Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lists of Salticidae species (2nd nomination)

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
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The result was delete. -- RoySmith (talk) 03:14, 28 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Lists of Salticidae species

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There are over 6000 species of salticids. Every time a species is transferred to a different genus, synonymized, or unsynonymized (which happens on a weekly basis) at least three (and often 4 or 5) articles have to be updated: the relevant Lists of Salticidae species (usually 1 to add to and another to remove from), the relevant genus article, and relevant species articles if they exist. Due to all the work involved, updates are rarely made and these lists are basically stuck in 2016 (when they were generate with a bot). These lists are completely redundant, as all the same information is covered by List of Salticidae genera and the relevant genus articles (only 1 of which is currently a red link). For comparison, the number of bird species is roughly the same order of magnitude, but no one has created List of bird species. Instead we have the manageable List of birds, which lists only the subgroups, while the actual species lists are one or two levels further down the article hierarchy. For salticids, we have twice the maintenance burden, and a fraction of the editors. I nominated these lists for deletion in 2014, but they were kept mainly because Sarefo regenerated the lists with a bot. Unless he is willing to keep doing that on an ongoing basis, these lists cannot be maintained by hand. Since this list was generated, over 200 species have had their names changed, but only a fraction have been fixed in these lists. Please let us restore some sanity and not have multiple copies of the same information which cannot be realistically kept updated and in sync! Kaldari (talk) 14:51, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note. I've added the following subarticles to the deletion nomination:

Kaldari (talk) 14:53, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Animal-related deletion discussions. Qualitist (talk) 14:54, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Qualitist (talk) 14:54, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This does seem odd to me, to lump all the genera and species of a family into a list, and then split it up by first initial. If the number of taxa in the family were small enough to fit on a single page, that would be OK. I don't see how this current setup is useful though. --

talk) 15:15, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply

]

Delete Pointless multiplication of required maintenance effort (which clearly isn't being expended). List of Salticidae genera does all the necessary work. "Do no try to keep massive redundant lists of invertebrate species" should be a policy item (joking...) - it's a thankless task, with minimum pay-off for the reader. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 15:33, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and all other "Lists of SPIDER-FAMILY species". My understanding is that when WP:WikiProject Spiders was started, there were few genus articles, and so it was thought that these lists of species by family would be useful. Now they are not. They are redundant to the usual system whereby:
- The family article has a list of genera
- The genus article has a list of species

Redundancy of this kind is always bad, and we should set about removing all of the lists of spider species by family. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:00, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Peter coxhead, Outliving its usefulness is good, but is there likely to be anything useful that could be scraped into an article. cygnis insignis 20:35, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Cygnis insignis: there should be nothing in these lists that is not duplicated in List of Salticidae genera and then in the lists of species for each genus – lists that should either be in the genus articles, if the list is short, or in separate "List of SPIDER-GENUS species" articles if long. Clearly it would be good to check that this is the case. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:00, 21 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I had overlooked the list of genera, that is what I have used before. Again, your general guidance on where to list what is eminently sensible, now that building of content is more advanced. Family articles full of species are something I have felt needed rationalising, gutting rather than updating seems prudent as taxonomies continue to be resolved. cygnis insignis 07:22, 21 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

delete, or userfy where that was offered: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Lists_of_Salticidae_species, However, dated lists less bothersome than other forks, I just ignored these when I was dabbling with spider articles. cygnis insignis 20:56, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, delete. Having List of Salticidae genera is sufficient and the proper way to have such pages. My very best wishes (talk) 00:58, 21 February 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.

More lists

@RoySmith: By the same logic as was used above, all of the following should be deleted. What's the best way of proceeding?

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Peter coxhead (talk • contribs) 09:13, 28 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Peter coxhead: Another monster list of lists, it's the kind of thing a bot/script should take care of. I say this with particular fervor after the tedious, repetitive, and necessary cleanup following the previous lists deletions. – Athaenara ✉ 14:14, 3 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Athaenara: indeed; the size of the cleanup is why although I've long thought these lists should go, I've never felt like proposing it! Peter coxhead (talk) 14:16, 3 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, that's the rest of the spiders? I would certainly back the same treatment, following the above solid consensus. Options appear to be a) having an AfD for the entire lot, which seems reasonably efficient, or b) asking a taxonomically-minded admin to do it (not sure RoySmith considers himself such :). --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 14:33, 3 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

AfD certainly worked well above, but spider experts may determine on their well-informed own that these lists are superfluous and burdensome and offload them via {{

db-G6}} tagging or something similar. At least one (no, I'm not clicking down the whole list) was created by Peter coxhead, he's certainly free to {{db-g7}} any of those. – Athaenara ✉ 01:52, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply

]

Two points:

Yes, I created some – for consistency. I never agreed with them in principle (they were created before I joined WP:SPIDERS).
As editors found with the Salticidae lists, the real problem is that the tradition has been to put a link to the "list of spider family species" in |diversity= in the taxobox of every genus in that family. So there are many, many articles that need to be fixed if the species list article is deleted. This really needs a bot.

Peter coxhead (talk) 08:35, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]