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. Consensus is that this is too broad to be a suitable topic for a list even if split into sublists and cleaned up. Sandstein 06:40, 10 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

List of firsts[edit]

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I propose that List of firsts be deleted because its coverage is entirely limitless and therefore is “content not suitable for an encyclopedia” per Wikipedia:Deletion policy#Reasons for deletion. It also appears to run contra to Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. For example, the article currently includes such completely disparate entries as:

First law written in cuneiform
First de facto Prime Minister of Great Britain
First commercial airliner to be hijacked
First animal in space: fruit flies
First successful creation of soda water
First cloned camel

This article could just as well include such “firsts” as:

First woman graduate of a college.
First woman graduate of a college in the United States.
First woman graduate of a college in Michigan.
First woman graduate of a college in Detroit.

First printed image of a cat
First printed image of a group of cats.
First printed image of a Siamese cat.
First printed image of a sleeping Siamese cat.

First patented medicine.
First patented medicine for headaches.
First patented medicine in pill form.
First patented medicine in liquid form.

First published use of the name "The United States".
First published use of the name "Iowa".
First published use of the name "Des Moines".

See additional examples on the talk page: Talk:List of firsts#Delete or ?.

I propose, therefore, that this article be broken up into subsidiary articles, to the extent they might be deemed notable, such as List of firsts in polar exploration or List of firsts in computer technology See below Ecphora (talk) 18:55, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:16, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - very uneven, very amorphous, and lacking good citations. Racepacket (talk) 19:21, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Not just lacking good citations, it lacks any citations. Not surprisingly, it's from those early days where a person would write something on the chalkboard, and the next person would write something else, and others would do likewise. I'm gathering that every once in awhile, someone would find a "furst" (i.e., something that has a claim for being the first thing ever in a group) and then copy it onto the "list of firsts". The idea is that you click on the blue-link to get the verification that this is a "furst", and maybe there's a cite to a book or something in the linked article. However, even if it were sourced, it's a big potpourri fun facts from politics, sports, entertainment, explorers, human achievements, and traffic lights. I think I'll save it to my hard drive, but our standards have improved in the last few years. Mandsford (talk) 19:39, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - I agree 100% with the nominator. The article is a fine idea but untenable because if it listed all notable "firsts" it would just end up being way too huge for any sort of usefulness. Break up into subsidiary articles as suggested by the nominator. Doomsdayer520 (Talk|Contribs) 19:41, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete too broad, indiscriminate, only a couple have references and lots are incorrect (Don Quixote is the first novel in Spanish? It's not even the first novel by Cervantes!), misleading (first actor to portray Superman on screen doesn't mention Bud Collyer's voice work in the Fleischer shorts), or generally debatable. I could go on, and on, and on. But ultimately many of these are complex cases that we shouldn't try to distill into bite-sized factoids: we're an encyclopedia, not the inside of a gum wrapper. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 20:08, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Split into multiple lists or distribute content to applicable articles. Much too broad and unfocused. --Cybercobra (talk) 20:39, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The commenters above are entirely right that this is an article of theoretically unlimited scope, and that inclusion is in fact arbitrary because it relies on contributors' own opinions of what is sufficiently notable to be listed. Why list "First nude scene in German filmmaking," and not "First topless scene in Thai filmmaking"? And so on. Glenfarclas (talk) 21:02, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Clean up and keep. If sources are required for each entry, most problems will be solved. /Yvwv (talk) 22:21, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The problem isn't just sourcing. Even if you could find a source to say that such-and-such was the first oat-based cereal to be made with raisins, or the first steel-frame hospital to be built in Ocala, Florida, you can never really find a source to say whether that item should be included on this list. To me that's the issue: unlimited scope with no genuine criterion for inclusion, and that's not something that "requiring a source" has much to do with. Glenfarclas (talk) 23:55, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Random factoids. dude1818 (talk) 22:48, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete this was on my watch list, and i was curious if anyone would nominate it. I agree that the inclusion criteria are way too broad and not well defined. if you narrowl down the "first" description, EVERY SINGLE NOTABLE EVENT in history becomes a first. michael collins was not the first man in space, or first to orbit the moon, but was the first to orbit the moon while men walked on the moon simultaneously. its fun, anyone can play. the first star wars film to feature ewoks, the first edition of "fahrenheit 451" published after ray bradburys death. any significant events on this list that are not mentioned in their linked articles could be put in other articles. if we have a seriously long list of firsts here that fall within an easily definable category, then maybe someone can userfy the list and create some new ones. they could be good if well thought out.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 00:23, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hey...we could even add "The first time List of firsts was deleted from wikipedia". Assuming that this list only covers notable subjects, it would eventually list every other article on wikipedia, since all notability includes being the first in some extremely narrow category. Handschuh-^{talk to me} 02:35, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hitting the random article button 3 times gave me 3 new firsts:

Yamanaka Yukimori was the first samurai of the sengoku period, born under a cresent moon to serve as a retainer to the Amako clan.

Roman Catholic Diocese of Cuernavaca was the first Roman Catholic Diocese of Cuernavaca.

Orlando Pattersonwas the first historical and cultural sociologist at Harvard University known for his work regarding issues of race in America to serve as Special Advisor to Michael Manley, the then Prime Minister of Jamaica, from 1972 to 1979. Handschuh-^{talk to me} 02:49, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Rebuild into a Lists of firsts and link to various other lists of firsts, with this being a list of lists. 76.66.197.17 (talk) 06:49, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per WP:NOT#STATS and other core points of MOS:LIST. "Firsts" is so vague it could really include most anything. MURGH ^disc. 10:43, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment On further thought, although I suggested spinning off some lists when I proposed this deletion, I now think it would be questionable even to save parts of this list because any spun off article would suffer from the same problem – its coverage would be completely unlimited. For example an article “Firsts in film” would include the following (all in the existing article):

First lesbian-themed film
First woman to appear nude in a motion picture
First nude scene
First fictional feature film shot with a mobile phone to premiere at major film festivals
First actor to portray Superman on screen

Significantly perhaps, there appear to be extremely few other such lists on Wikipedia today. The only ones I can find are:

List of firsts in India
List of firsts in Sweden
List of firsts in aviation
List of firsts in the Geographic North Pole

(This excludes lists such as List of first overall NBA draft picks or List of the first female holders of political office in Europe, which have specific limits in the title and are finite and unobjectionable.) These lists all suffer from the same problem as List of firsts (example India includes first “Woman to reach 4th round (highest as of 2009) of a Grand Slam singles event: “ and “First One day Cricket captain”. I think it would be a mistake to proliferate this sort of thing and therefore this article should simply be deleted. Ecphora (talk) 16:06, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and split has necessary--should be extensively developed. . If the person or event has a Wikipedia article , it is notable, then the listing is not indiscriminate. We might indeed have to split it, but I see nothing unencyclopedic about a lists of first mayors of every american city (since they would all be qualified for Wikipedia articles) . I think of it as a navigational device, and it's useful for browsing. DGG ( talk ) 00:19, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly disagree to delete this article, and vote to keep this article, with conditions

I also advocate a cleanup and split of this article to more relevant sub-lists, for one I agree there are very narrow topics added to this List since i last saw it (2007?), but I find wholesale deletion unacceptable

there are notable sections to this (entries linked to main articles must be kept, for example) and I volunteer to do primary cleanup, drawing up of limitable finite criteria and grouping to relevant topics/headings for split up —-— .:Seth_Nimbosa:. (talk • contribs) 07:33, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Strong delete - omg kill it before it multiplies! This list is infinite, and if DGG's criteria is "if it has a wikipedia article" that does very little to threaten my argument. This list is so incredibly unmanageable, it would be of no use to anyone, and rife for problems of a number of kinds.

One possible exception: a meta-list of wikipedia "First" articles. For example, it could have things like "List of first Oregonian Americans to..." or "List of first Mongolians to..." "List of first people to summit a mountain...". That might be a manageable article, but the fact I can come up with this many topics off the top of my head should only reinforce the point that this list is absolutely endless.

Finally, I don't think the meta-list, as reasonable as it could be, is advisable, since the same goal is accomplished much more efficiently through categories. Shadowjams (talk) 10:10, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete despite brave offer from Seth_Nimbosa I don't see exactly how this can be made 'limitable'. pablo_hablo. 10:16, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: Oh my god... inclusion for this article is infinite! Plus it's unreferenced and has some truly strange entries. Ryan4314 (talk) 17:15, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Userfy to Seth Nimbosa's userspace, good luck my friend, or incubate if Seth Nimbosa so chooses. J04n(talk page) 17:34, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Category and split lists. As is, the article is limitless, even with proper sources. And yet, firsts are very notable, and the article made a very brave attempt at organization. I have reference books with lists of first in space or medicine, so lists with a limited scope would be notable and manageable. So what we've got is an article attempting to be the Table of Contents to Wikipedia. I think a category will serve its specialized utility, and a central list would be a helpful wikilink to the information Wikipedia provides. But I cannot justify an individual first fact being on the page. MMetro (talk) 21:59, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep but split into different list. List of firsts should list all the other list in it, they having their own articles. List of firsts in films, List of firsts for women, List of firsts for blacks, List of firsts in medicine, etc. You could have a List of firsts for civilization listing the first use of slavery, and the first time someone outlawed it, as well as the first written law, the first war that involved a significant portion of the world's population, etc. Dream Focus 21:24, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

These subsidiary "firsts" lists suffer from the same problem as does List of firsts -- they are all infinite in scope. (If you have an infinite collection of items and eliminate every second item, you still have an infinite collection of items.) Because there are no criteria on what would be included, a "List of firsts in films" article, for example, could include "First film made in Guatemala," "First documentary film made in Guatemala," "First color documentary film made in Guatemala," "First film with an automobile," "First film in Italian with an automobile," "First film made by a director under 20 years old," etc. There are only four such open ended first lists on Wikipedia (see above). I caution about creating dozens more. Ecphora (talk) 00:21, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not a problem. People can use common sense to determine what belongs there, and form a consensus on the talk page. Any there are PLENTY of open ended list out there. In fact, I believe most of them are open ended. That is no reason not to have them. And many accomplishments get coverage. The first woman pilot, Amelia Airheart got plenty of news coverage, she famous, as did the first black Supreme Court Justice, Clarance Thomas. Dream Focus 01:03, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Amelia Airheart was not the first woman pilot, and in naming her you've accidentally illustrated what's wrong with us presenting information in this manner. Depending on one's definition of "pilot", the first woman pilot is any one of a half-dozen or so different people: Marie Thible, Sophie Blanchard, Jeanne Labrosse, Almina Martin, Harriet Quimby, Baroness Raymonde de la Roche, and Aida d'Acosta all could be called the "first woman pilot", and I bet if one looked hard enough one could find at least one book citing each of the preceding persons as such. It would take a solid couple of paragraphs to compare each one and define how each is the first woman pilot in one way or another. Many first, perhaps most firsts, simply cannot be distilled down into a bullet-point factoid. History is rarely simple enough for that. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 05:16, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, history is that simple. You just have to check your facts before adding anything, something I didn't bother to do here, since it doesn't matter right now. You made a mistake also, spelling her name wrong as I did, it actually Amelia Earhart. Fearing a list might get too long, is not a valid reason to be against it. There are reliable sources in books and newspapers that would demonstrate each thing was in fact notable enough to be on a list. Dream Focus 05:45, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

and what about pilot? you going to be sure and qualify your meaning via a link? Jack Merridew 06:43, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete FIRST PERSON TO MAKE THIS JOKE - seriously now - unmaintainable in present form. Splitting into the useful articles seems perfectly reasonable, so do whatever needs to be done to make that possible if someone is actually going to do it, but "list of firsts" needs to go. Hipocrite (talk) 22:27, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per the irony of the categorization of this AfD debate: Category:AfD debates (Indiscernible or unclassifiable topic). And for all the good reasons presented above that amount to the same thing: this is an unencyclopaedic collection of indiscriminate information that is inherently subjective, infinite, and stupid. Jack Merridew 06:43, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Please keep the discussion on this page. Tags have been added to the article stating that "It has been suggested that this article be split into multiple articles accessible from a disambiguation page", with a link to the article's talk page where people are duplicating this discussion. I have removed those tags so that the entire discussion occurs here. Ecphora (talk) 07:05, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Nominator's reasoning is compelling, keep/split/merge/what not if and only if someone actually does the scutwork.--Tznkai (talk) 16:59, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete As Tznkai says, the nominator presents an extremely strong case — how could this be a proper encyclopedia article? We can verify that this thing or that thing was the first of its type, but there's absolutely no way that we can determine what belongs and what doesn't. Even if we split this into several lists, we couldn't determine what would belong in each one. Nyttend (talk) 21:45, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete- unless all items are refed in which case maybe incubateI can see no way to rescue this without deleting everything that is inadequately refed, which leaves a very short article with much missing. I'll do this if people want me to.NBeale (talk) 22:09, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and reorganize, there are several books on firsts, so the topic is notable. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 04:54, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment The fact that there are books like Firsts: Origins of Everyday Things That Changed the World (which is admitted to be 'trivia') does not necessarily mean that we should have an article which seeks to replicate the book. Pretty much anything is the "first" something (eg this is the "first comment in an AfD discussion about list of firsts which ..." you get the idea) and a list which has no chance at all of being even remotely comprehensive surely does not belong here. NBeale (talk) 05:44, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. WP is not a list of everything and this list has no clear criteria. Just saying they are "notable" first isn't sufficient. Notable to whom? I don't find all of those things particularly notable. (BTW, had to laugh as the "first half-white President of the US. Isn't he more notable for being the first half-black President?) Nom is correct, we could "first" it to death. Niteshift36 (talk) 17:58, 8 January 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.