Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of ancient Macedonians in epigraphy

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 no consensus. postdlf (talk) 20:56, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

List of ancient Macedonians in epigraphy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Prod removed by serial deprodder without providing a reason. reason for proposed deletion was "What exactly is the point (or the subject notability) of a list of names that appear in texts, where only four of the 100 or thereabouts have their own article, and the remainder seems to be utterly non notable? That we have e.g. a text about the sale of a house is notable for the study of the Macedonians, but that doesn't make the people named in that text notable, not even notable enough to be included in a list." Fram (talk) 09:44, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Macedonia-related deletion discussions. sst✈^discuss 09:59, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak delete - per nom. I feel like there should be notability being these are ancient texts, but I couldn't find any other such list besides people listed in the Bible/Quran etc. —Мандичка^YO 😜 10:29, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep The information seems mainly distilled from Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum and so passes WP:LISTN. The creator of this page also created List of ancient Macedonians and seemed to know what he was doing in structuring the information this way. As the material is quite scholarly in nature and deletion would be disruptive, it seems best to leave well alone, per our editing policy. Andrew D. (talk) 12:09, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strange reasoning. The List of ancient Macedonians lists (mostly) people with an article here, i.e. notable ancient Macedonians. The list up for discussion lists the remainder, i.e. non-notable ancient Macedonians. The fact that the original creator divided them like this indicates that he knows the difference, but can hardly be used as an argument to keep this list. That one can distill a list of names from a library of old texts is normal, and does not meet WP:LISTN which indicates that they must have been the subject of attention as a group, not that each individual item has been mentioned in one or another issue of a scholarly source. "Preserve" says nothing about the arguments you present here, and you give no reason to "leave it well alone". You make claims like "deletion would be disruptive", but don't indicate how or why this would be true. Please refrain from throwing around shortcuts to policies which have no relation with your actual arguments as they give the false impression to the casual reader that you have policy behind you, while in reality you have your opinion on one side and unrelated policy on another. Fram (talk) 12:23, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Such information has been studied as a group in works such as A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names. Volume IV. Macedonia.... The topic therefore passes WP:LISTN, as I said. One might debate the extent to which we should cover this but there's an obvious alternative to deletion, as recommended by our policy WP:PRESERVE, i.e. merger into the List of ancient Macedonians as an epigraphic supplement. All our deletion policies indicate that such alternatives are preferred to outright deletion which is disruptive because it makes the content inaccessible to ordinary editors (it's not actually deleted). There is no good reason to make this information only viewable by admins. My !vote stands. Andrew D. (talk) 13:54, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Lists of terms discussed in lexicographical studies, whether they are names or something else, really isn't what Wikipedia and its lists are for. You have given us a link to a 387 page book which neither you nor I have seen, and claim that this is evidence that it meets LISTN. This is highly dubious (but typical). You don't know if and in what way these names are included, whether they are discussed as a group, whether they basically meet the requirements of LISTN. You are simply guessing. Please don't. And while your semantic discussion of deleted vs. viewable by admin only is noted, I really doubt that any admin feels mighty powerful because they have access to things like this and lowly editors don't. You still don't give a policy- or guideline-based reason to preserve this non-notable content apart from your rather extreme wp:preserve position, which you are well-known to use in nearly all afd debates you participate in no matter how applicable it is.

• I'm just getting warmed up. Here's more about that book:

This is exactly the sort of material we have in this list and so I continue to maintain that it passes WP:LISTN. Fram says that Wikipedia doesn't do this sort of thing but this assertion is belied by the extensive category:Names by culture, which demonstrates that we do have lots of material of this sort. My !vote stands. Andrew D. (talk) 17:18, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Have you actually looked at the articles in that category? They explain the naming conventions of different nations, cultures, ... they don't list names of non-notable persons which by accident survived. The "list of " under discussion does nothing similar to what the articles in that category do. As for your quote from the book and your reasoning to keep the list perLISTN: Wikipedia is not the place to store study material, the "basis for further research", but is the place to store summaries of such research. We are not the starting point of research but the end point of research, and that is where this list and your cote are totally misguided. Fram (talk) 07:39, 4 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, when you provide such a very long quote, please make it more clear that it is a quote and what the source is, to avoid WP:COPYVIO problems. Fram (talk) 07:41, 4 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• The category is the usual tangle of categories, lists and articles which approach the topic at various levels, from general discussion to specific names. For example, we have List of Dacian names, which seems similar to the page in question. And we have many pages about specific names such as my own which mix up general discourse with numerous specific examples. It seems clear from pages such as Ancient Greek personal names that this is an area of significant scholarship. The author of the page in question seemed quite familiar with this field and so it seems sensible to defer to his judgement rather than restricting access to it. My !vote stands. Andrew D. (talk) 13:04, 4 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. This list is useful for anyone interested in Macedonian culture, and names in particular. Individuals don't need to be sufficiently notable to justify individual articles in order to be of value in a list such as this. Indeed, the list is more valuable than a simple list of personal names, simply because it provides context for each of the names, without going into unnecessary detail about each one. P Aculeius (talk) 13:50, 4 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 18:43, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 18:43, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment -- One of the purposes of lists is to identify missing articles, but for most of these people we know nothing but their name. It is a valid list; however my concern is whether it is an encyclopaedic list. Undecided. Peterkingiron (talk) 11:58, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete: for a list to be notable, the relevant policy states that "a list topic is considered notable is if it has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources"; I see no evidence that that is the case. Wikipedia is not simply a list of people unless that set of people is notable. Even if we accept that the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names demonstrates that the set of Greek personal names is notable, I don't see why it should also necessarily demonstrate that the subset of Macedonian names attested in inscriptions is also notable. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 08:33, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names is divided into volumes because of the scale of that project and we divide large topics in a similar way per WP:SPLIT. The volume cited as evidence is number IV Macedonia, Thrace, northern regions of the Black Sea. This seems close enough for our purposes as we're not trying to copy their structure exactly. The general point is that names which occur in classical epigraphy are collected and studied in this way and so it is reasonable for us to have a summary of this work. And when we produce lists, we do not require that each entry is a link to an article. For example, see some featured lists such as List of Alamo defenders, List of numbered roads in Kawartha Lakes, List of National Treasures of Japan (crafts: swords). For other lists of names of people from antiquity, see category:Bible-related lists of people. This contains some nice examples such as List of people in the Hebrew Bible called Shemaiah and the wonderful List of names for the biblical nameless. Andrew D. (talk) 12:58, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak Keep or Rename - So this is a forked, yet notable, list of common Macedonian people who had not achieved notability? Someone should really write a lead that explains what this confusing list is all about. How about renaming, reforking and remaking this into a "List of Ancient Macedonian names" or something like that? Ceosad (talk) 01:09, 15 November 2015 (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.