Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of LGBT-related films

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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's a fair amount of agreement here that the title should be repurposed as some other type of navigation aid, but the page as is should be kept, if for no other reason than to maintain the attribution history. Any ideas for reworking the page can be worked out on the talk page. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:51, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

List of LGBT-related films

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List of LGBT-related films (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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List that has outlived its usefulness and been supplanted by other, more specific lists, for a subject that has become far too large to be maintainable in this one-stop format anymore. Just to be clear in case anybody misunderstands, I am not proposing that we do away with all lists of LGBT-related films; we already have many other more specific lists by year which should absolutely be kept, and I just don't think we need to keep a massive A-Z master list alongside them anymore.
When this was first created in 2003, there were a lot fewer LGBT-related films to list at all -- the original version literally had only around 100 films in it total. But with the sheer explosion in the visibility and sourceability and mainstreaming of LGBT-themed films in the intervening 16 years, we now have over 3,000 articles about LGBT-related films before you even take into account the considerable number of LGBT-themed films that are currently still redlinks, and the literally unfathomable number of LGBT-themed films still to come in the future. So in 2012, we started a comprehensive set of LGBT-related films subgrouped by year of release, which is highly developed and very well-maintained -- and with those lists in place, the value in trying to maintain a comprehensive A-Z master list alongside them is significantly reduced.
The sheer number of LGBT-related films that need to be listed now also poses a serious maintainability problem -- films frequently get added to the by-year lists without being added here, and the sheer number of films involved makes it virtually impossible to actually undertake any serious effort to get all the missing films added here anymore. And, by comparison, if a country has "List of [Country] films of [Year]" lists in place, then we just use "List of [Country] films" as an index of links to the year lists and not as a redundant master list of all the films that are already in the sublists -- and the sheer scope of this topic means we should treat it like a "country" in that sense.
TLDR, I believe this "comprehensive" master list has outlived its usefulness. We should just delete it, move List of LGBT-related films by year overtop the redlink, and let the by-year lists stand on their own from now on instead of trying to compile a reduplicated master list alongside them. Bearcat (talk) 19:33, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Film-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 19:33, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sexuality and gender-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 19:33, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Gabe Iglesia (talk) 09:35, 25 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Repurposing this title as the move destination of one of the other lists is exactly what I proposed. The discussion is fundamentally about whether there's any value in maintaining a massive A-Z master list alongside the other lists anymore, so AFD is the appropriate venue for that discussion — but deletion of this list would not preclude reusing the title for a different purpose, because deletion never precludes redirection or repurposing of its title to cover something else. So the ability to repurpose the title into something else is not a reason why we would need to retain the content of this list in its existing form, which is what a keep result would mandate. Bearcat (talk) 16:03, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Your proposal is to move List of LGBT-related films by year to this space, however, List of LGBT-related films by year (which has multiple lists) is not the same as List of LGBT-related films (single list), it is in fact more Lists of LGBT-related films. This is something that should simply be a move that can be proposed in its talk page, discuss, move then adjust the content. Much simpler and less likely to result in unnecessary mistakes. Hzh (talk) 19:34, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Bearcat, the goal is to preserve the attribution history. I agree that we don't need a list, but I do not agree that we need to explicitly delete the list as it never existed. The history of this goes back to 2003. The list now persists in more specific forms, and it has not been proven that these forms have never relied on the original list. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 13:42, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The matter of whether the by-year lists ever relied on this list or not is completely impossible to prove or disprove in either direction — how, exactly, is anybody supposed to prove anything either way about whether the year lists were compiled by pulling films directly from this list, or from the same outside sources that were used to build this list? And secondly, as of the time that the year lists started getting spun out, the list was half as long or less as it is now — so by far the largest group of involved films were (a) added to both the year set and this list concurrently, (b) added to the year set first and then added here later, or (c) added to the year lists and never actually added here at all, and thus never relied on the existence of this list as their source. And even for the far smaller number of films that were already in this list before the by-year lists got spun out, the question of whether the by-year lists relied on external sources, or on this master list per se, is not my responsibility to prove. And precisely because external sources do exist for the classification, and we're supposed to be relying on those outside sources rather than self-citing ourselves in violation of
WP:CIRCULAR, the question of whether the by-year lists relied on this list or on the external sources isn't even an important consideration at all. Bearcat (talk) 14:55, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply
]
Like I said, I agree with converting this into a "lists" article. I don't understand why you want to delete the entire page history. Look at
list of science fiction films. It redirects to lists of science fiction films, and we can see the oldest edits going back to 2001. That's what I favor. Not the outright deletion of the original topic editing, which was completely valid and likely spun off into the specific lists. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 15:42, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply
]
Here is an example of the need to preserve copyright. Editor Dev920 began "splitting list" on July 31, 2007 with List of LGBT-related films and List of LGBT-related films by year. Later, in August 2012, editor Lugnuts split that (and contributions in between) out into individual years here. The page history of the original list should be preserved. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 16:24, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Just a note that if you bold the word "delete", it would look like you are choosing to delete the article, which is in fact what's recorded in your AfD stats. Bold either keep or delete. Hzh (talk) 17:51, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I changed it from bold to underline. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 18:11, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and consider repurposing into a navigation page. ミラP 19:57, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as per arguments re preserving attribution history above (as I happen to just so log into my account for the first time in a couple of years just as this kicks off...) Dev920, who misses Jeffpw. 23:36, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Crazy timing! I almost didn't tag you. To be clear, are you in favor of converting this list into a list-of-lists article? Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 12:39, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and consider repurposing into a navigation page.4meter4 (talk) 19:39, 1 October 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.
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