Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Title 15 of the United States Code


 * 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. John254 00:40, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Title 15 of the United States Code

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

Wikipedia is not a repository of links. — James Cantor (talk) (formerly, MarionTheLibrarian) 19:47, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

The page is list of links all to the same external page, all linking to the next paragraphs of the law. I originally nominated the article for speedy deletion, noting that the article fits criterion A3 for the speedy deletion of articles ("No content. Any article (other than disambiguation pages and redirects, including soft redirects) consisting only of external links...a very short article may be a valid stub if it has context, in which case it is not eligible for deletion under this criterion"). In my opinion, this page has no such context. It is merely a list of links that repeats verbatim the list of links given by the government's page (which is also given as an external link on the page).

User:Iridecent believed that that reason was not sufficient for speedy deletion, so I have listed the article here. — James Cantor (talk) (formerly, MarionTheLibrarian) 20:00, 9 August 2008 (UTC) — James Cantor (talk) (formerly, MarionTheLibrarian) 20:39, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep, obviously. Every other section of the United States Code, has an identical linkfarm, and for good reason; because it's useful. I thought WP:USEFUL was a lame and misguided personal essay when it was written, and I still think it's a lame and misguided personal essay now; our primary purpose is to be useful. How is cut-and-pasting a great glob of federal legislation into Wikipedia (which would seem the only viable alternative to this article) going to improve the encyclopedia in any way? – iride  scent  20:13, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I thought we were trying to be a useful encyclopedia, though, not a directory, nor a linkfarm. Pasting the laws in here would be equally bad.  --Falcon Darkstar Kirtaran (talk) 23:23, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. A part of an important body of laws. The content is pretty minimal but it's definitely expandable and not completely useless as is. Tombomp (talk/contribs) 20:14, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep, obviously. The earlier attempt at speedy deletion and this current AfD are part of this editor's ongoing pattern of disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point. Most of his edits revolve around POV-pushing attempts to annoy me and others by wikilawyering. This editor is a WP:SPA here to promote his coworkers and their work, and to annoy and discredit their offsite critics (which includes me). This behavior is now apparently leaking over into deleting info from ANY of the 1000 or so articles I started, not just the few about his buddies. Jokestress (talk) 20:28, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It is not immediately apparent how nominating this article for deletion promotes the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health or sexology (as linked above), or even constitutes wikilawyering. Please do not make accusations without explaining fully your justifications and evidence.  Besides, AfD is not a particularly appropriate place to air disputes between users.  --Falcon Darkstar Kirtaran (talk) 23:23, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * As you'll note above, I said this SPA's purpose on Wikipedia has two themes. This appears to be part of the latter theme (attempting to annoy me). See his user page for some typical comments about me, or check out the sorts of edits he has made to my biography. The only reason this user took notice of Title 15 of the United States Code is because it is listed on my user page as an article I started. The disruption and wikilawyering was noted by Iridescent on his talk page. The wikistalking is noted by Dicklyon below. If you have further questions about James Cantor's conduct, let me know. I was trying to give context to why this nomination was made. Regardless of that, the article was created to fill a red link in Template:USCTitles, which has been in place since 2006. The article in question here has well over 100 links in other articles and is well integrated into Wikipedia. It helps contextualize and organize wikipedia articles about acts of Congress that govern commerce. Jokestress (talk) 00:05, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment: apparently just WP:Wikistalking by User:James Cantor of his nemesis User:Jokestress. Dicklyon (talk) 20:32, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment: I would be perfectly happy to clear up my histories with either of these folk with anyone who thinks it might be relevant. No allegations about my motives, however, change whether a list that is a cut-and-paste of someone else's webpage (in this case, the U.S. government) violates WP:NOTLINK.  Should an exception to NOTLINK be made for what a consensus perceives to be a useful list of links, then the next logical step is to update WP:NOTLINK.
 * Keep. This isn't just a list of external links, it's also (and more importantly) a list of Wikipedia articles.  This is a really easy way to see how our articles about U.S. law are organized under the United States Code.  You could have a different list (and maybe we do?) with the articles organized chronologically, or whatever, but this set of pages is important to have.  Not quite a list, not quite a disambiguation page, but who cares?  We need this. Darkspots (talk) 21:17, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete. If nothing can be written about this on its own, perhaps we could create a category of everything in title 15 of the united states code, or of sections of the united states code.  Perhaps an article on the subject is warranted, but this is not even close to what a good start would be.  The external links belong in those articles, not in a list (Wikipedia being not a directory or list of links, useful or otherwise).  I think that if this were to happen with, say, Mexican or Ethiopian law, someone would give more or less this exact argument, and we need to be careful of systemic bias.  I don't think the order in which the wikipedia articles (the only appropriate constituent of this list) is overly important in and of itself, and so a category would be just fine.  Additionally, if this is a list it should be named accordingly.  Finally, there being other such pages is not usually a good reason to keep this particular one unless those were voted to be kept.  --Falcon Darkstar Kirtaran (talk) 23:23, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. — Cliff smith  talk  23:05, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep, write articles for as many of the individual chapters as practical , and do similarly for the rest of USC. That is, if we get enough people do do it all, but there's no reason to remove what we do have. Among the justification of lists is as an organizational device, and this is a simple and straightforward way to do it. To use an available PD list as a starting point is a perfectly sensible way to go about  it. DGG (talk) 02:37, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep--the page (along with the other 49 chapters of the U.S. Code) are certainly notable, and it is entirely possible to write articles about all the Acts of Congress contained therein. Furthermore, I disagree with User:Falcon Kirtaran's opinion that we would delete it if it were a non-English-speaking country.  If it is a part of the law in any jurisdiction, it is worth keeping.  With regards to User:Jokestress's comment above, this may actually be a bad-faith nomination.  --Eastlaw (talk) 04:54, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep, the number of external links is a side effect of using usctc to format the USC citation correctly (a 3 second glance at the source would have indicated this). This article also serves as a navigational guide to the various chapters that cover extremely notable topics (Sherman antitrust, FTC, weather service, NIST, etc., etc.).  This article CLEARLY does not fall under CSD and the nominator's initial rationale of being contentless makes we wonder as to the true motivation of this AFD and extremely hesitant to believe his rationale & to support deletion.  As such, no valid deletion criteria provided.  Cburnett (talk) 04:59, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep, I agree with all of the other "keep" comments above. To delete this one article on the external link claim alone would require deletion of the entire body of USC articles, which would be detrimental to Wikipedia.DCmacnut &lt; &gt; 23:40, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. per all the above reasons and more.—Markles 01:54, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment: By the way (apropos of nothing): if you want to suggest adding content to an article, put stub or expand. If you want to make sure that the article is expanded, add afd.  See how much has changed here: (History since afd proposal)!—Markles 01:54, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. Agree with Darkspots who wrote: This isn't just a list of external links, it's also (and more importantly) a list of Wikipedia articles.  Wikipedia does have articles which are lists - even featured ones.  Perhaps this and its kind can formally be changed into such lists, whatever the criteria are. Deleting it is not the way to go, however. --Hordaland (talk) 18:48, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep Article is a repository of encyclopedic value, and as mentioned above, it is a list of what are essentially other encyclopedia articles. Valuable to project as a whole, both as a starting point for augmentation and as a very good list (which, as was stated earlier, are part of WP). Lazulilasher (talk) 02:05, 12 August 2008 (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.