Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of albums

List of albums and related articles was proposed for deletion. This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was NO CONSENSUS

I realize this may be controversial, but I think we should delete this and everything else in Category:Lists of albums.

Template:Albumlist explicitly states that "all albums listed have articles in the Wikipedia", so the category system is already able to list all of these albums. MediaWiki's category system will improve with time, and even now is plenty good enough to browse albums. Maintaining these lists by hand is a huge and pointless task. Plus, many people (myself included) have created album articles and not listed them here, so these lists are (and always will be) incomplete in listing articles about albums. Delete this, please! And if you vote to keep, please consider elaborating about what this list is better for than Category:Albums and its subcategories. ~leif (talk)   21:40, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. Elaborating: how do you suppose to replace the following line from the list using the 'category' tool?
 * Aerosmith - Night in the Ruts - 1979 - sixth album, recorded partially after the departure of Joe Perry'' Mikkalai 23:05, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Just a comment, the "sixth album..." info should be included in the album's article. I don't think notation like this is a valid reason to keep the list. - Lachatdelarue
 * my thoughts exactly.  ~leif &#9786; HELO
 * This page only helps readers of Wikipedia learn and find things. That it duplicates small amounts of info from the article is a good thing, as readers don't have to go to the article to get a very brief summary. &mdash; siro  χ  o  01:07, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)
 * It not only duplicates info, but it also can lead to people missing info, because they think an article about an album doesn't exist because it's not on the list. Plus, as in the Aerosmith example above, the list ended up containing information not on the article page (I have since fixed it in the case of Night in the Ruts, but many other cases exist). Now that I've explored these lists more, I see there is actually a sizable ammount of info in them that needs to me merged into album articles before they can be deleted. I don't think that means they shouldn't be deleted, it just means it's a lot of work. But it's still less work than maintainng the lists in the long run, I think.  ~leif &#9786; HELO
 * I personally think that all lists should be deleted in favour of categories, and extra info that appears in the list should go into the articles themselves (in this case, either the album or artist article). Lists just make for excess maintenance and duplication. However, I believe policy is to keep, so I reluctantly vote that way. Shane King 23:20, Oct 28, 2004 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure these lists and whatever policy you're referring to predate the category system. No reason we can't change things now.  ~leif (talk)
 * You seem to miss an important point: lists are good for preview. With category, I have to peek inside every article during a search. With annotated lists, I can browse more efficiently. Mikkalai
 * Mikkalai has a very, very good point. Until categories can include previews, Lists are useful.  &mdash; siro  χ  o  01:08, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)
 * I don't know what you mean by "preview". A place for careless editors to put information that isn't also put in the article? Because thats what we've got now with these lists.  ~leif &#9786; HELO
 * Keep - lists are an important method of cross-referencing and I personally have used and added to this lists. Capitalistroadster 05:11, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep but list should be able to include albums without articles yet. Rmhermen 15:27, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Albums are almost never encyclopedic, neither is a list of them. I hope people don't attempt to fill the category with every album made. Oy. --Improv 15:35, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. [[en:RaD Man|RaD Man (talk)]] 16:36, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete veering away from Shane only at the last sentence: I'm not reluctant at all in hoping this gets deleted. &mdash; Bill 21:50, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Why's this? It can only help Wikipedia be more useful to readers. &mdash; siro  χ  o  01:00, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)
 * As I said above, these lists can actually be harmful due to duplicated info or missing entries.  ~leif &#9786; HELO
 * Keep, lists are useful for giving small pieces of info along with titles. &mdash; siro  χ  o  00:55, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. I agree with points above; a simple list like this can be handled by the category system.  Also, short descriptions can be useful, but such descriptions would be more useful (and easier to maintain) in other places, such as an article about the artist or a particular musical style or period. neckro 03:29, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. These lists will never be complete or accurate and would be more easily managed using the category system.  The issue of previews should be a moot point; our priority should be accuracy in the lists, not whether or not there's an arbitrarily chosen sentence or two used to describe the album.  If people want information, they should visit the article.  - Defunkt [[User talk:Defunkt| (talk) ]] 16:32, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Enthusiastically neutral The lists do get edited fairly frequently, but are no doubt very incomplete. It would be good to keep the list because of the captions, which can be helpful, but it should be noted that I wrote almost all of the captions a long time ago in the hopes of inspiring others to write more.  This hasn't happened, and I don't have any reason to suspect that this will change. Tuf-Kat

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like other '/delete' pages is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion or on the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.