Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Model engineering clubs of New Zealand

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 delete. Sandstein 06:36, 28 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Model engineering clubs of New Zealand

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Completely unreferenced list of non-notable topics. As always, the primary purpose of most Wikipedia lists is to help people find Wikipedia articles, not to create comprehensive directories of every single thing that exists in the outside world -- so if none of the entries in a list have Wikipedia articles at all, then there's no value in Wikipedia maintaining the list. Bearcat (talk) 15:50, 20 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of New Zealand-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 15:50, 20 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The nomination is mistaken as per WP:LISTPURP, lists are not exclusively indexes of articles; they also provide information and encourage development. The topic in this case is notable per WP:LISTN as such societies are listed in sources such as The New Zealand Railway Observer; Live Steam; and The Railway Enthusiast's Guide to Railway Societies and Clubs, Museums, Preserved Locomotives, Railway books and Periodicals, etc., etc. in over 40 countries. Andrew D. (talk) 16:38, 20 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not mistaken about the purpose of lists. They exist to provide information about notable things that have Wikipedia articles, not just to create indiscriminate directories of everything that exists without regard to notability issues. And whether the class of thing is a notable concept or not is irrelevant — the individual clubs listed here do not have their own standalone Wikipedia articles, and are highly unlikely to qualify for them. Bearcat (talk) 16:54, 20 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Still mistaken. WP:LISTN states that "Because the group or set is notable, the individual items in the list do not need to be independently notable'". Q.E.D. Andrew D. (talk) 17:52, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That refers to closed-ended and finite lists, such as lists of holders of notable political offices, where it's genuinely more important that the list be complete than that it consist exclusively of blue links — however, we also have many other lists where we do limit the entries to topics that already have Wikipedia articles to link to, because the list topic is open-ended and potentially infinite and highly prone to being misused by every self-promoting wannabe who thinks they can add themselves to a Wikipedia list for the extra publicity. A list of mayors of a specific city, for instance, is more valuable if it's complete, so a person who can be verified as having been mayor of that city should be in the list whether they have an article or not — but an open-ended list of writers should be restricted to blue links, because its value would be impaired by permitting an entry for every single person who ever published a poem in their high school yearbook without regard to whether they passed WP:AUTHOR at all. And the lists where we do impose the "article must already exist" restriction actually far outnumber the lists where we don't. LISTN does not mean we just indiscriminately keep every list of non-notable things that anybody could ever possibly want to create; the "any verifiable member of this class of topic can be added here whether it has an article or not" condition only applies to certain specific lists, and not to many others. Bearcat (talk) 22:56, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Bearcat's theories seem to be all his own invention as WP:LISTN doesn't say any of that. I quoted the actual guideline; Bearcat just makes things up. My !vote stands. Andrew D. (talk) 20:38, 25 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't make things up. What I said is a 100 per cent correct summary of Wikipedia's consensus around how lists work: we very frequently do apply a "the article must already exist before an entry may be added" condition to lists, precisely because some lists are highly vulnerable to the addition of non-notable wannabes who are trying to promote themselves by adding themselves to our lists, and our list policies most certainly do distinguish between lists that are allowed to include unlinked entries and lists that are not. Bearcat (talk) 21:55, 25 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete generally we should start with something like model engineering. If there is sufficient information, we might make model engineering club and model engineering in New Zealand. We might even make model engineering clubs in New Zealand. It is only when we either have a large list of notable entries in that last article that this article would be appropriate. I suppose if the entries all had marginal notability we could have a single list to collect the information (like how we make lists of integers that have a single interesting property between 400 and 499). I am fairly certain that WP:LISTN requires the group to be discussed in secondary sources, not just listed together in secondary sources. I cannot find any indication online that model engineering clubs in New Zealand are discussed as a group.Rockphed (talk) 17:25, 20 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per WP:NOTDIR. Almost all entries have no articles implying they are non-notable. Ajf773 (talk) 19:49, 20 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete As frustrated as I am with the "we can't have lists of entries unless those entries merit their own articles" (which essentially makes all lists into lists of links to articles, which is redundant with categories), due to incidents like this and especially this, this list is really pushing it. The following entries are particularly entertaining. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:29, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]


Name	Location	Raised track gauges	Raised track length	Ground level track gauges	Ground level track length	Notes
Experimental and Model Engineers	Hamilton	unknown	unknown	unknown	unknown	Private.
Unknown	Christchurch	n/a	n/a	7.25"	600m	Private.

To be fair, lists are not always automatically redundant with categories. They can (a) be organized on a different basis than the categories (e.g. List of Canadian writers is not duplicating Category:Canadian writers, because the list includes everybody while the category sorts them into many different subcategories rather than directly containing any individual writers itself), and (b) they can include referencing to support inclusion (e.g. our lists of LGBT people require a legitimate reference before a person can be added, due to their past misuse as a form of attack editing against non-LGBT people) and additional contextual information (e.g. the cities of license and brand names of radio stations), which categories cannot do. So they aren't always redundant with categories just because we restrict most lists to notable entries with Wikipedia articles, because the category and the list can present the information in different ways. Bearcat (talk) 16:39, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per everyone above.4meter4 (talk) 01:43, 28 September 2019 (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.