Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of academic conferences (2nd nomination)


 * 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 delete. If anyone would like this userfied to aid in creating a category, just ask. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:43, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

List of academic conferences 2nd nomination

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

Woefully inadequate list that has not improved since it's last AfD nomination in December 2005. The arguments then were that is was unmaintainable, but to see how it developed as it was nominated after just half an hour! Unfortunately it hasn't developed very far, and is full of redlinked articles (suggesting non-notability of the conference) and external links to conference websites, as borderline spam Steve (Slf67)talk 08:28, 13 March 2007 (UTC) andy 09:10, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. The idea of producing a useable list of conferences was never a good idea. There are ten of thousands of them so at best it would be highly selective and prone to spam, and in any case almost no-one ever edits this page. The conferences that are there are pretty unimportant - not a single major medical conference for example. There are some excellent commercial sites that produce these lists and also have an alerting service and that's what academics really want - Academic conference had been deleted as spam but I've restored it because these sites provide a far better resource than this page.
 * Delete. Too vague of a subject for there to be a list; a category would be better suited. Also, as andy mentioned, the list is highly prone to spam due to the sheer number of conferences out there.-- TBC Φ  talk?  09:18, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Replace by Category to see the possibilities, see List_of_computer_science_conferences. there are more of these than in other subjects  but there are reasonable numbers for other subjects; they could form reasonable separate lists, maintained by the subject people, which could then be combined  using categories. This would probably be a cleaner way to do it than the present list. There is an existing category, Conferences, which could easily be reorganized for the purpose. I have started the reorganization by making the Category:Academic conferences, and will then make the Category:Academic conferences by subject, and follow up from there. I suggest that when developed this will replace Academic conference. Specific subject subject lists will avoid the spam problem to a considerable extent.
 * Comment a quick pass through List of computer science conferences shows that many of the conference abbreviations are actually incorrectly linked, mostly to the computer term rather than the conference, to disambiguations, and one even links to Damascus International Airport! So it may seem this is a well sourced list of notable conferences but that's not quite the case.  --Steve (Slf67)talk 05:15, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
 * There are many uses for such lists besides that mentioned by andy: for example,  the abbreviations for the names of these conferences occur in many articles, and are used in bibliographic references. Admittedly, they should probably all have articles, but this is impractical to do quickly with the present resources.  DGG 09:53, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not convinced that lists would be adequately maintained. The number of categories is big and that of conferences is even bigger. If you had very narrow specialisations it might just be possible but I doubt it. For example, just on computer science conferences alone check out Google at and then drill in to one or two of the directories listed there and you'll see what I mean. For example  - and that's just the letter A! The person who maintained the Wikipedia list would have to duplicate this list at the very least. So why not simply add a link to it from relevant places in Wikipedia? Surely Wikipedia shouldn't be trying to duplicate external resources that are already perfectly adequate? andy 11:31, 13 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep but restrict to links that are about a series of conferences, not one-off conferences. I have added two such conferences for chemistry but there are many more. These regular conferences deserve an article and a list can be a valuable link to them. Unlike a category, it could contain red-links to encourage articles to be written. --Bduke 10:35, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I had always assumed that it would be about series--the vast majority of academic conferences are. In fact, all but one of the present list is about annual or biennial conferences. (In contrast to public affairs, where  obviously one-off conferences have been of monumental importance), In science, there have been occasional times when a particular one in a series was of special importance, but I can think of no individually held ones that would be worth listing for their academic value.
 * This is therefore the opposite of the commercial lists mentioned by the nom., which are devoted to announcements and dates of particular conferences. We no more need lists of those than we do of lists of individual football games.
 * Suggestion: we Delete this category and let any ed. who wants to do a more specific list go ahead and try, and judge them on their merits. There is no point in a general list where only one or two sections are maintained. (A new Category: Lists of academic conferences) is enough to keep the articles together. I am not aware of any in WP except the one I mentioned, List of computer science conferences, and its related ones, List of cryptology conferences, etc. and those only include series. (There is also a related List of writer's conferences' which also includes only series of conferences.   A "List of chemistry conferences" would fill the need BDuke mentions--as he says, there are enough for a list. Ditto in biology. But we do not need a general list. I used to think otherwise. DGG 19:43, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment we are discussing the deletion of a list article here. That decision does not impact the associated creation and maintenance of conference categories, extending those categories that exist, and tagging existing notable conference articles with the appropriate category. I don't think any new categories have to be created, and it's against naming conventions to have "List of" categories.  Putting the category against an article automagically creates the list --Steve (Slf67)talk 22:37, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * of course--we have just been thinking aloud to try to keep this compatible with other things we're doing.DGG 05:37, 14 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete and replace by category Impossible to keep such a list manageable or up to date. A category would be the right approach NBeale 07:25, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete Unmaintainable. Vast number of candidates for inclusion. --Folantin 17:03, 18 March 2007 (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.