Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of albums considered the best


 * 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. THre is probably an article here, but as pointed out, there is too much OR here for this to be it. Black Kite (talk) 17:19, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

List of albums considered the best

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This entire article is original research. We aren't supposed to take a bunch of random surveys, put them together then compute arbitrary aggregates. The article even repeatedly admits that it uses a "methodology" (which is WP:OR by itself) then that it is "questionable" (as if it was ok for articles to be unsourced as long as you admit it). All in all, such an aggregate presents next to no interest since it's combining data that is not meant to be combined. Laurent (talk) 05:08, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete pretty much every album has someone somewhere sometime who thought it was the best ever. Stuartyeates (talk) 05:30, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete Fails to meet stand-alone list notability criteria while the table is original research. Such lists are only notable when they are produced by a reliable source—for example Rolling Stone's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.  Philg88 ♦talk 08:56, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep, but clean up. The media keep churning out these album lists, so it deserves to be here. However, the median ranking business is WP:OR. I'd rather go with albums in the top 10 on at least one component listing. Also, get rid of some of the weaker sources. Clarityfiend (talk) 10:18, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete. The concept is inherently unencyclopedic. "Albums that have made the top 10 of the Billboard 200" is encyclopedic, and there are corresponding articles like that for every year. List of best-selling albums also works and has an article. "List of albums considered the best" doesn't mean anything. --Ashenai (talk) 10:28, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete per everyone above - We have other articles that cover all this which are all better named. – Davey 2010 •  (talk)  13:50, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep "list of the best albums" is not notable. This article is. It can definitely be well sourced and extensive. It's already quite well researched.--Coin945 (talk) 16:57, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep. A well established format for many list articles which aggregate information from multiple sources.  The only thing remotely approaching OR is the median column, but that could fall under the Routine Calculation clause of OR.  Gamaliel  ( talk ) 17:06, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Albums and songs-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:52, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:52, 4 August 2014 (UTC)


 * CommentWhether or not this list is classed as unencyclopaedic, we still have List of films considered the best, which has survived four AfDs with WP:snow keeps, and would likely survive another if nominated. The articles are of the same nature, and wikipedia should be consistent. Martin 4 5 1  16:58, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The fact that it's been nominated four times by four different users indicates that there's perhaps a problem, and indeed the article is far from great. It's possibly less worse than List of albums considered the best since it doesn't attempt to aggregate the data. In any case, even if the list of albums is kept, it will have to be completely reworked. As it is, it is a joke - for instance, according to it, there has been only two albums "considered the best" in the past 30 years, which is ridiculous. That's why, if there's pretty much nothing to keep, deletion actually makes sense. Laurent (talk) 23:06, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The existence of the List of films considered the best article isn't germane to this discussion according to the principle of "other stuff exists". Philg88 ♦talk 06:56, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete Per Philg88's point on notability.Forbidden User (talk) 17:15, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep it and Fix it There is nothing in the nomination that cannot be easily fixed. These do not appear to me to be "random surveys" or "arbitrary aggregates". (I would really appreciate it if people stick to policy-based terminology and avoid subjective language like this when nominating articles for deletion.) The "Median rank" has to go - that's OR. (Median is a simple calculation, but using it as a basis for rank is OR, and unlikely to be meaningful for any purpose without statistical weighting for any other factors, which we can't do.) But the surveys used are IMO an admirable selection from RS, notable in themselves, though I wish non-English charts were more readily available and better represented here. From WP:OR, "Compiling related facts and information from independent sources is part of writing an encyclopedia." Where in WP policy or guidelines is it suggested that putting well sourced data in a table is OR? It's done all over WP, and it is not per se OR. Is there something special about the word "aggregate" that makes this article problematic? "Aggregate means put together. In this case, the data is put together into a table, not combined numerically or in some way that synthesizes new content (except for the mean). I think genre should either be eliminated or disabled as a sortable variable. (No one agrees on what genres even mean, and most of these have several.) Rewrite all of the prose. Don't just say what's wrong with the methodology. There is no methodology to excuse if we use data, as-is, from RS. The methodology is theirs, not ours. Criticize their methodology if appropriate. Use List of films considered the best as a template and fix this article if necessary, but I like it as a sortable table. As a reader, I want this kind of information available in an encyclopedia. Limiting an article to albums that made the top ten of the Billboard 200 is exactly that - limiting. And basing an article on sales does not get to the artistic value of these albums, as determined by very widespread expert opinion, gathered by the various sources. Remember what a hit Macarena and Achy Breaky Heart were? They sold well, but expert polling might not rank them quite so high based on artistic merit. It's a whole different kind of information from sales (and airplay, downloads, streaming, etc.) I do have a lingering concern about copyright though. Are the rankings copyrighted? Dcs002 (talk) 10:32, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep and, as above, fix it. I was on the fence for a while but I think that reworking it so to make it look like List of films considered the best is doable and would make of this a worthwile article too. I see no policy-based reason for deletion: there is no WP:OR in simply aggregating what several sources say, otherwise all articles would be WP:OR.-- cyclopia speak! 12:35, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete. Presenting this as a table is in and of itself OR.  It is saying that these disparate lists are, in fact, comparable when no source has said that.  The table is ordered by the median calculation and hence the entries are restricted to those with high medians.  Missing entries may have featured highly on some lists while included entries are as low down as 424 on some lists.  This cannot be fixed in this format (and in this format it is not equivalent to the list of films article).  Not convinced the topic can ever be encyclopaedic, but even if it can, for this article it should be blown up and started over. SpinningSpark 15:37, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
 * You are basically suggesting to edit the list. Problems that can be solved by editing must be solved by editing and not deletion, per our deletion policy.-- cyclopia speak! 15:40, 13 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Philg88 ♦talk 16:00, 13 August 2014 (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.