Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Biography of Pope John Paul II


 * 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 wasKeep interested editors may merge/edit as they see fit. JERRY talk contribs 02:30, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Biography of Pope John Paul II

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

This is completely unencyclopedic. Pope John Paul II should be about his biography, not a seperate article in and of itself. In fact, I have found no other "Biography of" articles here. Since Pope John Paul II's article size is getting to be a problem, we could split it into separate articles on periods of his life such as Early life of Jan Smuts. My user account (talk) 23:38, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment: This article certainly IS encyclopedic. The subject certainly is notable and verification of the biographical details is not in question. The only discernible reason I see is that there is no other article titled as such (Biography of ...) in Wikipedia - which should not be a a reason for nomination since the Wikipedia is not paper. I hope this does not become a popularity vote as the AFD votes tend to end up parroting each other just like the seagulls from Finding Nemo - mindlessly delete, delete, delete, ad nauseum no matter if its right or wrong.... --Eqdoktor (talk) 03:03, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Agree delete it An article should not be titled "Biography of....", that is as you said unencyclopedic. Ohmpandya   ( Talk )  00:41, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete as unnecessary fork. Ford MF (talk) 00:46, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete already in Pope John Paul II Doc Strange (talk) 01:02, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually not all of it. It is missing a bit, that's why I suggested splitting into sections. My user account (talk) 01:04, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep, rename and edit: I suggest that the article be renamed as Early life of Pope John Paul II and edited appropriately as such (removing the later details already covered elsewhere). Notability is not an issue, just duplication of some details. The Wikipedia is not paper - I don't see the burning need to delete the article just because its unique within Wikipedia. --Eqdoktor (talk) 02:52, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
 * There is, actually. Pope John Paul II should be where the info goes, not a second article. Notability is an issue because the specific Biography of Pope John Paul II is not notable enough to merit its own article per se, though the info should be covered in the Pope John Paul II article. My user account (talk) 16:08, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete based on current format, but allow creation of an "early life" article instead. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 08:12, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Merge. Main problem is the title of this article and the existence of an alternative article. There is much good content here. The parts of this article that are good text are worth conserving should be merged into the existing Pope John Paul II. If the Pope John Paul II article is then thought to be too long, sub-articles can be spawned form it (it is quite long already although I am not sure that I personally mind long articles very much). Gaius Cornelius (talk) 09:15, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep/Merge - Far more useful at Pope John Paul II, but the article itself could be an expanded version of the main article. Kil  o • T  16:04, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Merge the useful information into Pope John Paul II, per above. Bearian&#39;sBooties (talk) 18:51, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Merge: There are over 1,000 published biographies of this man. I'm thinking that a separate article is not necessarily unwarranted. That being said, it doesn't seem like there is enough unique info to warrant a separate article. If it did, I would support it. For now, I agree that it should be merged. Phyesalis (talk) 23:45, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Merge with main article. Avruch talk 03:30, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete: this is what Pope John Paul II is for. The present article is an unnecessary fork. Goochelaar (talk) 14:47, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge this unnecessary and improper fork. -- Orange Mike  |  Talk  22:39, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete because it is unencycopedic. Tavix (talk) 06:42, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect. This looks to contain a surprising amount of valid content, but it rightfully belongs in Pope John Paul II.  It's going to be a large job.  --Lockley (talk) 07:04, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep: main article of John Paul II is long enough, its good to have his Biography seperated--Drhlajos (talk) 18:02, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
 * 
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Rudget . 12:29, 6 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Merge – Have to say a nicely written article.  However, with that said, Wikipedia already has a “Biography” on this Pope at, you guessed it at Pope John Paul II. Since we are not limited by size, unless Wikipedia has recently placed limits on how long an article can be, I say merge.  Shoessss |  Chat  14:42, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge anything useful into Pope John Paul II; if that's considered too big it could be split somehow, but a parallel "biography of" article is not the way forward. JohnCD (talk) 14:44, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment SIXTEEN people registered their opinions the first time around... and it has to be relisted for further debate? You've got to be kidding.  Do you plan to do this with every article?  Mandsford (talk) 14:51, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree with Mandsford. Relisting is not needed when so many people have submitted recommendations. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 23:23, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge into Pope John Paul II article. STORMTRACKER   94  15:11, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
 * The editors who think that this is a fork have not looked at the article, what links to it, or its history. This is a Summary style breakout article of Pope John Paul II, and was created as such.  The overall structure of the parent article didn't develop in the way that it was expected to back in 2005.  Multiple sub-articles were broken out of the Pope John Paul II section, from the individual sub-sections, rather than a single one.  But this is easy to fix.  Simply rename the article to Early life and church career of Pope John Paul II and refocus it to be a summary-style breakout sub-article below Pope John Paul II (merging those two sections), moving the content dealing with the other parts of the biography into the other biography sub-articles (Health of Pope John Paul II, 1981 Pope John Paul II assassination attempt, Funeral of Pope John Paul II, and so forth).  That requires nothing more than the rename button and the edit button, which every editor with an account has.  An administrator hitting a delete button is not required.  Keep. Uncle G (talk) 16:40, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge with Pope John Paul II, but keep all or nearly all the content of this article and, for space reasons, split off other parts of that article, leaving summaries. All the content can remain, in other words, but the forking should be done with subjects, not with biography. The reason is simple: We're not here to confuse readers. We name biography articles by the best-known name of the subject. If we do otherwise, then we just create confusion to no good purpose. The most radical forking could be Papacy of John Paul II, but the subject is best covered by continuing to fork smaller topics because the subject is so important and sources are so numerous. Uncle G's suggestion is something I could agree with, if there is precedent. If not, this will be the first of many partial biographies in Wikipedia, and I'm not sure we want that (we'd be getting deletion discussions on Early life of Roy Rogers, Early life of Margaret Thatcher, Early life of Charles Darwin ...) Better to have new articles on Cause for canonization of Pope John Paul II, Pope John Paul II's relations with other denominations (we already have an article on his relations with the Eastern Orthodox Church), Social and political stances of Pope John Paul II, List of works by Pope John Paul II, etc. etc. etc. There is, of course, a Category:Pope John Paul II. And by the way, some of these sections are enormous and could be cut back to three, even two paragraphs. Do we really need so much information in the JPII article -- now -- on his health, when we've got a whole article on that subject? Things like that can be cut down drasticly from the main article, leaving room for biography material. This should be the one article where readers can get a concise overview of the subject. Noroton (talk) 17:20, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete. I read through this article and have not found anything in it that isn't already sufficiently covered in its parent. Lets remember that we are writing an encyclopedia which means that as Noroton above stated - we should be providing a concise overview. If you want more information than this, there are several excellent books on the life of John Paul II. Trusilver (talk) 20:02, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Object. I strongly object to the use of AFD in a clear-cut content discussion.  This doesn't seem like the most effective application of WP:SUMMARY that I've ever seen, but it's absolutely not a discussion for AFD.  There's absolutely no reason to remove the revision history from this valid content.  This should be speedy closed, and interested parties should resolve how to use WP:SUMMARY at talk:Pope John Paul II. --JayHenry (talk) 00:40, 7 January 2008 (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.