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. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:47, 3 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

List of Mad issues[edit]

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Tagged for original research since 2009 with no improvement. The individual lists impart no new information except for a completely contextless list of articles within. Most magazines do not have lists of this sort to begin with, and there is no precedent for having any of this. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 16:58, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - As much as I've always been a fan of the magazine, I'm going to have to go with Delete on this. The main article is mostly OR - most of the statements are using the actual magazines themselves as the sources in order to support the article author's own analysis. The little bits that are not, such as the excerpt from Harvey Kurtzman's obituary, are better suited in other articles, such as his own. The individual lists are just pure WP:FANCRUFT and WP:LISTCRUFT. Additionally, the information presented within them is completely unsourced. As the nominator said, its not a usual thing for Wikipedia to catalogue the contents of every issue of a magazine, and for a publication that is as long running, and still continuing, like Mad, this is going to be nothing but an ever increasing pile of cruft. 64.183.45.226 (talk) 17:39, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Journalism-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 17:53, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 17:53, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 17:53, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 23:59, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Delete all. The base article isn't about issues per se, but rather a summary of the magazine itself. Lists of issue contents are pretty much unprecedented. Clarityfiend (talk) 01:32, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all. WP:FANCRUFT. Ajf773 (talk) 09:50, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, although the bit about the Houghton Library may be worth merging to the main Mad (magazine) article. I'm not sure just how significant inclusion at the librarly actually is. Argento Surfer (talk) 13:30, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I love Mad, but this is all a bit too indiscriminate. There might be merit in having a list of individual issues that were especially iconic or controversial, but there's no need to have this here. I have no objection to this being sent to a fan wiki, if any of them need it. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 16:54, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per WP:LISTCRUFT and WP:FANCRUFT. SW3 5DL (talk) 19:44, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all -- The object seems to be to provide a contents list for the magazine. This is most unlikely to be useful and is certainly not encyclopaedic. Peterkingiron (talk) 18:44, 22 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Delete ~~per WP:SNOW~~ — Iadmc ♫^talk 20:36, 22 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Add @Diego Moya: List of Mad issues could be merged into Mad (magazine), at least the Art Spiegelman quote and info about Houghton Library. The rest of that article appears to be OR. The lists themselves are overkill, IMO, though the most notable issues should all be mentioned in the main article: e.g. Mad #1, Mad #4 (Superduperman!), and the debuts/finales of various contributors. Spoofs could be mentioned in the relevant articles with a link to Mad (magazine): e.g. Mad #389 "The Supremos (TV Satire)" is a spoof of The Sopranos and so should be mentioned there. The rest of the issues are completely unlinked and thus WP:LISTCRUFT and WP:FANCRUFT as stated above and thus the lists should be deleted — Iadmc ♫^talk 17:48, 26 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Or deleted per WP:INDISCRIMINATE and WP:NOTCATALOG, if you prefer — Iadmc ♫^talk 18:16, 26 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Furthermore, MAD list all their issues here (though you need to keep pressing "Load more") — Iadmc ♫^talk 18:23, 26 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Very strong Keep as a shining example of the lists that the WP:CSC guideline considers valuable, which are short, complete lists of every item that is verifiably a member of the group. The guideline provides a laser-focus criterion for inclusion, making it clearly not WP:INDISCRIMINATE. The fact that the Deletes need to quote essays to justify their position is telling. Seriously guys, don't you have some lists of toy product catalogs to delete today, that you have to resort deleting the documented history of a worldwide popular publication? Diego (talk) 10:23, 25 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You realize that the very section of the guideline that you are quoting specifically says that lists only meet that criteria if the "complete list is reasonably short (less than 32K)". This massive, multiple page list of material is certainly not that. The guideline also mentions that when it comes to exhaustive lists, "criteria for inclusion should factor in encyclopedic and topical relevance, not just verifiable existence", and there seems to be pretty clear consensus here that this material is not encylopedic..64.183.45.226 (talk) 17:25, 25 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The lists for each decade are about 8K each. Consensus needs to take into account the positions of all the previous editors that were codified into policy. A vote count based on essays that never got support to be changed into guidelines does not define a clear consensus. Diego (talk) 22:02, 25 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's also worth noting that almost every entry is packed with blue links to Wikipedia articles on notable topics, so the list doubles as a navigation list, thus fulfilling not one but two of the purposes why list articles are created and kept, per the lists guideline, as a structured information source and navigation table. It works as a very effective list of topics in popular culture per decade, as reflected by the editorial criteria of a reliable source. Diego (talk) 13:06, 26 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Diego Moya: What use does the info have then? "What If Batman Were Jewish?" bestows no information on the issue. How can you secondarily source anything in this article? Detailing the content of the magazine's article would be WP:OR or WP:PRIMARY. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 17:53, 26 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:18, 27 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - as per Peterkingiron. Not suitable for an encyclopedia. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 14:30, 31 January 2017 (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.