Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of California street gangs


 * 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 no consensus. Daniel (talk) 03:45, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

List of California street gangs

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I can't believe that this page hasn't been deleted already. It's clearly enough of a vandalism/spam/OR/vanity magnet that it has had to be fully protected. There are six references, some of dubious reliability, for over fifty gangs, many of which are redlinked, some are not even linked at all. There is no clearly-defined inclusion criterion - there is no clear distinction as to whether extinct gangs are to remain, as the lead suggests, or be removed, as the history shows has happened regularly. All in all, this article provides precious little benefit to the encyclopedia, while tying up admin time with ludicrous requests on the talk page. Happy‑melon 22:34, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Related discussions:
 * Articles for deletion/List of Los Angeles street gangs
 * Articles for deletion/List of Melbourne gangs
 * Please feel free to add any more related discussions

I*Keep Considering that each blue link represents a gang that has its own article already, it makes perfect sense that there would be a list that separates the gangs by the nature of their membership-- African-American, Asian, Hispanic. I don't get the argument that it's vandalism or vanity; although the argument could be made that it works better as a category, I think this is preferable for navigation purposes. Mandsford (talk) 02:52, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Strong delete as listcruft; this is a pure vandalism/vanity target for sure, and probably won't ever be completed anyway. Ten Pound Hammer  and his otters • (Broken clamshells•Otter chirps) 23:56, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Weak keep "Listcruft" is a meaningless term meaning one does not like a particular list; being a vandalism target is not ground or deletion--we can deal quite effectively with vandals. The presence of most of the items is documented by the information in the WP articles as for other lists; the others should be documented or removed. The content reasonable includes past gangs--notability is permanent. If people want to turn it into a list of present day gangs, the talk page is after all the place to discuss it. DGG (talk) 01:18, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
 * KeepThis is meaningful for anyone studying youth gangs, and simply being a potential target for vandalism or vanity is not in and of itself a reason for deletion.Brian Waterman, MS, CDP (talk) 03:16, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep - it's not listcruft, as the topic is notable and not trivial, and the list is useful for navigating Wikipedia articles as set forth in WP:LISTS. See also List of Chicago street gangs.  Concerning vandalism, we can't bow down to vandalism by removing pages that are likely to be vandalized - if we did, large portions of Wikipedia would disappear, including the article on George W. Bush, and quite a few user pages as well!  We have hundreds of vandal fighters (maybe more) who revert vandalism and an army of admins to block vandals, and these are the correct responses to vandalism.  The inclusion criteria is clearly specified in the page's title: "street gangs" of "California".  Past or present are both included unless otherwise specified - the simple solution is to create a heading for former gangs.  There's no requirement to keep defunct gangs on a separate page.  The nom's statement that the article provides precious little benefit to the encyclopedia implies that such topics should be censored, but Wikipedia doesn't stand for that.  Th e Tr ans hu man ist    03:22, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't really understand how you got from "precious little benefit" to "censorship", but I assure you it is nothing of the sort. My claim of "precious little benfit" is based on the difficulty in finding a purpose for this list as a list: it does not provide, and could not easily and reliably provide, any context or content to make it preferable to have a list rather than a category or navigational template.  I would not be averse to converting this list to a category, but I simply can't see how it benefits the encyclopedia to collect these articles in this fashion.  Happy‑melon 09:52, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
 * keep is an obviously reasonable topic for a list and it has decent sources for parts. Target for vandalism is not by itself an issue. The list should be cleaned up not deleted. JoshuaZ (talk) 05:41, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. Gang culture is a notable sociological phenomenon. Will be hard to keep the article unvandalized and NPOV, but that's not a reason for deletion. Jellogirl (talk) 17:39, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete. The subject is notable, but I see no advantage whatsoever to presenting this in list form.  Remove this waste and let categories do their job.  RFerreira (talk) 18:53, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
 * keep Facts are presented as fact and there is no reason to delete facts from WP. A list is the only way to handle subjects which as yet do not have an article, yet belong in such a list.  Both lists and categories are useful for different reasons. Hmains (talk) 23:40, 15 February 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.