Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Barack Obama (disambiguation)

I'd like to say that some of the voters should find a better outlet for their personal vendettas than AfD. I really hate seeing grudges, and I'm sure they're not helping Wikipedia. --Raijinili (talk) 12:56, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Problem with title, rationale for keeping
The current title seems to be List of topics related to Barack Obama, and at least one person has switched their !vote to keep on the basis of a supposed precedent set by Category:Topical indexes; however, I have been unable to find any examples of a topical index that specifies a living person. This could be because I suck at doing searches for things, but it occurred to me that this may be because there might be some policy I am not aware of that prohibits a "List of topics related to An Individual" that I am not aware of. I can't even find any for non-living persons. Anyone have any ideas? -- Scjessey (talk) 21:37, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It's because topical outlines are only tenable for subjects for which there are a great many articles, and Obama is one of the only living people with enough articles to make such an endeavour worthwhile. For more info, you might want to ask User:The Transhumanist, who if I am correct is the driving force behind the initiative. Regards, Skomorokh  21:41, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Like I said, I have not been able to find any others. None for living or non-living people. Not even for incredibly famous people with lots of articles, like Albert Einstein, Adolf Hitler, Abraham Lincoln, etc. -- Scjessey (talk) 21:52, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I didn't so much switch my "!vote" because of the change of title but because of what the change of title reminded me of - namely that we have hundreds of similar pages (regardless of their titles). As I said, personally I am not a supporter of these pages and think a more elegant situation should be investigated - but that's not within the remit of this AfD. There may well be a specific argument that we should not have a topical index based around an individual but it has not been presented in the course of this discussion. The AfD has been focussed around the idea that this type of article goes against policy and is redundant to other navigational devices - a position I would generally agree with - but the presence and acceptance of the articles in Category:Topical indexes shows that perhaps - policy being descriptive, not prescriptive - a wider discussion of the issue is needed. Guest9999 (talk) 21:57, 21 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I doubt very much if any of those figures have anywhere near the number of articles Obama has. Skomorokh  22:07, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Which is entirely beside the point. Is Obama the first individual to warrant their own "List of topics related to..." article? If that is the case, then this particular article is setting a precedent, and thus we may need to expand the scope of this discussion beyond a simple AfD. I do not see that the number of articles related to Obama has any significance to whether he not he deserves his very own topic, particularly when there are already categories and templates to consider. -- Scjessey (talk) 22:23, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * There's little need to be so formal about precedents – this is a wiki. The point is that when a given topic accrues a large number of articles, it becomes navigationally useful to arrange a topical index. This is clear in this case, for example, by the fact that the number of Obama articles have outstripped the capacity of the Barack Obama template. If all the relevant articles could be accommodated in a template, one could argue that there would be no need for an index. However, indexes serve slightly different functions, and can be more nuanced and useful to the reader even if containing the same links as a navigation template. For an illustration of this, compare Outline of anarchism with Anarchism; it would be difficult to argue that the former is redundant to the latter, or that this Obama page could not be similarly structured. Skomorokh  22:33, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * But anarchism is a widely-scoped topic. A person is not normally regarded as such. If the number of articles has exceeded the capacity of the template, then rather than this being an indication of the use of a topic article, it is an indication that there are too many articles in the topic - perhaps because so many that have been included are only tangentially-related to Obama. Anyway, it is clear you disagree. I seek other opinions also. -- Scjessey (talk) 22:49, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I would say that if there are too many articles on Obama, they ought to be deleted/merged, which would bring the number within comfortable scope of a single template, and that as this has not occurred, a topical index is currently merited. But I don't have strong feelings on the issue one way or the other. Skomorokh  22:57, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * What about moving topical indexes into portal space, it makes sense that if there are enough articles to have a topical index there should be enough articles to justify a portal and the point of portals is to aid navigation within a topic. Having them in portal space would also allow for the index to be free from some of the restrictions normally associated with mainspace and would clear up any conflicts between current policy and current practise. They could still easily be linked from the bottom of each relevant page. Guest9999 (talk) 02:36, 23 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I count 281 articles in Category:Barack Obama (including subcategories, not excluding duplicates, excluding images), versus 89 by the same count in Category:Albert Einstein.
 * I don't understand why you're so worried about the controversy articles. It's not like people are going to be convinced that the conspiracies are well-founded by seeing those articles, and if they would be, that's either a problem with the reader or with the conspiracy article's neutrality. Linking to other pages which are directly related to Obama (and you can't say a conspiracy theory about him isn't directly related to him) doesn't fail neutrality. What's the deal?
 * Anyway, the List brings up a very important issue: organization. There simply needs to be more categories dividing up the Barack Obama category.
 * And why the heck is Tim Wu considered a Barack Obama article? Jeremiah Wright being in there is where your coatrack concerns should be focused on. Guilt by association? Look no further than Tony Rezko's categorization. --Raijinili (talk) 01:06, 25 April 2009 (UTC)