Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Statutory Rules and Orders of Northern Ireland


 * 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__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__. Keep holds both a numerical majority and a stronger guideline-based grounding in WP:LISTN. signed,Rosguill talk 03:04, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

List of Statutory Rules and Orders of Northern Ireland

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Second longest article on Wikipedia, for the sole reason that it contains 1,452 instances of the phrase "Not Allocated". Clearly this has almost no relevant or encyclopedic content and meets criteria 4 and 14 of WP:DEL-REASON. WhichUser AmI  15:36, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Law, Lists,  and Ireland. Hey man im josh (talk) 15:44, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Northern Ireland-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 18:07, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, ✗  plicit  23:39, 26 May 2023 (UTC) Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Randykitty (talk) 13:20, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete I'll note this is basically a copy-paste of the official database available at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/nisro. That should be linked at Statutory rules and orders or elsewhere, but since none of these individual regulations are notable, I don't see a navigational or encyclopedic purpose here. There's a similar issue with List of Statutory Rules of Northern Ireland, 2023, etc., which duplicate https://www.legislation.gov.uk/nisr, and List of Statutory Instruments of the United Kingdom, 1985, etc., which duplicate https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi without additional additional content or encyclopedic value to pass WP:LISTPURP. While Code of Federal Regulations has articles (of questionable individual need) for each chapter as organized by topic and agency, these at least don't list every single regulation ever issued. Reywas92Talk 20:10, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep. Satisfies GNG and LISTN easily and by a wide margin. Does not satisfy criteria 4 or 14 of WP:DEL-REASON. Some of the individual rules and orders are notable, and the rest can be redirected to a broader article that discusses them (and the coverage of them in independent sources). More importantly, Northern Ireland statutory rules and orders are notable as a group. The present content of the article is encyclopedic. The list satisfies LISTPURP because it is "a valuable information source" and it could be made more valuable by annotating it. It will serve a navigation purpose once it has been wikilinked. This is a clear case of WP:ATD. All that needs to happen here is to either create articles or redirects for the individual rules and orders, or to annotate the list with further information about the individual rules and orders, or both. The outright deletion of this list would have the effect of removing virtually all of Wikipedia's present (navigable) coverage of something approaching half the statutory law of Northern Ireland, and would completely disrupt this area of the project for many years to come. James500 (talk) 22:59, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
 * The list is not copied from the government website: The listed statutory rules and orders were published in print between 1922 and 1973, long before that website was created. We can produce a better list than the one on the government website, which includes no commentary and is incomplete with random missing items. There is no guarantee that the government website will always be available and will never fall victim to paywalls, budget cuts, or censorship, or that it will never be used to invade the privacy of its readers, or etc etc etc. I am under the impression that our policy is to link first to our own scans on Wikisource and the Wikimedia Commons, not to scans on a non-WMF site. James500 (talk) 23:00, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep Category:Lists_of_Statutory_Rules_of_Northern_Ireland, Category:Lists of Statutory Instruments of the United Kingdom, and Category:Statutory Instruments of the United Kingdom exist. Are there list of laws for other nations as well?  This does seem like an encyclopedic topic.   D r e a m Focus  11:51, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
 * So what? Those are nothing but (less complete) pure overlaps of the same material as the article being nominated. This is not a valid keep reason.  Those should really be bundled along with this nomination too.  35.139.154.158 (talk) 15:41, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
 * List of Acts of the Northern Ireland Assembly, list all the list articles for each year for the acts. Lot of articles like this out there.  Anything passed into law would get newspaper coverage and be in legal textbooks printed afterwards.   D r e a m Focus  18:03, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
 * As for UK statutory instruments, there is commentary on them in publications such as Halsbury's Statutory Instruments, and in legal periodicals and annuals, amongst others. The coverage is even more extensive than for Northern Ireland. Since the statutory instruments constitute significantly more than the majority of the legislation in the country, you will probably find coverage in more or less every law book published in the UK since 1946, when they replaced SR & Os (which were essentially equivalent). James500 (talk) 03:56, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete mainly per Reywas. I don't think I agree with the DEL-REASON #4 in the nomination, but it doesn't really matter -- this is precisely the sort of bare listing that stuff like WP:NOTDATABASE is meant to keep out (or WP:IINFO or WP:NOTLINKFARM, take your pick).  The above appeal that "All that needs to happen here is to either create articles or redirects for the individual rules and orders, or to annotate the list with further information about the individual rules and orders, or both. The outright deletion of this list would have the effect of removing virtually all of Wikipedia's present (navigable) coverage of something approaching half the statutory law of Northern Ireland, and would completely disrupt this area of the project for many years to come." doesn't really hold any water.  If the individual statutes are notable, then write the articles first, and then if needed, a separate list article might be appropriate, but not until then.  Also, contrary to the above assertion, no evidence has been presented that this meets any sort of notability threshold like LISTN.  35.139.154.158 (talk) 15:41, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
 * The redirect WP:NOTDATABASE is unambiguously factually inaccurate and seems to be based on a complete misunderstanding of what the word "database" means, of what WP:NOT says, and of how MediaWiki software works. WP:NOT says that Wikipedia is not a lyrics database (emphasis added). WP:NOT does not say that Wikipedia is not a database. The MediaWiki software that Wikipedia uses is classified as a database. Therefore Wikipedia is a database, and there is no way you could accurately claim it is not a database. The redirect was created recently in 2021, and the shortcut seems to have been added without discussion as a purportedly minor edit (which it was not).
 * The redirect WP:NOTDATABASE is causing confusion and meets criteria 2 of WP:R. The redirect is an implausible misnomer for the policy to which it redirects. The redirect should be deleted. James500 (talk) 01:28, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Apart from the fact that it violates WP:ATD, the above appeal that "if the individual statutes are notable, then write the articles first, and then if needed, a separate list article might be appropriate, but not until then" is based on a mistaken assumption. It would be practically impossible to write articles about the statutes without having a list of the statutes first. In fact, it would be practically impossible to write articles about any aspect of Northern Ireland law without having a list of the statutes first. Those of us actually editing in this area of the project know that such lists are necessary. James500 (talk) 01:42, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * To put it bluntly: bullshit. Having this list is not a prerequisite for writing articles about specific statutes in any way, shape, or form.  And NOTDATABASE very much does apply here.  It redirects to the whole section, and I'm generally pointing to both this and to other aspects of WP:NOT to paint a picture that this list falls under that overall umbrella.  ATD does not mandate the keeping of this.  You're engaging in some heavy wikilawyering here and arguing over the semantics of "database" instead of arguing why this article should be kept.  There's no evidence of notability and it serves no navigational purpose, so it doesn't get a pass on those either. 35.139.154.158 (talk) 02:03, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * You are using "NOTDATABASE" and the other shortcuts as a WP:VAGUEWAVE. WP:ATD specifically says "If editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page". That is clearly the case here.
 * As for LISTN, you can start with the coverage in the Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, the Digest of Northern Ireland Law, the Irish Law Times, and the Irish Jurist, amongst others. James500 (talk) 02:38, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment I have suggested at the article's talk page that instead of deletion, the article could be disambiguated, split up to distincly separate time periods such as a List of Statutory Rules and Orders of Northern Ireland from 1930-1939, List of Statutory Rules and Orders of Northern Ireland from 1940-1949, etc. in order to reduce the amount of content presented in the one article. Suggested also was the removal of all instances of "Not Applicable", and the inclusion of a disclaimer which would notify the reader that any gaps in the sequential order of the list should be interpreted as not being applicable. This would also serve to reduce the amount of spam in the article and lower the size of the entire text by about 42,000 bytes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by WhichUserAmI (talk • contribs)
 * I have no problem with any of that. When it was created in 2006, this page was originally about 6kB long. Most of the new content was added in 2021. James500 (talk) 01:51, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * Strong Keep per James500's decision. CastJared (talk) 14:05, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep as disambiguation page after splitting into smaller articles. -- A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 18:24, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep individual entries do not need to be notable in the list, and the list is a valuable addition of encyclopedic content. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:57, 13 June 2023 (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.