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. Randykitty (talk) 13:18, 12 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

List of birds of the world[edit]

List of birds of the world (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Per its talk page this is an article that is very long and has no reasonable hope at being usefully split or being transformed into something else beyond articles that currently exist, and it's not even a complete list despite its size. All possible splits such as by species groups and by continent are already made, so there doesn't seem to be much more use for this article remaining. Otherwise this article is arguably indiscriminate information and/or a scientific journal. Onetwothreeip (talk) 10:17, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. MT Train^Talk 11:00, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Animal-related deletion discussions. MT Train^Talk 11:00, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete: per WP:NOTINDISCRIMINATE. There is already a List of birds, this is just a different way of categorising them. At a first glance, there's no content which does not exist at the aforementioned list or on the article about the IUCN Red List, so no merge is necessary. SITH (talk) 12:29, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per the above as being redundant. A redirect doesn't look useful for this term either since list of birds would show up in the search engine before typing the rest of this out. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:51, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. postdlf (talk) 18:28, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete as redundant to list of birds. A knowledgeable editor should carefully compare the two first before deletion to see if there are any improvements that the other is missing. postdlf (talk) 18:31, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Unnecessary spin-off to List of birds. Ajf773 (talk) 19:00, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per above. buidhe (formerly Catrìona) 19:25, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per all of the above Spiderone 23:24, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Meropidae, Videsh Ramsahai, and Owlsofeurope: Pinging some people who have put significant amounts of work into this list for their input.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  02:28, 6 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete for above reasons and also because there is no reason to maintain such a huge list when that job is already being done by HBW and the IUCN. The creation and maintenance of a "definitive" list of birds is a mighty task, and not one we ourselves do. Nor one we should do, as it would tread towards OR. Since we are using someone else's one here (and not even the one that Wikipedia uses as the basis for our articles) best to just let them do it, rather than mirror it. Sabine's Sunbird talk 04:22, 6 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete List of birds is a good overview with much less required continual curation; this type of content is better aggregated through the category system and more refined lists by smaller taxonomic groups and places. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 00:04, 7 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as redundant. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:31, 9 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Sorry that this is long, but I wish to observe that this page was clearly an extremely ambitious but well-planned effort to create one encyclopaedic checklist of birds of the world, akin to the useful publications of HBW, Gruson or Howard & Moore. As such, the suggestion and tagging by the OP of splitting it into sub-pages would have caused it to fail utterly in its purpose, and one that I find misguided. One checklist, not lots of little bits in separate places are what actually makes a checklist useful! Sometimes big is beautiful. Equally, the rationales for deletion (WP:INDISCRIMINATE and WP:NOTJOURNAL) are daft). First off, this is/was far from an indiscriminate list (whilst a little over-ambitious, it set out to be an encyclopaedic taxonomic checklist down to species level, which no other Wikipedia page on birds offers.) Such an encyclopaedic checklist falls outside all the descriptions given in WP:NOTJOURNAL, too. Were that rationale regarded as valid here, it could be used for all listings of a myriad of other taxonomic groups of animals or plants.

Lets be honest: the only reason to delete it is in full acceptance and recognition that better and more accessible resources exist online elsewhere, and that we here on Wikipedia will never be able to match those efforts in maintaining them. I could support that rationale. I found it extremely surprising that the already-mentioned List of birds offers no clear and obvious 'External Link' to any such free online resource, such as those maintained and available for download at the IOC World Bird List website, and no doubt elsewhere.

I don't care that this won't do my AfD stats any good, but purely in recognition of the incredible work done with genuinely encyclopaedic intent in the true spirit of Wikipedia by Owlsofeurope (453 edits), Meropidae and Videsh Ramsahai - and until such time as someone places a clearly visible link to download or freely view one or more definitive checklist of birds of the world on the List of birds page - I am going to make the futile gesture of !voting Keep. I respect their efforts, but as an afterthought I would strongly urge anyone with an interest in creating any taxonomic checklist or other species list in the future to only create them in sortable table format because, errm, they're sortable and much more useful to readers when content can be accessed in multiple ways. So much effort has been wasted in the past by list creators failing to recognise this, thus rendering their efforts far less useful or accessible than it could have been. But in this case I do recognise that better maintained and resourced definitive checklists do appear to exist off-wiki; lets at least make those checklists more easily findable from within Wikipedia and ensure that every one has a lead which explains which taxonomic arrangement they're following. And, please, let's get our rationale for deletion better thought through before we rush to remove really great content like this one could have been. Nick Moyes (talk) 00:31, 10 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

We can put the content on a user page if you would like. Onetwothreeip (talk) 01:22, 10 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to be honest back, if the purpose of this page is to create one encyclopaedic checklist of birds of the world, akin to the useful publications of HBW, Gruson or Howard & Moore. then my delete vote is Strong delete. We are not a taxonomic authority. We are not an ornithological society. We do not have the authority to make the kind of decisions about what constitutes a species or not, or where it sits in the list. This list is not, however, attempting to do that, it defers the IUCN. It's never going to rank with the great lists because its a mirror. That is no criticism of the work done, but I fear it was one in vain. Sabine's Sunbird talk 04:36, 10 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It would on reflection be awesome to have a crowd-maintained wiki bird checklist, maintained and deliberated on by consensus. Unfortunately it doesn't belong on this site. Sabine's Sunbird talk 04:39, 10 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Sabine's Sunbird: In case there's any misunderstanding, I was, and am, actually in complete agreement with you and others here, and in reality I do side with those who move to delete it. The task of maintaining a definitive checklist is clearly not practicable here, though we do need to do better at sending users to external checklist resources that are freely downloadable and properly maintained by experts. My admittedly futile 'keep' !vote was purely to reflect my respect and admiration for those editors who tried hard to make a go of it over two years, against the odds. I have never felt the need to !vote in such a way before, and probabky won't again. To my mind, it was a far more worthy aspiration than compiling petty lists of Pokemon characters, and the like. I have no need to have the list on my userpage; maybe Meropidae might wish to comment on that helpful suggestion. Nick Moyes (talk) 17:02, 10 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete: Maybe there's a place for a list similar to this which would only include scientific name, authority and common names. It could be restricted to species. That would at least be shorter. One could search it to find a name, or it could be useful for searching to see how many times Linnaeus was an authority in birds or how many times nobilis is used as a specific name, but even that is unworkable. Scientific names have many synonyms and common names are not standardized. Maintaining such a list would require a concentrated effort.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  17:28, 10 January 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.