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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. Based on my reading of the discussion, it does not seem to be clear whether the topic meets the Wikipedia:Notability#Stand-alone lists guideline or the Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists#Appropriate topics for lists inclusion criteria. These guidelines are fairly open-ended as noted by hike395's argument; unlike most other notability guidelines which either demand some standard of sourcing (e.g WP:GNG) or some standard trait of the topic (e.g WP:NPOL) these ones appear to be more a case-by-case decision making. And it does not seem like the delete case is overwhelmingly more compelling than the keep case, hence "no consensus". Also, a bit of a nitpick, but WP:NLIST is actually about biographies; WP:LISTN is about lists.

Beyond the notability point, it seems like much of the discussion is whether Wikipedia:Set index articles should be allowed when a disambiguation page already exists and the list topic is primarily about a name similarity. Again, it seems like there are compelling arguments on either side (the arbitrariness of the inclusion criterium on the delete camp; the potential usefulness in lieu of having articles on each item and the existence and AFDs closed as keep on the keep side) without one overwhelmingly more convincing.

Some people have suggested that this is a problem with the guidelines about lists rather than this specific list and have proposed a discussion on them. A merge discussion with the dab page might also be a good idea. But as far as the scope of an AFD discussion is concerned, this is a "no consensus". Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:04, 9 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

List of lakes named McArthur

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List of lakes named McArthur (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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There is no coherence, or reader interest, in articles about unrelated lakes that happen to have "McArthur" or "MacArthurs" in their names. Does not meet criteria for a standalone list, because there are no sources, there is no interest in the set of lakes named with a partial text string match, but all for completely different reasons, so randomly having extremely vague similarity. What is needed for readers, only, in Wikipedia, is a disambiguation page, which already exists, which is McArthur Lake (disambiguation). Note, this topic comes up because several of the past participating editors including myself are discussing criteria for articles about lakes at ongoing AFD, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lac Terant. Doncram (talk) 05:45, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note, in the past, in the process of developing some editor(s) understanding about how Wikipedia works, and editing and/or moving articles during ongoing AFDs which somewhat confounded reasonable discussion and so on, i think, there were Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/McArthur Lake, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/McArthur Lake, Ontario, and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/McArthur Lake (2nd nomination). At this point, I hope (knock on wood) that some editors now understand more about how Wikipedia works. Basically, we don't want separate articles about obscure lakes having no information besides their location and little more available about them. If necessary, we can disambiguate between different, similarly named articles. There is no reasoning supporting having a standalone list-article duplicative to a disambiguation page and of no interest to any readers, not supported by any sources discussing the topic of the set of lakes which have similar names. Especially if all the members are named for completely different persons. This is NOT like a set-index article for ships named U.S.S. Constellation or whatever, where there is coherence and relatedness in the naming, in that the U.S. Navy re-employs a name for a new ship in honor of a past ship which has been retired or destroyed. These lakes are completely unrelated. --Doncram (talk) 05:53, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 07:50, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging editors who expressed view in two prior previous debates @DGG, Yngvadottir, Station1, Shhhnotsoloud, and Squeamish Ossifrage: any views on this? Aymatth2 (talk) 13:00, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wait a sec! Did you just selectively ping the editors who you guess will agree with you? What about User:Milowent, User:Spartaz, User:power~enwiki, User:Clarityfiend,
  • Strong keep. This list is an example of what are known as Wikipedia:Set index articles, a list of lakes with the same or similar name, some of which have articles and some of which do not. Other examples are List of peaks named Signal, which describes a set of mountain peaks, and List of ships of the United States Navy named Enterprise, which describes a set of ships. It is a list rather than a disambiguation page. The difference is:
    • The disambiguation page McArthur Lake lists all pages with names like "McArthur Lake", including lakes and other types of thing, giving minimal information but linking to the pages. It does not include anything that does not have an article
    • The set index List of lakes named McArthur gives a list of similar things (lakes) with names like "McArthur Lake", giving information about each entry whether or not the entry qualifies for a full article on its own. It provides a way of giving information about minor lakes that do not qualify for full articles, but where readers may be trying to find out about the lake.
Since this is such a classic example of a set index, I advise User:Doncram to take up the broader issue of whether all such articles should be deleted at the guideline level, Wikipedia talk:Set index articles, rather try to pick off the set index articles one by one. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:00, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
NO, I absolutely do not agree to fix everything else in the world before addressing this. We have here editors who have thought deeply about lakes and the need to draw connections between them or not. And at the ongoing AFD about Lac Terant I am hopeful about how there is some new understanding being created between lakes editors, including yourself.
It is a tangent to go off about all other list-articles. However the directions about set index articles are clear that the criteria for standalone lists must be met. There must be some coherence, some relationship between items, some coverage out there about the topic and/or some interest among readers about the topic. About lakes sharing a text-string in their naming, however, there exist no sources covering them as a set; there is no usefulness in linking from one article to another one.
Nonetheless, I do sympathize a bit to editors having confusion, because it is my understanding that the relatedness of things has been a battleground for more than a decade, if not for the entire life of Wikipedia. My understanding or not of the past history doesn't really matter, but honestly i understand that the concept of "set index articles" was invented to create a truce between incredibly persistent, bureaucratic editors bent on enforcing disambiguation page rules (which oddly disallow footnotes and annotation-type substantial information about items) vs. wp:SHIPS editors who wanted to maintain lists of ships named Constitution or whatever, which do in fact have some relatedness, and where there is clearly a need for a disambiguating function to be performed, which can in fact be performed by the "set index articles" then created. The SHIPS editors were allowed to include sensible annotations and other information in their "set index articles" and the disambiguation rules editors were willing to go away. What is written in guidance about set index articles doesn't report on this history, and is itself a battleground. I have myself tried to help rationalize this area, but there is only so much i can do. Sorry about that. :(
Somewhat helpful to you, perhaps, is wp:CLNT, an editing guideline about complementarity of categories, lists, and navigation templates, when covering sets of related things. One section of that guideline includes good commentary about stuff not being related enough:
"Navigation templates are particularly useful for a small, well-defined group of articles; templates with a large number of links are not forbidden, but can appear overly busy and be hard to read and use. Good templates generally follow some of these guidelines:
  1. All articles within a template relate to a single, coherent subject.
  2. The subject of the template should be mentioned in every article.
  3. The articles should refer to each other, to a reasonable extent.
  4. There should be a Wikipedia article on the subject of the template.
  5. If not for the navigation template, an editor would be inclined to link many of these articles in the See also sections of the articles."
Please consider here about lakes, where IMHO we have completely unrelated things. It is not plausible that a reader interested in one lake in Saskatchewan named for a Canadian war veteran named Mcarthur, say, has any interest at all in finding their way to an article about a lake in Australia named for a completely different person with last name MacArthur who is known for being a birdwatcher or whatever. I think you would not want a "see also" link, or any other link, from one article to the other.
Again, I absolutely do not accept a requirement to fix everything else wrong in the world, before fixing this one thing that this AFD is about. I do note that you, did in the past put an extraordinary effort into creating articles about many of the lacs with McArthur in their names; you are uniquely informed and qualified to know that those articles have nothing at all to do with each other, except for the oddity of your own interest in writing about them, which IMHO was your reaction to being told in some of those AFDs that they were probably not notable. I heartily wish that you personally will choose to devote your future energy to addressing "more important" lakes rather than "less important" ones, and to establishing relationships that are "real" rather than "fake" (my wording may not be perfect). For example, I do thank and commend you for your constructive participation about Lac Terant, where you went on to create two related articles which really were needed and really are helpful (the one about the proposed national park and the one about the wildlife refuge area). Rather than, say, going off on conceivable tangents like how there might be a lake with a vaguely similar name in Tarrant County, Texas or whatever. You, me, everyone needs to think about how best to use our Wikipedia volunteer time, and we do better when we prioritize stuff more encyclopedic/important/interesting to readers over stuff less that way. Hope this helps, YMMV. --Doncram (talk) 13:55, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Points about battlegrounds proven by my editing at wp:CLNT just now, to remove a possible silly implication. I.e. if a navigation template is not needed/helpful, that does not mean a category or list is needed. Which you, Aymatth2, just reverted on "principle" presumably, I think because you perceive that battling in the guidance-type articles might serve your pre-determined(?) or oppositionally-motivated(?) goals here. I may be sorry to have pointed you to that guideline, which has been helpful to many in the past, oh well.
And, at McArthur Lake (Idaho), i removed some padding in the article about the reservoir which you Aymathy just reverted. IMHO you originally put excessive stuff into that article in order to "win" about keeping it, because, like I said, you were oppositionally motivated by being told that random lakes of that name were probably not notable. Okay, i will give up there, you can have your separate article overlapping excessively with the pre-existing article about the wildlife corridor of that name. Whatever, think about readers, or not, whatever. --Doncram (talk) 14:29, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as redundant to the DAB McArthur Lake. I don't see any value in grouping these together beyond mere disambiguation, where it is based on nothing more than coincidence of name (not even shared eponym here). The two lists to which the sole keep !vote compares this have more basis for them than this purely superficial relationship, as name was driven by function in the former and shared as a tradition within a military organization in the latter. postdlf (talk) 15:05, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Again, a disambiguation page is quite different from a set index list. See Wikipedia:Set index articles. Disambiguation pages lead the reader to articles with similar names, while set index lists give information about similar things with similar names, none of which need have articles. A set index list, like other types of list, is useful in providing information about things that do not warrant stand-alone articles, while a disambiguation page only leads to articles about things that do. They are completely different. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:04, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The point isn’t whether it’s a set index, the point is if that’s what it is it’s a bad set index, for reasons given above. postdlf (talk) 16:50, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
A set index list gives information about of a set of items of a specific type (lakes in this case) that share the same (or similar) name. They need not have anything else in common. The reader is looking for information about a lake called "Macarthur", and this list tries to provide it, even if they are looking for a lake that has no article. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:52, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. The disambiguation page rightly lists only 7 lakes, because only 7 lakes have articles, and a disambiguation page is a guide to navigating articles. The article discussed for deletion contains information (albeit minimal) about 15 lakes. Removing useful, easy-to-find information from the encyclopedia in the name of "coherence" doesn't seem sensible to me. Furthermore, opinions about sufficiency or reader interest have no evidence. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 16:15, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, perfectly valid set index (and actually a rather good one at that compared to many which for all practical purposes are disambiguation pages with a different template and without functionality of having links to the page listed in reports for remediation). older ≠ wiser 17:08, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Huh? Oh, in fact I do get what User:Bkonrad ("Older ne wiser") means. It is a technical point that in Wikipedia there are mechanisms to identify and eradicate accidental links to disambiguation pages, when instead a link to one of its members is meant (see, for example, wp:Daily Disambig, the internal "newspaper" about it). While for links to set index articles, there are no comparable mechanisms. I actually tried to change that in the past. Bkonrad, you have been involved with the concept of set index articles for more than 10 years, I am pretty sure. Are you sure you want to stick with your position here that no standards at all are to be required? --Doncram (talk) 00:06, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Doncram, what makes you think I advocate for "no standards at all are to be required". Quite the contrary, I find this to be a rather good example of a set index page, unlike many others which for all appearances are nothing more than disambiguation pages with a different template. This page strikes me as what set indexes should be -- detailing content for which there is no stand-alone article but which share a name. older ≠ wiser 01:30, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm sorry, I thought you would have something to say about where you would draw the line between notable vs. not, about how wp:DIRECTORY applies or not. You comment in effect that the list "has information" and "is formatted nicely" (my wording), but you don't come to any judgement that differentiates this from a phone book. Or any subset of a phone book covering the people having the same name. IMHO we don't want to consider those as sets, at all, and we don't want to be told trivial information about the members. That's what atlases and phone books are for. Maybe you don't, as a practice, deal with notability at all, or provide substantial votes in AFDs? It's okay if you don't want to come to any larger judgment, but then I think your "Keep" !vote would better be retracted, and your comment should better be labelled as merely "Comment". --Doncram (talk) 02:56, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    As far as I'm concerned, this list is precisely what set indexes were meant to be. older ≠ wiser 03:55, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, per reasons given by those wanting to keep this article, which seem good to me. Davidgoodheart (talk) 17:45, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment (ec): Replying to the above three !voters, I am sorry, I don't know how to be entirely polite about this. It's like you have seen a bauble--a formatted list of places about which the locations are known--and you are enchanted. Will you set no limits at all? Wikipedia is not a gazetteer about lakes. We can't be...at the AFD on Lac Terant, it has been pointed out that there are more than 500,000 lakes in Quebec, comparable to the number of persons in the province. There are too many individual lakes in the world, too many streets that have locations and names, too many individual ships and boats, too many individual persons, for us to create articles about each one of them. We should not want to, it is would not be encyclopedic, it would show no judgment, we would be acting like morons or computer bots if we did. As Pontificalibus states above, "Wikipedia is not a directory or gazetteer (although it might share some features with the latter per WP:FIVE). Hence we have Washington Street and not List of streets named Washington Street listing all 5,000+ of them with co-ordinates for each." For the lakes and streets and churches and McDonald's and whatever else have locations (latitude and longitude), it can be determined and verified what are their approximate elevations, maybe their approximate sizes, and these statistics can be put into an article or table row. And many generalities can be mined about the average weather in the area, and the typical land usages in the area, and so on, so that a bot can write an article or a table row with some detail that might for a second look interesting or useful, if you were only looking at a few of them. But NO, we don't want separate articles. We also don't want separate table rows about each of these. List-articles have to meet some minimum criteria and have some minimum criteria for membership, beyond "shares name with something else". How many surnames exist, how many female first names exist, how many colors exist? Do you really want to have/allow/require, for every one of these, a list-article enumerating tens or hundreds or thousands of examples of lakes sharing that name? Of boats sharing that name Of persons? Few or none of which are individually notable. Is wp:Notability to be transformed to "shares a name with something else", or "shares a name with something having an article"? Every state has a registry of boats and ships, I think. Every person in the United States at least is named in one or more databases. Are we required to create a list-article for "boats named Petunia", and "persons named Janice" and allow a row in that list for every one of thousands of examples? "Ships named Elizabeth"? About lakes or other things having fixed locations and names discernible on any map, no, we do not want a separate article about each one of them, and we do not want to allow a set-index for every naming combination of them. "Streets named 32nd Street"? "Churches named First Presbyterian"? "Home Depots"? For every celebrity, have a list of persons sharing that name? Have a list of every set of Facebook persons who have the same name?
About this list-article, there are eight items not having articles, about which effectively nothing is known. I know, because i debated about it previously, that the only thing known about the "small lake in Goldsboro, North Carolina" is that it has a location shown in Mapcarta. We don't want a nicely-organized list-article covering it. About none of them is there any mention, AFAIK, in any other article; neither Goldsboro, North Carolina nor any other article, present or future, will ever mention that lake, unless someone is just going out of their way to disprove this point. For set index articles like this one, with items not covered in separate articles, there is not even a disambiguation-between-existing-articles function being served. Nor is there any plausible interest of readers to find their way from one local one to a different one far away, merely sharing the same name. We need to exercise judgment and cut those eight mentions out of Wikipedia, entirely. --Doncram (talk) 18:46, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep (ec). As others have said, this provides a place to gather what information we have about lakes that do not (so far as we know) merit an article, as well as distinguishing them from other lakes of the same name. Yngvadottir (talk) 18:37, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No, we do not want to gather information about them, and no we do not need or want to distinguish them. --Doncram (talk) 18:47, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Put it another way. How many disambiguation pages are there in Wikipedia? Do you want to require or allow, for every one of those, a corresponding "set index article" of things named similarly and having articles, with trivial facts encouraged to be mined about each of them to be put into the list, plus add tens or hundreds or thousands of other items not having articles but sharing the same name into that list? "Persons named George Washington"? There cannot be more than 50,000 lakes named "Black", er, well maybe there are. --Doncram (talk) 18:52, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete First, DAB pages are not precluded from mentioning topics which do not have their own articles, so some of this could be incorporated there. But the lakes without articles are simply among the millions of large ponds around the world that hardly even merit listing. Next to the one in Pleasantdale, Saskatchewan, are more than a dozen small lakes but does that really mean a "List of lakes named Lawley" and "List of lakes named McPhail", etc. are guaranteed existence despite the non-notability of their contents and failure of NLIST? These don't merit mention in their local region pages, much less with completely disconnected places sharing a name. Reywas92Talk 23:22, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Reywas92: You are arguing that Wikipedia:Set index articles like this should all be purged. Doncram also feels strongly that the Wikipedia:Set index articles guideline is mistaken. I encourage you to open a discussion at the guideline's talk page or some other suitable forum. Meanwhile, "I don't like it" is not a valid argument for deleting an article that is a classic example of compliance with the guideline. First get the guideline changed. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:58, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
User:Aymatth2, you seem to believe that the SIA guideline states that every identifiable set of things is notable (every set of Facebook pages of persons having the same name?). It does not. It states "Fundamentally, a set index article is a type of list article. The criteria for creating, adding to, or deleting a set index article should be the same as for a stand-alone list. The style of a set index article should follow the style guidelines at Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists." Stand-alone lists do have to meet notability requirements, I am not sure if you know that? I do agree that there probably are some other suspect set index articles, but here we are working on the new problem of dodgy lists of lakes. And we do not have to change any SIA guideline to address that. --Doncram (talk) 00:15, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This is not a new problem at all. Template:Lake index was created in May 2009, and various set index lists of lakes like List of lakes named Diamond date back further than that. This list conforms to all the requirements of Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists, including format and sourcing. The notability issue is discussed in WP:NOTESAL and WP:LISTPURP. I get impatient with this wikilawyering. The point is that a list like this is useful to a reader looking for information about a lake named McArthur that does not have a stand-alone article. Deleting it serves no useful purpose. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:48, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Umm, you point to wp:NOTESAL, which is pretty clear that this list-topic is not valid. There is not a single source existing which discusses this as a group or set, right? And I think no one ever could be interested in it as a set. wp:LISTPURP is in the Manual of Style and comments about ways a list might be useful, none of which applies here AFAICT. wp:ITSUSEFUL points out that being useful is not enough, because lots of info is useful but not encyclopedic, and anyhow you must say why you think something is useful. The only vague possibility that I see is a person from North Carolina, who knows there is a "McArthur" pond there, perhaps because they see it on a map, might want to know: Does Wikipedia have anything substantial to tell me about it? And the answer is NO, which is conveyed perfectly by the disambiguation page showing no entry. If the list-article continues to exist, that just confuses matters, it sort of suggests that Wikipedia will have information about it, although that is not the case. You must have a different idea about usefulness than i do, i hope you might explain. But I too would like to hear from others, and I will reply less here. --Doncram (talk) 02:56, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
About that list of Diamond lakes, though, which I was once aware of, you had me worried about how many full-blown "List of lakes named X" there might be. In Category:Set indices on lakes, there are in fact six others, created in 2007 (one by Bkonrad by the way), 2008, and 2010, and then there is this one created in 2018. These are not too many to deal with, in future AFDs, while the priority should be to address this new one, and the current idea held by one or a few newish editors that creating more of these might be okay. There are about 90 less pretentiously named shorter lists in the category, which can be dealt with in an orderly manner, too. Compare vs. possibility of thousands of similar list-articles (all of which would be inappropriate IMHO) being created. --Doncram (talk) 04:05, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - I agree with the others above. Useful list. Distingushing them from the rest are also useful. Deleting this in the name of coherence is not in the best interest of the Wikipedia. BabbaQ (talk) 23:44, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Perfectly valid set index article "about a set of items of a specific type that also share the same (or similar) name", better than many. The dab page is not sufficient because this article contains info not found elsewhere on WP. There's no reason to obliterate well-sourced info. Few people look at this list but it hurts absolutely nothing. Station1 (talk) 04:08, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. This type of list article is the perfect way of dealing with items that are not individually notable. It would certainly be correct of have such an article as List of lakes in Ohio, which contains some minimal information about lakes that might be notable or nearly notable, but about which we do not yet have articles--or possibly may never have articles. It's much superior to the other alternative, making a separate article for every possible lake, under the rule that all named geographic features are notable--inclusionist as I am about geographic features, this is often wildly excessive coverage adding only confusion. If anyone should eventually expand one of the listings, it would be easily possible; if not ,we have at least some information. Doing it by name also is enormously convenient, because someone may well want to look up such a name, but not know the state. (I often have this problem when trying to locate articles on relatively minor geographical feature in other WPs, especially in countries where many villages or other objects will have very similar names after particular saints. I sometimes cannot figure it out without going to their article on each possible region and hope the object is mentioned.) DGG ( talk ) 05:13, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
DGG, I sympathize with the sentiment about heading off new articles on marginally notable lakes by use of list-articles, a strategy I have recommended and/or employed elsewhere, however only when the list-article is basically valid, itself. It is valid for these lakes as items to be included within sensible, normal, accepted list-articles by region, such as List of lakes in Quebec, which could be modified to include coordinates and more. However, the list definition itself here is invalid and unhelpful; IMHO we do not want such a collection defined so randomly, having no coherence, no reason to link the items, and we do not want to built a system of world-wide lists of lakes grouped merely by superficial similarity of names. If you want to park mention of each of these lakes into list-articles, that can be done, but should be done in the existing system of "Lists of lakes in REGION" type articles, and/or perhaps splitting out or creating new lists of lakes by watershed.
This AFD, however, is about one instance of a particularly bad way to define a list, one not supported by any sourcing. And DGG's !vote here, like all other "Keep" votes in the AFD so far, simply does not address the basic issue that there is a requirement for notability which is not met here. And I and some others are objecting, and think this article should be deleted. And deletion is what is required/supported by policies and guidelines. --Doncram (talk) 06:15, 3 September 2019 (UTC) and revised--Doncram (talk) 20:43, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Hey I see the !votes so far are 8 to "Keep" and 7 (besides the nominator's view) to "Delete" here, so it is more likely than not conceivable that this could be closed "No consensus" and therefore Kept. That is, if the closer ignores quality of arguments and just counts votes. If you are considering closing this, please take note that your decision will likely be reviewed at wp:DELREV and if you do ignore the merits, I expect it will likely be overturned.Sorry, no need to be making threats --Doncram
But anyhow, seeing that the longterm supporters of set index articles are likely conceivably could get their way, and it may be enshrined then one might argue it has been enshrined that "set index articles do not need to comply with notability requirements", I have taken the opportunity to point out the availability of this argument to save almost any article headed for deletion. (This is somewhat of a joke, maybe not funny, maybe not working, but please understand that this was meant jokingly.--doncram) Please see:
It is argued in those that the big exception (NO NOTABILITY REQUIREMENT FOR ANY SET OF SAME-NAMED THINGS!) means those articles can be saved, regardless of their merits otherwise. This is a tiny bit of a stunt, but not seriously disruptive (i did not actually !vote in either of those). My point here is obviously that ignoring fundamental policies cannot be allowed. There has been, for quite a while, confusion and a determined local consensus of SIA/DAB editors protecting a seemingly big exception to policies, but actually in only a relatively small area. Wikipedia is much bigger than the narrow area of lakes and mountains and ships and such so far covered by set index articles (most of which are probably legit), and the absence of valid reasoning here about random lakes having nothing in common, and no sourcing, is going to be seen, I hope. IMHO it is high time. --Doncram (talk) 06:15, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
WP:STANDALONE clearly states "The criteria for creating, adding to, or deleting a set index article should be the same as for a stand-alone list". Standalone lists are subject to WP:N. No one has demonstrated why "List of lakes named McArthur" is a notable topic. ----Pontificalibus 12:56, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That is pure wikilawyering. A set index is a list of items of a specific type that share the same (or similar) name, like List of peaks named Mount Washington. The items will usually have nothing else in common. It is very unlikely that the title of a set index would ever be notable, any more than the title of a disambiguation page, a related concept. If you think set indexes should be abolished, take that up at some more public forum. This obscure AfD is not the place to dispute guidelines. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:18, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Not what is going on here. Actually this is a clear case now, and I think it is about ready to be closed "Delete", given valid arguments for doing so, no disagreement at all from anyone about fact this does not meet the notability requirements that are required to be met by the existing guidelines which govern. Not one "Keep" voter has responded to the issues raised. Perhaps the strongest "Keep" reason suggested is "this is not doing any harm", which is not a valid AFD argument. And, I happen to think this is doing serious harm, specifically by confusing matters for arriving and/or relatively new editors in this area, who should be directed towards productive work, and also by mis-serving readers. --Doncram (talk) 20:52, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The guidelines say "There is no present consensus for how to assess the notability of more complex and cross-categorization lists (such as "Lists of X of Y") ... Lists that fulfill recognized informational, navigation, or development purposes often are kept regardless of any demonstrated notability." Once again, this is not the place to discuss the question of whether set index lists should be abolished. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:01, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

List of lakes named McArthur random break

[edit]
  • Keep the SIA, recommend Merge the dab into the SIA
It turns out that the notability guidelines for stand-alone lists are subtle, and I had to re-read it multiple times.
The important thing to note is that the general notability guidelines are sufficient but not necessary for a list article to be kept. That is, if the topic of a list article is supported by external sources, then it should be kept. But there are other list articles (e.g, List of mountains of Ethiopia or List of King George V Playing Fields in the United Kingdom) whose criteria are not supported by external sources, yet are considered valid list articles.
WP:LISTN says this explicitly:
WP:LISTN then refers to WP:LISTPURP and says
WP:LISTPURP says that lists should fulfill information or navigation purposes. So, the question is --- does List of lakes named McArthur fulfill a navigational purpose and an informational purpose? I would claim that it must fulfill both. If it were only a navigational purpose, then the dab page McArthur Lake should be sufficient and I would support deletion, per nom.
WP:SALAT supports this kind of analysis, too:
From reading nom's and Delete comments, I would infer that the commenters may fall into this category of Wikipedians, and may think that List of lakes named McArthur is trivial, non-encyclopedic, or not related to human knowledge. From reading the Keep comments, I would infer that those Wikipedians may think that the list article, as currently written, contributes to the state of human knowledge. This is a legitimate disagreement.
From my point of view, this list has informational value, because each element is a named natural feature with information beyond simple statistics (in the Notes column). This makes many of the entries notable per WP:GEOLAND. There does not seem to be enough information to create an article for each of these lakes, but per WP:CSC, it's acceptable to have a list article where each entry may not have enough information to support a stand-alone article.
Thus, I would say that this list article fulfills both a navigation purpose and an informational purpose, so should be kept per WP:LISTN and WP:LISTPURP. Note that this analysis is not based on the existence of WP:SIA. Note also that this analysis is not making a general argument that "all SIAs are notable": it's leaning on WP:LISTPURP, WP:GEOLAND, and WP:CSC. The same analysis probably would not work for Blurr, for example. Nor would this argument work for a list with thousands of lakes named "Black", with only statistics or coordinates for each entry.
To reiterate nom's point, the navigational aspect of List of lakes named McArthur and the dab page McArthur Lake strongly overlap. It doesn't make sense to me to have both. Given the informational value in List of lakes named McArthur, I would suggest a merge.
Finally, I believe that this disagreement is because there isn't clear guidance of when we should create SIAs versus when we should use plain dabs. This lack of clarity will trigger case-by-case analysis of the notability of list articles. And, as we've seen, WP:LISTN isn't very clear about WP:GNG: there's an escape valve through WP:LISTPURP that requires discussion that seems to make harmonious editing difficult.
AfD is a poor place to discuss changes to policy. Per Aymatth2, I would suggest that a more general but calm discussion at WT:SIA could be helpful. —hike395 (talk) 12:58, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Hike395: thank you for your thoughtful analysis. Clearly this is not a simple subject. I will open a discussion on clarifying the rules at WT:SIA once this discussion is closed. I would say that most SIAs are not notable in themselves. They are collections of things that happen to share the same name, and are very unlikely to have been the subject of news items, scholarly papers etc. But they often have value to readers, so have a place in Wikipedia. It would be worthwhile to try to clarify when a SIA clearly is relevant, and when it clearly is not, although there will always be borderline cases.
  • I am a bit uncomfortable with merging the DAB and the SIA. The DAB includes a couple of things that are not lakes, so including them would technically violate the SIA guideline. I do not feel strongly about this. It can be discussed in a merge proposal after this AfD has been closed. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:42, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I noticed that. I am skeptical that users searching for McArthur Lake Wildlife Corridor or McArthur Lake Wildlife Management Area would start at McArthur Lake. But we could just put them into a hatnote on the SIA. But we can discuss further at a potential merge. —hike395 (talk) 14:44, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment in reply to Hike395. Hi again. Hike395 and Bkonrad and some other editors long involved with "set index articles" all chatted back in 2015, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of peaks named Signal Mountain, where I took aim at the poster child "set index article". Which is different than this case, in part because it was argued that a "signal mountain" is a real thing, and that there really may be readers interested in knowing about the set of them. So I "lost" the AFD, and nothing else discussed about SIAs got changed either.
Here, "Lakes named McArthur" is a truly trivial set, about which no one has interest.
Both Aymatth2 and Hike395 are confused about list-articles which are cross-categorization lists, i.e. the intersection between two list-systems. But here, we have "LAKES" which is a valid set and "LIST OF LAKES", divided by region, is a valid list-system, following the by-region categorization tree under Category:Lakes by country. And we have "THINGS NAMED MCARTHUR", which is not a valid thing. And there is no Category:Things named McArthur, because that would be a TRIVIAL CHARACTERISTIC, and we do not allow categories by trivial, non-defining characteristics. In practice we do not allow re-splitting a legitimate big list-system by some new trivial characteristic.
You can't seize upon the assertion that "wikipedia doesn't know what to do about cross-categorizations" to get this AFD dismissed, because this is not such a case. And even if you can find some way to argue it is, that does not mean we need to suspend all intelligence and cave in. For any true cross-categorization list, one can still discuss whether there are sources about the group, whether it is plausible that any substantive readership might exist, etc.
Also, both Aymatt2 and Hike395 argue that some bigger decision should be made elsewhere, not here. That is simply not the case. Here we have the one new "List of lakes named X" articles which has been created in years, and it must follow the current requirements, including that it must be a notable topic. It's true that there exist 5 or 6 similarly named lists, created in 2010 or before, perhaps when new articles simply got less scrutiny, or when guidelines were not clear, or when our pretty good AFD system of discussions was not as mature as it is now. And actually those lists might be different than here. (This list-article is objectively "pretentious", meaning that its naming and content suggest that Wikipedia thinks gathering and presenting assorted info about its members is legitimate, and that expansive development about any new thing of the name, no matter how obscure, is welcome. While for the others, created by bot from GNIS perhaps, seem less inviting for editors to add information to. They might arguably be legitimate as modified disambiguation pages, although including other items that are included in GNIS and including coordinates for all. They do not invite random text and sources and new members to be added. Perhaps some new exception for disambiguation pages might be created to keep them, but that debate is not for here.)
Hike395 suggests a different distraction to fend off this AFD, i.e. to discuss, elsewhere, a merger between the list-article and the dab page. Well, the dab page is legitimate. By existing policy and guidelines, a few redlinks could be added, as long as they comply with MOS:DABRL, i.e. as long as the item is purported to be worthy of an article, somewhere else, by another article including that redlink. If any of the 8 non-article items is deserving of an article in the future, then you could consider adding a redlink there, and consider that to be a "merger" of information from here. Also you could argue that moving the items here into various legitimate list-articles of format "List of lakes in REGION" is kind of like merging that information elsewhere, to multiple targets. Frankly I am skeptical about any value, because like pointed out already, it is unlikely that any other Wikipedia article, ever, will legitimately mention that North Carolina one. But sure, it can be stipulated that the paltry contents will be provided to the userspace of any editor interested, in case they think they can use the info in some other way. But the decision here is whether to KEEP or to DELETE this collection, and there is no serious merger proposal on the table, and making a new one just to derail this AFD should not be allowed.
This AFD is now, and it is fair and good to question this list-article here. And it is NOT COMPLICATED. There is no need to change policy or guidelines anywhere, in order to decide this case according to the policy and guidelines which apply.
And yes, Hike395 has it right that some consider this topic to be "trivial, non-encyclopedic, or not related to human knowledge." And damaging, too, including from the cost of having repeated debates like this one. --Doncram (talk) 01:59, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I am not sure this was bludgeoning. I do happen to agree that in general I don't like AFD nominators commenting too much, though. Anyhow I responded above with length to Hike395, an editor whose opinions I respect, and responded to others I respect also, because I really don't get how they can ignore the guidelines which apply. But I was done, certainly if they are not replying, and I have continued discussion with Hike395 elsewhere about potentially changing some guidelines in some way (not relevant for this AFD). --Doncram (talk) 20:03, 7 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep I agree this is more useful than a disambiguation page. A valid list article, aids in navigation, helps people find what they are looking for. Dream Focus 00:03, 7 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep I agree that individuals may have a need to look for a particular lake with this name and such a list could be of use in helping them find the lake for which they are looking. I have run into situations where I had to sort through lakes listed on the internet with identical names in an attempt to find a particular one. Bill Pollard (talk) 21:59, 8 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.
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