Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 205


 * 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 Closed as keep. Dreadstar †  18:48, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 205
AfDs for this article: 

This is the page I happened to discover, but this would obviously effect every article in this series. WP:NOT states that wikipedia is not a directory, and that appears to be what we have here. A complete index of the United States Reports is not an encyclopedia article and is not a list designed to give insight and commentary on a particular group of objects. Every single link here is a red link too, as is the case on some of these other pages as well, which means that it is not even a guide to coverage on wikipedia. Maybe someday every U.S. Supreme court case will have an article and this will be the best way to organize them (though United States Reports is only the most important of several Supreme Court reporters so it hardly seems proper to group in that manner exclusively), but at the moment this is just a directory and red link farm. Also note that Lists of United States Supreme Court cases provides much of the same material in an annotated context and that there is hardly a need to have two different lists that essentially do the same thing. Indrian (talk) 21:27, 7 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete The intent seems to be to pave the way for an article about every single published opinion that is handed down by the United States Supereme Court, and there are quite a few reasons why that's not a good idea for a project. Notwithstanding that this isn't Westlawpedia, or that the High Court decisions are visible elsewhere, the main reason is that all court decisions are susceptible to different interpretations.  Even the average lawyer is not in a position to write a Wikipedia article that "explains" the meaning of a court decision.  This is an idea that's neither necessary nor feasible.  Mandsford (talk) 21:46, 7 February 2008 (UTC)


 * By that reasoning we shouldn't have articles for Roe v. Wade or Dred Scott v. Sandford. Someday hopefully there will be an article for every Supreme Court case and these lists will help.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 02:25, 8 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep As per many of the arguments in Articles for deletion/List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 113 and Articles for deletion/List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 35, this is a valid use of lists. To quote from my opinion on one of them "Is a sensible structured list (by date) meeting WP:LIST. Most if not all Supreme Court cases are notable in their impact as can be seen from the most recent of these lists List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 546 where many of the cases have their own articles. As notability is permament I see no reason why the same cannot be done for many of the cases on this list". Davewild (talk) 21:51, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
 * And how exactly does it satisfy WP:List? That page gives three reasons for lists.

1. "Information: The list may be a valuable information source. This is particularly the case for a structured list. Examples would include lists organized chronologically, grouped by theme, or annotated lists." This does not apply because the case names and decision dates by themselves are virtually meaningless and the article provides nothing that the reader cannot find using an index.

2. "Navigation: Lists can be used as tables of contents and indexes, or if the user is browsing without a specific research goal in mind, they would likely use the See also lists. If the user has a specific research goal in mind, and there is only one or two words that are used to describe the research topic, and they know exactly how to spell the word, they would probably use the search engine box. If the user has some general idea of what they are looking for but does not know the specific terminology, they would tend to use the lists of related topics (also called list of links to related articles)." This would work if articles actually existed for most of the entries, but much of it is redlinks.

3. "Development: Some lists are useful for Wikipedia development purposes. The lists of related topics give an indication of the state of Wikipedia, the articles that have been written, and the articles that have yet to be written. However, as Wikipedia is optimized for readers over editors, any lists which exist primarily for development or maintenance purposes (such as a list of red link articles needed) should be in project or user space not the main space, if the list is not otherwise encyclopedic." (emphasis mine) This one fits the best of course, but check out the boldface. Without additional information not found on an index or the utility of linking a large number of articles, the list is not encyclopedic on its own so should not be in the main space according to this criteria.

Based on the three guidelines above, would you care to present a rebuttal as to how the list meets WP:LIST, because based on what you have stated so far, your argument is not valid. Indrian (talk) 22:04, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
 * As I said the list is organised basically chronologically and the whole series is structured by volume. This meets the information requirement of WP:LIST where it says "The list may be a valuable information source. This is particularly the case for a structured list. Examples would include lists organized chronologically, grouped by theme, or annotated lists". I argue that having the case names and decision dates in a structured format is valuable and not meaningless as you said. Combining this with the development potential of the list, where many of the more recent cases do have their own articles, as over time will cases from this list, makes it an encyclopedic list. Davewild (talk) 22:48, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I do see where you are coming from, but basically you are saying its value stems from it being a directory of cases. WP:NOT clearly states that wikipedia is not a directory.  How do you reconcile this? Indrian (talk) 23:22, 7 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Strong Keep Full disclosure: I created this article and many of the other lists of U.S. Supreme Court case article lists. But as per the discussion at Articles for deletion/List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 113 and Articles for deletion/List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 35 cited by Davewild, those well reasoned arguments should really suffice. I will also say that I use these articles all the time to navigate and create new articles. Nowhere else on wikipedia is there a complete list of US Supreme Court case articles. It is also organized chronologically, so despite what Indrian says, it fulfills the first two categories of the WP:LIST. As for Indrian's point that wikipedia isn't a directory at WP:NOT, that page says: "Of course, there is nothing wrong with having lists if their entries are famous because they are associated with or significantly contributed to the list topic, for example Nixon's Enemies List." I would say this is comparable.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 00:48, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, a coupel of problems here. First of all, the issues of whether a list is structured and whether a list is valuable are two different issues that you are merging into one.  A list of my favorite bathtime gurgles in the order in which I dreamed them up would not satisfy criteria one just because it was chronological, but it would be structured.  Second, the definition of valuable in this context is not whether it is useful for creating new articles.  Please read criteria 3 again where it says that lists that are primarily useful for determining the progress made on wikipedia should be on a project page and not in the mainspace.  How you get that it fulfills criteria two is particularly mystifying because navigation is not possible through a series of redlinks: if there are not articles extant, a list cannot be used for navigating wikipedia. Indrian (talk) 01:05, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Apparently you are under the impression that your "favorite bathtime gurgles" are on par in signifance with the select decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. Wrong. As for number two, you will notice that each list has a table at the bottom which links with each other list creating a complete list of cases. If you remove one particular list of cases, you defeat the purpose of having a complete list. Also, just because the links are red doesn't mean they always will be. In fact they are very useful for starting a new article because they use the proper citation format and each has a citation that can be cross referenced. You are not going to convince me that these lists should not exist.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 02:36, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Your strawman is not helping things you know. You stated above that because the list is chronological it automatically fulfills criteria one.  I merely gave an example of a chronological list that would not fulfill criteria one.  If you cannot separate a hypothetical from personal opinion, we may have a problem.  We are talking about the list and whether or not it conforms to policy.  Never have I argued that the cases themselves are not notable.  The question is whether the list as it stands conforms with policy.  I think it does not.  You think it does.  That is the issue.  There is no problem with these lists remaining in a wikiproject space devoted to Supreme Court cases, but it seems to me criteria three suggest they should not be in the mainspace. Indrian (talk) 04:19, 8 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Ok. I'll try to go through each one of your points one by one, first for why you originally thought this page should be deleted. I'll try not to use any "strawmen". You say:


 * (1) "WP:NOT states that wikipedia is not a directory, and that appears to be what we have here." See my above comment, comparing this page to Nixon's enemies list.


 * (2) "A complete index of the United States Reports is not an encyclopedia article and is not a list designed to give insight and commentary on a particular group of objects." You can take from this list what you want. The Supreme Court is selective about the cases they review and each individual court chooses cases that it thinks are important in moving the law in certain directions. So I would say that the complete list does give insight into the ways that the court has changed directions, and this particular list gives insight into the state of the law in 1907.


 * (3) "Every single link here is a red link too, as is the case on some of these other pages as well, which means that it is not even a guide to coverage on wikipedia." This page is part of the complete list of cases, and there are thousands of SCOTUS case articles that that list links to. Also, you may have noticed that Dreadstar has assiduously been creating articles to fill in this particular list. Dreadstar, you have my thanks.


 * (4) "Maybe someday every U.S. Supreme court case will have an article and this will be the best way to organize them (though United States Reports is only the most important of several Supreme Court reporters so it hardly seems proper to group in that manner exclusively), but at the moment this is just a directory and red link farm." I invite you to add other citations to these articles to give them more depth as references. This list is doing a good job of organizing SCOTUS case articles already.


 * (5) "Also note that Lists of United States Supreme Court cases provides much of the same material in an annotated context and that there is hardly a need to have two different lists that essentially do the same thing." It may provide some of it, but it doesn't provide the same thing. It doesn't have the red links which are useful in creating new articles.


 * You continue:


 * (7) "First of all, the issues of whether a list is structured and whether a list is valuable are two different issues that you are merging into one." The list is both structured and valuable. It is structured because it is chronological and organized by volume. It is valuable because it appears to fulfill all three of reasons why one would want to keep a list: It is good for information, navigation and development.


 * (8) "A list of my favorite bathtime gurgles in the order in which I dreamed them up would not satisfy criteria one just because it was chronological, but it would be structured." See answer to (7).


 * (9) "(T)he definition of valuable in this context is not whether it is useful for creating new articles." One of the reasons it is valuable is that it is good for development.


 * (10) "Please read criteria 3 again where it says that lists that are primarily useful for determining the progress made on wikipedia should be on a project page and not in the mainspace." To finish the quote, "if the list is not otherwise encyclopedic." This seems to be the real bone of contention. You don't think that a complete list of US Supreme court cases is encyclopedic. Well, I admit, there is room for debate here. Is this list encyclopedic? I would argue that it is, and that it does in fact communicate where we are in our goal of creating an article for each case. It fulfills the part of criteria 3 that you didn't highlight: "The lists of related topics give an indication of the state of Wikipedia, the articles that have been written, and the articles that have yet to be written."


 * (11) "How you get that it fulfills criteria two is particularly mystifying because navigation is not possible through a series of redlinks: if there are not articles extant, a list cannot be used for navigating wikipedia." As explained before, this one page is part of a much longer list, which navigates through the table at the bottom of the page, and many of the cases have articles.


 * You responded to my comment:


 * (12) "Your strawman is not helping things you know." A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. I don't think I've misrepresented anything you've said but if I have I apologize.


 * (13) "You stated above that because the list is chronological it automatically fulfills criteria one. I merely gave an example of a chronological list that would not fulfill criteria one."  Criteria one says that "Examples would include lists organized chronologically" So actually, I would say a chronological list of your "favorite bathtime gurgles," in fact does satisfy criteria one. My point was that such a list would fail WP:Notability. Sorry that was a little mashed together.


 * (14) "If you cannot separate a hypothetical from personal opinion, we may have a problem. We are talking about the list and whether or not it conforms to policy."  I agree.


 * (15) "Never have I argued that the cases themselves are not notable." I believe this could be a reference to my response to Mandsford who said "Even the average lawyer is not in a position to write a Wikipedia article that "explains" the meaning of a court decision." I didn't say that you, Indrian, did argue that the cases are not notable. I believe that this may be a strawman argument.


 * (16) "The question is whether the list as it stands conforms with policy. I think it does not.  You think it does.  That is the issue."  That does appear to be the issue.


 * (17) "There is no problem with these lists remaining in a wikiproject space devoted to Supreme Court cases, but it seems to me criteria three suggest they should not be in the mainspace." Criteria one and two (and I would argue three as well) are in favor of keeping the list where it is. It doesn't say on WP:LISTS that all three criteria must be satisfied or even that lists need to satisfy any of those criteria. It just says that those are the three main purposes for having a list, there could be others that would be valid reasons for keeping a list in wikipedia that does not fulfill those three "criteria" as you call them.


 * I hope that will be a sufficient answer for why we should keep this list of SCOTUS case articles now and in the future.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 01:52, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I still disagree and am not going to rebut your points because I would just be repeating myself. I would like to state that I know what a strawman is and that you did indeed engage in that fallacy when you misstated that my hypothetical constituted my opinion that bathtime gurgles (a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference by the way) are more important than Supreme Court cases.  It may have been an attempt at levity, but if that is the case, I think it failed.  Anyway, apology accepted. Indrian (talk) 09:56, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, a Hitchhiker's reference. I missed that one. I guess I did assume that what you were writing was actually your opinion. It's hard to pick up on written sarcasm. Sorry I couldn't convince you.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 18:33, 9 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep, meets the requirements of WP:LIST purposes: information, navigation and development. Dreadstar †  01:11, 8 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep: Ack. How many times do we have to do this? This is the sixth time, so I'll simply pull a quote from one of the previous times this discussion has happened:
 * Keep. There are over 30,000 U.S. Supreme Court cases; if WP:SCOTUS created 100 articles per week, it would take over 5.5 years to complete all of the cases. Is that an argument to delete the lists? No, it's just a simple justification for the number of red links. Hopefully, one day, all of those links will be blue; it won't be today or this year. There are very few complete lists of U.S. Supreme Court cases available online; before this, the only publicly accessible one that I know of was the U.S. Supreme Court's, and that list was hard to find for even an incredibly capable web surfer. These lists are unbiased, accurate, informative, and useful. These lists are unable to be replicated using categories due to the nonexistent articles. However, as for notability, every U.S. Supreme Court is binding on the entire United States. To try to argue that what they rule is uninteresting and therefore the lists of articles should be deleted is ludicrous. Additionally, this very debate has come up before and was not only closed as "keep," it was closed speedily. These lists should stay.
 * --MZMcBride (talk) 01:17, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep A list such as this is a useful navigational and organizational tool. I expect that each of the cases have multiple substantial coverage in reliable and independent sources, as would be seen by a search of Google book. This is in addition to legal textbooks. They generally don't get to the U.S. Supreme Court unless they have a high degree of importance, and they are typically important thereafter as interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Edison (talk) 01:20, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep The concensus of several previous AfDs of other lists of SCOTUS cases are notable and valid lists. This may want being documented in the notability guidelines, along with geographical features and the like. —Quasirandom (talk) 01:26, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep Is there a way to salt these lists from further afd's?-- brew crewer  (yada, yada) 01:49, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep - As I have said before, Having theses articles (even the redlink ones) ordered into lists like this is preferable to having them all lumped into one big category. And regarding questions on how this this satisfies WP:LIST, the lists themselves are notable. Fosnez (talk) 02:32, 8 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep. Yes, the the intent is to work towards "an article about every single published opinion that is handed down by the United States Supereme Court"; this is an excellent project. These cases are the high points of US law, and represent the small and most notable portion of the many court cases--in modern times, about the most notable few hundred of all the US legal cases a year. Aren't the UK people here doing something similar?   Just what WP should be doing. Would we had more such projects!  We'll still have enough   room and enough editors left for all the childrens' televisions episodes. We can't do all of X is an obsolete argument. It's not just not being paper, it's the hundreds of thousands of editors & their diverse interests.   DGG (talk) 02:45, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
 * There is nothing wrong with a project to document and summarize every Supreme Court case. There is also nothing wrong with a series of wikiproject subpages that brings together information such as this as part of an effort to bring such a goal to fruition.  WP:LIST clearly states that these kinds of lists should not be in the mainspace.  There is already another list at Lists of United States Supreme Court cases that deals with the cases we already have articles for.  The US Court Reports list is merely a directory in violation of WP:NOT and a redlink farm that would better be served as a wikiproject subpage.  You may disagree with that position which is your right, but try not to put up a strawman that distorts the views of the nominator. Indrian (talk) 04:19, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Would note that three of the cases on the list now have articles written on them. Davewild (talk) 08:43, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Similarly, when volume 113 was nominated for deletion, Cdogsimmons endeavored mightily (and succeeded) to make many of those red links blue. As MZMcBride said, it's going to take us many years, but progress is happening. I see the lists by court popping up on my watchlist all the time as people add new cases.--chaser - t 09:54, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep; these lists are useful for the purposes of development and, someday, navigation per WP:LIST. The Lists of United States Supreme Court cases and the lists by court indeed deal (almost) exclusively with those cases we have articles for and thus are unsuited for the purpose of development. Actually they link to articles of this type for a complete list. --Huon (talk) 11:07, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. Supreme court cases are, especially in common law countries like the US, very instrumental in defining the law in the country, and receive a lot of attention in the legal community. That is why such cases are considered notable. This page is a good navigational aid for those articles, since it sorts them in chronological order. Sjakkalle (Check!)  13:38, 8 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep; hugely important and informative list. If we are ever going to have complete coverage of all cases -- and we should IMO -- we need these lists to provide redlinks.  Others above make good points as well, as regards navigation and organization.  Remember that lists are still good for Wikipedia, and have a function just as important as, and separate from, categories.  Antandrus  (talk) 05:04, 9 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.