Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of blogs


 * 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. Spartaz Humbug! 05:28, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

List of blogs

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

Was PROD-ed as "Unmaintainable list - current entries seem random and unjustified, probable violation of WP:INDISCRIMINATE/WP:NOTDIRECTORY", but then removed by creator. I believe an AFD is appropriate, as this seems redundant to Category:Blogs, which already acts as a repository of all notable blogs on WP. Zim Zala Bim talk  17:04, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete indiscriminate list that is redundant to a category. Doc StrangeMailbox Logbook 17:21, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment - redundancy between lists and categories is normal and beneficial. We should not sacrifice one of Wikipedia's navigation systems for another - each of them needs to be complete.  See WP:CLN.  The Transhumanist  20:52, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep There is absolutely nothing Unmaintainable about this list and what pray be are entries that are random and unjustified. I maintain lists all the time as new information and sources becomes available. If this list is Unmaintainable, the every article that's not currently perfect in WP is equally unmaintainable. Everyone of the blogs listed appears to have a WP article, making the Blog notable in its own right.  They are essentially in alpha order (a reasonable organizational precept) and the additional columns provide useful information about the blog content.  The argument for deletion that a Category already exists is simply not consistent with WP:CLN and should not be even considered.--Mike Cline (talk) 17:28, 14 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Very strong delete Mike Cline, this list is utterly unmaintable, it's too open ended, it's the same as a "list of dogs", how are we supposed to list every dog that was ever owned? "List of notable yorkshire terriers" or something like that is maintable because it discriminates, we would list ones owned by famous people and some yorkshire terrier than dragged a child out of a burning building would also be listed. We wouldn't list my friend Bob's terrier. Loads of people have blogs, there's got to be millions of them, why should we list them all? Wikipedia is not an indiscrimiate collection of information.-- Serviam  (talk)  18:12, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Doth protestest a bit much! You've interpreted the title to be: A list of every concievable blog that ever existed notable or not, whereas I interpret the title to be: A list of notable blogs. The fact that the word Notable is not in the list title is pretty consistent with: Lists meaning that the notability of entries is assumed either because the entry is a WP article or sourced to show notability.--Mike Cline (talk) 18:46, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Whilst I am not sure this article should be kept, I have to agree with Mike Cline's response - this is clearly a list of notable blogs (where notability is defined by the site having a Wikipedia article, so there is no uncertainty there). See some of the lists linked from Lists of websites for other examples. Mdwh (talk) 18:58, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete due to Wikipedia being neither an indiscriminant collection of information nor a web directory. The fact that there's already a category just makes this doubly pointless. Andrew Lenahan -  St ar bli nd  18:23, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Until the WP:CLN guideline that plainly states that categories and lists provide complementary and redundant methods of organizing navigational information is changed, I find no compelling reason that A category already exists a valid reason for deletion of a list.--Mike Cline (talk) 18:51, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete: Indiscriminate list that could easily encompass millions of blogs. Dayewalker (talk) 19:09, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Hundreds, judging by the size of Category:Blogs, but there's nowhere near millions of blog articles. Millions is comparable to the total size of all Wikipedia articles! Mdwh (talk) 19:12, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment: Without strict guidelines, every single blog hosted at blogspot, blogger, etc. could conceivably make a case for inclusion, thus making this article a list so large as to be useless. I'd think establishing notability for blogs would be much easier than establishing notability for a full wikipedia article, so this list could quickly become impossible to use effectively. Dayewalker (talk) 19:17, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Lists has this to say: "words like "complete," "famous" and "notable" are normally excluded from list titles, and instead the lead makes clear that that list is complete, or is limited to famous or notable members." Thus, while "notable" should not be in the list title, this actually is (or can quickly be edited to become) a list of just notable blogs. The millions of non-notable blogs floating around online neither should nor would be included. –Black Falcon (Talk) 19:26, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment: As of right now, there are no guidelines for establishing notability of blogs on the page. Are the criteria for blog notability more stringent than for general wikipedia articles? For example, the ESPN website features dozens of blogs from writers encompassing everything from pro football to women's college basketball. Would all of these be notable? Dayewalker (talk) 19:35, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment - Fixed - there is now. The requirement is that the blog must have an article. This is the same way that we deal with other Lists (e.g., List of social networking websites). I don't see any problem here, and the same arguments would apply to long-estalished lists like List of social networking websites. Another example would be Lists of atheists - clearly this isn't intended to be a list of millions of people who happen to be atheists, it's restricted to those with Wikipedia articles. And even though that list is still quite large, that's not a reason to delete it. The only issue I see is whether the List is redundant (since we have a category), or whether the list adds extra useful information (in this case, the list includes language, subject and author). Mdwh (talk) 19:54, 14 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep - a perfectly valid list that organises information in a way that facilitates navigation between related articles by providing informative context to supplement individual entries. The reasons for deletion given thus far are either unclear, based on misinterpretations of policy provisions, or downright inaccurate; see below:
 * current entries seem random and unjustified - This is an unexplained and difficult-to-understand statement. The article is supposed to be a list of (notable) blogs and the current entries are notable blogs ... how is this either "random" or "unjustified"?
 * indiscriminate list - WP:INDISCRIMINATE notes: "merely being true, or even verifiable, does not automatically make something suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia". How is this statement/provision relevant to this list of notable objects, with a clearly-defined scope?
 * probable violation of WP:NOTDIRECTORY - WP:NOTDIRECTORY notes: "Wikipedia is not a directory of everything that exists or has existed". A list of notable object is not "a directory of everything that exists or has existed". WP:NOTDIRECTORY is designed to exclude lists of trivial intersections (e.g. List of (notable) golden retrievers born in 1987 within 25 kilometres of 10 Downing Street) and lists of non-notable people or objects (e.g. List of all people born in 1943), not this type of list.
 * redundant to a category - I could understand this argument if this was just a plain list without any other content. However, this list provides a great deal of information beyond just the name of the blog, including language, subject, and author. While I generally favour using categories in place of lists (when possible), this list is hardly redundant.
 * utterly unmaintable - This argument is based in a misunderstanding of the title. Wikipedia guidelines discourage the use of "notable" in article titles, but this is ultimately a list of notable blogs. While it does require more effort to maintain a list than a category, the list is not unmaintainable. –Black Falcon (Talk) 19:23, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete as indiscriminate information. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 19:41, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This rationale seems to be coming up repeatedly in this nomination, yet I honestly don't see what's meant by it. So, following the adage that it's better to ask and appear ignorant than to remain ignorant, could you (or someone else) please explain how this list qualifies as "indiscriminate"? Thanks, –Black Falcon (Talk) 20:50, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, seemingly indiscriminate. It appears that blogs were selected for this list based on whether they appeared in Category:Blogs without regard to any other objective or subjective criterion for addition or any criterion that makes reference to any third-party evaluation of the blogs. I note this primarily because of the inclusion on the list of Is This the End?, which had an article on Wikipedia and was in Category:Blogs until a few hours ago. Is This the End? had no independent, reliable sources; the only sources provided were the blog itself and a page on the blog author's employer's site. Upon further investigation, it turned out that "Is This the End?" was not a blog at all. Rather, it was one post on the author's blog, a post which had received a grand total of 27 comments. So it doesn't seem to me that the creators of this list were evaluating the listed blogs based on anything other than being in Category:Blogs, which is indiscriminate. I'm not sure what purpose the list will serve in its current format, alphabetical by blog name. If someone is looking for blogs to read, and doesn't have a particular blog in mind to start with or to look at its blogroll for ideas, they would probably be most interested in blogs sorted by topic rather than alphabetically by blog name. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 02:24, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep - a list of all blogs would be unmaintainable, but a list of notable blogs (like the article states) is certainly maintainable - per mdwh. Also, per everything Black Falcon said - there is useful content here and no violations of policy that I can see. Stu (aeiou) 20:35, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete. The list is arbitrary or unmaintainable or both. Witness there are almost twice as many notable blogs in Category:Blogsas in the list. ~ Ningauble (talk) 22:02, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This list, like most of Wikipedia, is incomplete. That is not the same as being arbitrary or unmaintainable. –Black Falcon (Talk) 23:58, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment This article only existed for three days before it was nominated for deletion! I'm sure if this is kept, people can get round to adding the other half. Mdwh (talk) 09:58, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * keep and rename - Notable blogs should certainly be kept -- inherently encyclopedic topic; maintenance concern simply a red herring. Ombudsman (talk) 22:15, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment: "Simply a red herring" seems to imply some kind of ruse or agenda, which seems counter-productive. However, I will agree with you on the renaming, this category seemed very poorly defined at the start of this AfD. Dayewalker (talk) 22:23, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. I made the list, and am currently expanding it, so eventually I should have more of the notable blogs at the blogs category. As to it being arbitrary, I am only including blogs which have been deemed notable enough for their own article. I have not included every blog on the planet, I have not even included blog articles which are currently being considered for deletion. Co-existing categories and lists also exist, see List of online encyclopedias and List of websites. Scapler (talk) 23:29, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment: WP:Lists also states: "Redundancy between lists and categories is beneficial because they are synergistic, and is covered in the guideline Categories, lists, and navigation templates. Like categories, lists can be used for keeping track of changes in the listed pages, using the Related Changes feature. Unlike a category, a list also allows detection of deletion of its entries, and, more generally, a history of its contents is available; lists also permit more than 200 entries to appear on a single page." Scapler (talk) 23:29, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep The implication is, list of notable blogs, those with WP articles--just the same as for all the other thousands of similar lists of Wikipedia. Maintainable by removing any others. Not indiscriminate, because it discriminates by listing only those with articles here, a very small percentage of the total (0.001%, perhaps--the very opposite of indiscriminate), not a directory because a directory would include them all, which is why we don't have that here. I wish people in voting about list articleswould actually read the guidelines and look at the article. DGG (talk) 02:00, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep on the one condition that MuZemike's Blog be included on the list :P MuZemike (talk) 04:24, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * In all seriousness, the article should be not only kept but also moved to another, more specific title, like List of notable blogs for instance (there goes my PoS blog!). I can foresee this list becoming very large, very quickly, at that point it can be split into other discriminate lists like List of political blogs,, List of entertainment blogs, List of video gaming blogs, etc. MuZemike (talk) 21:02, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment The word "notable" does not have to be in the title, and indeed, this is discouraged (see Lists). The criterion for inclusion should be specified in the lead, not the title, and the article has already been updated to restrict this to solely notable blogs (this is how all the other "List of" articles are done). However I agree that splitting into Lists of blogs with several sub-lists is a good idea once this list grows large. Mdwh (talk) 01:34, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep per Mike Cline, Scapler, Stu, Black Falcon, Ombudsman, DGG, oh and MuZemike too.John Z (talk) 09:15, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep The list is not indiscriminate, unmaintainable, nor "random and unjustified". The only concern here is if it's redundant compared with the category. The extra information added here is rather minimal I think (language, subject, author), but no one has persuaded me that this is insufficient for a separate list. I am also concerned at the number of delete votes based on the misconception that this is intended to be a list of all blogs ever. Mdwh (talk) 10:04, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment - redundancy between lists and categories is not a valid reason to delete. Wikipedia has several navigation systems, and lists are one of them.  The list system is highly redundant when compared to the category system, and vice versa, but each system has its advantages.  Even unstructured bare navigational lists should be kept, because removing them creates a hole in the list navigation system, and because they are an essential starting phase for improved lists (remember, all adults start off as children - if you kill off all the children, there won't be any more adults!).  For more details, see WP:CLN. The Transhumanist  20:32, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. It's a navigational list, for the defining characteristic of the items on it. AndyJones (talk) 12:39, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep - a list of Wikipedia articles about a particular type of subject. The list's contents are very specific: blogs that have an article on Wikipedia.  Non-blog pages are not listed.  There are no non-notable blogs listed.  Articles on cat and dog breeds are not included on this list (but a blog about them could), nor articles on any topic other than blogs.  I find the claim that the list is indiscriminate is completely false/mistaken.  And the concern that the list will grow too large is absurd: Wikipedia and all of its subject areas continually grow/expand; Wikipedia and every subject within it (whether in the form of articles or lists) are scalable.  Just like articles, lists can be structured into subheaded sections, and split into further lists as they grow larger.  See Lists of philosophers and List of geography topics for examples of list expansion.  Eventually, we may have a Lists of blogs.  Cheers to a job well done.  Keep building Wikipedia and its navigation systems!  The Transhumanist  20:40, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Websites-related deletion discussions.   --  Fabrictramp  |  talk to me  23:28, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.   --  Fabrictramp  |  talk to me  23:28, 17 September 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.