Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Greg

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. Enigma^msg 06:58, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Greg (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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This is a list of random people with "Greg" in their name. If this doesn't fail WP:INDISCRIMINATE it is hard to understand what does. Jytdog (talk) 21:54, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. MT Train^Talk 03:27, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep This page serves as a disambiguant along with all the other given name pages and actually is discriminate: if your name is Greg, you are eligible for the list. SportingFlyer talk 07:23, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • No it is not a disambig page. It would be as goofy to disambig on this as it would be on "the" or some other common word. If anything it is a list, and this fails WP:LISTN by miles. Jytdog (talk) 08:14, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• To get the obligatory “Other stuff exists” argument out of the way... I note that we have similar pages for many other given names (see Andy (given name) and Jenny (given name), just to list two at random). Is the “Greg” page any different? Blueboar (talk) 10:29, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • User:Blueboar I was unaware that we have other such collections in WP. My attention was called to this one, because a now-blocked sock trying like crazy to create and keep Greg J. Marchand came and added that person's name here, I reckon as part of an effort to de-orphan that page. I was cleaning up after them, and when I followed them here and looked at the page, I was astonished to see that this page even existed. What are people thinking?! This is pretty much the definition of "indiscriminate". Jytdog (talk) 16:40, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• If this is listing every blue-linked person with "Greg" as a first name, alongside other uses of "Greg" as a name (surname, fictional characters, etc.) then this seems fine. It is halfway between an encyclopedic page on the origin of the name "Greg" and a disamg page for "Greg" , and makes little sense to split them up. But this presumes that we have captured all blue-linked "Gregs" in the person list. If this is a random sampling, then that's a problem per LISTN. --Masem (t) 13:16, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • User:Masem how would a complete list of "Greg"s pass LISTN? Very interested in what sources you could bring that show that the topic "people with greg in their name" is notable. (and following on Blueboar's comment, that "people with X-first-name in their name" is notable.  :) Jytdog (talk) 16:40, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • If we're not discriminating on which blue-linked "gregs" to include, then its not a list but a disambiguation page. It already has parts that make sense as a disambiguation page, but that cannot omit any "Gregs" (which would then beg if we should have such disambi on first-name pages. --Masem (t) 21:44, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • User:Masem looking at all the history of discussion and the various guidelines, I don't see any page where it says it is legit to list every person with first name X on a page X. Many of them refer to using this thing -- All pages with titles beginning with Greg -- which this page has as the first "See also", to help people find and browse through all pages where a person has first name X. Jytdog (talk) 03:13, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Greg! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:21, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Surely, if the existence of such pages is in question, there should be a general discussion about whether we should have such disambiguation/list/whatever pages about shortened forms of given names rather than pick off one such article at AfD? Having said that I would strongly disagree that 'this is pretty much the definition of "indiscriminate"'. It is in fact pretty much the definition of "discriminate", because it discriminates between people called "Greg" and everyone else, and notability of each individual Greg is a pretty obvious inclusion criterion to use. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 19:05, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • We can look at the bigger issue later. Take this as a test case. What is the basis in any policy or guideline for this page to exist? There isn't one that I can find. It is not a valid disambig page, and it is not a valid list. Jytdog (talk) 19:40, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. WP:NAMELIST indirectly addresses this: "To prevent disambiguation pages from getting too long, articles on people should be listed at the disambiguation page for their first or last name only if they are reasonably well known by it. ... Herb (disambiguation) does not even list any people named "Herb", but instead links to Herb (surname) and Herb (given name), where articles on people named "Herb" are listed." (bolding mine) To me, this means Herbs could legitimately be listed in dab pages, but aren't for a practical reason rather than for some fundamental disqualification. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:11, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• User:Clarityfiend thanks for that... clarity! Greatly appreciated.

My first response is that if we are following that, the only entries here should be:

• Greg (comics), the pseudonym of the Belgian comic book artist Michel Regnier
• Greg the Bunny, a puppet in a Fox sitcom of the same name
• Greg, the secondary main character in Over the Garden Wall

and everything else needs to be deleted. Correct? If folks agree, I will withdraw this.Jytdog (talk) 01:12, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• If there were non-people named Greg, I'd say that would have been possible, but I'm stunned to discover I couldn't find anything, not a village, a book, a film, anything (unlike Gregg, for some bizarre reason), so the given name is the primary topic. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:06, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize for not understanding you. So are you saying keep this and remove all the entries but those three I listed? Delete this whole thing? Leave it as it is? (i hope not the latter...) Something else? Jytdog (talk) 04:17, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• additional note -- that bit with "Herb (given name)" was added to the disambig guideline in this diff at 17:33, 27 September 2014.

I went looking in the archives to see discussion. There is:

• 2005 effort to have a "policy", with a !vote and all. Was not closed but way more "oppose" to the notion of having pages like Michael that are a bunch of people with that name.
• 2007 discussion, not much digging first-name lists, instead proposing people just use Special:PrefixIndex/Robert (all pages starting with "Robert")
• 2007 discussion, short, nothing much there
• 2010 discussion; complete muddle
• another 2010 discussion; longer, complete muddle
• 2011 very short discussion about a template
• 2018 discussion about removing names.

There was a bunch of discussion on the talk page in Sept 2014, now in archive 42 but this Herb (given name) thing was not discussed there.

I feel a lot like people did back in the 2005 pseudo-RFC, who were aghast that we would have pages listing a bunch of random people named Greg. how did we get here?? Jytdog (talk) 01:12, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Given name lists for common names aren't extremely useful, but they are better than a redlink in lieu of a proper article on the name. If there was only one notable person named Greg, "Greg" would redirect to their article. Since there are multiple notable Gregs, then a list of name-holders is acceptable. —Xezbeth (talk) 04:32, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That is just making things up, and has nothing to do with policies or guidelines or what we do here. Jytdog (talk) 07:17, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

MOS:DABNAME and Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy/Standards are "making things up"? —Xezbeth (talk) 07:24, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That's entirely different than what you wrote the first time. Thanks for providing a meaningful rationale.

So Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy/Standards has a section called WP:NNAME that saysA name article usually contains either a list of entries that link to other articles or a wikilink to a list article. If at least two articles matching the surname or given name of the subject of a name article do not exist, then the surname or given name list article would not be notable and should not be created. A properly sourced article about a name may still be notable without a list.. That is probably the lamest N standard that I have read anywhere in WP. It directly contradicts INDISCRIMINATE and invites dumping grounds like this page is currently. What the hell is going on here? Jytdog (talk) 08:11, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. Here's the way I see it. If there were a dab page, all these Gregs (given name and surname) would be 100% legitimate entries. The only reason people are handled a little differently from the run-of-the-mill entities is because there are often a lot of them, so they're usually split off. This case is a bit out of the ordinary, in that there aren't any other types of entries, but that oddity doesn't make them unlistworthy. Clarityfiend (talk) 07:52, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There are a few issues with this one though. There's a lot of Gregs currently listed at Gregory (given name). There are around ~2000 notable Gregs with articles that could/should(?) be listed. There is also some past precedent for deleting lists of extremely common given names such as Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of people named John. I think there are some more recent examples too but I can't recall any off hand. —Xezbeth (talk) 08:25, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Now I remember, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of people named Jacob. The argument for deleting is sound, but the end result is Jacob (name), which is a short, unhelpful article that gets a disproportionate amount of views from people who are almost certainly looking for a name list. —Xezbeth (talk) 08:32, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

So now we have this awkward situation, where lists are kept or deleted based on a seemingly arbitrary and hazy length cutoff. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:07, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per above. Disambiguation pages titled X contain articles commonly referred to as X. People are commonly called by their first name. wumbolo ^^^ 13:32, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep This is a textbook example of a disambiguant that conforms to WP:NAMELIST. --Clean-up-wiki-guy (talk) 22:13, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Valid disambiguation page. Ajf773 (talk) 20:51, 11 May 2018 (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.