Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of songs whose title includes personal names (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 NO CONSENSUS, at this time. The key reason for deleting these articles is essentially that they represent nothing more than a happenstance of intersection; hardly something an encyclopedia need worry itself over. The key reason for keeping is weaker: that this particular happenstance of intersection has some utility to a user of an encyclopedia (ie that it is encyclopedic). In my opinion, the basis in policy of the deletion case is firmer, but clearly there is no settled opinion on this particular article. I observe with academic interest the distinct shift in opinion since the previous AfD. -Splash - tk 22:47, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

List of songs whose title includes personal names

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

This list, and its subpages, survived a 2005 AFD under what appear to be less strenuous requirements than currently exist. Lacking any context or justification, I do not see how lists of song by words in title, especially envisioned this broadly, are anything other than indiscriminate or trivial collections of information.

Despite my general opposition to mass-listing, this nomination, by necessity, includes the 26 associated subpages:

Regards, Serpent&#39;s Choice 06:00, 20 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete all. There's absolutely no point in classifying songs in this way; if absolutely necessary a category would do fine. Sandstein 06:39, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete all. These lists serve no purpose.  Risker 06:55, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Expansion of my comment: Lists in general, and these lists specifically, ignore the way that a typical reader will search Wikipedia. In this case, readers might look for "Songs about (Favourite Name Here)," but are extremely unlikely to look for "Songs about people whose names start with (Favourite Letter of the Alphabet Here). There might be something favourable to be said about keeping a list of songs using a particular name, but I cannot see any benefit to the reader or knowledge seeker in having a list of songs that start with a particular letter. I will also note that many of the songs listed contain a word in their title that is sometimes used as a person's name (e.g., Rose, Candy) but the song is not about a person at all. Risker 03:15, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep I couldn't disagree more with the above. These lists provide an entertaining look at music across time, across genres, with the unifying theme of proper names in their titles. There are  clearly definable  criteria for inclusion.  There's no ambiguity as to whether a song should be in or out - a criticism that some other lists have recently beaten back - and no reason has been given for their deletion other than that these editors see no reason to have them.  But other editors presumably do - the dozens of editors who have contributed to these lists over a period of time.  And the people who happen upon them and peruse them - maybe to find songs with their own name, or their child's name - bringing some pleasure to people.  Also useful for writers' research.  Do we suddenly have a space issue?  One of the great joys about this online encyclopedia is its potential for having vast numbers of articles, lists, categories, essays that the millions of people who pass through our pages can enjoy.  So why remove this?  Tvoz | talk 07:10, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep The lists serve no purpose unless someone actually wants to find out about songs about 'David' or 'Sara' in which case they serve that purpose admirably. The criteria for inclusion is clear, the songs are sourced and it's already been kept after an AfD discussion. Many of the objections to it on the first AfD asserted that the lists were 'unmaintainable', but as they've clearly been maintained and expanded since then this objection would seem null. Nick mallory 08:01, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong delete all - Wikipedia is not a repository of loosely-associated topics. The songs on the list have nothing in common beyond a songwriter's happening to have used a name beginning with a particular letter of the alphabet. This does not tell us anything about the songs, the songwriters, the names, people with the names or music across time or genre. Otto4711 12:43, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * In that case, open your eyes: the are links to 98% of the artists, and 5% of the song has their own wiki. Besides people will always be looking for stuff related to their own- or beloved one's names, this is an important aspect to keep in mind. --Patrick1982 21:11, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * People look for a lot of things related to their names. They look at directories, at baby name lists, at discussions of name meanings and origins.  But Wikipedia isn't any of those things.  And this list isn't even about the names; it is about other people who have used names as an often-trivial mention in the titles of songs that are themselves often not notable.  Put another way, how is this any different from a hypothetical (and nearly certain to be deleted) List of roads named after people, sorted by the embedded, bold-text names, with each entry linked to the city the road is in (since individual roads rarely have articles)?  Serpent&#39;s Choice 03:00, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * You surely have some point there, but there is a great difference between a name in a song and a road; music has an greater overall impact (worldwide) than some sign in a local street of example. --193.67.80.4 11:01, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep - I was actually thinking that it would be a delete from me on the basis of the topic name, but I can certainly imagine many situations where users would turn to WP looking to find exactly this kind of information. It is also a perfect match of technology function as WP is the first encyclopeadia that can cope with changing this list as soon as a relevant new song is released. Agnetha1234 15:42, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * That's hardly a valid reason. Ten Pound Hammer  • (((Broken clamshells • Otter chirps))) 16:10, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong delete all. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Ten Pound Hammer  • (((Broken clamshells • Otter chirps))) 16:10, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment What item in that wiki link is relevant to this discussion please? I'm really not seeing it. Tvoz | talk 19:10, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm. The best I could think of would be "Long and sprawling lists of statistics may be confusing to readers and reduce the readibility and neatness of our articles". Ten Pound Hammer  • ((([Special:Contributions/TenPoundHammer 21:41, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, but it isn't that at all - I think that wiki link is not a appropriate one to cite in this. I don't see how this list violates any principle set out there, nor is it indiscriminate. So why bring it into this conversation? Tvoz | talk 22:00, 21 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete all per above. Arbustoo 17:28, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep no trivial value for names? you gotta be kidding... --Patrick1982 21:06, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * No, it is trivial -- it's not encyclopaedic. Ten Pound Hammer  • (((Broken clamshells • Otter chirps))) 23:58, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep A very well prepared list. But OK to nom in mass, because in this case they all stand or fall together.DGG 23:29, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete I strongly agree to delete. It's nothing but a meaninless list of names. Someone mentioned that some songs have proper articles about them, in that case they would come up in a search anyway. I just find it as pointless as an article about "Names beginning with the letter x in the phonebook"....... Sweboi 14:13, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Well, that assumes that one knows the name of the song to begin with. And many of the songs' artists have wiki articles but not the songs themselves, obviously, so searching does no good. For example there are over 80 songs listed with the name "Mary" but only 6 or 7 come up on the Mary dab page, and a wiki search on "Mary" yields over 100,000 hits so that's not a practical way to find this information. The list is of course not claiming to be complete, but it is an ongoing project like all good wikipedia entries, and is a compilation in one place that is a useful resource for anyone interested in seeing an array of songs for a particular name.  It actually is nothing like a list of names beginning with x in the phonebook - nor is it like a list of songs that contain the word "the" in them.  This is neither meaningless nor indiscriminate, and no one has explained why it so offends their sensibilities to have it here.  It represents a great deal of work by a lot of editors who do find it valuable- so who  is to say that their efforts are meaningless?  Tvoz | talk 14:55, 21 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete just an aggregation of things by name, not much different than List of songs whose title begins and ends with a vowel in aggregating unlikes together. Carlossuarez46 18:45, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment You really see no difference? Your hypothetical example is a totally meaningless random accident of spelling - this list's entries are thematically connected and not at all random. Tvoz | talk 18:48, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but the contents of the list are not thematically related. A title is not a theme. The songs with the same name in the title as each other aren't thematically related. Some of them aren't even about people of that name, for instance, a number of the songs listed with the name "Angel" are about actual angels, not people named Angel. Otto4711 14:17, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
 * If that's the case, those errant entries should be removed, absolutely. But that's not a reason to delete the entire list.  I'm sure it could use some editing - like everything.  The items in the list are thematically linked in that they are not "all songs that start with A" or something like that - the theme that links them are the names in  the titles - linking  "Take a Letter Maria"  with "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria"  is the food of popular culture research - a well-established academic field in fact - and this list and other simlar ones on Wikipedia elevate us from a bunch of kids having fun, as some see us (would that I were still a kid)  to a proper research tool.  No one has given any good reason for deletion - these songs have a relationship to one another that scholars of popular culture find worthy of writing articles and books about. Britannica doesn't touch it - we do. Tvoz | talk 19:11, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
 * There is no thematic relationship between "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria," a song from a Broadway musical based on a true story sung by a group of nuns in a convent dealing with an unruly novice, and "Take a Letter, Maria," a pop song sung by a man telling his secretary to take his dictation of a letter to the wife who is divorcing him. The claim that these two songs, written decades apart, sharing nothing of theme, genre or style beyond the presence of the word "Maria" in the title, is ludicrous. If the song were "Take a Letter, Conchita" or "Take a Letter, Evita" or (changing just one letter) "Take a Letter, Marina," what do the songs then have in common? And assuming for a second that the two songs do have something in common thematically because they have the same name in the title, the list is not "List of songs with the name Maria in the title." There is no thematic relationship between "Take a Letter, Maria" for the list of M names and for instance "Maynard's Tool" or "Hello Mabel" or "The Day I Met Marie" or "Live from Matt Malloy's Pub" or any of the other dozens or hundreds of M songs from the list. Otto4711 23:59, 25 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Strong delete all This is getting close to the extreme end of list making. Pointless non-notable trivia. Adrian   M. H.  21:24, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete all. Wikipedia articles are not lists of loosely associated topics: the only thing that these songs have in common is that they just happen to include any name in the title, out of thousands of possible different names. Delete for all the valid reasons that other similar lists were deleted, ie; Articles for deletion/List of English songs whose title includes the name of a landmark, Articles for deletion/List of songs with the word "song" in their title or lyrics, Articles for deletion/List of English songs whose title includes the name of a fictional place, Articles for deletion/List of songs whose title includes a phone number (3rd nomination), Articles for deletion/List of songs that are also the name of a TV show, Articles for deletion/List of songs whose title includes dates and times, etc. Masaruemoto 03:51, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep Unlike the lists mentioned above, this has clearly definable barriers to entry. It serves a useful purpose-- everyone likes songs with their name.  Many people have contributed to the lists over time, which shows an interest.  I agree with Tvoz.--Gloriamarie 17:42, 22 May 2007 (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.