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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of zombie novels

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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. The article is going in the right direction at the moment. Keep it this way. Tone 10:40, 13 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

List of zombie novels

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List of zombie novels (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)
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Pretty much an unsourced list of non-notable books and authors. This would be similar to creating List of albums and listing all of the bands which fail WP:BAND. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 05:13, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Novels and comic books are not valid items for a Further reading section, so merging wouldn't make sense. DreamGuy (talk) 17:48, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Or, in other words, you violated WP:CANVASS by going to articles of people you thought would support your side and by avoiding any place that would likely have people disagree with you. Yet another example of you trying to game the system. DreamGuy (talk) 17:52, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No, he did not... and your accusation is in no way supported by guideline or policy. He did nothing sneaky. He did not try to encourage others to support his point of view. he was neutral in the extreme. He simply posted notices in a very few places where this discussion might receive input from knowledgable editors. Editors coming here becasue of the notice are just as likely to agree with you as with anyone else. If the messages told others in how they should comment, you'd have reason to cry foul. But this is not the case. I read WP:CANVAS several times to be sure... his message was quite specifically Limited AND Neutral AND Nonpartisan AND Open. It most definitely was not Mass posting OR Biased OR Partisan OR Secret..... so nope, he did not violate CANVAS. Wrong queue. MichaelQSchmidt (talk) 00:28, 8 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
He simply posted on articles where people more concerned with trivia about a specific topic than encyclopedic standards gather. the Wikiproject would be resonable, specific novel articles clearly are not. DreamGuy (talk) 16:01, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have no intention of trying to fix this article, in which case the only fix would be to remove every single entry that isn't linked, and then try to find reasons why every single linked novel and author would be considered notable. Despite WP:BEFORE, which I find specious, I have no intention of doing such a thing. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 19:37, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    It appeared as if you had no intention of fixing this article, in violation of WP:BEFORE, now your own words confirm it. There is a good reason why there is Google links above each afd, it is for research. I have begun doing what you refused to do before this AFD, find valid references and collaborate with editors. Whether you accept WP:BEFORE or WP:PRESERVE doesn't change that they are both guidelines, which you ignored. Ikip (talk) 03:12, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Yeah, and guidelines are not policies, and when they say dumb things, or when people twist what they say to try to wikilawyer their own side, they should be ignored. If your main argument is this, then you do not have a valid Keep argument, just some tangent you want to focus on to game the system. DreamGuy (talk) 17:46, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete or prune. I think the issue is more that most of these books will never have articles - it looks like there's a lot of self-published self-promotion in there, making the notable works much harder to find. Wikipedia "list of..." articles should be lists of links to existing articles; we should see what we have left after we've tried wikilinking everything. --McGeddon (talk) 09:08, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Surely this is what cats are for?--Cameron Scott (talk) 09:19, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please see WP:CLS which explains, "each method of organizing information has its own advantages and disadvantages, and is applied for the most part independently of the other". In other words, categories are not superior to lists and do not supersede them. Colonel Warden (talk) 10:44, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
But since the article is just a spam trap and the use of categories would prevent this (because you'd need an article to add the category for), I consider this the optimal form for this information. --Cameron Scott (talk) 14:15, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"Spam trap" I think we need a definition here: Spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. I am still scratching my head, a list of published books is not spam by any sense of the word. 01:44, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Note to closing nominator I have begun to remove all of the books which do not have sources, [1] something that the nominator never did, per WP:BEFORE and WP:PRESERVE. Ikip (talk) 09:32, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • ...of course the nominator never did this: if he thinks an article or list should be deleted, why should he be cleaning it up first? Before nominating, one has to check if the article has potential and can be turned into an acceptable article: if one is convinced that this is not the case, it can be nominated for deletion (or merging, redirecting, ...). There is no requirement, no expectation, and absolutely no logic in editing an article when one has decided that it should be deleted anyway. On the contrary, I have seen nominators blamed for removing entries from a list before putting it up for deletion. Fram (talk) 07:10, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Fram, good to see you again, I notice how you always zero in on my particular AfD arguments, and I am touched.
Believe it or not, there are quite a few options in our wikipedia tool belt other then deletion, many editors here have talked about merging and redirecting, which could have amicably been discussed on the talk page first.
  1. Per WP:BEFORE: Consider making the page a useful redirect or proposing it be merged rather than deleted. Neither of these actions requires an AfD.
  2. Read the article's talk page...If there is no discussion then start one, outlining your concerns. Then watch for responses from interested editors.
  3. When nominating an article for deletion due to sourcing or notability concerns, make a good-faith attempt to confirm that such sources aren't likely to exist.
  4. ...Unless it is obviously a hopeless case, consider sharing your reservations with the article creator or notifying an associated wikiproject, mentioning your concerns on the article's discussion page, and/or adding a "cleanup" template, instead of bringing the article to AfD. If the article can be fixed through normal editing, then it is not a good candidate for AfD.
This is just BEFORE, we can discuss WP:PRESERVE later it you like.
The nominator has said that, "I have no intention of trying to fix this article" above, it seems like there is no effort to discuss any option except delete. WP:BEFORE and WP:PRESERVE both policies, are not there to be ignored. They are there to help editors avoid the controversy and drama of AfDs. Ikip (talk) 20:33, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't always zero in on your particular AFD arguments, only when they are patently ridiculous (like twice in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Triangel) or when you canvass an AfD first (like you did for this one at Wikipedia talk:Article Rescue Squadron#List of zombie novels, where the message was definitely not neutral but praising the article) and then make another bizarre reasoning. I don't reply in all AfD's you are around, and don't reply exclusively to you (even in this AfD). As for your arguments: if a nominator is convinced (rightly or wrongly) that there are no alternatives and deletion is the only option, it would be quite stupid to first spend time editing the article only to nominate it then anyway. And there is no "drama" in AfD if you don't want it to be there, there is only drama when people don't discuss rationally and with solid arguments. IF AfD regulars make poor arguments (giving extremely irrelevant but high Google numbers, like you did, or offering essays time and time again as if they are rock solid policy, like one of your colleagues does in many AfD's, or stating that "growth is the purpose of Wikipedia", like yet another ARS colleague of yours does in this AfD), then I may comment on that as I see fit. Fram (talk) 07:34, 8 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
And since when is WP:BEFORE a policy? As you can see on Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion#Upgrade WP:BEFORE to a guideline?, a discussion you participated in, there is even serious opposition against making it a guideline... Fram (talk) 07:34, 8 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That's a pointless argument, and certainly not a valid reason to vote Keep on an AFD. BEFORE and PRESERVE are being used as clubs by anti-deletionists with absolutely no understanding of how Wikipedia is supposed to work. DreamGuy (talk) 17:41, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete or prune drastically Most of these books aren't notable, and those that are can probably be merged into the Zombie article. AniMatedraw 14:22, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • WeakStrong Delete I was a weak keep, but Cameron Scott has a good point. I'm convinced this could be done with a category. At the very least the article should only contain notable books, and books by notable authors (the second might be hard with categories?). I've made a proposal on the article talk for criteria. If that proves fruitful I might switch, but I really don't see a need for the article, and per the nom it jut looks like a way of getting material that fails our criteria into the project. I feel this damages the project. Verbal chat 14:27, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • In addition to my concerns above, per WP:LIST as noted by Who then was a gentleman? below each entry in the list requires an article, therefore considering Zombies in popular culture already exists, the work of this article can be done by a category and that article. Despite attempting to improve the article then, I change my opinion to a very strong delete. Verbal chat 18:05, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • Verbal stated: "WP:LISTS says that entries in a list must meet the same requirements as if they were individual articles." No one is arguing that, this is why I removed a good portion of the talk page. But your repeated statement: "each entry in the list requires an article" has absolutely no basis in current wikipedia rules. Where is this policy Verbal? Where? You told me to look at RS last time I ask, where in RS? If you don't come up with an answer, your argument should be ignored by the closing admin. Ikip (talk) 20:24, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete It works as a category, but as a list its too inclusive, as too many books in this list are nonnotable by any of our criteria. Films are usually more notable as they have bigger budgets, and are rarely vanity releases. lists of books on more unusual subjects that are not likely to be the subject of anthologies, star trek like series w/o notability, fancruft, etc, would be interesting. if we allow this, where do we stop? eventually, if you had a list for every theme in every book, you would have every book ever published referenced thousands of times throughout WP. and, of course, what is a zombie? the voudon legend, any animated corpse? if its not magically animated, its alive, not dead. brief mention of zombies? the criteria for inclusion are actually nonrational to me.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 18:47, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong keep. I'd like to point out that the nominator has stated on this page that he is not here to build an encyclopedia. The article should be saved and improved. Irbisgreif (talk) 21:02, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Of course that's not what I said. But I did go to the village pump and asked opinions there prior to coming here, so it's not like this nomination came out of the blue. And you yourself have not explained why you think the article should be kept, so, of course, your "vote" will be ignored. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 21:42, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • My ¬vote was influenced primarialy by Ikip and Colonel, and my comment, directed at you, by Ret.Prof. Since you insist I rehash their arguments they are as follows:
      1. Sources are easily available and the article can be improved
      2. Categories and lists are not mutually exclusive, and the list assists users in navigation, benefiting the encyclopædia.
      3. You stated you did not try and improve this article and would not do so in the future, this kind of attitude harms the encyclopædia. You are not here to build an encyclopædia if you wilfully disregard policies and guidelines. If you think a page is bad, you must make some effort to improve it. (Pages meeting CSD naturally excepted.) Irbisgreif (talk) 04:17, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am finding Ikip and Colonel's arguments above most persuasive and to add my own thoughts as well, the article passes Wikipedia:Lists as it is discriminate, encyclopedic, maintainable, navigational, notable, unoriginal, and verifiable. Sincerely, --A NobodyMy talk 01:48, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Article needs to be more then just a simple list, but that does not mean it needs to be deleted. The article Vampire literature is a good example of what this article should look like, with the list only being a minor part. So maybe it should be renamed Zombie literature. That being said I firmly believe that lists should be limited to items that have their own articles and not become dumping grounds for items that are not notable enough for their own articles. Zombie Hunter Smurf (talk) 04:24, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep It strikes me that the nominator's concerns are being addressed, the article IS being 'pruned' and improved even while it is being discussed here, and multiples of multiple sources exist that show notability. Per WP:POTENTIAL the article serves to improve the project by remaining and continuing to be improved. Growth is the purpose of Wikipedia... and not its bane. MichaelQSchmidt (talk) 05:18, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Umm, no, growth is not the purpose of Wikipedia, nor its bane. Being a good, easily accessible encyclopedia is the purpose of Wikipedia, and being good includes both the creation and exapnsion of articles, and the deletion or shortening of others. Fram (talk) 07:13, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • Then let us agree to disagree. Wikipedia is far far from being completed... and please forgive me Fram, as no slight is intended... but editors acting like all we need to do now is clean up what is already here runs contrary to what I believe Wikipedia is all about or why it was started less than a decade ago. To me it does indeed seem that growth is its purpose, and too often I see that growth treated as if it were an infectious disease. Wikipedia needs a contatant supply of new articles and a steady stream of new editors... willing to (often) put aside matters in the real world to concentrate on what goews on in these imaginary pages. I know that WP:WIP is only an essay... but its a damn fine one. Certainly, being a good, easily accessible encyclopeida is a fine goal... but its not the only goal and there's no need for editors to think or react as if we have no room for more. So yes... growth has been, and should be, the continued goal. So far over 3 million articles and over 17 million pages. I hope we'll be having this same discussion when it's 10 million articles and 40 million pages. WP:PAPER? MichaelQSchmidt (talk) 07:51, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • Growth is a goal, obviously, or I wouldn't be creating new pages. Growth is not the purpose of Wikipedia though. Not deleting a page because Wikipedia should grow is completely wrong, just like deleting a page because Wikiepdia is too large is besides the point as well. Pages should be kept or deleted because they are maintainable, clearly defined, verifiable, about notable subjects, neutral (subject itself, contents can be corrected), ... Introducing the argument that articles should be kept because growth is the purpose is fine if you want to be the largest website in the world, but not if you want to be the largest good encyclopedia in the world. Fram (talk) 08:21, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note to closing nominator the article has gone through vast improvement since nomination.[2] with at least 8 references being added, and the article being "pruned". Nullifying the nominator's original argument: "unsourced list of non-notable books and authors" in which he admitted candidly, "I have no intention of trying to fix this article" Ikip (talk) 12:57, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Candidly, he shouldn't have to have any intention of improving the article if he thinks it should be deleted. Pointless arguments like that have no business being argued here. DreamGuy (talk) 17:41, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Also candidly and with respects, yes... if a nominator is of an opinion that something does not belong in these pages, it is unlikley that they will bother to improve the article or give consideration to WP:BEFORE or WP:ATD. Those that think they should do so will bump heads with those that think they should not. Guideline should be rewritten to remove any such responsibility from those who nominate articles for deletion. Why should guideline instruct something that they are not being expected to do? I have so far myself 'saved' over 150 articles from deletion that would not have been at AfD if ATD and BEFORE were followed... and yes, there are rare exceptions. But again... why have guidelines that are impossible to enforce, not expected to be enforced, and only cause dissention. MichaelQSchmidt (talk) 20:05, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Wikipedia list articles aid in navigation, there plenty of blue links in it. Not every notable book has its own Wikipedia article of course. As long as it has reasonably high sales figures, attachment to a notable series(books based on a video games), or otherwise establishes notability through common sense, its fine to have on a list. Dream Focus 14:57, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep due to active improvements; I'd like to see where they can go further. In any event, the article now contains about a dozen references, and non=notable is too subjective of a term to count toward deletion. Good job getting the ball rolling! Sincerely, --A NobodyMy talk 15:07, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as fundamentally opposed to what an encyclopedia is for -- we are WP:NOT for indiscriminate collections of information. Much of the content isn't even novels. It's just a random collection of trivia and used as a place for people to promote nonnotable books. People who want this kind of information should go to Wikia or a fanlisting site instead of here. DreamGuy (talk) 17:41, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
And as a follow up, we ALREADY have the article Zombies in popular culture, which covers the notable works of fiction. All the split off articles should be redirected to the main topic. DreamGuy (talk) 17:56, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This doesn't include many of the books in this list. In case you didn't notice, there is a further tag under the Zombies_in_popular_culture#The_modern_zombie_in_print_and_literature section. This is an expanded section. Ikip (talk) 20:13, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The existence of a "further tag" is not a valid reason to keep the article. I know you and some others weighing in here vote Keep on every AFD that comes up and have a basic problem with encyclopedic standards, but I wish you'd give it a rest and go find a more appropriate web site to spend your time on. DreamGuy (talk) 15:57, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: WP:LISTS says that entries in a list must meet the same requirements as if they were individual articles. If you can't prove that an unlinked name or title is notable, then it should not be in the list. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 17:53, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Then all the spinouts should be merged completely back into the main article, where they have context, no matter how huge and unwieldy the main article becomes. The current article has several various sections where a few paragraphs mention a few books or films. The article can support lots more without having spinouts. If it makes the article difficult to navigate for those with dial-up or slow connections.... so be it. Let them upgrade. MichaelQSchmidt (talk) 20:11, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't understand your reasoning here, but to say "so be it let them upgrade" certainly doesn't seem to have the best interests of the encyclopedia's readers at heart. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 21:07, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes... you caught me in an attempt at irony. The whole reason guideline allows spinouts that rely on the notability of the parent article is because when articles get too large, it places an undue burden on users who do not have high-speed internet access. Heck... I remember a few times when my own server was down and I had to rely on dialup... sheesh... took many minutes to open even a moderate sized article. So when an editor performs a guideline suggested spinout and then it gets nominated for deletion.... and then others opine that all the article's spinouts should be deleted and set as redirects... I see that loss of easy accessibility to the information and the (unintentional) disregard for the work of others to be a grave dis-service to the encyclopedia's readers, as it's about them.... and not us. So if THAT dis-service is condoned, we may as well put the information back where it came from and let the overly large and cumbersome article be the dis-service instead (more irony)... as at least it keeps the information someone might have been hoping to find. Truely, as I opined above, I believe keeping and improving the article using the many, many available reliable sources, improves the project to the benefit of all. If absolutely required, all an editor need do is go to the articles of the various novels listed, and bring sources in for them from those other articles. Now it seems like an awful lot of unneccessary make-work... but it could be done and the list have its notability sourced. But somehow this has yet to be mentioned in this lengthy discussion. Is it trees for the forest or is it forest for the trees? MichaelQSchmidt (talk) 00:17, 8 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note the advantage to the reader of a list over just having a category in this case: a list of books can contain redlinks and be sorted by criteria such as date, author surname and title in a way that a category can't be. So there is a prima facie case for having a list, possibly in addition to a category. I don't wish to comment in depth about the validity of the particular items in this list, or how tightly "zombie novel" can be defined, but the suggestion of expanding this into an article on zombie literature in general seems sensible. TheGrappler (talk) 01:02, 9 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per Colonel Warden. Kuralyov (talk) 20:41, 9 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete better as a cat & hence an unnecessary list that is simply a magnet for bad content. Eusebeus (talk) 21:31, 9 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Per WP:SALAT, this is much too broad of a list topic to develop an encyclopedic article about the list of zombie novels. The topic of zombie novels as a genre is notable, but the topic of the list of zombie novels is not and, as with most never-ending lists, constitutes an indiscriminate collection of information. This is a case where a category is all we need and a list creates problems. ThemFromSpace 23:51, 9 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This narrow interpretation of WP:SALAT would delete these Wikipedia:Featured_lists. Broad? Please. This is a small subgenere of horror novels, which has only existed since Night of the Living Dead in the late 1960's, and has only bloomed in the past 5 years. There are very few books, and now that the grand majority of the non-sourced books have been removed, there is less than 30 novels, about 10 of these can be removed also. Per User:TheGrappler, "a list of books can contain redlinks and be sorted by criteria such as date, author surname and title in a way that a category can't be" you can't see the year of the book, you can't see the footnotes of the book with a simply category. Ikip (talk) 01:21, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I meant broad not as in the topic of zombie novels, which is well defined and notable. I meant broad as in a list of all zombie novels ever written. Writing about zombie novels is one thing, writing about every zombie novel is another. We can't pretend to create lists of all things that exist; the idea is laughable and the result is usually embarrassing. A category works superbly as it identifies every article we have on a particular topic, including those too broad and too narrow for encyclopedic articles to be developed. ThemFromSpace 01:34, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Talk:List_of_zombie_novels#Removed_to_talk These have been removed from the talk page since the AfD. Only articles with blue links and references are in the article now. Less than 30 books. Ikip (talk) 01:39, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per Colonel Warden, too. I immediately thought that there had to be a slew of books that are about the history of Zombie literature (this article that should exist as well). Zombies are an important, expansive topic, and a list of the novels that have dealt with the subject is an excellent aid for anyone reading up on Zombies. Varks Spira (talk) 02:30, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep A list should be about a topic that has existing coverage, have a clear scope, its entries based on independent reliable sources, and some form of encyclopedic content beyond the list itself. While some of the entries lack sources, it otherwise passes all of these criteria. I suggest tagging the unreferenced entries and removing them if citations are not found in a reasonable time. Chillum 03:22, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Didn't look at the old version, but it's going in the right direction now. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 01:50, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, but cull every book that deservingly doesn't have an article. \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 00:24, 13 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and, for the books that don't have articles, check first if they are well known enough to have them . Redlinks in a list like this can be used to indicate missing articles (of course, some of them will undoubtedly not be appropriate, & should be deleted). A list with material limited to that in articles on notable Wikipedia subjects is not indiscriminate, but discriminating, according to WP:N. This is not too broad in scope, and fits very well within the list guidelines. Categories and lists are complementary, and there is no reason not to have both. Lists have the particular advantage of providing some information about the material in which they appear, thus facilitating identification and browsing. Browsing is a key function of an encyclopedia. As a general rule, for topics like this, if there is a category, there should be a list. DGG ( talk ) 05:59, 13 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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.
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