Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Jewish Nobel Prize winners

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was - no consensus

List of Jewish Nobel Prize winners

Delete - This page does not seem appropriate. What does winning a prize have to do with choosing/being a particular religion? The two are not related. What about Nobel prize winners that were married or smoked? It seems silly and inconsequential. We have a list of Nobel Prize winners already. If Nobel prize was about religious scholors I would think differently. This AND relationship is not signifigant. Hobie 02:24, 2004 Sep 25 (UTC)

Note: This vote is a waste of time as this list is part of a series relating to List of Jews. It has nothing to do with "religion" as such, it is more about people who were ethnically Jewish, see [1] for a similar project on the web. See article on Jew in this regard. The page List of Jewish Nobel Prize winners was originally part of List of Jews. And because, that page had become too long, it was necessary to create this new "Nobel" list, just as new "Lists of Jews" were created for other subjects: List of Jewish scientists and philosophers; List of Jewish superheroes; List of Jews by country; List of rabbis; List of Jewish Biblical figures; List of Israeli politicians. Please cancel this vote, as the list will still need to be inserted separately (as there is not enough room on the List of Jews page to accommodate it). Thank you. IZAK 10:39, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[Comments by IZAK moved inside the editable section and section indenting restored. - RedWordSmith 17:29, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)]

Delete - It contains a lot of mistakes: some scientists were apparently unaware of their Jewish descent.

Anonymous editors have no vote. And actually it was mostly your deletions from the lists that were mistakes. Jayjg 00:53, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Delete. Nobel Prize winners are notable for winning the Nobel Prize, not for being of a particular ethnicity or religion. Pyrop 02:38, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)
Delete -- Jmabel 03:34, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)
Delete. Pointless list. — Gwalla | Talk 03:50, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Abstain. Would it make a difference if it were, say, a list of black senators, or a list of female CEOs?--Improv 06:24, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- Delete. On further thought, I think that this, along with List of Jews, should be deleted. While it's not an open-ended list (well, List of Jews is), it's still not encyclopedic. Of course, List of Jews is not up for VfD right now, but I simply don't see any reason any kind of List of Ethnicity article should exist. Are we eventually to have List of People? Such things are never notable, they're open-ended, and they really don't belong here at all. --Improv 06:12, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Delete I don't think it's even possible to clearly define someone's religion. What if one converted? What if one denounced his/her faith but did not advertise it? How is it possible to know someone's faith if one keeps it private? Besides, we don't have any lists of people by religion: List of Buddist Nobel Prize winners? List of Atheist Senators? Pointless and probably offensive too. --Gene s 07:34, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Delete. Note however that:
- This page was (I think) created as an offshoot of the List of Jews page, so somebody will probably return it there if it's deleted.
- The criterion used is Jewish ethnicity, not religion (though it should differentiate between people of part and full ethnicity).
- Defining religion/ethnicity is difficult, but not necessarily more so than nationality (just look at List of Czechs or List of Russians).
- This is far from the only 'AND' list on Wikipedia. Just for composers, we have List of female composers, List of famous gay, lesbian or bisexual composers, List of composers of African descent, List of Dutch and Flemish composers, List of Indian composers, List of Indonesian composers, List of Italian composers and List of Polish composers. There's even a List of Christian scientists and a Category:Scientists by nationality.
  - Is that a list of Christian Scientists or Christian {{Scientist]]s? Rich Farmbrough
- Some people might think that it is consequential that 20% (128.231.88.3 please do not change other people's comments) of Nobel Prize winners were of Jewish ethnicity. However, without a reasoned article explaining why it's consequential the list could do more harm than good. -Udzu 10:37, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Abstain what about "category:Jewish philosophers (Secular)"[2]? i'm not so sure of the harm in such lists/categories. Wolfman 11:25, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Keep! If based on ethnicity. I don't see the harm done. What about the list of Italian composers, etc..--Jondel 14:32, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Keep and create more such lists. - SimonP 16:24, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)
Delete without fuller indication of full or part ethnicity. Lists should clearly indiciate the criteria used for their contents, otherwise they are subject to misinterpretation both by readers and later editors. Jallan 18:35, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Redirect to List of Jews. It's the kind of thing that somebody seeking information on notable Jews might look for, and it's a valid concern. Lord Bob 19:20, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)
Redirect unitl such time as database functionality makes all such articles (lists) automatically available. Rich Farmbrough 23:39, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Merge and redirect. -Sean Curtin 03:21, Sep 26, 2004 (UTC)
Keep. Obviously based on ethnicity, and Wikipedia has other such lists. Jayjg 04:42, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Keep. This nomination fails to recognize the very basic rule of Wikipedia: once an article grows too large, it is subject to splitting. Obviously, Jews recognize and acknowledge their own people better than, say, Russians. Therefore their List of Jews page grew large and hence subject to splitting. Mikkalai 06:45, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Keep. Valid subject for an article. Rick K 06:47, Sep 26, 2004 (UTC)
Redirect. ElBenevolente 06:58, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Keep. If the other articles Udzu linked above are valid, what would make this list different? ~leif ☺ _HELO
- Although really I'd rather use the category system for lists like this (ie have a Category:Jewish Nobel Prize winners and so on for all those other lists). That way when the category browser gets better all these lists will benefit. And category pages can still have content added to them... Oh well, just a thought. Keep for now, replace most List_of articles with categories later. ~leif ☺ _HELO 07:04, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Comment from originator: leif/Udzu have very valid points. I believe wiki could be significantly improved if categorys where used more then an endless number of combinational lists. For example using Udzu's composer example: Categorize people by nationality. He is Italian, She is Italian(Category:Italian_people)...then categorize by Composer (Category:Composers). Then without creating extra (unneeded) pages, we have the same data available as the List of Italian composers that never needs to be updated. Cross reference is power. It works the same for all cases mentioned. I am not arguing the data, just the format. Any thoughts? Hobie 16:54, 2004 Sep 26 (UTC)
And how do you get "List of Italian composers" from the two categories: Category:Italian_people and Category:Composers? Mikkalai 18:01, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

That is up to the user. With catagory tags and any combonation is available. What if I want a list of Italian composers, who are also poets? Should there be a list for that. Clearly no, but if everything is catagorized then that data is availiable for those who want it. Technically how? Write a query, compare names - Tools will always be availiable for searching and organizing data as long as the data is organized. The weakness of lists is that the must be manually updated. Hobie 18:51, 2004 Sep 26 (UTC)

See Category:Jews (a sub-category of Category:Jews and Judaism) in this regard. Both "Lists" and "Categories" serve their functions, it depends what categories and lists are available and how they are used by readers of Wikipedia. Thank you. IZAK 17:39, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Also, unlike category, list articles may include brief summaries for its items, which makes them much more useful for browsing. Mikkalai 17:57, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

That is not true. Category pages can include information. Category:Politics is an example. Hobie 18:51, 2004 Sep 26 (UTC)

I am speaking about summaries for its items, not a summary, i.e., kind of intro text. I.e., in a list each item can be annotated, which is of benefit for further search. Mikkalai 00:49, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Keep. Child article of the perfectly encyclopedic List of Jews article. We don't delete child articles. If anything, we merge them back into their parents. In cases like this, however, the parent and child articles are too large to be re-merged. • Benc • 02:39, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Keep. Neither offensive nor uninteresting. DJ Clayworth 14:21, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Delete. Attempts at confusing religion with ethnicity are inherently POV.--Gene_poole 12:13, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Isn't this one of the in-flight reading materials available in Airplane!? Delete Terrapin 13:51, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
KEEP. I don't see what's wrong in this list. It might not be of interest to some, but it might be to others. Wikipedia is not paper, so I am not afraid of having more articles. There are lists for everything, why not this one also?--AAAAA 15:28, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.