Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of battles (alphabetical): Difference between revisions

List of battles (alphabetical)

This page is impossible to maintain. There are thousands of battles in human history and they would all be impossible to organize into one page. This page is only biased toward some of the most famous battles. Also, this page now includes many non-battles (sieges, etc..). Some battles listed in red font actually exist so this page is becoming misleading. All battles on Wikipedia are already contained in [[Category: Battles]]

• Strong Delete as nom. --Ineffable3000 01:38, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. TSO1D 01:54, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment It may just need cleanup. Obviously, there are thousands of battles, but only the notable ones make it onto Wikipedia, so I don't think it would be too impossible to maintain. Of course, there is the problem of deciding which name of a battle to use when placing it on this list. If you're going to delete this one, though, take a look at List of battles. Gzkn 01:57, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - some lists in List of battles are very good. The page List of battles does need expansion however. Some lists of battles will be impossible to maintain and should be deleted. I work with Wikiproject Military History and it is our goal to add every single battle in human history to Wikipedia, no matter how big or small it is. All battle are inherently notable (as historical events). Creating a list of The Most Important Battles would violate WP:POV. A list of battles with the most casualties already exists. If this list of battles is deleted, I will consider nominating other obsolete lists for deletion. Categories work well for many of the battles. Lists are only required for Battles of certain characteristics (casualties, certain event, etc.) --Ineffable3000 02:01, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment Oh I know. I probably should have clarified...I meant the alphabetical list is not really that much different in scope than say the geographic list; some users might find alphabetical listing useful. Gzkn 02:03, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
      • Comment - I do not agree much with Geographic list either. It omits a lot of battles. How would a user not find a good category or just search just as useful? --Ineffable3000 02:06, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment - I am hoping that this AfD would bring a new test which determines what battle list is necessary (and good) and which is just impossible to maintain and obsolete. Please give opinions on the matter. In my opinion, such a test would help idealize the Lists of Battles. I am acting in Good Faith and do not wish to cause any harm to Wikipedia by doing this AfD. I just want the lists of Battles to become good, and I do not think that some of the lists are good at this moment. --Ineffable3000 02:06, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Looks fine to me. List can be sorted multiple ways, and the red links let me know what articles still need to be written. Why is the excuse to delete a list always that a category exists, and the reason to delete a category is that a list exists? Both should always exist! --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 02:12, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Proposition - Battle List Test:

The following lists of battles are good necessary:

Distinguished battles (by number of casualties, by number of forces, etc..)

Battles of each country (List of Battles of Russia, List of Battles of USA, etc..)

Battles of a certain conflict (Battles of the American Civil War, Battles of WWII, etc..)

The following lists of battles are not necessary, impossible to maintain, and are confusing:

Battles by century/millenium/decade (Battles of 100-200, etc..)

List of all battles (List of battles (alphabetical), List of battles (geographical), etc..)

List of most important battles in world history

Please add to my proposition or explain your support/opposition to it. --Ineffable3000 02:10, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• Application of Proposition - I have evaluated the Lists of battles using my proposition:

List of battles before 601 - NOT ACCEPTABLE
List of Roman battles - ACCEPTABLE
List of battles 601-1400 - NOT ACCEPTABLE
List of battles 1401-1800 - NOT ACCEPTABLE
List of battles 1801-1900 - NOT ACCEPTABLE
List of battles 1901-2000 - NOT ACCEPTABLE
List of battles 2001-current - NOT ACCEPTABLE
List of battles (alphabetical) - NOT ACCEPTABLE
List of battles (geographic), i.e., by country - NOT ACCEPTABLE
List of Chinese battles - ACCEPTABLE
List of Islamic battles fought during Ramadan - ACCEPTABLE
List of Japanese battles - ACCEPTABLE
List of naval battles - NOT ACCEPTABLE
List of World War I battles - ACCEPTABLE
List of World War II battles - ACCEPTABLE
Most lethal American battles - ACCEPTABLE
Most lethal battles in world history - ACCEPTABLE

List of orders of battle - ACCEPTABLE
List of wars - ACCEPTABLE
List of Routs - NOT ACCEPTABLE
List of raids - NOT ACCEPTABLE
The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World - ACCEPTABLE

What do you think? --Ineffable3000 02:13, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• Ammendment to Proposition

Lists of wars are acceptable.

Lists of battles listed in a book are acceptable.

List of sieges is acceptable.

Please comment. Thank You. --Ineffable3000 02:17, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment - I am just interpreting WP:LIST for the case of lists of battles. --Ineffable3000 02:18, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

after fourth edit conflict :) Hmmm, I do feel that a chronological list (separated somehow into different time periods) might be useful. But it might be a pain do decide how to break it up. Perhaps this might be better on a talk page somewhere, though, maybe the Military History project talk page. Gzkn 02:18, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

The AfD page is fine for discussion. We can always copy final policies. I will put up a link to this page on the Wikiproject Military History page. --Ineffable3000 02:21, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, AFD pages are generally pretty bad for holding general discussions, as they operate under a seven-day limit and force things towards an artificial keep/delete dichotomy. Kirill Lokshin 02:47, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment - I have put a link to this AfD page on the Wikiproject talk page. Hopefully some experts will come and speak. But either way, in my opinion, a list of ALL BATTLES, should not exist. --Ineffable3000 02:33, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• Delete I don't see an alphabetical listing as a particularly useful axis for navigation, especially when there are lists/categories that organize the material much more effectively. Carom 02:44, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• The alphabetical list is, admittedly, pretty useless, as it's redundant to the categories (which already follow alphabetical sorting) in the local sense and to Wikipedia's search function in the global one. As it's additionally fairly difficult to maintain, I don't see a problem with deleting it.

More generally, the intent of lists is to provide a form of navigation that categories and templates do not. For battles, navigation by country (via Category:Battles by country) and war (via Category:Battles by war and campaignbox templates) are done fairly well without lists; the lists of battles for each country and war are thus often redundant (although they may still be useful, in some circumstances). The major—and very obvious—form of navigation that categories do not provide, however, is the chronological; categories are sorted alphabetically, which makes it quite difficult to arrange battles in order when browsing them. Here, lists—in particular, the lists of battles split into centuries (which are really just chunks of a single timeline of battles that has been broken apart due to size constraints)—really excel; I think that this application of lists is the primary one that ought to be retained.

Which is not to say that the current form of these lists is the most useful, of course. In the long term, I think it would be best to combine these with the corresponding chronological list of wars to create a grand Timeline of military conflicts (which may need to be split into chunks) that would list, for each year, the wars and corresponding battles that took place. Kirill Lokshin 02:47, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it is a good idea in the long run. But for now, why not create categories for conflict during each time period? --Ineffable3000 02:50, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Um, because the articles within the categories would still be sorted alphabetically? The point is not to have the set of battles in the Xth century, in other words; but to have a listing of battles in precise chronological order (the century part merely being a convenient way of producing readably-sized pages, nothing more). Kirill Lokshin 02:54, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment - Let's get a consensus on which lists should stay and which should get deleted. --Ineffable3000 02:52, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
  • This nomination is only discussing one list; if you want to suggest that others be deleted, you'll need to make separate nominations. (Which I don't recommend, incidentally, until after there's some sort of general consensus on what sort of lists we want to work with.) Kirill Lokshin 02:54, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
    • That is what I mean. We can still discuss what other lists we would like to nominate for deletion later here. --Ineffable3000 02:57, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
      • Well, here's what I would suggest:
        • List of battles (geographic) - delete; classifying battles by the modern states where their sites are located isn't very useful (and was deprecated as a category option for just that reason)
        • Lists by country or by war - some of these may be useful; others are redundant with the categories and campaignboxes
        • Lists by period (battles and wars) - combine into a single timeline, as I suggested above
        • Lists of routs/raids/etc. - delete, pretty much impossible to determine neutrally what goes into these
        • Lists by casualties - possibly combine into the timeline through the new sortable table option; alternately, rework into articles dealing with the rich historiography of these topics Kirill Lokshin 03:07, 5 December 2006 (UTC)