Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jacob Neusner bibliography 2

 This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was keep. Eugene van der Pijll 21:35, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Jacob Neusner bibliography
This page survived VFD in April (see this) but I fail to see what is encyclopedic about all the publications (including journal articles) of one academic expert in Judaism. No other person, not even Albert Einstein, has received this treatment on Wikipedia, and I really suggest the whole 135 KB monstrosity is deleted, or maximally transwikified somewhere. (The page had a new VFD notice put on it on 9 July by Klonimus; this formalises the re-listing.) JFW | T@lk  22:33, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep Notable scholar and much too much information to merge. CanadianCaesar 23:12, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge - O come on, there is more info here than his own faculty website bothers to reproduce. Neusner is a very notable Jewish scholar, but a list of every article in every minor journal? Not encyclopedic! Abridge into a 'notable works include' in his article. (Even if this artice survives it needs abridged) --Doc (?) 23:33, 3 August 2005 (UTC)--
 * Comment I think it can be turned encyclopedic. Yes, you could condense it, and then you can add short descriptions next to each work, or some of the works, an alternative to having articles for each and every book.  CanadianCaesar 23:45, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge back to the main article. A brief scan of articles on some major academics shows that the tendecy is very strongly to collect the most influential works, and list them as a section on the main page, with perhaps a breif description. I looked at Freud, Boas, Maxwell and Feynman. Even Feynman, with close to three dozen items (and that may be too many) looks just fine, especially as they are well organized. I see no reason why the same couldn't be done here. (Unless, of course, no one can be found who knows which works are major, and which aren't. But that shouldn't be too much of a problem, and ignorance is no excuse for clutter.) After all, if the purpose of an encylcopaedia is to provide information, it does no good to have a giant list of all of someone's publications if the reader can't tell which ones are really that important, and if they're desperate to find some minor work, WP:NOT either a collection of links (or titles) nor an indescriminate collection of information. Whew. --Icelight 00:16, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * Is that merge everything or merge just influential works? JFW | T@lk  21:15, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Influential works only. I thought I made that clear, but this is just to make sure there aren't any doubts. --Icelight 00:34, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep unless someone can point me to the wikipedia policy that says this is a bad thing. Obviously it's ridiculous to have complete bibliographies for prolific authors (in any field) in their main article, but I don't see how having a link at the top of a 'select' bibliography on the author page to a complete list is a bad thing. Sure, the wiki software isn't very suited to this task, and it might be dupe of information on their own site etc, but I don't see how such pages can do anything other than improve the content of the encyclopedia, even if on their own they are obviously not articles you'd find in britannica. --zippedmartin 17:06, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. If you can distinguish which Neusner papers have rocked the Judaic studies world, kindly merge them into his own article and delete this. JFW | T@lk  21:15, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't see 'complete bibliographies' listed under WP:NOT#INDESC, personally I've seen lots of worthwhile 'non encyclopedic' pages as side shoots to a main article. And hey, check List_of_lists for indescriminate collections of information. If it weren't for the hatred of subpages, I'd say the obvious thing would just to stick this under Jacob Neusner/bibliography so people couldn't accuse it of failing to be an encyclopedia article in its own right. --zippedmartin 23:17, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * A bibliography is not an encyclopedia article - of course a page about his works and their significance could be, if someone wants to write it --Doc (?) 23:19, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Dude, a List of Pokémon by name is not an encyclopedia article, nor is Cowboy Bebop media information nor are most of the articles on albums, small villages in the US, or half the other things wikip has. As I see it this page is in the article namespace because there isn't a better place to put it, but it's wrong to try and delete it by article criteria. Anyway, what I was looking for, Isaac Asimov complete bibliography. The guy was far too prolific to list even a reasonable subsection of his work in the main article, rather than just trimming, there's a 'complete bibliography' page to give the whole history. It's not a very good page at the moment, but means you can keep the main article down to a reasonable size without just ommitting things. If someone makes a policy on bibliographies of authors (like, I dunno, transwiki to wikisource or something), that'd be the right action to take, but as stands it's better to keep the information for reference, even if Neusner is just some random academic. --zippedmartin 23:39, 4 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Merge the most important works back to the main article, as per User:Icelight. JamesBurns 05:47, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. More encyclopedic than 99% of all the pokemoncruft tolerated around here. Uppland 05:55, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Very good idea for all major scholars. Philip Arthur 05:24, 10 August 2005 (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 an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.