Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Methodist churches in Leicester

2nd nomination notification and clear link to review
This a second nomination. Template satisfies that and gives contributors a view to the history and invites informed participationDjflem (talk) 08:18, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
 * It’s not the right template here, as evidenced by it literally saying This project page was nominated for deletion. The article was nominated for deletion, not this AfD page itself. That’s why I added the links manually. — MarkH21talk 08:25, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Until such time as the correct template is added, let this one suffice.Djflem (talk) 08:27, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
 * No, because it’s inappropriate here. The wording of the template here is just false; its wording is inappropriately about deletions of the AfD page and what to do when considering nominating the AfD page itself for deletion. Plus, the links immediately below the nomination suffice. — MarkH21talk 08:33, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

further lists to AFD after this AFD is closed: top-down vs. bottom-up
In this AFD it was asserted, incorrectly or misleadingly in my opinion, that numerous church lists like this one, asserted to be of form "List of X in Y" exist and are okay/good in Wikipedia, with pointer to Category:Lists of churches. The members of that category, however, are almost all proper/okay in my view, as being what I would call "top-down" constructed, vs. only a few of "bottom-up" construction like this Leicester list. In my view all the other bottom-up ones are too narrow and are inappropriate/bad, and should be merged up.

There are in fact good world-wide top-down-type list-systems, several of which I started, for List of Baptist churches, List of Methodist churches and similar, indexed in navigational template Template:Lists of religious worship places. Some of these have been split when development of one area has expanded greatly, e.g. and List of Methodist churches in the United States and some others covered in navigational template Template:Lists of religious worship places in the United States. It is also okay in my view for any country's subsection to be split out.

However, in my view it is not okay for there to be extremely narrow lists, which come from a "bottom-up-type" perspective where an editor is asserting, in effect, that a narrow geographic area can have a list-article of churches of whichever denomination or of any specific denomination. As if they believe that every one of many thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of narrow topics get a free pass and can be assumed to be Wikipedia-notable. That is not so. Instead, we need to exercise editorial judgment/discretion that we want top-down construction only. This way, we rely only upon the self-evident notability of world-wide broad topics like "Baptist churches" or "Methodist churches", for which surely reliable sourcing exists, and wp:GNG and wp:LISTN are met. It is then okay to split out any too-large subsection, as being part of the main list which is notable. It is not okay IMHO to assume that topics like "churches in my local neighborhood" or "Baptist churches in my local neighborhood" are Wikipedia-notable. Usually reliable sourcing for the narrow topic being a thing will not exist at all. In a few local areas such as Leicester perhaps there are marginal sources which can be construed to be establishing that a narrow topic like "Baptist churches in Leicester" is a real thing, despite it clearly not being a distinctive thing, i.e. despite no evidence that Baptist churches in this local area are special or in any way different than Baptist churches in any other small area. Setting aside dispute about whether the local sources are sufficient to establish the local thing-i-ness, it seems to me obviously better for us just not to entertain those. We can, should, and generally do choose to exercise editorial discretion to develop by top-down approach only. If there randomly happens to exist some excessively detailed sourcing about churches in one narrow area like Leicester (known to be generally same as churches anywhere else in England), than those sources should only be considered for use in discussion at the "churches in England" level, where detailed info about Leicester can be used as an illustrative/typical example. I concede that if Baptist churches in one local area really were really different and special in comparative sense, and this was established by reliable sources, then yes we could allow that one local list-article.

But that is not the case for several list-articles which I spot within the category. So after this AFD concludes I suggest we move our attention on to up-merging anything useful out of (or deleting) these too:
 * any surviving other Leicester ones
 * List of churches in Harvard, Illinois
 * Christianity in Omaha, Nebraska
 * Parishes of the Eparchy of Holy Family of London for Ukrainians
 * List of churches in Taungoo

There are a few sensible modifications to be made for a few others:
 * List of Indian Shaker Church buildings in Washington should probably be broadened to be List of Indian Shaker church buildings, to cover other examples in the American northwest more broadly.

There are others which might appear at first as too-local, such as List of churches in the London Borough of Barnet, but that turns out to be split out of List of churches in London. While I personally question how much coverage about churches in London should exist, this does seem to be from a top-down approach. To fight bloat in this area, the way to proceed is to make a proposal for discussion probably at Talk:List of churches in London about what should be the standard for list-item-notability of that list-system. Obviously churches that are individually notable (have a separate Wikipedia article) should be kept, and some allowance for relatively important others should be made, where there is support about their importance in footnoted sources. However not every church in London should be listed, else the list becomes merely a directory and non-encyclopedic.

Comments, suggestions would be welcomed. --Doncram (talk) 23:34, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
 * This AfD is not about other articles. It is about one. There are better areas to discuss this. Jerod Lycett (talk) 02:00, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
 * It's a Talk page. Yes this is sort of a draft for an essay, perhaps, but I am trying it out here. --Doncram (talk) 04:32, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Fully agree on all of these examples. Articles for deletion/List of Association of Baptist Churches in Ireland churches (3rd nomination) just closed as well, which I nom'ed after that silly OSE point. Was just a bare list of names, also nominating the only two bluelinks that were not notable. Reywas92Talk 20:40, 7 February 2020 (UTC)