recognised subspecies (at the scientific names).
 * An alternative and more scientifically justified use of African lion would be as the common name for extant Panthera leo. Modern lions all descended from the population bottleneck in Africa several hundred thousand years ago. This would distinguish the lions from older fossil lions elsewhere, as well as the cavelions and north American lions. The Asiatic lions would be descended from a very recent migration of thse African lions into Asia. I don't propose Wikipedia follows this usage as it isn't widely used, but it helps illustrate why African lion is an poor article title.  Jts1882 &#124; talk 09:41, 9 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep There should actually be three main articles for "modern lions": this one (African lion), Asiatic lion (already exists) and another article for the extinct populations of lions in southern Europe closely related to African lions and Asiatic lions. There is an article called "History of lions in Europe"; this article should be renamed "European lion".  Jrheller1 (talk) 17:50, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * did you see the material about the subspecies? The split between the two is noted here on this map File:Lion subspecies distribution3.png. Are you saying delete or merge the subspecies pages? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:33, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * There should be enough material for each different population of African lions to have its own article. Of course, each population of African lions should be mentioned in the "African lion" article, but with less detail than in the articles for the different populations. Jrheller1 (talk) 00:02, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Doesn't really matter if there "should be enough", what matters is why do we need all these articles? Just for the sake of it? FunkMonk (talk) 01:45, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Multiple smaller articles (rather than one huge article) is simply a better way of organizing the content. Jrheller1 (talk) 02:09, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree and besides, the very organisation that reclassified the subspecies as Panthera leo leo (for lions in northern parts of Africa and Asia) and Panthera leo melanochaita (for lions in the southern part) expressed uncertainty over their classification, partly as the two subspecies appear to overlap in the equatorial region of Africa, and this is based on genetic analyses such as this, as mentioned in the article, so how should those lions be treated is something to consider here, and if this article can't be kept, then the information on these lions would have to be kept somewhere else. Leo1pard (talk) 12:59, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Stop distorting the source - the source is pretty clear there are two subspecies (folks can read about it on page 72). Hence material on populations with mixed genetic makeup can go in parent article. The rest in subspecies. Simple. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:27, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Or wherever appropriate, where it concerns the lions in part of the map of Page 72 where a question mark was placed, or similar cases. There could be brief mentions where lions of the northern subspecies P. l. leo overlap or coexist with lions of the southern subspecies P. l. melanochaita in each of the articles, not too much. Leo1pard (talk) 13:40, 10 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom and per Vanamonde's comments above. Having subspecies articles makes this one unnecessary. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 10:49, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete, or redirect to lion. It's a clear case. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:32, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete or redirect to lion. The lion article is already focused more on African populations due to 99% of lions being in Africa. It doesn't make sense to have an article that discusses every lion population expect the small isolated Asian population. LittleJerry (talk) 16:26, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Lion for overall article organization reasons as described by OP and Vanamonde above. The present multiplicity of separate lion population articles is in some cases redundant and in others detracts from presenting complete coherent articles. Loopy30 (talk) 21:44, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Redirect to "Lion". Unnecessary duplication of material. The vast majority of the "Lion" article is applicable to African lions anyway. While the "Lion" article is rather long and there may be some potential to split out daughter articles, "African lion" is not a sensible option. Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:34, 13 November 2018 (UTC)


 * 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.