Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Listed buildings in Liverpool


 * 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 and Cleanup. Cbrown1023 21:53, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Listed buildings in Liverpool

 * - (View AfD) (View log)

This article could qualify as listcruft. There are over 2,500 listed buildings in Liverpool, and the same list exists here. This article lacks severely lacks organization, listed in alphabetical order only. Similar articles should not be mere lists which have duplicates, but only include certain more notable buildings. A good example of this is Listed buildings in Birmingham. While WP:NOT a paper encyclopedia, WP:NOT an indiscriminate collection of information either. A relevant discussion is this AfD debate. -  SpL o T  (*C*+u+g) 16:13, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Weak keep but only with a rewrite. If we already accept Listed buildings in Birmingham as a guide, then the same could be done to the Liverpool article.  The Rambling Man 16:22, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep and send to cleanup. It isn't indiscriminate, it is a list of buildings (check) that are listed (check) in a specific location (check). It could be replaced by a category, but lists are recognized as being useful in conjunction with or in replacement of categories because they can include annotations and redlinks. --Dhartung | Talk 20:30, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep per Dhartung. --Davidbober 20:34, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete Wikipedia is WP:NOT a directory or a database dump site. Not every building that is listed deserves an article. There are 500,000 listed buildings in England (just one part of the UK) alone. My family home in London is a Grade II (the lowest grade) listed building. There is nothing special about our (extensively modernized/remodelled) home (my father went and researched this in order to value the property, which dates from the 18th century) except some "period" architectural features on the house's front and top (the house is not recognizable as a "old" house and there is no special history attached). ~94% of England's listed buildings are Grade II. The higher grades - Grade II* (4% of buildings) and Grade I (2% of buildings) - are conferred on buildings with some kind of enhanced or exceptional interest and are eligible for grants towards preservation (Grade II are not eligible). Grade I buildings are likely to be worthy of articles. Grade II* buildings - maybe. Anyway, applying these average England percentages, 94% of the buildings on the Liverpool list - which has just been dumped from a database - will be quite unremarkable in encyclopedic terms. I have nothing against a recreation of the article along the more sensible lines of the Birmingham version,   but the current content is not viable Bwithh 21:17, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep per The Rambling Man. Needs to be cleaned-up into a table to make reading easier. Keith D 21:27, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep per all above Jcuk 01:46, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per Bwithh, can anyone address his points? There are hundreds of thousands of such buildings throughout the UK, and this precedent would open the gates for lists of similar buildings in every city of every country in the world which would literally translate into millions of buildings.  This is unnecessary minutiae which amounts to a directory which violates WP:NOT.  --The Way 08:39, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep, cleanup. Bwithh is correct, the current list is too much information, but this is an argument to cleanup, not delete. I would suggest restricting the list to Grades I and II*, plus those Grade II buildings that are notable for other reasons. Eludium-q36 18:17, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * No, it's an argument for deletion; the criteria for inclusion on the list is simply too wide, it is unmaintainable. At the very least, if we restricted the list to the first two grades we would need to rename the article as the contents would then disagree with the title.  I still believe that even that would violate WP:NOT a directory.  Can someone elaborate as to how this does not violate this policy? --The Way 18:28, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * While I am currently neutral in this debate, I am having trouble understanding how this list meets the definition of a directory, which, according to the OED, is a list of people and businesses in a certain area with their addresses or a list of people in a particular trade, profession or occupation. This is a list of places of interest, which is a list, not a directory. And lists are perfectly acceptable on Wikipedia. -- Necrothesp 19:14, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It may not list the owner's of each building, but if you look at the article you'll see it lists the addresses of all of them. Virtually none of the thousands of addresses listed are linked to articles and never will be as they appear to be addresses of houses and other small buildings.  They are accompanied, apparently, by the date of their creation.  There entire list consists solely of addresses and the date they were built; no context is provided, not notability is established.  There probably is copywrite issues because someone most likely ripped this list wholesale from somewhere else.  Sure, lists can be fine on Wikipedia but they should provide context, notability and should be easily maintainable; lists that have well over two thousand entries consisting primarily of items that will never have their own articles are almost, if ever, acceptable. --The Way 19:23, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * However, it is not a directory, and therefore does not meet the criteria on NOT! Of course it lists their addresses, since buildings tend to be known by their addresses! That doesn't make it a directory. Since I'm not for or against this article, my only concern is that policies and guidelines are not incorrectly cited. -- Necrothesp 19:42, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It is a directory, at least as far as WP:NOT is concerned. A list of addresses or names or a combination thereof constitutes a directory.  Furthermore, you haven't addressed the fact that 99% of these buildings are non-notable and will never have articles, that the article itself provides no context, that the information is unencyclopedic and can be found elsewhere more appropriately and that it likely is a copyright violation.  --The Way 20:19, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Really? Where in WP:NOT does it say that this is a directory? It doesn't appear to meet the criteria for any of the three categories listed there. It is not a list of "loosely associated topics" since it focuses on a single narrowly defined topic. It is not a genealogical entry or a phonebook entry. It is not a directory (as already established according to the pre-eminent dictionary of the English language), TV/radio guide or resource for conducting business. Unless there is a hidden category which I am unable to see, it is not therefore a directory in Wikipedia terms. Furthermore, maybe you should read both my previous posts where I said I was not trying to address anything other than your incorrect citing of a policy and note that I have not said "keep" anywhere. My concern is simply that people are getting rather too fond of citing policies and guidelines which they claim back up their arguments but which in fact do not. -- Necrothesp 20:47, 15 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment: I agree with Necrothesp that this article cannot quite fall under WP:NOT. However, it also does not fulfill WP:LIST, which is only a guideline, but states the purposes of lists. The first is information, which is not relevant, as the information in the article can be found in external links. The second is navigation, for which this article can be replaced by a category. The third is development, and since a vast majority of the locations listed on the article do not yet fulfill WP:N, a category can do the same job. -  SpL o T  (*C*+u+g) 09:35, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
 * If we take the example quoted of Listed buildings in Birmingham then there is information given such as date and architect that are not readily available in external links. If this list is converted to something like that one then it would provide information.
 * Replacing by categories is not very good as only those entries with an article would appear in the category list.
 * Keith D 10:21, 16 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Is there even a need for every listed building to be listed down in this manner on Wikipedia, when alternatives exist? Unfortunately, this article is in a far worse state than Listed buildings in Birmingham, and in its present state, is unsuitable for Wikipedia. -  SpL o T  (*C*+u+g) 10:31, 16 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep and cleanup per The Rambling Man and Necrothesp. I'd suggest listing just the Grade I and Grade II* listed buildings, as well as the most notable ones in Grade II.  The Birmingham article would also be a more effective template than the Liverpool list, which is rather difficult to read or use.  I don't have any objection to having lists of Listed Buildings (in the same way we have lists of buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States), but a common format would be easier to use.  --Elkman - (Elkspeak) 23:03, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Now that I checked a little more closely, Listed buildings in Merseyside already contains a section for Liverpool, but in a more concise format. And, apparently, every building within a particular district is listed separately, as in Port Sunlight which has 900 listed buildings.  In contrast, United States NRHP properties often group buildings together if they're in a single district or if they're submitted as part of a historic district.  Often, they're part of a Multiple Property Submission.  With that in mind, I'm thinking more that any relevant information should be merged to Listed buildings in Merseyside, and the rest of the article should be deleted.  --Elkman - (Elkspeak) 23:15, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep and cleanup per Rambling Man, Dhartung (and indeed the delete arguments by the nom and Bwithh can be resolved by cleanup). Clearly an enyclopedia topic, readily verifiable, and we all agree on the cleanup needed. I'd prefer to see Liverpool kept separate from Merseyside, but Elkman's merge argument is worth considering, after cleanup. Angus McLellan (Talk) 00:07, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * delete per bwithh. Most of the plain old Grade II buildings are completely non-notable, and a great big list of non-notable things is worthless. Leave it as a redirect to Listed buildings in Merseyside, which is a good article. Squiddy | (squirt ink?)  12:09, 19 January 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.