Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Kolkata facts

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 redirect to Kolkata. The edit history will be preserved so that any useful information can be merged as seen fit. Shereth 21:33, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

List of Kolkata facts

The epitome of a violation of WP:NOT an indiscriminate collection of information. Alternately, merge this to Kolkata and subarticles, and redirect to Kolkata. Calliopejen1 (talk) 04:12, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Merge and redirect. There's a number of useful facts here - "list of X facts" is an really bad way to organize an article, but most of the underlying content looks sound. Incredibly enough, most of it even appears to be decently sourced. Zetawoof_(ζ) 07:56, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to the relevant articles and Delete. Yes, "List of X facts" is a very bad way to collect, organize and retrieve information. This article is an excellent example of an indiscriminate collection of information. Eklipse (talk) 08:29, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Might I point out that "merge and delete" is not a valid option. Under the GFDL license the contribution history must be maintained if the article is going to be integrated into another article. Now for my opinion... I hardly see this collection of information as "indiscriminate". There is plenty of relevant information and organization here, and there is plenty of encyclopedic value in a list of notable people and facts about a major city. Sure some of this information is redundant, but there are plenty of redundant list articles. Such as List of oldest trees which contain a list of all the really old trees, some with their own articles such as Old Tjikko. That doesn't make "list of old trees" redundant just because it states the same information that can be found within "old tjikko", it simply lists the oldest trees in a valuable order and simplifies the task of gathering the information on your own. I see the same value here. Kolkata is a notable place with lots of notable facts which deserve a seperate list. And for full transparency, yes I have worked on this article and the reason it is so well sourced is due to me and User:Aditya Kabir putting some time into fixing this one. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 09:02, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect (and merge whatever is needed) to Kolkata. The premise for this article, collecting miscellaneous facts, without clear criteria beyond geography (surely it is not supposed to be a collection of every fact about Calcutta) is a problem. WP:IINFO might be a relevant policy, but I will be cautious in using it since the facts themselves are in fact quite reasonable and encyclopedic. They are just better presented in the context of the main article. Sjakkalle (Check!) 13:02, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, just delete. Kolkata is an excellent featured article, and dumping a heap of random trivia onto it wouldn't be right. While sourced, most of this stuff is just a mess and only tangentally related to Kolkata anyway ("The Calcutta Club opened its doors to women members in 2007.", "Satyajit Ray was only indian who won Academy Award. He is considered as one of the finest director ever produced.", and so on.) Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 14:36, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep Yet another article facing AfD because it's not been developed to a high standard. Please, this is a collaborative project, and articles are not submitted after meeting all quality standards. If you care about the article, develop it. If you don't have the time or the resources, tag it with {{cleanup}} or something. Deleting articles are detrimental to the growth of Wikipedia, and is not a proposal to be wielded lightly. The current state of the article is not probably the best way to organize an article, but that calls for article development. Getting rid of things that looks like work is not called organization, it's called demolition.
This is a sub-article of the Kolkata article, so the merge proposal doesn't seem valid, especially since the mother article is a quite stable article of featured status. The information is encyclopedic enough to warrant a keep anytime, and it's well sourced as well. What policy stands against this article, apart from a loosely used "indiscriminate information" identification? Since the information is already very much about a number of highlights of the city of Kolkata, even that doesn't apply. It is not a coincidence that the merge opinions holders have already acknowledged the usefulness and encyclopedic nature of the information.
The two pieces of information cherry-picked and presented put of context is even less of a reason for deletion. They are very much part of an attempt at contextualizing the information in the article. Like, if you don't know who Satyajit Ray is, you don't have to click on the link first, rather the article would give you a short brief on the person and his notability. That is very much a Wikiepdia way of doing things, not the other way round. And, if you don't like it still, try copyedit.
I don't care about it or I don't like it are not deletion arguments, they are subjective opinions of a personal kind. I understand that this nomination was made in good faith and those who voiced for delete and merge acted in good faith, but, please, don't demolish the house while it's still being built. I have worked on the article along with ErgoSum to build a house, not to demolish it, and so can you. It's not that difficult. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 04:54, 21 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"I don't care" and "I don't like" were not the arguments for deleting this article. The main problem with this page, and its title, is that it has no scope other than "things related to Kolkata". In which direction would you improve this list if its scope is not even defined? Eklipse (talk) 12:27, 21 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Surely the name and/or scope of this article is not the whole reason behind this debate. When I found this article it was titled "Kolkata trivia" which I then changed to "List of Kolkata facts" in the interest of being "encyclopedic". I think the WP:INDISCRIMINATE policy is being taken a little too far here. I think this can be summed up with "One man's trash is another man's treasure." What some people see as a trash pile of random "trivia", others see as a well-organized list of notable "facts". I would like to point out the main issue here is that most of the information contained in this article is already contained in other articles and simply deleting or merging this article will have accomplished next to nothing. If this information is notable enough to be included within other Kolkata-related articles, then what is the harm in keeping a separate list? List of Monctonians, List of people from Connecticut, and the mother of all lists Lists of Americans are just as "indiscriminate" in their guidelines for inclusion and should rightly be considered "trivial" in nature but seem to be largely favored by the community. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 10:48, 22 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There's a difference between List of people from Connecticut and List of Kolkata facts, though.

First, it is possible to enumerate people from Connecticut, and to determine which people qualify. It's a large set, but one which has well-defined boundaries. A "Kolkata fact" is not something quite so well-defined, though. You cannot look up one of these facts and determine whether it qualifies as a Kolkata fact or not. Hence, the selection of items is purely subjective.
There's also a subtle distinction that you're missing between the partial duplication which exists in most lists and the duplication which exists in this one. Lists are considered important on Wikipedia because they serve as a "value-added" extension of categories - ideally, each item in a list represents some item which is expanded upon elsewhere. Moreover, this duplication only exists because the list is summarizing information from elsewhere. Since all of the notable "Kolkata facts" all belong in Kolkata and related articles, and there's no further expansion to be done on most of these facts, there's no value added by selecting them for appearance here.

Finally, there's simply no value in such a list as this for the reader. Someone who's looking for information on Kolkata will start looking at Kolkata, not List of Kolkata facts. If the exact information they're looking for isn't there, they'll look at a more specific article or a related article - at no point is a "list of facts" a logical location to find information. Which is, in the end, what we're after: organizing information. Zetawoof_(ζ) 19:58, 22 June 2008 (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.