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 by (less than clear) consensus as passing WP:LIST and WP:OUTCOMES. Bearian 01:05, 17 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Lists of African Americans[edit]

Lists of African Americans (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

The article duplicates Category:Lists of African Americans, which is sufficient to serve the encyclopedic needs of a single location for the lists. The prior AfD nomination was mistaken about its contents and that AfD was withdrawn. -- Jreferee t/c 02:30, 13 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete, as per the supercategory's presence. Falls within WP:LIST, but is kind of redundant. --Dennis The Tiger (Rawr and stuff) 03:24, 13 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. The superlist presents the other lists within a useful hierarchy according to occupation or time period. The category can only list them alphabetically by title. The superlist is thus not redundant to the category, and is useful in a way that the category cannot replicate. Nick Graves 03:50, 13 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• General comment What exactly is the problem with having both lists and categories? I've never understood why people are in such a hurry to delete lists. A lot of new users don't even notice that the categories exist. Zagalejo^^^ 03:52, 13 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I agree with your confusion. There's quite a bit of CFD "this should be a list" and AFD "this should be a category" kicking back and forth and no real consensus other than the general observation that lists should attempt to add value above being a category. When they do this, though, is largely subjective. --Dhartung | Talk 08:52, 13 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete with prejudice: why do we classify people by race, anyway? The category is more than enough in my view. As a list this is unmaintainable and useless. It's also offensive to me -- what's the implication but that all notable African Americans can be listed on one page? Pah, it's silly anyhow. CRGreathouse (t | c) 14:56, 13 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete redundant to category.--Victor falk 19:16, 13 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep I created this list in part so that the "Lists of Americans" infobox would have an African-American component -- it's kind of pointless to have any of the items in that infobox if you don't have one of the largest ethnic groups in the country in it. Other reasons were to provide quicker links to lists that don't exactly fall into the category, such as List of civil rights leaders which doesn't properly fit in Category:Lists of African Americans. This list also provides easy access to List of Black Britons, List of Black Canadians, which fall outside the African American category but which might prove very useful to someone browsing the subject and interested in comparing and contrasting. This list also provides quick access to List of Black Jews, which overlaps with African Americans. The category would provide none of these links as well, if at all. Noroton 04:15, 14 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• keep There is no requirement or even suggestion in MOS that WP cannot have both lists and categories on the same general subject. Lists and categories serve different purposes for different WP audiences. As for this specific list (broken out for convenience into article sub lists), it has equal use with all ethnic lists of F00 Americans. The U.S. is, and always has been, an ethnically diverse country; attempts to hide that fact in WP reflects the POV of the editor, not truth. Hmains 18:47, 14 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Superior navigation tool in this instance (as detailed by Noroton). In addition, no policy, guideline or manual of style supports deletion. Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes states, "These methods should not be considered to be in competition with each other. One should not be deleted in favor of the other. Instead, each should be used to update the other. This provides two core methods of navigating Wikipedia. See the navigation menu at the top of Wikipedia:Contents. The "category camp" shouldn't dismantle Wikipedia's list-based navigation system, and the 'list camp' shouldn't tear down Wikipedia's category system". In accordance with the precedents for list deletions at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Precedents#Lists , "lists nominated for overlapping categories are often kept". Precedent set in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Russian Americans suggests that "a common ethnicity means the article escapes WP:NOT#IINFO". In the explicit guidelines established in Wikipedia:Categorization FAQ#What is the difference between a list and a category?: ''Grouping articles into a category is not the same as making a list of articles. If you have a category that has vague criteria or that adds and removes members frequently, then maintaining a simple list is often more appropriate." This is applicable to List of African Americans: as more African Americans are establishing WP:notability and thus may fulfill the various inclusion criteria currently set for the individual lists, the inclusion criteria may change when it comes to degree of fame needed for inclusion and/or the lists may grow. Random categorization cannot handle this scenario. Also, as per established policy in Wikipedia:Overcategorization: "not every verifiable fact (or the intersection of two or more such facts) in an article requires an associated category. For lengthy articles, this could potentially result in hundreds of categories, most of which aren't particularly relevant. This may also make it more difficult to find any particular category for a specific article. Such overcategorization is also known as 'category clutter". This list is an elegant solution to the problems mentioned. Pia 23:59, 14 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - overlapping (redundancy) between categories and lists is fine. The two types of pages leapfrog each other. The Transhumanist    08:30, 16 October 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.