Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of novels considered the greatest


 * 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. ✗ plicit  14:51, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

List of novels considered the greatest

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

This list is completely subjective and fails WP:LSC. A comparable deletion discussion took place at Articles for deletion/List of television series considered the best. Hey man im josh (talk) 14:27, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete This is completely bonkers. Considered by who? Who decides whose consideration is worth consideration? Who considered a novel great 100 years ago but had no chance to benchmark it against Harry Potter because they're dead now? How can you compare Ulysses with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold? What role genre, in other words? What IS greatness? I could clearly go on, but the issues raised by the very concept being proposed by this list are legion and it needs to go and quickly. Agree the precedent set by the TV AfD is salutary. Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 14:45, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment. I would at least consider reverting back to this very short version to remove the unsourced "stick my favorite book in" cruft that has crept in during the past year at bare minimum.  I believe that this is a notable topic but it's possible that the current structure requires WP:TNT, draftification, and a top-to-bottom rethink to be reborn, along with eternal semi-protection.  (Note that I had a discussion with article creator Hurrygane years ago and we clearly deeply disagreed on how best to structure such an article, as he defended the current structure as the only way to do such an article and attacked the video game article as bad, but I would propose that something like List of video games considered the best or List of prominent operas, with rigorously defined inclusion criteria and aggressive reverting to enforce it, could possibly work.  It wouldn't look anything like the current article, though.  So this is basically a "delete but without setting precedent that the article is unsalvageable should a better version be made" vote).  SnowFire (talk) 14:47, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Fictional elements and Lists.  Just ' i ' yaya  15:16, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete. I agree with all that Alexandermcnabb says. In addition I wonder if the person who made this list is truly familiar with all the books listed: Seven Pillars of Wisdom, for example, is not a novel.  Athel cb (talk) 15:45, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Procedural comment. I've reverted back to an older, sourced form of the list, for any future voters confused as to the article seen by the above users vs. the reverted form.  Although the methodology is IMO still bad even in the older version.  Honestly those unsourced additions probably should have bene reverted first, although it doesn't speak well that the article wasn't maintained.  ( In fairness to the article creator, Seven Pillars of Wisdom was one of a spate of very recent additions to the article a week ago, so that one wasn't their fault.) SnowFire (talk) 15:55, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:TNT; surely a notable concept to some extent but this is not the way to go about anything here. Dronebogus (talk) 17:39, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete I know the article was reverted to an earlier version, but IMHO this version is even worse than before. We now have a "List of novels considered the greatest" containing only 5 works all more than a century old and all by European authors. I see no way for this list to be saved. Nuke this entire thing and be done with it.--SouthernNights (talk) 19:23, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete. Ugh. While this could be sourced, the inclusion criteria are an issue. A single mention in one RS will create a gigantic list, particularly as the list already uses fuzzy criteria, ex. the second source talks about "best book ever written.". A list of novels called greatest, best and like seems pretty WP:INDISCRIMINATE to me. PS. If this goes, we should discuss List of films considered the best and List of video games considered the best. List of greatest hits albums is probably ok given the existence of the concept of Greatest hits album. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 10:02, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Both of those have pretty well-defined list criteria, though. The inclusion criteria for List of films considered the best is that each film must have been voted the best in a notable poll. The inclusion criteria for List of video games considered the best is that each game must have appeared on six or more "best games of all time" lists. Additional details/clarifications can be read at Talk:List of films considered the best and Talk:List of video games considered the best, respectively. That being said, I'm not exactly unbiased since I have been quite heavily involved in editing the film list and discussing the entries and inclusion criteria on its talk page. I will say that I think the film list should have a somewhat higher threshold for inclusion (i.e. be more restrictive in which polls are counted) and that I find it dubious that the video game list considers appearing on several "top 100" (or similar) lists as the same thing as being considered the best regardless of position or even if the list is unranked—it should either restrict itself to the top entries like the film list or be renamed List of video games considered among the best (or something along those lines). TompaDompa (talk) 13:17, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  10:07, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete I don't think this is a valid way of constructing this list. Melissa Bank, William Faulkner, and Vladimir Nabokov all considering Anna Karenina the best/greatest/their favourite book is three individuals' viewpoints. I think it is self-evident that these viewpoints are not WP:DUE individually. Wikipedia editors collating these individual viewpoints doesn't change that—as the saying goes, the plural of anecdote is not data. The assembly of data needs to both be more rigorous and come from the sources, lest we be improperly synthesizing. See List of films considered the best for how this could (theoretically, at least) be done, but that would be a fundamentally different list than the one under discussion and would need to be constructed from scratch. TompaDompa (talk) 13:58, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete Different random people would give different opinions on what the greatest novels were.  D r e a m Focus  18:56, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete: While this topic is likely notable, it needs to be destroyed before something decent can be built. Currently, it is little more than a collection of opinions. I will admit that the sheer breadth and subjectivity of the subject matter makes a list of greatest novels hard to build within the confines of Wikipedia's policies, however. &#8213; Susmuffin Talk 23:08, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete per all. There is no way to create a list like this that isn't indiscriminate, because hundreds of sources have considered hundreds of novels and it's too subjective. We could impose our own criteria, but then we'd be substituting one subjective opinion for another. Jontesta (talk) 19:12, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment: The list as it stands is unwieldy, but what if the list is based on the same criteria from say, the game article? That is, from six or more lists that have them stated as the best of all time? I found one from the NYT, but will look to see if I can find more. ReaderofthePack (formerly Tokyogirl79)  (｡◕‿◕｡)  15:12, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Here's another - it's not a poll, but it's from Britannica. I'll continue this on the article's talk page, so as not to bog down the discussion page. ReaderofthePack (formerly Tokyogirl79)  (｡◕‿◕｡)  15:25, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
 * If anything, it should be based on the same criteria as the film article: having been voted the best in a notable poll. At any rate, we would have to WP:STARTOVER from scratch since that would be a fundamentally different list than the current one. TompaDompa (talk) 15:31, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I've found multiple "best of" lists, so this could be made according to the VG article. It will essentially need to be done from scratch, however, as it'll take time to compare the lists. ReaderofthePack (formerly Tokyogirl79)  (｡◕‿◕｡)  15:51, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I think that a remade article along the lines of the video games article or the films article (both use slightly different criteria) would work well. Can always ask that the existing version be userfied / draftified if you want to keep the history, although nabbing the existing sources used is probably the most valuable part.  SnowFire (talk) 16:04, 27 July 2022 (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.