Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of self-referential songs (3rd 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 of the debate was no consensus to delete, so article kept. Johnleemk | Talk 11:58, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

List of self-referential songs
Subtrivial listcruft! Nominations 1 and 2 were obviously misconceptions of the article's unsalvageability.
 * Delete. This would be just as unsalvageable as List of songs whose title is said in they lyrics, List of songs that describe what their title is about and List of songs that reference culture similar to it since some people may think that an element like that warrants notation denoting self-referential status.  I would think so.  Not to mention, it is unmaintainable. --Nintendude 01:41, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete- how has this survived for 2 years? Listcruft. Reyk 02:31, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Like most lists of songs, this is potentially interesting, and verifiable. Trollderella 02:36, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Weak keep. Maybe someone will write a report for school on self references in popular songs. 24.54.208.177 02:40, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. This is an idiosyncratic non-topic, and WP:NOT lists of unrelated topics. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 02:51, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep This page just survived two very recent votes for deletion. It is inappropriate to list again so soon: nominator is basically saying that it should be listed again because the people in the last two votes did not vote as she/he wanted them to. Turnstep 03:26, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I for one don't consider two months and four months ago to be "very recent", and I don't consider the nominator's reasons for nominating the article a third time grounds for disregarding the content of the article, which is crufty to the max. Bad articles should not escape deletion because of technicalities. Reyk 03:49, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, first, let me express that my 'Keep' also applies to the article itself. It is maintainable, noteworthy, and verifiable. It also has undergone lots of work from many editors. You honestly don't consider two months to be recent? Would you renominate articles that have already survived a AfD every two months? It would be one thing if the (unsigned) nominator presented new evidence, or someone how convinced us that the previous voting process was flawed, but they have done neither. Turnstep 13:58, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * You're right. The anonymous user has not provided any new reasons why the list should be deleted, so I'll have a go at it. Firstly, I don't think Nom 2 should be given any weight at all. The only rationale for keeping the list was that the article had been put up for deletion only a month previously. There has been no discussion of the merits of the article itself since August. If two months is stretching it, three months is surely OK. Secondly, as of now the vote stands at 15-9 in favour of deletion, which indicates that opinion has swung heavily since August. My guess is that my fellow Wikipedians are getting fed up with the proliferation of listcruft in Wikipedia and, in my view, rightly so. There's obviously strong opinions on both sides and I think there needs to be discussion about it. Reyk 02:58, 23 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Delete. Edwardian 03:29, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. mdd4696 04:04, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Weak keep. Someone might find this useful one day. Easily verifiable, too. Jacqui ★ 04:08, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete per nomination. Every song written in first person would end up here.  Jtmichcock 05:12, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Weak delete per above NSLE  ( 讨论 + extra ) 05:55, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Not even that verifiable, as a look at the talk page shows that there is no clear definition of what it means for a song to be self-referential.  —Cleared as filed. 06:05, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep per the first AFD debate. Sjakkalle (Check!)  07:33, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete this is an unsalvageable, pointless list. Self referential seems to be nothing more than use of the perpedicular pronoun (as a certain tv show put it) and that's plain ridiculous. Eusebeus 07:47, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete self-referentiality is too loose and slippery a property. "This is the story of. . ." means about the same thing as "Once upon a time", and neither falls into the same category as "you think this song is about you".  While one could potentially do a survey of the songs falling into the latter group, WP is not the place to do so.  This article is liftcruft at present, and turning it into anything worthwhile would require original research.  Anville 10:02, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete as above -Doc ask? 10:22, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * keep, but rename to List of self-referential song titles. This would be manageable, and a load more interesting.  Robinh 13:00, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * And would also require deleting most of the current content... &mdash; Haeleth Talk
 * Delete this list, if it had a hope of being comprehensive, would still be just as useless, as it would be too long --Halal 13:11, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete poorly-defined and unmaintainable original research. &mdash; Haeleth Talk 14:52, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Yuck! Any list of songs based on a certain property is non-encyclopedic, for it can't ever be complete and such a property is fairly random. Gerrit CUTEDH 16:48, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep per Turnstep. AndyJones 17:13, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Why is this up for the third time?  And is whoever made up the word "listcruft" here?  Anyway, the nearest I can find to a dictionary definition is "unmaintainable, arbitrary and unencyclopaedic lists".  Hardly meets any of these criteria but "lists" IMO.  I could go on, but most of all, it's an interesting list worth preserving. -- Smjg 17:43, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, users should be able to find examples of this interesting phenomenon. Kappa 20:04, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * The problem is that this isn't a phenomenon. It is certainly quite common, and has been since music accompanied by lyrics has existed. --Halal 21:12, 22 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Strong Delete Obvious listcruft with no value.  Millions of songs refer to themselves. Maybe we should have "list of albums that have a song track with the same name."  Complete waste of space.Ryoung122 23:14, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Yet another pointless list. And why are these lists always of SONGS? --Calton | Talk 02:06, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you missed the recent spate of List of  ? :) Turnstep 21:45, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete I can think of no earthly reason to keep this list. D e nni &#9775;  02:18, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. List probably has no utility, but in this case I admire the proto-Hornbys who compiled it. Also hate anon renoms. -- JJay 03:30, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete per all the other sprawling, unmaintainable lists of songs that have bit the dust over the past few months. Andrew Levine 05:03, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep stare decisis. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 08:39, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. I just realized there's an institutional imbalance in the tension between Keepers and Deleters of Wikipedia articles. Someone can renominate an article for deletion over and over again, as long as there's some unspecified minimal delay between nominations, but if one time, the interested parties miss the vote window, the article is deleted and can never be recreated without being speedy-deletion bait. This means that anyone on a crusade to rid WP of controversial articles need only be persistent, and they're likely to win, whereas someone fighting to keep such an article loses forever with one negative vote. This troubles me. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 18:02, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
 * It's not quite that bad. Sometimes deleted articles get recreated when more notable content is available, and are not necessarily speedied, or even deleted at all.  Still, I do think it is somewhat cynical to renominate articles for deletion that have survived multiple prior rounds.  It's a rare case (and not this one by a long shot) where the prior notability of a topic suddenly vanishes. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 18:19, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Maybe it's not that bad in practice, but how would one necessarily know that anyway, given the current size of Wikipedia? Anyway, it doesn't change the principle. I know that if I were an admin here (I am at Wikiquote), I'd feel completely justified SDing such an article — perhaps even obligated to, since I might disagree with the original deletion and feel it necessary to SD per policy to ensure neutral policy practice. (Of course, WP is vastly larger than WQ, so perhaps admins don't feel similarly compelled here.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:03, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Your observations make two mistakes. 1) they assume votes are partisan between two camps - they are not, many of us vote on merits not preconceptions. 2) if we are talking of 'institutional imbalance' then remember that the 70% threshhold for deletion (30% to keep) would be a greater conterbalance. --Doc ask? 19:15, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Doc, I'm sorry but I cannot follow your reasoning here, at all. (1) votes are "partisan" if you describe those parties as "those who vote delete on the merits" and "those who vote keep on the merits". Besides, I cannot see in what way JeffQ's argument relies on the "mistake" that votes are partisan. (2) Comparing the 30:70-thing with JeffQ's don't-keep-renominating-thing is comparing apples with fishwives. Surely it's obvious that your chances of getting a 70% vote on one occasion increase in proportion to the number of times you put the matter to the vote. For what it is worth, my view is that:
 * Broadly, editors should respect a keep consensus at AfD and not renominate articles they do not like in the hope of a more sympathetic crowd at AfD on the next occasion;
 * Wikipedians should be far more careful than usual in voting to delete pages like this one which are long-established and have attracted a lot of editors.
 * Just my 2p worth. AndyJones 13:48, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
 * There is no clear way to separate "partisan" from "non-partisan", as anyone following politics can readily observe. Most passionate arguments stem from basic ideas that have some merit within a society; otherwise one or the other side would feel too uncomfortable to speak up. Many people who claim non-partisanship do so because they refuse to accept the other side as rational. Sometimes this is true, but usually it is emphatic rhetoric to demean opponents. Consider how dismissive and even mean some of the current votes here are ("obviously misconceptions", "stupidly unmaintainable", ridiculing with "ridiculous") and compare them to Wikiquette guidelines. (And what the heck is a "proto-Hornby"? I don't know whether the list editors should be flattered or insulted by this. It would have been nice if JJay had taken advantage of the medium and added a link to whatever was meant by this! :-) As for AndyJones's idea about respecting keep consensi, I agree in general but acknowledge that we should be able to renominate articles after some reasonable time, because situations and the mood of the community can change over time. But rapid-fire renomination is an abuse of the process. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 18:30, 26 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Delete - stupidly unmaintainable. --Cel e stianpower hablamé 21:08, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep useful list, verifiable and mantainable.  Grue   12:15, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete per my Delete vote in the other nomination --Jaranda(watz sup) 19:30, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete Izehar 16:38, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep per two previous AfDs. Interesting, verifiable, and maintainable. Owen&times; &#9742;  16:40, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep: I think this may be useful; it's certainly interesting; No less notable than a list of songs whose title includes a phone number. Probably guidelines on inclusion should be made explicit (the self in self-referential means the song's self, not the singer's) --대조 | Talk 17:55, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete the kind of useless information that is just wasting space. Croat Canuck 04:40, 28 November 2005 (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.