Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of works available under a Creative Commons license


 * 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. Edited to clarify: Nomination rationale suggested the list was not notable because the act of putting a CC license on a work was not itself notable. WP:LISTN, however, doesn't require that, it does require instead that the topic of the list be notable, a subject for which was mostly ignored in the discussion.

Concerns that the list are unmanageable were argued, and were the primary theme of the discussion. This is a matter of editorial judgment, no policy sets out the limits of maintainability, and while "all CC documents" would be so clearly unmaintainable that it was beyond any sort of "grey area", "all CC notable works" is less clear to me, and seems within reasonable editorial discretion. Modifications to the article made during the discussion appeared to have the effect of convincing many editors that the list would be maintainable, including the nominator, and as such, I determined consensus that the list would be manageable.

Lacking other significant arguments in practice or policy for deletion, I determined consensus to be keep.

As a personal aside, I commend the effort to improve the list, roughly per WP:HEY.

Notable, encyclopedic. Concerns that the list was indiscriminate appear to have been resolved to many editor's standards by a full WP:HEY of effort. joe deckertalk to me 00:50, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Comments made before the massive cleanup contributed by Izno

 * – ( View AfD View log  •  Stats )

Putting a Creative Commons license on a site is not notable and a list of such sites is not notable. The article serves no purpose and is a honeypot for linkspam. Woz2 (talk) 22:45, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete as indiscriminate and unmanageable. If kept, however it should be limited to notable entries. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 01:08, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete per Mr. Wolfowitz. Here's the first indication that this is an impossible topic for systematic encyclopedic content: "Several million pages of web content use Creative Commons licenses." Carrite (talk) 01:36, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep/merge This was created as a spinoff from the Creative Commons article. It is clearly helpful to have a good list of examples which show the variety and nature of the material which is made available in this way.  The current version seems fine to me but if it gets unwieldy we could just merge the best examples back into Creative Commons or divide the list further.  This is all a matter of ordinary editing not deletion per our editing policy. Warden (talk) 08:40, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * There's already a manageable, representative list of examples in the Creative Commons article.  We could add a note at the bottom of that list saying "if you want more go to http://search.creativecommons.org/ " and add an HTML comment saying "don't add more." I see no value in the one here and no way to corral it into anything useful.  Woz2 (talk) 11:49, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete use the categories instead. There's already plenty Category:Creative Commons-licensed works, Category:Creative Commons-licensed journals, Category:Creative Commons-licensed websites etc.--Otterathome (talk) 11:59, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Excellent suggestion, Otterathome. If a web site is notable, there is (or will be) an article about it. The category mentioned can be added to such articles. Woz2 (talk) 12:03, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Admin: Procedural question: If the entire article is replaced with a redirect to Category:Creative Commons-licensed works, is that a deletion, or just a really bold edit? Woz2 (talk) 12:10, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
 * That's a WP:XNR, which is a no-no; doubly so for the fact that it's a redirect to a category. --Izno (talk) 14:40, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 18:12, 22 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete. What next? List of books printed on paper? Come on, lets try and get WP articles under control here!! -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:17, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom, Otterathome's suggestion is useful for readers that are interested in learning about more CC creations with Wiki articles.-- Lenticel ( talk ) 01:45, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Comments made after the massive cleanup contributed by Izno

 * Keep per WP:CLN (to address the comments on the existence of categories: see Woz, Otterathome, Lenticel). The comments which mention the indiscriminate nature also point to the solution: discriminate! I'm personally fond of discriminating by notable topics, as is common for many other such lists (Liefting, Wolfowitz, Carrite). It's a trivial solution to the problems suggested with the article, and I think the navigation gains per CLN are salient above the points of deletion (everyone browses in a different manner!). The fact that it is a spinoff is also a consideration. --Izno (talk) 14:40, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
 * And in fact, the list is supposed to be limited to WP:N topics (edit the page; there is a comment which asks for editors not to add articles which are not listed on Wikipedia). --Izno (talk) 14:42, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Wow, Izno. Do you untie Gordian knots too :-) This solution works for me. Woz2 (talk) 15:46, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep The list, of course, is supposed to be not about all those works in the world with CC licenses, but those works notable enough to actually have Wikipedia articles about them. As that is a relatively small number as compared to all the works in the world with such licenses, so will this list be. As we have room for the articles, we have room for the list of articles. Perhaps some day this will be the expected manner of publication, and the works without CC licenses will be such a small minority that it would be better instead to have a list of them, but that will unfortunately be a long time coming. And if  there should unfortunately be a future time  when printing on paper becomes an anomaly, the list of works printed on paper suggested above may also be necessary. At the present, this list is the one needed.  DGG ( talk ) 04:32, 26 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks! BTW, for visual convenience I put headings in for before/after the transformation Woz2 (talk) 11:19, 26 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:00, 28 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep now that it's fixed I originally listed it here because until Izno's contribution I thought it was a hopeless case. It's pretty good now. Woz2 (talk) 00:13, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep, limiting to notable things. This sort of licensing is an encyclopedic topic. –Roscelese (talk &sdot; contribs) 01:24, 28 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment - Utterly random mish-mash accumulation. This is not a topic that can be systematically covered, no useful and functional list is possible. List of things made of plastic limited to only notable plastic things would be a similar case. The "topic" remains so broad than it can't be covered with any level of useful depth. Carrite (talk) 06:47, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep - Now that this list article is limited to notable works, it is a discriminate list that is encyclopedic in nature, and useful to Wikipedia's readers. Northamerica1000(talk) 12:21, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep per WP:HEY. - Jorgath (talk) (contribs) 17:06, 28 April 2012 (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.