Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Ashkenazi Jews

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.

Closer's notes
Although if you count heads there's more people wanting deletion, many were "per X"; on the flipside, a number of detailed and policy-based arguments were made by people wanting the article kept, and they weren't adequately addressed in responses throughout this discussion. The argument countering "indiscriminate" - being Wikipedia notability - was not addressed sufficiently by throwing about Wikipedia:Listcruft, and claiming it is unmaintainable.

These two factors mean that, in reading this debate, I find that there is no consensus to delete the article. As GRBerry correctly notes, you are free to renominate this article if no-one fufills the faith shown by people wanting to keep the article ("If no one is going to do these things [a short indication of why each individual is notable (and) a citation to a reliable source indicating that the individual is an Ashkenazi Jew], categorization might be the right end result"), but please give ample time. However, for now, the people expressing opinions for this article to be kept have made a sufficient case that a quality list with references and clear bounds of notability should belong on Wikipedia and falls within our policies and guidelines. Daniel 05:53, 30 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

List of Ashkenazi Jews

This list if completed would amount to a list of approximately 9,000,000 names - making it completely impractical. Should articles really be used to catagorise every person in the world by their religeous background? This could be a catagory but there is really just no need for an article. Wikipedia is not a directory and this articles and many others like it are incomplete (with no real possibility of completion), unneccessary and unencylopaedic. How do you even use an article like this - effectively it is just a giant trivia section so people can go "Oh, I didn't know that (he/she) was..." if people actually want to know the status of particular people they can easily check the individual articles. As I said I realise their are many other articles like this but WP:OTHERSTUFF is not a good arguement for inclusion. Guest9999 14:27, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. For most lists of people, the presumed title includes "notable" -- this is an implied list of notable Ashkenazi Jews, not every Ashkenazi Jew who ever lived. The same goes for lists like List of University of Oxford people or List of people known by initials -- they only categorize already-notable people that meet those criteria. See Wikipedia:Lists (stand-alone lists)#Lists of people. On the other hand, this list does not appear to be cited and therefore does need verification and cleanup. Dylan 15:02, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Categorize & Delete - I'll be glad to do with AWB if the AFD community agrees. /Blaxthos 15:26, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: per nomination. Even if the list only includes notable Ashkenazi Jews, it would still be extremely long and unencyclopedic. This would be more appropriate as a category. — DIEGO ^talk 16:56, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Dylan, as long as the list pertains to 'notables.' -RiverHockey 17:26, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Delete: Wikipedia is not a directory, and this is unmaintainable listcruft. Do we really need every intersection of nationality and religion as its own page? CRGreathouse (t | c) 18:10, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - This is an excellent category. Llajwa 19:27, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and rename to List of Notable Ashkenazi Jews - This is potentially an excellent list which carries far more information than any mere category could hope to do Jcuk 20:39, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Categorize and Delete per Blaxthos. Majoreditor 02:15, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Notable is of course implied. The article is therefore not indiscriminate--and in practice is not, because it includes the ones included in WP as notable, The criteria is clear. In most cases the relevance is absolutely clear from the article, but i suppose some will need to be cited. That the list is long is hardly a reason for deleting it--if anything, it shows the notability. some other lists have been nominated as being short. if people want to establish a WP guideline that only medium sized lists are acceptable, let them propose it. To call something non-encyclopedic is meaningless unless one speecifies why, and , besides the irrelevant reasons I've just summarized, nobody has. DGG (talk) 17:02, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom and for Wikipedia:Listcruft, as well as Overcategorization: non-notable intersections by ethnicity, religion, or sexual preference, Overcategorization: Opinion about a question or issue and Wikipedia is not for things made up one day. Thank you, IZAK 02:09, 23 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Wikipedia:Listcruft is an essay saying that we should only have lists if we first have an article on the encyclopedic topic. Since we have Ashkenazi Jews, that essay either says nothing about this list, or says that we should have the list. Everything after listcruft is totally irrelevant. The first two points are for the guideline on Categories; this is a list, not a category. Even if it was categorized, they wouldn't apply because there is neither an intersection (Ashkenazi Jews is an ethnic group, not an intersection of an ethnic group with a religion) nor is there inclusion based on holding an opinion. Finally is being an Ashkenazi Jew is not something made up in school one day. GRBerry 03:03, 23 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - "Listcruft refers to indiscriminate or trivial lists" -- see first sentence of Wikipedia:Listcruft -- and by all means add the names of a few famous Ashkenazi Jews to the body of the Ashkenazi Jews article, but for heaven's sake, how on Earth will anyone ever create a list of every last notable Ashkenazi Jew without trivializing the entire subject? It would be a very, very long and near-indiscriminate list, and it would be a self-defeating exercise, like trying to list all notable Germans, Frenchmen, Poles and Russians in a combined list of "notables" so that this is not a list or category of significance, it is a classification by rough ethncity, race and vague nationality. It is one thing to have an article about the notion of "Ashkenazi Jews" (just as there are articles about Georgian Jews and Yemenite Jews) but why go further than that? It's more of a concept than anything else, and even among the Jews, it is not used as a means of "listing" or "categorizing" them. Ashkenazi Jews are very much part of Judaism's concepts and history, since they were the ones who did not follow Maimonides' and Joseph Karo's rulings in the Shulkhan Arukh. It gets complicated and it's very abstract, and is certainly no basis for compling lists of such people, many of whom today do not fit the mould strictly. IZAK 07:56, 23 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Judaism-related deletions. IZAK 02:11, 23 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep (Better to keep these things at AFD than by overturning at DRV, as we've been doing lately.) It is unquestionable that the ethnic group Ashkenazi Jews is a notable group. Once that is established, the presumption is that the list of notable members of that group is of encyclopedia value, and should be broken out when it gets long, as is stated in Wikipedia:Listcruft. The list would be in far better shape if two things were added to it, first a short indication of why each individual is notable and second, a citation to a reliable source indicating that the individual is an Ashkenazi Jew. If no one is going to do these things, categorization might be the right end result - but getting there requires first asking people to expand appropriately. Community consensus is that WP:NOT#DIR is intended to cover phonebook style entries, not that we can't have a list of notable members of a group; the nominator misrepresents what the policy says. GRBerry 03:03, 23 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, more suitable as a category, if even that. --MPerel 06:05, 24 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and cleanup a bit. Seems notable. Liveforever22 21:26, 24 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per IZAK. --Shuki 12:29, 26 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete list would be endless and almost impossible to source.Yahel Guhan 00:45, 30 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete This list could be hella long. There is no reason to characterize these individuals by their religious background. Pilotbob 03:44, 30 October 2007 (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.