Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of military commanders (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. After discounting the two "keep" opinions that are simply votes because they don't address the reasons why the article should be kept or deleted, consensus is that the list has an unmanageably broad scope. That being so, editors who want to split it into more manageable pieces are free to request userfication for that purpose.  Sandstein  20:19, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

List of military commanders
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Per WP:NOTCATALOG & WP:OVERLISTIFICATION. This list is massively overbroad, better dealt with via catagories, and badly handled.

WP:OVERCATEGORIZATION and SUBJECTIVE are also relevant: it's not an adjective, but what constitutes a "military commander"–political leadership or generalship; unit commanders (of whatever size) or individual soldiers displaying leadership; figureheads such as Joan of Arc...–is at the moment entirely arbitrary: There are no criteria for inclusion provided & no rational ones could exist that connect mythological Chinese emperors, medieval knights, and Ehud Barak in his role as civilian commander of the Israeli military.

Also, as original nomination. The page has had years to hit its stride, make sense, or fork sensibly. It hasn't. The points made by the original noms have been borne out; those made by the opposition have proven to have been incorrect or overly-optimistic. — Llywelyn II   14:05, 20 February 2013 (UTC)


 * delete Deeply indiscriminate list which could conceivably encompass every soldier in Wikipedia above the rank of corporal—assuming the army/navy/etc. in question even had ranks with names. And of course as the nominator says, there's any number of civilians who could be tossed into the mix. Mangoe (talk) 15:33, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete just silly, this is always guaranteed to be WP:INDISCRIMINATE.--Staberinde (talk) 16:04, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:06, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:07, 20 February 2013 (UTC)


 * This would be better covered by categories. Weak delete (or userfy if somebody wants to check the list and convert it into the appropriate categories). - Mike Rosoft (talk) 18:17, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I am willing to revise my opinion, as long as some reasonable criteria for inclusion are agreed upon. - Mike Rosoft (talk) 17:52, 21 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep The claim that this would be better done by category is false and explicitly contradicted by WP:CLN, "Therefore, the "category camp" should not delete or dismantle Wikipedia's lists...". WP:NOTCATALOG is irrelevant as that's talking about sales catalogs.  And WP:OVERLISTIFICATION is an essay which does not represent policy.  The fact that this list is large tells us that a lot of work has gone into it and so it would be blatant WP:DISRUPTION to delete this.  And should anyone doubt the notability of the topic, per WP:LISTN, please see sources such as Military Commanders - just one of many such surveys. Warden (talk) 20:25, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, that's one hell of a strawman. Go read WP:NOTCATALOG again: it is not talking only about sales catalogs. — Llywelyn II   22:40, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete as indiscriminate. It's either a list that can encompass every leader in every little skirmish in history, or you set some arbitrary standard to keep it to a manageable scope. Neither works for me. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:57, 20 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep It only list those notable enough to have their own Wikipedia article. Obviously when you have a list of something, it means "notable", even without having that word in the title.  These are people famous for being military commanders.  It is not indiscriminate.  For those of you not familiar with how Wikipedia lists work, look at any of the thousands of them.   D r e a m Focus  00:22, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Famous like Henri Dentz in the Battle of Beirut (1941) or Ernst-Felix Krüder in the Action of 8 May 1941? There are thousands upon thousands of senior but obscure officers who've commanded in battle and have articles about them. Yikes, look at the hordes listed for the Battle of Pteria alone. Clarityfiend (talk) 01:38, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Ernst-Felix Krüder was a naval commander and we have List of sea captains and Lists of admirals for those. Do you want to delete those too?  Do you want to leave readers with no way of navigating and browsing our thousands upon thousands of articles?  Warden (talk) 08:52, 21 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Yeah, when did "having a Wikipedia article or not" become a test for discrimination? There are loads of people who were corporals, sergeants, or even lieutenants in wartime, but whose significance is based on something else entirely  p  b  p  02:51, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * The list is not full of corporals and sergeants though, is it? So that's just a straw man. It is quite normal for list entries to be expected to have Wikipedia articles per WP:CSC, "Every entry meets the notability criteria for its own non-redirect article in the English Wikipedia. Red-linked entries are acceptable if the entry is verifiably a member of the listed group, and it is reasonable to expect an article could be forthcoming in the future."  This list is mostly blue links and the corresponding articles are mostly kings and generals, just as one would expect. Warden (talk) 08:52, 21 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete: having a Wikipedia article isn't discriminate enough. This would be better handled by a bunch of little lists rather than one big one  p  b  p  02:51, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete Much too broad a topic to have any workable inclusion/exclusion criteria. Nick-D (talk) 09:46, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Nonsense. The list was started nearly ten years ago and it was quite clear what the idea was - to have a list of major military leaders like Alexander, Napoleon and Rommel.  The list has been expanded by good effort since then and it still conforms reasonably well to this goal.  There's still more to be done but this will not be assisted by deletion.  For example, there's currently a redlink for Samudragupta.  That person is not well known in the west but was a great conqueror in India - in the same league as Napoleon.  That person is not in any military category - just category:Indian people and so the category system is doing a worse job than the list in this case.  How is our coverage of great commanders assisted by deletion in this case? What have you got to offer instead? Warden (talk) 17:03, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Here's the problem. Who decides who is a "major" or "great" military leader? Does Ariobarzanes, Satrap of Persis really qualify? The criteria are just too ill-defined, even including the "notoriously flamboyant, incompetent or otherwise famous". I suppose it could be salvaged if it were renamed List of military commanders considered among the greatest ever, with proper sourcing for each entry, which would leave out our friend Ariobarzanes and a whole lot of others on this list. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:10, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Ariobarzanes gave Alexander the Great a hard fight and so he was not some lowly corporal. How is his presence in this list a problem?  How is it a problem if our readership should want to find and read more about him?  The 10-year history of this article does not indicate that there have been any significant disputes about such matters.  We should not be deleting substantial content for the sake of hypothetical or imaginary concerns. Warden (talk) 14:33, 22 February 2013 (UTC)


 * The list is more useful than a category, since it shows more information, so you know what articles would be of interest to you. This is a list of all military commanders that have their own Wikipedia article.  If you want to make separate list for just some leaders, that's fine too, no reason why you can't have entries on more than one list.   D r e a m Focus  00:47, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Agricolae (talk) 03:05, 22 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete - it will always be unmanageably broad, arbitrarily subjective or massively incomplete, probably all three. Agricolae (talk) 03:10, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Please give some evidence to support your contention. For example, what entries are missing and why would their absence be a policy-based reason to delete the list, rather than developing it further?   Warden (talk) 16:14, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
 * A while back I more than quadrupled the number of listings for Iberia by only adding just the most prominent of names from one of the six Christian states for just a 300 year period. Just listing all of the Iberians military commanders who currently have pages would probably include several thousand names, and we have, what, 24?  That equates to being woefully incomplete, while pages for Iberian noblemen (almost by definition military commanders) are being added faster than names are being added to this list, which means it is unmanageable (or at least unmanaged).  And what would be the point of listing all those names, as a list that long is unusable.  We are literally talking about tens of thousands of Wikipedia pages in a list that was anywhere close to complete (just in terms of those with WP pages), maybe even 100,000 or more.  Recently, an attempt has been made to limit it to commanders someone or other thinks were important - that is both unmanageable and subjective - I have seen such limits placed on short lists work, but only when there was a clearly defined set of criteria and a small body of interested souls to police the list regularly, but this list has no defined criteria, and covering 4000 years of history across every continent but Antarctica (but then, Shackleton and Ross were military commanders there too) is too broad for anyone to police in this manner.  Such a list can never be anything but a problem - incomplete, POV, and arbitrary.  Agricolae (talk) 23:52, 22 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep but the criteria for inclusion needs to be made clearer, as it could include commanders of low-level units throughout history!.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld  13:42, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Weak keep. I would vote Split if that were an option.  The list is far to big to be useful, the selection of people is random, the information given is inconsistent and the organization is confused. The list should define better inclusion criteria to eliminate platoon leaders who went on to create fast food chains. Focused lists like List of Costa Rican military commanders would be much more useful. I would support a move to split this list into smaller country- or region-specific lists, assuming it survives this discussion, and leave this one as an index to the smaller lists. With a country-specific article it may be possible to find some way to organize the list systematically, including redlinks. But just because this article is a mess does not mean it should be deleted.  It needs work, e.g. splitting, is all.  Aymatth2 (talk) 16:39, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Agreed, much better to be comprehensive and focused, I'd use this article as an index/navigation base and create separate lists with more focus. Throughout the entirety of history and all empires and nations is an awful lot to try to cover in one. I mean, you wouldn't have a list of soldiers in one article, you'd break it down by empire/nation and in specific time periods.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld  16:44, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree that constructive restructuring would be sensible. What I found when I started cleaning up the list was that there were multiple half-baked tables which were quite confusing and hard to work with.  That approach hasn't worked out and so I reverted to make the original structure of the list clear.  Sub-lists would be a sensible way of dealing with cases where there might be many entries.  For example, there's Commanders of World War II which is given as a sub-list.  That has all the same problems of scope because there were millions of officers in WWII and many of them have sufficiently notability to warrant articles on Wikipedia.  The sub-list can be left to deal with that problem of scale while this list can give some of the major examples like Monty, Patton, Rommel and Zhukov and then refer to the sub-list.  Having a tree of hierarchic lists is a common way of managing such data.  For a well-developed example, see list of writers. Warden (talk) 17:02, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I would say it is best, as with lists of writers, to have no people at all in the main index list, which should be strictly a list of lists. But that is a discussion for the article's talk page. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:15, 22 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep I agree with Dr. B that there need to be more defined qualifications, . The current list is a very broad list, and I would perhaps that should be supplemented by a more exclusive one for which the basic qualification would be "famous". I'd suggest a general "famous" list and then divided lists for the merely notable.   We also need to decide whether to include purely political leaders during a war. There also needs to be a consistent format; the point of a list is that it can give more information than a category, but too many of the entries in the list are still a bare list of names. INDISCRIMINATE or NOTDIRECTORY never holds for a list composed of those subjects who have BLP articles, and a list and a category are not exclusive--most should have both. There are no other actual arguments for deletion.    DGG ( talk ) 17:20, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
 * [Comment]. Just to put things in perspective, Category:United States Army generals has 1,646 pages, Category:British Army generals has 1,487 pages, Category:Royal Navy admirals 1,128 pages, Category:Wehrmacht generals 754 pages etc. etc. (most of those previous cases could have gotten another few hundred from sub categories). There is nothing stopping from pushing this list into massive 10,000+ entries except extreme tediousness of the task.--Staberinde (talk) 17:23, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
 * There are corresponding lists such as List of British generals and brigadiers, which have many entries. But the numbers involved are still orders of magnitude less than some of our list structures such as list of species or list of minor planets.  We even have some lists of infinite scope - see Articles for deletion/1 metre for the lengths that some will go to.  Lists of generals are comparatively manageable. Warden (talk) 18:04, 22 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Also it would look hilarious if someone for example would add all thousands of British (or US) generals, admirals and air force generals. Would totally dwarf the rest of list in its current form. But there would be no basis for removal of any entries in such case, and only way to restore some sort of balance would be doing exactly same for all other countries.--Staberinde (talk) 17:30, 22 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I sense consensus that this list in its current state is far too big, arbitrary, etc. to be useful, and that if the title is to be kept, it should be converted to a "list of lists". I don't mind helping with that.  Lists of names alone are not much use - they should have some additional information, sequence and structure. There remains a question over whether some of the sub-lists would also be too big to be manageable. A list of 1,646+ United States Army generals would indeed be large.  There were a lot of General Smiths.  But the very large lists can be subdivided into lists of lists or organized under headings.  Would a reader search for "military commander?"  I think they might, and this article, if changed into a list of lists, some of which could also be lists of lists, could get readers exploring and finding interesting stuff they would never have thought of looking for. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:34, 23 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep, I added all the entries from List_of_British_generals_and_brigadiers and I'll find some sailors and pilots to add in next. Spartaz Humbug! 14:30, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, all 68 bleedin' pages of them. The whole benefit of having a page List of British generals and brigadiers is so you don't have to list them all on the main page. Agricolae (talk) 15:37, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
 * So? If they are commanders, and generals are clearly commanders, why can't I add them to the list? Spartaz Humbug! 15:52, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
 * You can, but see the comment of Staberinde above. The question is whether it is valuable to repeat the information in this manner (and hence double the upkeep). The bigger question is whether such an unfocussed list, covering all commanders from all countries from all periods in history, one that currently lists in that section 1000+ Brits and 1 from China, is useful. Agricolae (talk) 17:03, 23 February 2013 (UTC)


 * There is no possible reason to list every single person who ever had the rank of general. The start of the article establishes the inclusion criteria.  Are you flooding the article to be sarcastic?  You obviously know there is no possible way to list every single general who ever existed in every army around the world.   D r e a m Focus  08:38, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment - The term "commander" seems be causing the problem. At some level, all military personnel exercise authority, so everyone listed in Category:Military personnel and its subcategiories can be included in the article. Revising the lead to read something like -- List of military commanders is a compilaton of commissioned officers whose importance/significance primarily stems from their command of a military unit. -- might help inform editors of who can be added to the list. That may run into problems in determining whether ancient commanders or commanders in a variety of countries were "commissioned," but it is a move forward. Without "commissioned" in the scope, you run into the problem of whether non-commissioned officers (corporal and sergeant in some countries) are to be included in the list. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 15:49, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
 * In concept this is fine, but in practice, do we really leave it up to editors to decide the primary basis for notability of an individual? Might this exclude, say, Eisenhower, who arguably could be said to be of primary importance as President of the USA, yet whose military exploits cannot be overlooked. Likewise this focus on commissions effectively removes every commander prior to the formalization of ranks and commissions - most of history. Agricolae (talk) 17:03, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
 * As Spartaz is making clear above, without a statement of scope and inclusion criteria of the list, it will be very hard to get editors on the same page as to what can and cannot be included in the list. See Manual_of_Style/Lists. In other words, one editor can feel that something does not belong in the list and another editor feel that it does and both are right because there is no standard against which to decide. The primary basis for notability of an individual should be in the lead paragraph of the Wikipedia article, so that is where editors can figure out whether their importance/significance primarily stems from their command of a military unit. Military commanders over all time in all countries too vague for editors to agree on what can and cannot be included. Something has to be revised. "Commander" has several meanings. Pick one and use that to create the statement of scope and inclusion criteria of the list. Otherwise, the list would not seem to exclude something like the chief officer of a commandery in the medieval orders of Knights Hospitalers, Knights Templars, and others noted at dictionary.reference.com/. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 18:27, 23 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete, without a shadow of a doubt. It's bloated, indiscriminate, and seems to possess no singular focus. MezzoMezzo (talk) 10:58, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep-Notable topic. The article needs CE in some parts. Inserting one or more templates to lighten the article would be a good idea.--Knight of Infinity (talk) 18:04, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Not for nothing, but the article needs CE in no parts, per WP:ERA and this edit establishing BC/AD as the page's format. — Llywelyn II   22:33, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment: The editors above who are saying "Keep but Split" and "Keep as Index to other Lists"... could you explain how such an "index of lists" page is in any way different from categories? (And given the categories don't have to be maintained by hand and are harder to vandalize, what worth do you think such a list of lists page would actually have?) — Llywelyn II   22:43, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment: There have been more 'keep' votes since the new lede came in, but I would like to point out that"This is a list of military commanders. These include the 'great captains' of history, as they were styled by military historian Liddell Hart; the major leaders of the armies in the most decisive battles of world history. Also included are those who were notoriously flamboyant, incompetent or otherwise famous, such as General Custer."means we're still including the (a) inarguably great, the (b) 'major' leaders at the 'most decisive' battles (whatever our editors decide those are), and the (c) everyone else with a page. This is not really an improvement, nor can it be improved with such a weak title and such vague adjectives involved. Any attempts to maintain a shallow list without much more narrowly-tailored wording is going to run into WP:BIAS issues. What this article covers really is as broad as a major metacategory & what it started as and some editors above think they can have really needs to be rebuilt from scratch at another namespace like famed military tacticians (with the criterion that they be currently studied at major military academies or even at all major military academies). —  Llywelyn II   22:51, 27 February 2013 (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.