Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of people who have walked across the US


 * 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. Why anyone would want to delete an article/list after it received the Uncle G treatment is beyond me. Anyway, the bulk of the deletes were either before improvements, or effectively "I don't like it" type arguments. The list has been shown to be verifiable - indeed, it is verifed. In the absence of an applicable policy-based reason to delete, this is closed as keep. Xymmax So let it be written   So let it be done  02:05, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

List of people who have walked across the US

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

I don't really see how this list can ever be verified or maintained Mblumber (talk) 00:54, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Inaccurate and impossible to maintain.  Mattie TK  01:15, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * That's demonstrably untrue, as can be seen. Uncle G (talk) 04:51, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Many of the "lists" on wikipedia are on-going and need to be maintained by users. Verification can found via the references included (such as books, movies, interviews, and reliable news sources). —Preceding unsigned comment added by OhioSarah (talk • contribs) 01:21, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep- Just because the nom doesn't see how it can be done, doesn't mean it can't be done. Umbralcorax (talk) 02:43, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete. I refuse to believe that Art Garfunkel, George Martin, or Michael Palin have walked across the United States. What exactly the "references included" referred to above by the article's author, OhioSarah, might be I have no idea, since no references at all are included ("movies"? should Forrest Gump be listed?). Even if the list could be restricted to sourced names, in the absence of any other notability for the persons listed, I think this would fail WP:NOT. Deor (talk) 02:56, 13 December 2008 (UTC) Changing !vote to merge the now cleaned up and sourced list into Transcontinental walk. Deor (talk) 16:34, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * What part of that policy, specifically, would it fail? Please point to it an explain in detail why it would fail it. Uncle G (talk) 04:51, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Deor, Art Garfunkel in particular is well-known for having walked across the US. He did it a section at a time, over several years, but he did it. See this, this, and this for more info. (Merge into transcontinental walk, BTW) Grutness...wha?  00:55, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete . Where's Forrest Gump? He'd be more notable than 4/5 of the non-notable and unconfirmed people on this list. --Amwestover (talk|contrib) 03:24, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * There are no unconfirmed entries on the list. Uncle G (talk) 04:51, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * When I commented on the article, it was mostly unconfirmed and non-notable entries. A lot of work has been done on the article since then, enough so that I change my !vote to merge with Transcontinental walk since it still doesn't have enough content to warrant a separate article. --Amwestover (talk|contrib) 02:37, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete--whoa, George Martin indeed... OK, this is really not a good list, because a. it offers no evidence at all (and that on-going thing is facetious--if it's on-going, wouldn't you begin with a couple of verified walkers? or do you draw up a long list of names and then check to see if they did it?) and b. even if it did, what could be the point? Drmies (talk) 03:29, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * To provide an encyclopaedic list of people who have walked across the United States, perhaps? Uncle G (talk) 04:51, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * G, I love it when you go Kerrzapp, and you are the master of turning cruft into craft. But I'm really not convinced of your down-to-earth answer, which allows for no discernible way to discriminate between what might be called notable and what might not be called notable. Why would a list of people who have walked more than 1000 times around Central Park not be notable? Just because only few people (perhaps) have done a certain thing does not make a subject notable. Now, your same list as a subsection of an article about walking across the US, which explains what the big deal is, that's a different story. But it would be a story, I mean something in prose with an explicit and specific purpose, not a list. Drmies (talk) 05:46, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The answer to that is simple: people have noted (i.e. reliably published documentation of them) people who have walked across the U.S., and haven't noted people who have walked around Central Park. That the feat has been noted indicates that it is notable.  Read User:Uncle G/On notability. And there's no reason that this list cannot contain prose about walking across the U.S..  Many of our best standalone lists contain prose.  Prose is not prohibited from standalone list articles.  (One of the problems with standalone lists is that people mistakenly think that it is, and as a consequence don't add it, and then complain that standalone list articles are just bare uninformative lists.)  Indeed, even this standalone list article as it currently stands contains more than just a bare list of people's names.  Every entry is annotated with detailed information about the walk that the person did.  That was a quite deliberate restructuring on my part. Uncle G (talk) 15:42, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete Unverifiable, and how many of these people would be notable anyway? My guess is very few to none. Ten Pound Hammer  and his otters • (Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP) 04:24, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Notability of the individuals would only matter if they were to have actual biographical articles of their own, which they don't, and which aren't the subject of discussion here anyway. What matters here is verifiability of the list content, and these entries are verifiable.  Uncle G (talk) 04:32, 13 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Rename to Transcontinental walk, rewrite, and keep . Just like we have Transatlantic flight, we could have a transcontinental walk.  It would have sections for different continents and for North America, include people who have walked across the US. A quick search turns up Charles Fletcher Lummis who walked across the US in the 19th century and John Hugh Gillis who was the first person to walk across Canada.  The article could even include the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, a failed attempt to march across Antarctica.  Apparently the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament was a transcontinental march in the US as well.  The Trans-Europe race is a footrace that crosses Europe. I'm sure more can be found and verified.   Linguist At Large  06:57, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep as is per UncleG's comments below.  Linguist At Large  08:26, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge into transcontinental walk. This is a discussion that belongs on that article. Shii (tock) 12:10, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep per very good tidy by Uncle G. Whydontyoucallme dantheman (talk) 15:47, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I had a whole bunch of sources that I was adding when the page had been nominated for deletion and all my work was for nothing! I think this page does have merit, also...someone doubted that Art Garfunkel or George Martin (not Sir George Martin but ex-NFL NEw York Giant George Martin) here are two links: http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/videopage?videoId=3456059&categoryId=3286128 and http://www.artgarfunkel.com/poems/america/quotes.html Not too many people have accomplished this amazing feat and I believe it is worth having an entry about. Thanks (OhioSarah (talk) 00:58, 14 December 2008 (UTC))
 * If you didn't want to make a claim that George Martin walked across the U.S., you should not have added content that linked to that article. (And that's not the only person whose name you just gave as a bare internal link that actually pointed to the wrong place.)  Are you really surprised that a whole load of bare links, sans citations, that didn't even point to the right articles, were challenged for being patently false and removed outright?  Link properly and cite sources in future, and avoid this happening to you again. Uncle G (talk) 15:42, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions.   -- • Gene93k (talk) 07:40, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge to Transcontinental walk per the improvement of the article as noted above. Would definitely fit in great with that article, just as in Transatlantic flight. MuZemike  ( talk ) 16:25, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * As can be seen by comparing what's below the horizontal rule (which was a hint of the usual sort) with what's above, a properly sourced article should not be deleted. And that's all that we have to decide here at AFD.  Merger is properly a matter for the articles' talk pages. However, I note this: transcontinental walk was created by the same editor who said above that this article should be renamed, after xe said it.  Xe didn't actually rename this article as xe opined here should be done.  That article has a wider scope than this one &mdash; naturally, since there is more than one continent in the world.  And this is a quite reasonable summary-style breakout of the transcontinental walk section. Contrary to what has already been said, it seems that quite a lot of people have verifiably walked across the U.S.. (There are still more entries to add to this list even in its current state.)  It seems a shame to merge this into a purportedly global article, resulting in a vast U.S.-versus-the-world imbalance in that article.  Similarly, I suspect that more people have walked across other continents, especially Africa and Australia, than that article currently suggests, and other per-content breakout sub-articles will eventually be needed.  Furthermore, it should be noted that transcontinental walk, which has zero sources, is in only slightly less of a sorry state than this one was when it started.  I'm sure that it can be fixed, though. &#9786; So what we have is the breakout sub-article that we will probably end up having anyway, and a parent article that is currently in poor shape.  I don't think that either deletion or merger is the way to go.  Expansion and writing are what are needed.  Uncle G (talk) 15:42, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment First of all, I'm a he. :) And second of all, I agree with your points.  As far as I'm concerned this AfD is a keep, and discussion of a merger should be continued on the articles' talk pages.  <b style="color:#080;">Linguist</b> At <b style="color:#600;">Large</b> </b> 08:35, 15 December 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.