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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. There was no support for deleting this article, and much more support for keeping it in its current form than for redirecting or merging. This was a (non-admin closure) DannyS712 ( talk) 00:08, 8 January 2019 (UTC) reply

List of songs recorded by One Direction

List of songs recorded by One Direction (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)
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One Direction discography is already of Featured Article status and obviously perfectly sufficient as is. I don’t see what this article adds to the One Direction article series that isn’t addressed there or individual album articles. This should be either deleted or redirected to One Direction discography. Trillfendi ( talk) 23:37, 1 January 2019 (UTC) reply

The list contains many songs that were not part of an album or songs from albums that were not released as singles. It is not a redundant list by any means. Spiderone 17:36, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Albums and songs-related deletion discussions. Abelmoschus Esculentus talk / contribs 03:01, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Music-related deletion discussions. Abelmoschus Esculentus talk / contribs 03:01, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Abelmoschus Esculentus talk / contribs 03:01, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
Hmm, I should’ve thought of that. Trillfendi ( talk) 06:13, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
  • Comment - I work a lot in the music content area, and I’ve held WikiProject-level discussions to try to figure out when exactly it is acceptable for bands/musicians to have these “list of songs” type article spinouts. There really wasn’t much of a consensus other than a vague “if the subject doesn’t have many song articles, it’s probably not necessary, and if they do, then it may be appropriate”. Without any clear criteria or consensus, I don’t really feel comfortable !voting to eliminate these lists unless a group only has one or two notable songs with articles. As such, this list doesn’t seem like the ideal type to be eliminating here, as this group has a larger number of notable songs. Sergecross73 msg me 13:17, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
I agree that, rather than just targeting this one article, a general discussion should be held to see whether there is consensus that these lists of songs are not notable, full stop. At the moment, it seems a bit vague. If you look at the category that the One Direction list is contained in, you will see similar lists for more than 100 other bands and artists, and that's just the British ones! There are more than 200 such lists for American artists and over 50 for Indian ones that would all need to be considered for deletion also. Spiderone 13:50, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
I didn’t target the article. I just didn’t see what it added of any substantial value that the discography lacked. To me, is obviously different so it depends. Trillfendi ( talk) 18:57, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
If you redirect to the discography, then you lose the A-Z listing of every One Direction song that this article currently provides. If you merge, then the article will be too long and people will be moaning that it should be separated anyway. One Direction is/was a major pop group and so it makes sense to have the two separate articles and this is in line with other major artists. I could understand a merge if we were talking about a small time artist with only one or two albums but not in this case. Spiderone 21:32, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
  • Keep - these "list of songs recorded by ___" articles tend to be allowed so long as the band has recorded a lot of material, which One Direction has done. It is useful for navigational purposes and is not the same as the discography article. It is well sourced and I see no reason to delete or redirect this article nor do I see it as unencyclopaedic in any way. See here and here for just two examples where the discography and the list of songs recorded coexist successfully; there appears to be a strong consensus that such articles are notable and can exist well alongside the normal discography lists. Spiderone 13:42, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
As far as I’m concerned, the smattering of 5 (!) songs that aren’t in the discography article could simply be added as another table (and they aren’t even notable songs.) Trillfendi ( talk) 18:57, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
This is an A-Z listing of every One Direction song. It is something that is often done for major artists. Spiderone 21:36, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
Since it is time that someone referred to a policy; WP:LISTN says "Lists that fulfill recognized informational, navigation, or development purposes often are kept regardless of any demonstrated notability."; I believe that this list meets LISTN. I also think that it is well sourced and, with over 400 page views per day average, I think that we'd be losing something if it were deleted. Spiderone 21:41, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
In the previous year One Direction discography also had an average of 400+ daily views so really an opportunity cost. And if “PopSirens” and “UnRealityTV” are now considered good sources I’m ready to yank my hair. Trillfendi ( talk) 07:37, 3 January 2019 (UTC) reply
  • Keep per Spiderone. A discography is not a list of songs, it is list of recordings released and serves a different purpose. Many artists have both kinds of list. As more information comes out this article could possibly expanded by songs recorded by 1D, but not released. -- Richhoncho ( talk) 15:53, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
It would take less than 10 minutes to just merge them in the other article. Trillfendi ( talk) 18:57, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
  • Keep - I see a number of songs on the list that were not issued as singles, so the list seems appropriate. Rlendog ( talk) 16:46, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
Before the edit conflict (that’s what I hate about wikitext) I pointed out that since there are only 5 songs not issued as singles why not create a separate table and just put it in the discography. 5 songs, people! Five! Trillfendi ( talk) 18:57, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
Because (1) songs that aren't issued as singles are not technically part of a discography, (2) that would eliminate the information of the other songs, some of which may be notable enough to generate articles in the future, and (3) there is no need to do so since the current situation is fine. Rlendog ( talk) 15:10, 3 January 2019 (UTC) reply
It’s like you people aren’t even listening to what I’m saying. Trillfendi ( talk) 19:57, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
It appears maybe you’re guilty of the same and haven’t been reading your responses either? As I mentioned above, you’ve stumbled upon a bigger situation that the community hasn’t come to a consensus on how to handle, and until it does, people are reluctant to make a call on this specific article. We probably need to come up with some general guidelines on when it’s acceptable to have a song list, or what info a song list should contain beyond what a discography article covers as to not be seen as redundant. (Writing credits, performance credits, etc). Sergecross73 msg me 22:10, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
The problem is some of you are trying to make this about the “broader” lack of consensus on some other page which has nothing to do with this page and why I proposed deletion or redirection. This is about this page as it relates to One Direction, not all list of recordings articles. Trillfendi ( talk) 07:37, 3 January 2019 (UTC) reply
It’s seems you’re not quite understanding what I’m trying to say. Think of it this way. Purely hypothetically speaking, let’s say there was a lack of community consensus on how to interpret the GNG. Let’s say half the community feels 3 sources are required to be notable, while half think 5 is required. Then someone nominates an article with only 4 sources for deletion. Many would say “let’s decide on whether 3 or 5 is the requirement before we decide the fate of this article”. That is more or less what you’ve done here. I’m not you did anything wrong, I’m just explaining why people are reacting the way they are - unbeknownst to you, you kinda stumbled into an issue that is bigger than this one article. Sergecross73 msg me 00:44, 4 January 2019 (UTC) reply
Normally I err on the side of deletion in discussions, but in this case I can't find a reason to support the reasons for nomination you have presented. Ajf773 ( talk) 06:28, 3 January 2019 (UTC) reply
  • Keep as a discography and a list of songs recorded by.... are two different lists. It is normal for a major artist/group to have both. The nominator seems unfamiliar with this type of list. Aoba47 ( talk) 20:05, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
  • Merge I don't see why we need separate pages for the albums and the songs on those albums (which have their own articles as well!). I agree that the content should not be deleted, but just because above voters would keep the content doesn't mean the article needs to be separate. Reywas92 Talk 21:05, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
The complete list of songs, along with the album and singles discography, would just create a ridiculously long article if merged together. That's why the consensus has been established that, for major artists such as One Direction, we should have them as separate articles. Spiderone 21:28, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
You can literally count on one hand the difference in the amount of songs between these two articles, so no it wouldn’t be “ridiculously long”. Trillfendi ( talk) 21:42, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
But how would you go about merging the lists? If you just add another table to the discography then what about the A-Z list? Please see my comments above where I refer to the LISTN policy. Spiderone 21:46, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
There is no A-Z list for One Direction. Trillfendi ( talk) 22:18, 2 January 2019 (UTC) reply
Well, there certainly won't be if you remove this one. Spiderone 17:58, 3 January 2019 (UTC) reply
  • Keep, as discography articles almost never contain the actual list of songs. Merging the articles together would be unnecessary and would make the resulting article too long. Jc86035 ( talk) 08:29, 7 January 2019 (UTC) reply
5 songs, dude. If 5 songs is “too long” for you then, well, I don’t know what to say. It would literally be the equal length. Trillfendi ( talk) 08:36, 7 January 2019 (UTC) reply
@ Trillfendi: I presumed that the entire table would be kept, since it includes extra data which could be useful to readers, and (unlike the discography tables) is sortable. I agree that this is a fairly unusual situation because of the large number of charting songs. However, what you're essentially saying is "we don't need this list because other articles that are not lists also contain this data", which could be used as a reason to delete a very large number of lists (e.g. List of counties in Rhode Island), and (per Sergecross73) it's not clear whether this is an accepted reason. Jc86035 ( talk) 10:17, 7 January 2019 (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.