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 per WP:HEY. Bearian (talk) 21:33, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

List of basic mining topics (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Contested prod. This is an unnecessary fork of Mining. The author states that it conforms to the standard format of Lists of basic topics, but the aim there is to create articles that are outlines of their respective subject areas and "are intended to help the beginner become familiar with each subject". That's a good idea but shouldn't become a shibboleth. Compare this particular article with for example List of basic classical studies topics - that will "help the beginner become familiar with each subject" but this article adds nothing that's not already in Mining. It should be deleted and redirected. andy (talk) 22:46, 1 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete redundant fork. Colonel Warden (talk) 08:46, 2 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. —andy (talk) 12:21, 2 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - First of all, the author didn't state that "it conforms to the standard format of Lists of basic topics", I did. I've created or developed most of the lists in that set, and when Andy found a problem with this page, the author came to me to see what was wrong with it. When I looked, I didn't find anything wrong with the page - for a page that was 2 days old, it seemed perfectly fine along its development to me. Andy prodded the page for deletion one day after its creation, apparently conveying the sentiment that list stubs shouldn't be allowed. He also posed above the well-developed List of basic classical studies topics as an example of what this list should be but is not, as if there can be no steps in between - only a completed draft will satisfy Andy (the example list took many hours of development to complete). Andy's type of "all or nothing reasoning" runs counter to the nature of the wiki as a collaboritve medium - if only completed drafts may be posted, then there is no opportunity for collaboration in the development of drafts up to that point. That's a very bad approach. Andy also stated that the list is redundant with the main article. That's the typical starting phase for lists of this type, and while they are redundant in scope, their purpose is differentiated by the format of the page - these are outlines, a sort of cheat sheet, which allows browsing of the relevant topics without reading a lot of prose to get to the links. Redundancy is irrelevant, though these lists tend to grow beyond the scope of the main article in the course of their normal development. Please allow this one to do so. The List of basic mining topics is a very good start. Rather than punish User:Erikzann for creating a list that was requested at the Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists of basic topics, please keep his work so that others can build upon it. Thank you. Sincerely, The Transhumanist 19:44, 3 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• I can't see how it is redundant, as Mining is a full-fledged article rather than a navigational list, and is very limited in terms of link lists (nor can it accommodate a lot of those). Narayanese (talk) 19:59, 3 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: why does deleting a pointless article "punish" the author? Nobody owns WP articles. But anyway, despite this afd there has been no attempt to improve the article. I see from Transhumanist's comments on the article's talk page that "over 200 more [similar lists] are under construction... but there are only a few of us working on these." That sounds to me like an overblown project that isn't yielding consistent results. andy (talk) 23:03, 3 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Right there. You belittled his work by calling it "pointless". Don't you care about others' feelings? Yes, that kind of treatment is punishment. He was only trying to help Wikipedia, and you come right along and bash him for it. I take great offense at your approach. Deletions, and deletion nominations, are pretty harsh feedback. A much better approach would be to jump onto the page and collaborate with the author to complete it, or discuss with him on the talk page how the page should be improved. Instead, you nominate the page, which is obviously under development, for deletion on its second day of existence! Ignoring the facts that this is a work in progress and a building block -- if you throw out his work, it will have to be started over from scratch (and will include exactly the same links, which will then be added to). The Transhumanist 20:00, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• And the page is not pointless. It's a topic outline/navigational list, distilling the subject down to its bare links. It is very useful, especially considering it is part of one of Wikipedia's navigation systems, the pages of which together serve as a topic outline of human knowledge. (See Lists of basic topics). And this portion of that master outline will grow to become even more useful. Also, you've failed to address the issue of collaboration - if you delete this page, then nobody can come along and improve it, and you will have wasted the effort of the author of the page, in addition to wasting everybody's time by forcing a deletion discussion. And if the deletion goes through, which hopefully it will not, you will have created a hole in the outline we are creating. The Transhumanist 20:00, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• The other pages of this type that are under development that I mentioned above are in the Wikipedia namespace in draft form. So there's no hurry on those, but by using AWB and other advanced tools, most of the pages are coming along at a fair pace. The team's results are highly consistent (we're currently focused on the geography-related lists in the set which are shaping up nicely), but you can't say that about the work of all Wikipedians, to which all pages on Wikipedia are potentially subject to.  :) The Transhumanist 20:00, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• You've mistakenly applied redundancy as a reason for deletion. That reason doesn't apply to Wikpedia's navigation systems (see WP:CLN, of which this page is a part. The navigation system has the same scope as Wikipedia's articles, as a whole, and in this respect is entirely redundant. Does that mean we should get rid of the navigation system?  :) The Transhumanist 20:00, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Status report - the page has been greatly expanded and the reasons posted in the nomination no longer apply (though they weren't valid in the first place). The Transhumanist 20:50, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Let's get a consensus. andy (talk) 23:22, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Hey, so I'm the person who started the list of basic mining topics. I'm new to Wikipedia, long time reader first time writer, etc. For a large part I don't know what I'm doing, in fact I don't even know if I can vote, but if I can I'm voting for keeping this list since as the Transhumanist have said the list is now greatly improved, containing many things that aren't in the original mining article; specific mining equipment, mining equipment inventors, etc. and I'll be further working on it as well. Erikzann (talk) 22:29, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. The list does what it sets out to do: it provides a good overview of terms to a reader getting familiar with the subject. It also provides information not (readily) available in the mining article. —C.Fred (talk) 22:37, 5 August 2008 (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.