Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of catacombs in Malta

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. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 04:01, 22 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

List of catacombs in Malta[edit]

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we don't have a list for catacombs for any other country and it's not clear what the criteria for getting on this list. this is better handled as an existing category. let's see if the usual suspect turns up. LibStar (talk) 05:56, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 05:04, 12 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Perhaps the article can be rewritten as Catacombs of Malta (or Catacombs in Malta), dealing with Maltese catacombs in general? I would be happy to help out, but currently I don't have enough time to do so. Xwejnusgozo (talk) 13:58, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 11:12, 15 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - keep ditto rewrite, with redirect to rewrite. Aoziwe (talk) 12:46, 15 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - The relevant guideline for this discussion is WP:LISTN, which states "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", and I have found several sources that do so. First, Late Roman and Byzantine Catacombs and Related Burial Places in the Maltese Islands is an entire book detailing the elements of construction and decoration common to the tombs, as well as the history of the archaeological study of the catacombs. The catacombs are also discussed in this book. There was even a study done on bacterial degradation of artworks in the catacombs. Therefore, this list meets WP:LISTN and should be kept. Altamel (talk) 03:31, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
As Altamel has correctly pointed out, the catacombs of Malta clearly satisfy GNG and are notable as a group. A search, especially in GBooks, for "catacombs in malta", "catacombs of malta" and cognate expressions confirms this very quickly. There may be a need for a separate list, in addition to an article on the "Catacombs of Malta" as there are said to be "many" catacombs there (eg by "The Mirror of Literature"). I should also point out that we do have standalone articles for the catacombs of London, Paris, Rome and other cities. Although Malta is a republic, it is actually smaller than, or similar in size to, those cities, so it seems reasonable to treat the catacombs as a group as they are relatively close to each other. "Better as a category" arguments fail NOTDUP. James500 (talk) 05:41, 18 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have gone ahead and effected a bold page move to the obvious parent title, "Catacombs of Malta". As sources say that there are several hundred catacombs, it is likely that the list will have to be spun out again, though there isn't much point in doing that while it only has six entries. I do not, however, support the merger of the three daughter articles on individual catacombs or groups of catacombs at this time. Those articles are already sourced, there are a large number of sources that could be added to them, there are so many sources on the maltese catacombs that I suspect there is no prospect of fitting all the information in a single article, and the three daughter articles are already quite lengthy. I am also under the impression that shorter articles are less expensive for our readers to download. I have also left a comment on Talk:Citta Vecchia about the need for disambiguation of that page. James500 (talk) 21:58, 18 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"Less expensive"? I thought this was Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia; the last time I checked, none of our articles are paywalled. Or do you mean "expensive" in a different context? Altamel (talk) 04:54, 20 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@User:Altamel: There is a paywall round the entire internet. One has to pay one's phone company to access the internet in the first place, and some of them charge according to the amount of data downloaded or set limits on the amount of data that can be downloaded. [Even if one can use the internet for free at a public library, one has to pay transport costs (petrol, bus/train fare etc) to get there in the first place (and it will not be open all day every day, and some libraries try to censor parts of the site, etc etc etc), so that isn't necessarily better]. So forcing people to download the whole of a large article, when they only want a small part of it, is not a good idea. James500 (talk) 06:45, 20 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Theoretically, that's an interesting argument. But practically, I doubt that the marginal difference in cost between loading several small articles as opposed to the whole of a large article is greater than a few ten-thousandths of a cent—and I challenge you to prove me wrong, if you are able to do so. I think it is better if we make arguments based on relevant policy (e.g. notability, WP:Article size) instead of speculating about the WP:PERFORMANCE of data download cost. But I agree that I don't currently see the need to merge the other catacomb articles into this list. The three existing articles on the tombs are already large enough that they would take up a substantial amount of space in the list were they to be merged. Altamel (talk) 07:02, 20 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - meets WP:LISTN and the bigger topic meets WP:GNG. Here's an idea that my keep !vote is not contingent upon: Rename this to Catacombs of Malta and merge the articles on the individual catacombs into it. There are only three of them. Two have one source; one has two sources. I think a substantial main article does readers much more of a service than a list article and poorly sourced examples. If someone decides to build out an article on one of them, it can always be spun out again. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:07, 18 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy keep - nonsense, meets of WP:LISTN, WP:GNG and other. Subtropical-man talk
(en-2) 21:48, 18 February 2016 (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.