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.
Just come across this (which is strange in itself as I have been extensively editing this area for years). It is virtually an
WP:Orphan,
[1] which partially explains why. I am not sure what the purpose of the list is. Best I could find on indexes is that they were an early way of organising topics,citation needed but categories are far superior for that purpose.dubious –
discuss We also have
Template:Genetic engineering.
The main problem I have is that there is no context for any of the entries. Most of them do not really relate to genetic engineering. From the first 20 entries in A I would generously suggest three could fit in a list like this
Achondroplasia,
Adenoviridae and
Allele if you had a large inclusion criteria. Then you have strange entries like
Albino and
Alcoholism.
AIRcorn(talk) 08:38, 5 November 2017 (UTC)reply
Comment I don't want a situation where indexes are suddenly considered obsolete, I use them all the time, as do many others. They are considered to be a valid type of navigational aid to be used in addition to categories, which are not 'far superior'. They are in many cases, used as a legitimate type of list and serve as an article in their own right. You may want to see
Portal:Contents/Indices, and
Wikipedia:WikiProject Indexes and
Wikipedia:INDICES and
Category:Wikipedia indexes for more information, and note the related
Wikipedia:Outlines.
That being said, I am not adverse to this specific list being deleted, but please don't talk in terms of indexes in general, most of them are very useful. I will also note that this specific list gets few pageviews
[2] possibly indicative of that fact it is not being utilized in any templates or for cross linking. I actually concur with most the nomination reasoning, and unless someone wants the integrate this index properly, it is not serving any useful purpose.
Dysklyver 16:25, 5 November 2017 (UTC)reply
I came across this through the genetic engineering topic, not indices themselves (I misspelt genetic engineering in the search bar). I wasn't even aware of these types of lists before that. I did search for other deletion discussions and looked at the wikiproject before nominating. I have no intention of personally doing a purge of "index of ..." articles (although to be honest the other ones I have seen look no better) as I am just concentrating on this topic area at this stage. As for your tags added to my above comment the citation is from
this rfc which I found from the wikiproject talk page. Incidentally the wikiproject (and even
Wikipedia:INDICES) gives no real indication as to their purpose. As for the dubious tag, categories are not perfect (and the genetic engineering one is particularly bad - it is on my list), but like indices they list articles relating to a topic and you have the extra organisational step of sub categories so you can more easily narrow down the article of interest. I am curious as to what you use indexes for though?
AIRcorn(talk) 06:58, 6 November 2017 (UTC)reply
I followed your link to the portal and found
Index of genetics articles. It is pretty much an exact copy of this article. I would guess this article was copied from that one with no thought as to what is actually genetic engineering. If this is the norm then I may have to rethink my intentions regarding indices, although that would have to be at another venue. This should be a pretty uncontroversial deletion now though.
AIRcorn(talk) 07:33, 6 November 2017 (UTC)reply
Delete. In principle, List-class articles are fine per
WP:CLN; list articles allow for alternative classification and possible annotation relative to categories and navboxes. So I would argue keep for this article, except for the fact that it seems redundant with
Index of genetics articles and some of the terms don't directly relate to genetic engineering, such as
altruism. Of the two,
Index of genetics articles is the more accurate list. Hence delete, with no prejudice to re-creation if someone wants to create a proper list of genetic engineering-specific articles. --
Mark viking (
talk) 23:40, 7 November 2017 (UTC)reply
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 12:49, 12 November 2017 (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.