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. The "keep" opinions do not adequately address the violation of WP:NOR, a core policy, inherent in compiling an editors' selection of "important" works, which does not cite any reliable sources that consider these works "important". This does not prevent a recreation of this list in a form that does not require original research.  Sandstein  06:05, 10 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

List of important publications in sociology[edit]

List of important publications in sociology (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)

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This does not seem like a proper subject for a WP article. How do we know which publications are important and which not? There are no references given, and even if there were they would only reflect their own authors' opinions. Wouldn't it be better to just mention the books in Sociology or History of sociology? Then each publication's importance could be explained. Wolfview (talk) 19:50, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Have you actually seen the criteria at the top of the article? They;re the usual ones used for such a list, and the inclusion of ay particular item is normally discussed on the talk page. DGG ( talk ) 22:48, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like group OR to me. I do agree that the information is useful to people studying the topic. Wolfview (talk) 23:21, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep the inclusion criteria make it encyclopedic to me. If everything is sourced, which could be improved, then there's no more OR. But article issues should not make it a delete. —fetch·comms 23:45, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep the content and basic concept. Not sure about the "important" in the article title. That would probably be best explained in the introductory text. Ty 02:48, 3 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep seems like a useful list...Modernist (talk) 03:16, 3 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment It's on a serious subject, and useful, and I'm not going to say delete-- but let's face it, Wolfview is entirely right that this is 100% original research... Mandsford 12:35, 3 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 14:18, 3 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 14:19, 3 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, it seems to me that deciding if something is "important" is no more OR than deciding if something is "notable". Of course the list could be improved by documenting which of the criteria the entries meet. Polarpanda (talk) 17:55, 3 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per WP:LIST, DGG, and Polarpanda. It is a useful list for students, our core users, and not completely random. Bearian (talk) 17:16, 4 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete I respect the effort, but when it comes down to it, this is un-salvageable, unencyclopedic, original research. Wikipedia is not a syllabus or literature review, it's an encyclopedia. I would remind other editors that "usefulness" is not a criterion for notability. A publication is a single work that fits into a larger historical, theoretical, methodological, or biographical narrative: why is this work important? what motivated it? what scholars and work did it influence? how has it been interpreted or challenged? There's no attempt to explicate these contexts (nor can there be in a "list" format); just an ad-hoc section structure with a few bullet points. If there were such a structure, this information should be on the Sociology or author's articles. The inclusion criteria are so broad as to be laughable. The content should only be saved if this is moved to some Sociology Wikiproject support page. Madcoverboy (talk) 13:52, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Alternatively, if one is interested in bibliometric statistics, it's feasible that this article could be retitled and reimagined as a "List of most cited articles in sociology." Even with such a distinct criteria as this, it's obvious the article would still be an indiscriminate collection of information. Madcoverboy (talk) 13:57, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - Meets criteria for WP:Lists. Inclusion criteria could be strengthened but is by no means vague. There are many Sociology Bibliographies, this for one, [1] that would be sufficient to source individual list entries.--Mike Cline (talk) 01:50, 10 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Due to vague inclusion criteria and due to original research that is inherent in the list name. --PinkBull 02:26, 10 June 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.