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. I would also recommend Rhododendrites' suggestions to clean up the article. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 11:50, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

List of surnames in Russia[edit]

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I believe that this article fails WP:LISTN and WP:GNG; it is also an indiscriminate directory-style list and it has been a WP:OR concern for almost 4 years. Spiderone 16:13, 1 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Previous consensus to delete:

Related discussions:

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Russia-related deletion discussions. Spiderone 16:14, 1 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Spiderone 16:14, 1 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep as index of articles per WP:LISTPURP and per WP:CLN as complement to Category:Russian-language surnames, which includes over 1800 surname articles. postdlf (talk) 20:41, 1 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

My deletion rationale is best summarised in this section of policy, which states "As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a directory, repository of links, or means of promotion, and should not contain indiscriminate lists, only certain types of lists should be exhaustive. Criteria for inclusion should factor in encyclopedic and topical relevance, not just verifiable existence. For example, all known species within a taxonomic family are relevant enough to include in a list of them, but List of Norwegian musicians would not be encyclopedically useful if it indiscriminately included every garage band mentioned in a local Norwegian newspaper." This article violates that because it is an indiscriminate list of every Serbian given name and is largely unverifiable. Spiderone 21:00, 1 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete CLN applies when the list can provide something beyond mere alphabetized links. This article does not, and should not be kept unless demonstrated to provide something better than being a context-free directory. Information such as prevalence can also go at Eastern Slavic naming customs. Reywas92^Talk 02:16, 2 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

*Keep: legit list per WP:CLN, WP:NOTDUP states: "building a rudimentary list of links is a useful step in improving a list. Deleting these rudimentary lists is a waste of these building blocks" and WP:AOAL lays out potential advantages. // Timothy :: talk 14:21, 2 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

And per appropriate topics for lists, we have "Lists that are too general or too broad in scope have little value, unless they are split into sections. For example, a list of brand names would be far too long to be of value." and "Some Wikipedians feel that some topics are unsuitable by virtue of the nature of the topic. Following the policy spelled out in What Wikipedia is not, they feel that some topics are trivial, non-encyclopedic, or not related to human knowledge. If you create a list like the "list of shades of colors of apple sauce", be prepared to explain why you feel this list contributes to the state of human knowledge." This article covers a topic that is too large, unverifiable and, most importantly, has no place in an encyclopaedia. The fact that this list contains surnames like Akhmedov and Aslanov is part of the issue as well as it's pretty much a list of any surnames that feature in Russia and so the list is basically indiscriminate. Spiderone 14:38, 2 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I don't know how many surnames in Russia there might be, but this list seem rather well maintained. Oleryhlolsson (talk) 20:31, 2 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete (changed vote): I was reading this discussion Spiderone posted and the mention of "List of Jewish names" startled me. I actually can't believe it didn't occur to me immediately what various lists of names that usually to belong to a particular group have been used for historically. This may not have occured to others as well. I know this was absolutely not in anyway the intention with these Wikipedia lists, but good intentions can be used by those with other than good intentions. This is enough for me to switch to Delete. I doubt there is a policy or guideline to directly support this reasoning, but per WP:IGNORE I think Delete is the best way to improve the encyclopedia. // Timothy :: talk 07:47, 3 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep: I think we should keep this because it does list Russian surnames, but we should find ways to improve it to make me more encyclopedic. BattleshipMan (talk) 19:21, 3 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: I just found this article today, then created an account so I could comment. It helped me confirm that my surname actually is legitimately Russian and not modified when my ancestor immigrated to the United States. There is information that I could add to it, but not if it's deleted. Zheltie 00:27, 4 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note to closing admin - none of the last 3 keep votes have cited a Wikipedia policy Spiderone 09:58, 4 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete I totally agree with the other delete voters. This list is indiscriminate, full of useless links, isn't sourced, and ultimately isn't useful. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:01, 10 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per the significant coverage in reliable sources.
The subject passes Wikipedia:Notability#Stand-alone lists, which says, "One accepted reason why a list topic is considered notable is if it has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources, per the above guidelines; notable list topics are appropriate for a stand-alone list." I will show below that "Russian surnames" has been treated as a "a group or set by independent reliable sources".

Sources
1. Benson, Morton (Spring 1964). "The Stress of Russian Surnames". Slavic and East European Journal. 8 (1). American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages. doi:10.2307/303975. JSTOR 303975. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  The article notes on page 44: "If the stress of a masculine or feminine declension source noun (this noun can be a given name) remains constant on the stem throughout its declension, the stress in the derived surname is on the corresponding syllable. Examples: Vóronov—vóron 'raven'; Vorónin—voróna 'crow'; Mólotov—mólot 'hammer'; Švédov—šved 'Swede'; Bársov—bars 'leopard'; Borísov—Borís (given name); Fédin—Fédja (diminutive of Fëdor) ; Bujánov—buján 'ruffian'; Kapitánov—kapitán 'captain.'"
  The article lists numerous other surnames.
2. Dunn, John; Khairov, Shamil (2009). Modern Russian Grammar: A Practical Guide. Abingdon: Routledge. p. 263. ISBN 978-0-415-42289-5. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  The book notes:
  Russian surnames 12.1.3 Most Russian surnames belong to one or other of the following patterns: 1 Surnames ending in –ов(а)/-ев(а)/-ёв(а) or -ин(а)/-ын(а): this is the most frequently encountered pattern. Surnames following this pattern have masculine, feminine and plural forms:
  [list of surnames]
  The declension of these surnames is given in 2.12.1.
  Surnames that take the form of adjectives. These too have separate masculine, feminine and plural forms:
  [list of surnames]
3. St. Clair-Sobell, James; Carlsen, Irina (1959). "The Structure of Russian Surnames". Canadian Slavonic Papers. 4 (1): 42–60. doi:10.1080/00085006.1959.11417849. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  The article discusses numerous Russian surnames throughout. Here are some example Russian surnames listed on page 49: Xadátajiv, Buslájiv, Kaznačejiv, Karavájiv, Bugájiv, Bakájiv, Genijiv, Valújiv, and Garnastájiv.
4. Karaulova, Maria; Gök, Abdullah; Shapira, Philip (2019-01-25). "Identifying author heritage using surname data: An application for Russian surnames". Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. 70 (5). doi:10.1002/asi.24104. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  The article lists these Russian surnames: Ivanov, Nikitina, Vyazemskiy, Chernykh, Medved, Golub, Landau, and Bidon'ko.
5. Balanovsky, O. P.; Buzhilova, A. P.; Balanovskaya, E. V. (2001). "The Russian Gene Pool: Gene Geography of Surnames". Russian Journal of Genetics. 37 (7). Springer Science+Business Media: 807–822. doi:10.1023/A:1016755111586. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  The article notes on page 809: "The most widespread Russian surnames selected for the study" are 75 names. Here are some example Russian surnames: Abramov, Efimov, Kotov, Noskov, Sokolov, Afanas’ev, Egorov, and Kovalev.
6. Balanovska, E. V.; Romanov, A. G.; Balanovsky, O. P. (2011-06-16). "Namesakes or Relatives? Approaches to Investigating the Relationship between Y Chromosome Haplogroups and Surnames". Molecular Biology. 45 (3). doi:10.1134/S0026893311030022. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  The article discusses these surnames: Bulygin, Kuvaldin, Il'in, Semenov, Ivanov, Popov, Sokolov, and Pavlov.
7. St. Clair-Sobell, James; Carlsen, Irina (1959). "The Structure of Russian Surnames". Canadian Slavonic Papers. 4 (1). doi:10.1080/00085006.1959.11417849. ISSN 0008-5006. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  The article discusses these example Russian surnames: Puškinim, Júrjev, Románov, Borísov, Kalínin, Kalíninom, Xadátajiv, Buslájiv, Kaznačejiv, Karavájiv, Bugájiv, Bakájiv, Genijiv, Valújiv, and Garnastájiv.
The list is not indiscriminate.
Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information says Wikipedia articles should not be: "Summary-only descriptions of works", "Lyrics databases", "Excessive listings of statistics", and "Exhaustive logs of software updates". This article is none of these, so it is not indiscriminate.

The list might never be complete, which is fine.
It is fine for the list never to be complete per Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists#Incomplete lists:
Because of Wikipedia's role as an almanac and a gazetteer as well as an encyclopedia, it contains a large number of lists. Some lists, such as the list of U.S. state birds, are typically complete and unlikely to change for a long time. Some lists, however, cannot be considered complete, or even representative of the class of items being listed; such lists should be immediately preceded by the ((Expand list)) template, or one of the topic-specific variations that can be found at Category:Hatnote templates for lists. Other lists, such as List of numbers, may never be fully complete, or may require constant updates to remain current – these are known as "dynamic lists", and should be preceded by the ((Dynamic list)) template.

General notability guideline
There is sufficient coverage in reliable sources to allow the subject to pass Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline, which requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject".
Cunard (talk) 04:46, 10 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Cunard, if your going to continue doing the copy and pasted wall of text crap, for Christ sake can you at least show a tad bit of decency for other editors and not over line break things so freaken much? You have like 4 blank lines between the "The list might never be complete, which is fine" section and the "General notability guideline" part. There's like 11 votes and your's takes up more then half the space in the AfD then all of them combined do. Which is completely ridiculous and just makes the page extremely hard to read. It's totally unnecessary to do it that way. --Adamant1 (talk) 04:56, 10 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: Fails INDISCRIMINATE, LISTN and NOTDIR, which rather trumps the WP:ITSUSEFUL keep arguments above. Ravenswing 22:35, 10 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per the analysis of Cunard (though I have admittedly not double checked all his sources and am taking it on good faith). WP:LISTN gives several reasons why lists can exist and Cunard does an excellent job of showing how several of those reasons suggest that this is an appropriate article. The idea that our content could be used for harm should not be dismissed but is not, in this case, a policy or guideline based reason to support deletion. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:43, 11 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Response to Cunard - I'm not suggesting that Russian surnames are not a notable topic and, indeed, some of those references that you have found could be used in an article called Russian names (currently a redirect); I am simply arguing that an exhaustive list of every single surname possessed by a Russian is unencyclopaedic and shouldn't be on Wikipedia. Spiderone 09:42, 11 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, – bradv🍁 03:43, 12 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Firstly, is it the list of the Russian surnames or of the surnames of Russia (only 80% of Russian population are ethnically Russian)? It looks like second, because, for example, Elmpt is certainly not ethnically Russian surname. But then it is very strange, because it does not include popular Tatar, Kazakh or Chechen surnames. In all, looks like WP:OR. Wikisaurus (talk) 13:47, 16 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Conditional keep - We have lots of pages about Russian surnames, so a navigational list is perfectly reasonable. But definitely opposed to trying to create some exhaustive list of all surnames that exist (a WP:SALAT problem, among others), regardless of whether there's an article. Keep, and remove all of the redlinks and cross-wiki links. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:00, 19 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - per Rhododendrites rationale: There are articles about people with Russian surnames, so it is a navigational list fulfilling NLIST. Wm335td (talk) 18:45, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per WP:LC items 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, and 11. Stifle (talk) 11:50, 27 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

WP:LC is an essay. Wm335td (talk) 17:37, 27 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes and citing an essay is an editor's way of telling you they agree with it and that based on it the article should be kept. It's a nice alternative to pasting the essay into this discussion. TJRC (talk) 23:37, 27 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep LISTN is clearly met, as would be the case with a list of names from any country. INDISCRIMINATE and NOTDIR are highly subjective and thus not really applicable when LISTN is met. Without there being annotations at the moment, this is quite redundant to the category but that's generally not a problem per WP:NOTDUPE. SD0001 (talk) 13:34, 26 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per WP:LISTPURPOSE being soundly met. ——Serial 16:49, 28 August 2020 (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.