Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of people widely considered eccentric/2005 September
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WP:NOT Section 1.7.2: No lists or repositories of loosely associated topics, part of "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information" excludes this list. It even says that the people listed have no meaningful association with each other, as it expressly states that eccentricity is defined relative to a person's social environment and as such they're all being judged eccentric by different standards - which means they really have nothing in common. Added to which it arguably meets the "idiosyncratic non-topic" criterion in the deletion policy and, I believe, has no encyclopedic value, and I think it's clear that this entry should be deleted. The Literate Engineer 02:36, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
- Keep. This is the article's third VfD/AfD; the first was in June 2003, and the second was in December 2004. (Back then, it was called "List of notable eccentrics".) What I said in the second deletion debate still applies: even though there isn't an absolutely precise definition of "eccentricity" that satisfies everyone, that doesn't mean we can't write an accurate, NPOV article about historical figures who have often been perceived as "eccentric". Yes, eccentricity is a vague concept that's open to wide interpretation, but so are terrorism and love. Should we delete those articles? In response to the assertion that this article violates WP:NOT, it does only if we adhere to the absolute letter of the law. An example of a "list or repository of loosely associated topics" would be, say, "List of interesting facts". sɪzlæk [ +t, +c, +m ] 03:52, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
- Comment The comparison to terrorism and love is a false one, I think. If this were the article eccentricity (behavior) I'd agree with you, but it's not: it's a list of people. And without a precise definition of what links those people, the list is what I call pointless. No, we shouldn't delete terrorism, but we should delete List of people accused of performing terrorism, and we shouldn't delete love but we should delete List of people who love. It's not about whether or not we can write the article, it's about whether or not we should even try, and in this case, I think we shouldn't. And I don't think it's instruction creep or a matter of adhering just to the letter of the policy, either. I think the spirit of that section of WP:NOT is that lists should not be made unless there is a compelling reason to make it (something stricter than the actual wording), and I don't see a compelling reason to have this list. The Literate Engineer 04:08, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
- Keep. Triple jeopardy. Andrew pmk | Talk 03:53, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
- Delete as per nom. DES (talk) 04:18, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
- Coment. Is there any reason this couldn't be merged, somehow, with category:notable eccentrics? Cnwb 04:24, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
- Keep. I never saw this article before but I think it is very interesting. The list is organized by subgroups and tells you a little about who each person is. The category would not be very good at the former (you would have to create–and then individually open–sub-catergories rather than see the people on one page) and does not allow the latter at all. -- DS1953 04:41, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
- Keep. Quite interesting. Penelope D 05:14, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
- Delete. No universal standard for eccentricity. --80.222.74.5 06:43, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
- Keep. I suggest that this article meets the criterion for keeping an article listed in the VfD guidelines: "The ideas have become newsworthy: they have been repeatedly and independently reported in newspapers or news stories". My reading is that this article only needs to meet one criterion for being kept to qualify as encyclopaedic. Maybe what we need is a concerted effort to cite some references to validate the assertion made by including someone on this list, not deletion? Hugh Mason 07:18, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
- Keep no indication that it meets deletion criteria. Trollderella 07:50, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
- Delete. Andy Mabbett 09:58, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
- Delete as unencycolpedic. -- Kjkolb 11:19, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
- Keep, interesting and notable subject. jamesgibbon 11:32, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
- Delete No lists or repositories of loosely associated topics --tranquileye 11:40:44, 2005-08-29 (UTC)