Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of major philosophers (second 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. --Sam Blanning(talk) 16:07, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

List of major philosophers
Inherently POV. The Manual of Style tells us "do not use a title like (...) famous Xs, listing of important Xs, list of noted Xs". And for good reason; titles like that will lead to POV disputes, as the history of this list illustrates. To solve the problem a methodology of inclusion has been constructed, and now the article describes its bias at the top of the page. Stating POV is nice, but not good enough. Wikipedia articles and lists should be NPOV, which I think this one will never be. N.B. When this article was nominated for deletion before, on June 8, its title was simply "List of Philosophers" - it was moved later, on June 14. Skarioffszky 17:53, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete, inherently not NPOV. Lists of philosophers is the policy-acceptable version of the list (or lists). hateless 18:05, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep, list may be biased, but the community is working diligently and making progress to keep it NPOV by consensus - similar to the list of political philosophers. It is a very useful list, and would be a shame to remove it. - Sam 18:13, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
 * The last post was 10 days ago. &mdash; goethean &#2384; 18:24, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment - previous AfD deletion shows that it was not named "List of philosphers" at the time. Why has this been nominated again when six months ago the result was keep? - Sam 18:18, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
 * It was moved on June 14, just before the AfD was closed: see, . But most of the discussion took place earlier, and was about a "List of Philosophers". Skarioffszky 18:25, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see now. Thanks. - Sam 19:04, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Nonetheless most of the content of the previous nomination appears to discuss the "major philosopher" point; so arguably it's already been treated. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 136.142.21.111 (talk).
 * Perhaps, but the new title certainly highlights the POV problems. Anyway, there is no rule against re-nominating an article for deletion. On the contrary. That's why there is an AfD template for a second (or third, or fourth) nomination. Skarioffszky 18:12, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


 * CommentDiscussion this month at Talk:List of major philosophers seemed to come down to two viable options for the list article: 1) delete the list or 4) keep the list and expand the criteria to eliminate biases. Most of the non-archived talk is about criteria expansion.  This is a portion of a longer conversation that has been going on at least since the last AFD.  Nobody is operating on the talk page with a great sense of urgency (folks interested in philosophy generally like discussion, gee...).  I'd rejected the idea of doing a nomination myself earlier today because I wanted to give it more time.  But now that we have a nomination, I want to see what the wider community thinks.  A lot of the trouble, as discussed in the first AFD, has originated with those that want Rand included as a major philosopher.  But that the issues come from those pushing a particular and unusual POV doesn't mean we should have the list.  GRBerry 18:51, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete, we already have Lists of philosophers which should have everyone on List of major philosophers in it. T REX speak 20:02, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete, while I think progress could be made to improve the POV problem, the Manual of Style point is hard to argue with. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by The hanged man (talk • contribs).
 * Delete, Ambiguity in the term 'Major' is unlikely to be resolved. The other possibility is to rename the list something like, "List of most referenced philosophers by the Analytic philosophy community."  SteveWolfer 18:49, 25 October 2006 (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.