Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of songs in English labeled the worst ever (5th 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   keep. – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 20:17, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

List of songs in English labeled the worst ever
AfDs for this article: 
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Tagged as synthesis since October 2007, and recentism since January 08 with no attempts to fix. I see no way of making this a useful list, given that we've got sources from a Dave Barry reader poll to VH1 and MTV polls of various qualities. Last AFDs were from 2006 with a lot of WP:USEFULs and WP:ILIKEITs, and were mainly closed as speedy keeps due to their being so close together. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • (Many otters • One bat • One hammer) 19:14, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete per the nom. How did this get kept 5 times?!  Not really NPOV, either.  —  Jake   Wartenberg  20:36, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. Why would it be a "synthesis"? The tag says "unpublished synthesis of published material that conveys ideas not attributable to the original sources" - but the article content and its title ("List of songs in English labeled the worst ever") match what the sources say, namely that such-and-such song is the worst ever. "Recentism"? The polls range from 1977 or so to present day. GregorB (talk) 20:44, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I gave it the synthesis tag. At the time the list was a collection of "most annoying", "Most Depressing", "worst number one record", "Worst Rock and Roll Song of All Time", "worst pop recording", etc. So the list title and concept was difficult to pin down and was a synthesis of various different lists. The tag may no longer be appropriate.  SilkTork  *YES! 09:12, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * This is a good point: the article does spell it out, but is unclear whether "most annoying" can be equated to "worst". GregorB (talk) 09:34, 25 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete This is one of the worst lists I have ever seen on Wikipedia. Drawn Some (talk) 22:23, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete: Can we list this page at List of pages in Wikipedia labeled the worst ever? There's lots of original research. Alexius08 (talk) 22:42, 24 May 2009 (UTC)''


 * Weak Keep As was said before, this is not a list of songs that were the worst ever, which indeed is hardly something we could decide, but a list of songs that were so labelled by notable people or groups. I'm not sure that every one of them is worth including, but some are national polls, or polls of very famous shows. The concept is possible for an article. DGG (talk) 01:43, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep If people didn't care about this shit, magazines wouldn't keep publishing lists of worst songs ever. If a song has earned a dubious achievement that can be traced to a verifiable source, it's a valid topic.  While I can appreciate the humor of "worst list ever", WP:IDONTLIKEIT and WP:ILIKEIT don't go far for a delete or a keep.  The question is whether one would consult an online encyclopedia on the subject, and I think it's fair to say that they would do so. Mandsford (talk) 01:53, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep We have a "List of Films Considered the Worst" so why can't we have this one. True, it needs a lot of cleaning up. And Mandsford, please watch your language. Eurovision 2009 and 2010Sasha SonSakis Rouvas 08:42, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * What? I shouldn't have used the word "valid"?  Mandsford (talk) 13:52, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * No, the word "shit". Eurovision 2009 and 2010Sasha SonSakis Rouvas 15:27, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Well! Please watch your language.  Just because you've seen other people use that word, it does not mean that you have to do so.  There was a time that I would have typed such a vulgarity, but that was more than half a day ago. Mandsford (talk) 16:44, 25 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Lists tend to have a lower notability criteria than articles as we don't have clear guidelines so discussions often do come down to I Like It or I Don't Like It. The guidelines on list content are WP:SALAT, WP:NOTDIRECTORY and Lists. The guidelines are not that helpful. We have to consider the list itself and make our own judgments. The criteria for inclusion on this list is difficult to pin down and has shifted over the years. A Google for worst ever songs comes up with a bunch of songs not on this list. Back in 2006 I spent some time tidying up this list and making it workable. I gave up. I think the basic premise is unworkable.  SilkTork  *YES! 09:29, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete Agree with the nom. I also tried to repair this list when it succeeded one of its 2006 AfDs. We made a lot of improvements, that's for sure, but in the end this list doesn't really work. As SilkTork says, the whole premise is wrong. "... Considered the Worst" means you're bound to end up with an arbitrary bunch of stuff (a "synthesis" if you like) that verges towards failures of WP:NOT, WP:NOTDIRECTORY and (ultimately, because the links to the cited websites are arguably the most useful part of the article!) WP:NOTLINK.
 * I don't think WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is a good reason for keeping this either (and List of films considered the worst in particular has its own issues right now; it seems to consist of a lot of mini-essays and hence WP:NOT/WP:NPOV failures, plus reproductions of iMDb/Rotten Tomatoes/etc. statistics which may be stretching "fair use" a bit - this "Songs" article had a lot of these faults back in 2006).
 * List of U.S. and Canadian box office bombs is a better list article IMO, but I think that's because the selection criteria are quantifiably measurable and fairly stable. Films are not songs either, of course - but it's the stability of the inclusion criteria that make or break these lists. And the current criteria used by this "Songs" article, laden as they are with qualifiers and caveats that tend to broaden the scope to include all kinds of stuff, rather than narrow them down to something specific, are (a) unsatisfactory but (b) probably as good as they will ever get.
 * So, while I feel there are other problems with the article too (e.g. quite a few online user polls of dubious notability in there), I think this article should go not because of its current content issues (current issues which have been constant for 3 years, mind you!), but because I honestly do not believe there can ever be any better content than this under a "Considered the Worst" rubric. It's probably borderline in terms of the letter of the above WP policies, but when I step back and think about it in an "ignore-all-rules" kind of way (and particularly when I sat down and tried to improve the article - something I heartily recommend to anyone who's undecided!), then I think it quickly becomes clear that the article fails the spirit of those policies. IMO, unfixable inclusion criteria = unfixable, and hence deletable, list article. --DaveG12345 (talk) 13:46, 25 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete. What a horrible precedent. If a list like this which is thoroughly unencyclopaedic and cruft-laden (not to say contrived) there is a countless number of non-notable lists we are inviting. Kiwikibble (talk) 15:06, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * On the inverse, with a delete precedent there's a countless number of notable list articles we would be inviting to delete, right? -- OlEnglish (Talk) 22:29, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep per WP:KEEPLISTING. It appears that this page just keeps getting listed in Afd with the hopes that eventually it will get deleted. Eauhomme (talk) 18:47, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment The previous AfD for this article was almost three years ago. --DaveG12345 (talk) 19:10, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment At the time of my above vote, Wikipedia was having technical difficulties that kept me from accessing the previous afd's specifically. Changing to neutral. Thanks for pointing that out. Eauhomme (talk) 00:16, 26 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Weak keep. Indiscriminate but still interesting, and has potential to turn into a quality list as long as each entry is sourced. -- OlEnglish (Talk) 22:23, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment If kept, what criteria for inclusion would we use? I can't think of a logical one. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • (Many otters • One bat • One hammer) 19:05, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Quq. I think that songs listed should be limited to those which have appeared on various subjective internet or magazine polls (for example, VH1's "50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever" and Maxim magazine's "20 Most Annoying Songs Ever!"). Mandsford (talk) 22:37, 26 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep Evidently notable topic. Needs effort not deletion. Colonel Warden (talk) 13:59, 29 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep. While the topic is subjective, the inclusion criteria aren't, and this list is the best sourced I've seen for a while. Fences and windows (talk) 23:07, 29 May 2009 (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.