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 keep. Though I would say the entries should all be sourced, at the list page, itself. Cirt (talk) 16:29, 17 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

List of British mobsters[edit]

List of British mobsters (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)

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This is a BLP violating uttery unreferenced list accusing people of being mobsters. Given that we already have Category:British mobsters, can we remove this list as a liability without an upside? Scott Mac (Doc) 14:37, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - List of this type must have a clear definition of what makes some one eligible, plus have every entry sourced. CitiCat ^♫ 15:30, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per nom, WP:BLP requires that we do so. JBsupreme (talk) 15:50, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Per BLP issues. Warrah (talk) 15:54, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as unsourced and mostly indiscriminate list that's not much better than a category. It's noteworthy that we do not seem to have an article about "organised crime in the United Kingdom", something that I hope will be written. But a list of "mobsters" isn't that article. WP:BLP problems are obvious; the mention of John Barrie implies that two men mentioned on that disambiguation page, one an actor, the other a snooker player, had some secret second career. Stuff like this was accepted in 2006, but not really acceptable then or now. Mandsford (talk) 16:40, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• See also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Irish American mobsters--Scott Mac (Doc) 16:48, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep, cleanup and source. Having a category does not preclude having a list. Also, if a list should be deleted due to BLP concers then the category would also have the same concerns. DCEdwards¹⁹⁶⁶ 19:12, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:56, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Crime-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:56, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep BLP problems are a reason to cleanup and source the list, and remove unsourced material on sight. No grounds for deletion of the entire list. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 21:10, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Are you going to clean it up and reference all the items? Because, if not, I give notice I will remove all unreferenced items at the close of this afd, which will leave NO items remaining.--Scott Mac (Doc) 21:45, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Clicking through I'm not seeing any unreferenced articles on the list - If you spot any I suggest they be removed. Artw (talk) 22:33, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the list I don't see any referenced entries whatsoever. References on another article will not do.--Scott Mac (Doc) 22:43, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We could duplicate the references on the article pages on the list, but it would be pretty crufty and IMHO pointless. I'm not seeing this done on other similar lists (for instance the majority of items in List_of_Irish_American_mobsters). Whether or not we put the cites on the page is also extraneous to the AfD argument. Artw (talk) 00:57, 9 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is not pointless whatsoever. We do not use other wikipedia articles as sources, full stop, even if they are well sourced. For a completely different example, I have recently been working on List of people from Leeds, which was cut down nearly completely because none of the entries were referenced. Quantpole (talk) 14:34, 15 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep, cleanup any redlinks, remove anything bluelinked that does not unambiguously qualify for inclusion on the list from article content. Artw (talk) 21:46, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. —Artw (talk) 22:34, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• keep all bluelinks indicating a WP article can have references in the artiicle; redlinks need references in this list. This is how many, many lists are handled. If this is kept and an editor goes in and deletes all the bluelinked items, it should be considered behavior unworthy of an honest and honorable WP editor, pushing their agenda above that of the group. Hmains (talk) 04:58, 9 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Hey, here's an idea: Instead of arguing about deleting entries which are sourced at their own articles, howzabout taking time to copy one of those sources over to the list? There are such things as British mobsters, and we have sourced articles on those British mobsters. There is no reason not to have a list of them. Totally spurious AfD. Dekkappai (talk) 18:39, 9 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep the sources are there, they are just indirect. Wikipedia is fortunately an electronic resource, so they are trivial to find. We cannot include sas much in a list articles as we do in the individual articles. To satisfy those who for some reason do not yet realize this, there's no harm in copying a key one over for each individual. And the ones without articles either can be written with sources or should be removed DGG ( talk ) 01:35, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

---

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Coffee // have a cup // ark // 00:45, 15 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep to be consistent. I once nominated Category:Rapists and all subcats, which by nature is always an unsourced assertion, and the consensus was to keep. While I think we should be cautious about labeling and categorizing people, I don't agree that our BLP policy currently requires all such labels to be sourced. If it did, then we'd need to get rid of most negative categories and lists that serve to label living people. We may indeed want to do that at some point, but I don't think there's consensus for it right now. Gigs (talk) 01:38, 15 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Are you saying that we wouldn't need a source that someone is a rapist to put them in a list of rapists? Quantpole (talk) 14:39, 15 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Not in the list article. In the main article, yes. Categories always use this sort of "vicarious sourcing", since it's impossible to source categorization. There's some precedent for it for lists as well. If the list article makes further claims other than mere inclusion, then those facts should be verifiable of course. Gigs (talk) 22:49, 15 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep very interesting AfD, I think Gigs comment is relevant, if we have a category for rapists, then why not have this one? Would need to be checked though from time to time though, after my experiences with Vodafone I would be tempted to add them to the list DRosin (talk) 12:46, 15 December 2009 (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.