Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lists of people on the postage stamps of countries (A-B)

Lists of people on the postage stamps of countries (A-B)

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First, no evidence whatsoever exists that any of these meets WP:NLIST. Heck, even a very generic "People on postage stamps" doesn't appear to do show anything amounting to WP:SIGCOV (only seems to throw up a few pages about how at some point in the recent past the US Postal Service relaxed rules against depicting living people on them) - and that's for the broad subject, not for the individual intersections of it.

Otherwise, all of these pages fail WP:NOTDIRECTORY (as generally "Simple listings without contextual information showing encyclopedic merit."); and furthermore, because having this is definitively a WP:BADIDEA, as Wikipedia is not a philatelical catalogue and there is no indication how this kind of page is of any broader encyclopedic significance. An encyclopedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, even if it is true, and despite it possibly being interesting to a limited number of dedicated enthusiasts.

The only of the above pages which has anything even remotely resembling actual encyclopedic content (the Azerbaijan page) only has a verbose lead which isn't supported by any source for most of it, and the only meaningful non-trivial content actually cited to a source is already in Postage stamps and postal history of Azerbaijan), so there's nothing to merge or redirect anywhere even in the best of cases. Shows how unencyclopedic the whole of this is.

Thus, Delete all. Bulk nominations (by smaller batches) to save everyone the trouble of having to argue this time and over again. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:07, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comment – Honestly, a bulk nomination is probably better than the countless prods and AfD noms, they're similar in scope and discussing them individually is counterproductive. I only participated in one AfD but I didn't realize this was a broader issue until I saw the talk page for someone who has recently had a lot of notices regarding these types of list articles. Clovermoss (talk) 01:55, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Question if this discussion closes one way or another, would it impact the consensus of the other articles that are prodded/at AfD? Because this nomination doesn't cover all of them. Clovermoss (talk) 03:01, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Satisfies Wikipedia:LISTCRITERIA. Supported by reliable sources (professional catalogues which have been in continuous publication, some for over a hundred years). Not an indiscriminate list (strictly limited by a country's issuing policy). Absolutely not a trivial matter - stamps may be a bit 'old-fashioned' today but in many people's living memory they were everyday items with regular news articles - in fact about 30 years ago one American 'person on a postage stamp' was major international news. Daveosaurus (talk) 02:14, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Go look up WP:LISTN - Notability guidelines also apply to the creation of stand-alone lists and tables. Notability of lists (whether titled as "List of Xs" or "Xs") is based on the group. One accepted reason why a list topic is considered notable is if it has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources, per the above guidelines. No source whatsoever exists which discusses as a group "the people who have appeared on the postage stamps of [x]" for the vast majority of countries (including all of these listed here); and the burden is on those claiming they do exist. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 11:25, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I note that it's phrased as "one accepted reason", not "the only accepted reason". List of national capitals does not mention any source that discusses national capitals as a group, for instance. Stan (talk) 11:48, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That really takes the cake. It is trivial to find sources talking about the concept of national capitals or listing them (ex. Britannica). Sources giving a detailed list of "people on the postage stamps of countries" or discussing the topic as a group, however... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 12:04, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If that Britannica article is sufficient, then so is Miniature Messages, or the general discussion of the choice of stamp subjects in Williams's Fundamentals of Philately starting at p. 91. Going back a little further, A Hundred Years of Postage Stamps by Patrick Hamilton starts with the discussion of the stamp as "a printed symbol of authority", and later talks about how "the scope of the portrait stamp was extended from the depicting of rulers and politicians" to "famous men [...] singled out for, usually posthumous, honour", continuing in that vein for several pages describing subcategories of people on stamps, such as artists. Stan (talk) 13:17, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And where is that coverage of the specific "people on the stamps of country X"? Where does it discuss the "group of people who have appeared on the stamps of country X" as required by WP:LISTN? Broad, general sources about philately are not sufficient sources for these very narrow and specific lists. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 13:24, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Else, weak merge to Postage stamps and postal history of _X" where available. CaribDigita (talk) 02:42, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Saying "unencyclopedic" over and over using different words does not make it so. Jack Child's Miniature Messages has a number of discussions of the political significance of who appears on Latin American nations' postage stmaps and when. Persons interested in List of people on the postage stamps of the Faroe Islands recently made a good case for retention, and for the US, the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee has a number of rules with the general goal of ensuring that only the most notable individuals make the cut. When persons interested in a particular country are informed that the stamps of their country are being dismissed as insignificant, we are seeing pushback, and lack of such really speaks more to Wikipedia's lack of breadth and depth, than to any inherent lack of notability. Stan (talk) 02:44, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Saying "unencyclopedic" over and over using different words does not make it so. Conversely, saying "this is important" does not make it so. As for the comparisons, these are neither lists about US stamps or Faroe Islands stamps. the stamps of their country are being dismissed as insignificant A textbook example of a strawman - nobody has dismissed the stamps as insignificant; what is the issue here is that these pages fail WP:NOT (Wikipedia is not a philatelical catalogue as explained above) and WP:NLIST. Whether the stamps are significant or insignificant is entirely irrelevant, these are not articles about the stamps but articles about the people who appeared on them, and given that no secondary, reliable source has covered these groups to a sufficient depth, they are not suitable for inclusion on Wikipedia, as Wikipedia does not engage in generating coverage of topics which have not been covered elsewhere. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 11:32, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete all None of these lists satisfy our criteria for lists. They are listing of trivia. It is a collection of indiscrminate lists that do not fall within the scope of Wikipedia. These are clear cases of violating our rules against fancruft.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:47, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Some of the lists also have unacceptably high numbers of people on them who lack article in Wikipedia.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:49, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The Belgian article has some really interesting entries. Such as "*Marguerite Khnopff, sister of Fernand Khnopff (2004)" Khnopff was a painter, but how does that make his sister notable? Lists are not supposed to have non-notable people on them.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:18, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I actually know the answer to this one, but who cares? They're all going to be deleted anyway. Stan (talk) 19:24, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]