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.
Turn into a Category, per WP:INDISCRIMINATE. This list is potentially endless, and thus unwieldy. Something more specific would work, but this article works better as a category. Doc Quintana (talk) 12:24, 10 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Pray keep - until we are done working on it. Don't you know that we are going to move entries from the List of vegetarians to there? That will take some time so pray, pray let us work on it first. And about the categorisation, no it will NOT do because cats cannot contain references, so who will verify whether the cats are correct? And remember, there are lots of dynamic lists on Wikipedia that are 'endless'. Kayau VotingISevil 12:37, 10 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I did not know, you probably should have put a ((underconstruction)) tag at the top if there was a major edit going on. Nevertheless, there could be eventually thousands of people on this list. I wouldn't mind if it was more specific somehow so there was more stringent criterion of getting on the list, but as it is now, this list is better as a category. Doc Quintana (talk) 12:46, 10 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Reply - can you at least wait till we are done with the article? Like List of vegetarians, we are going to change it greatly so that the list is a lot better than its present state. Kayau VotingISevil 12:49, 10 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, I can take it off if you want until you're done, but I don't think it would change my opinion. It seems like any notable person who passes BLP and gets a media link somewhere that they're rumored to be vegan could theoretically be on this list, it'd take alot of oversight to keep track of that, it'd be alot easier if it was a category since those are generally less seen, and thus the newbies don't use them as much. Doc Quintana (talk) 12:54, 10 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid your final statement is incorrect. In both the list of vegans and vegetarians, our inclusion criteria is that the person has an article on Wikipedia - any language Wikipedia. Therefore the number of people is limited. Also, we use only RELIABLE sources, so rumours cannot be here. Finally, if someone's vegetarianism/veganism is disputed or lasped, we'll label them as such. Kayau VotingISevil 13:04, 10 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I really am not a big fan of deletion on the basis of the possibility of an article expanding endlessly, since in my experience it never happens. It's not like we're going to start adding random people to the list, unless they happen to be notable people with their own Wikipedia articles. This is also one of the best-referenced lists I've ever come across. —Soap— 12:45, 10 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - There are plenty of vegetarian/vegan lists all over the internet so there's obviously enough interest to sustain a list of this nature. The list has been referenced by The Independent[1] so the notability of this particular list has been established through a third party reliable source, and not many Wikipedia articles can claim that. If the list becomes unwieldy then we can tackle the problem if and when that problem arises, but as pointed out above the list is finite since it is limited to notable people with a dedicated article on Wikipedia. As Kayau has indicated, categories don't permit sources and the information is not centralised so it becomes impossible to maintain. List of vegetarians was also put up for deletion but the decision was to keep the article, so if the decision is made to scrap this article we will simply transfer the names over to that list, but the current consensus is to have a hard split between vegetarians and vegans. Betty Logan (talk) 13:51, 10 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. WP:CLS. The list looks manageable: Category:Vegans by nationality currently contains less than 300 entries. — Rankiri (talk) 14:34, 10 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I agree with Doc Quintana that this article should be a category. It has never been very good, never could possibly hope to be complete, is nearly impossible to find reliable references for, and worst still, deals mostly with fickle celebrities who claim to be vegan one day and not the next. It would be better to just mention that these people are vegan in the biographical articles themselves. Worse still, this article has been cited by a magazine, even though it has always contained numerous factual errors. I've tried to go through and weed out the people with unreliable sources, or add sources whenever possible. But for the actors, musicians, etc. who comprise the bulk of the list, the only sources are tabloidesque, untrustworthy websites. --N-k (talk) 16:41, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, specifically because each entry can be properly sourced/footnoted, which can't be done with categories. Having a distinct article is the more encyclopaedic approach. It is a daunting article to keep current and accurate, but apparently many editors are working to do just that. MichaelBluejay (talk) 11:02, 12 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Turn into category interesting topic, but such a list could be endless. Dew Kane (talk) 04:23, 14 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Reply - it wouldn't be endless without inclusion criteria. Besides, we have only 6,823,056 articles on Wikipedia, and only a small proportion of those are biographies of vegans, so really the list is not endless. Kayau VotingISevil 12:25, 14 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, it needs some minor help with layout and organization, but the List of vegetarians article is serving as an excellent template. I think the argument that it will expand endlessly is rubbish, since veganism involves a finite number of people, especially as compared to others counted in Wiki list articles. One glance at the Lists of people on Wikipedia reveals countless broader lists – List of HIV-positive people, List of non-fiction writers, as well as all of the Lists of people by nationality are bound to be at the very least comparable, if not much larger, in scope and possibility for endless expansion as the vegan list. Colinclarksmith (talk) 17:53, 14 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep - sourcing track record seems solid and the list is well maintained considering unsourced and nn material tend to be purged in reasonable time, nothing "unwieldy" about it. We should be encouraging lists which demonstrate such strong supports WP:V, WP:N - definitely has featured list potential. Groupings and order are generally good, definitely not wiktionary:indiscriminate. Said groupings/ordering cannot be achieved as effectively under the wiki software's rather primitive category system, further justifying a list approach. Of course any list is "potentially endless" (WP:NOTPAPER, WP:SPLIT), but that is not a deletion criterion. In fact, there appears to be no valid deletion criterion claimed for this AfD. Dl2000 (talk) 22:39, 14 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - vegetarianism and veganism are obviously notable topics. They are a defining characteristic of many people's lives since many make an active choice to be vegetarian or vegan based on religious or ethical beliefs. The List of vegetarians is pretty big (bytes-wise), so having a spinout list of vegans makes sense. The list is well sourced and the contributors seem dedicated. there's no evidence that it will get out of control. Non-notable additions can be simply removed as they are with every other well maintained list. It's not going to be "endless"; there are only going to be so many people with articles here that are vegans, and the number will surely be smaller than, say, the number of Americans, or actors.--BelovedFreak 15:01, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. One major objection to a category is that it is unsourceable. My counterpoint would be that the article itself should have a source that documents that the subject is indeed a Vegan - and that the presence of that source is a prerequesite for inclusion in the category. A category is superior in many ways because of that - in theory, you know that each person listed in the category is confirmed to meet the criteria for inclusion in that category (i.e. actually being a Vegan). Not sure where I fall on deletion, but felt the need to clarify. UltraExactZZSaid~ Did 18:42, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
With categories though you're basically at the mercy of how rigorously verifiability is enforced on each article - some articles are exemplary in that respect, some less so. I'm not even convinced categories are encylopaedic information - were they ever intended as anything more than a means of organizing information on Wikipedia? Betty Logan (talk) 19:47, 15 April 2010 (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.