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 per WP:SNOW – PeaceNT 15:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

List of tall women[edit]

List of tall women (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - (View log)

Delete - "tall" is impermissively POV. I'm very sure we've deleted this once already (but I'm not finding the old AfD) so this should probably be salted as well. Otto4711 13:27, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Oh duh, the link to the old AfD was in the "tall men" nom up the page and it closed no consensus. Otto4711 13:31, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Won't this just have the result of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of tall men? Pomte 18:05, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep In the class of D-Cup Playboy Playmates. TonyTheTiger 18:15, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Would that be the D-cup Playmates whose list article was deleted? Because in that case, I couldn't agree more that this list is in the same class. Otto4711 19:15, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete The sole attempt at even using context or justifying this article existence is: "An interest in this subject might relate to the topic of heightism, which is argued to play some role in many tall women's lives." It might. It might not. It might be better to give appropriate examples in heightism than to randomly list tall women and leave it to the readers to make the connections. As it stands, it's just an arbitrary collection of women who happen to be tall, "tall" being arbitrarily defined. GassyGuy 19:38, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep The tallest female humans are unusual enough to deserve an article. Each claim should have a reliable source. The only 2 issues I see are whether it should be limited to women who are otherwise notable, and how high the bar should be set. Someone 2 standard deviations taller than average is not very tall, since if heights were normally distributed, out of 3 billion women there would be about a million and a half to be listed in the article if they did not have to be otherwise notable. Edison 20:27, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - This text is copied from the AfD for List of men. Although I have reservations about the article as it currently stands (incomplete, insufficiently documented, etc.), the reasons for proposing deletion do not convince me.

1. The article does not violate WP:NOR. Of the seven actions listed there that qualify as original research, the fourth--"It provides or presumes new definitions of pre-existing terms"--is relevant to this discussion. However, equating 6'3", 6'5", 6'7", etc. with tall is surely not an original idea--it has been done before, it will be done in the future. Any given cut-off point for tall is not original research; it is simply arbitrary. For a person, tall is defined as "having a vertical extent greater than average". So, if the average height in the United States is 5'10", then someone who is 5'11" is tall (when considered at the level of the United States). Since Wikipedia should not be biased toward any particular nation(s), it seems to make sense to define "tall" in terms of the average global height.
2. However, a definition of tall that includes 50% - 1 of the population of the world (same applies if it's just a country, city, village, etc.) would make the list useless (or, at the least, VERY incomplete). For that reason, it makes sense to use a high percentile, like 99% or 99.5% or 99.9%. Yes, it is arbitrary! No, it's not original research! In many of the social sciences, results are considered statistically significant at a 95% confidence level. It's an arbitrary choice, but one that is used by consensus. Just because a cut-off point is arbitrary, does not mean it is not useful. I think this could work if the first line of the article specifies something of the sort: "This is a list of men who, in terms of their height, are in the 99th (or some other number) percentile globally".
3. Finally, and this strays from this AfD somewhat, if the list is kept, perhaps it should include only individuals who currently have articles on WP. Again, it's an arbitrary inclusion criteria, but I don't see anything wrong with that as long as that criterion is reached through consensus. Also, this would address the concern raised in the comment above by User:Edison

I originally had no particular interest in this article or its AfD, but felt compelled to write this lengthy comment after seeing the reasons for the proposed deletion. To any inclusion criterion, there is (almost) always an alternative. Wikipedia's notability guideline for biographies is only one of many that could exist. However, it specifies an objective criterion for inclusion ("primary subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the person.") and has consensus support. I think this issue should be discussed in the article's talk page. Black Falcon 20:32, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep - especially useful for sociological research re accomplishments or demography or both, of people with exaggerated height. Julia Rossi 00:41, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletions. -- SkierRMH 02:17, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, per reasoning at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of tall men. Gender makes a difference why, exactly? --Calton | Talk 08:07, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep but it needs better sourcing. The tall men list is much better on that.--T. Anthony 18:07, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Encyclopedic subject, this is an encyclopedia. Therefore it must stay. -- TrojanMan 00:21, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep; this is an encyclopedic list, certainly not arbitrary. --Mhking 03:41, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per Black Falcon --BenWhitey 15:10, 25 January 2007 (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.