Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of notable surviving veterans of World War II

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. (non-admin closure) KCVelaga (talk) 03:02, 10 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

List of notable surviving veterans of World War II (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Randy Weston and a few other war vets who died today were not included in the list, so it doesn't make sense for people to add any more notable veterans, and this page is consuming a bit too many kilobytes. Extrapolaris (talk) 01:04, 2 September 2018 (UTC) Vahe Demrijian[reply]

• Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2018 September 2. —^{cyberbot I}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 01:28, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep WP:NOTDONE. Just because one person was missing, doesn't mean the entire article should be deleted. Since articles are contently being written or expanded, things will be missed. I agree it's large, but splitting the article into pieces would be one solution. Emk9 (talk)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 02:03, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 02:04, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. IntoThinAir (formerly Everymorning) talk 02:04, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Not sure why the nominator believes the list should be deleted because of the omission of some names. The inclusion rule should be as simple as if the veteran has an article. I do have an issue with the article title including the word "notable". Ajf773 (talk) 02:08, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. For casual use only. Not encyclopedic. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 02:09, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep The Wikimedia IT department will let us know when we run out of kilobytes; for now we have plenty to go around. I see no issue with the page besides that it needs to be replaced with a more modern table style. Nate • (chatter) 04:24, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge into List of last surviving veterans of military insurgencies and wars which has a sensible focus on the last few survivors of such conflicts. The current structure won't do because, eventually there won't be any surviving veterans, and so we should switch to a more stable format. Andrew D. (talk) 09:05, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Trivial, a mess to maintain, and probably wrong on the BLP status of quite a few members. This is not a WP:NOTESAL (list of X), but rather a cross-categorization of "Lists of X of Y" - in this case the selection criteria being the intersection of Category:Military personnel of World War II and Category:Living people. Had this been a stable cross-cat (e.g. veterans who were Sherman tank drivers) it would be one thing, but the BLP cat is inherently unstable - and particularly so for this age cohort - which makes for a maintenance nightmare here - and makes this cross-categorization better served by category queries. A merge to List of last surviving veterans of military insurgencies and wars would make sense at some point (when the list of "final survivors" (overall, per country, per service)) are manageable - but not now when the list has over a 1,000 entries.Icewhiz (talk) 14:11, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep No doubt this will loom larger as the conflict recedes into history. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:09, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I'm not sure if this list satisfies WP:LISTCRUFT definition 6 and 10. What exactly makes someone a "notable veteran of the Second World War" this would not only require research but its open to one's interpretation because different people would define "notable" differently some looking at what they did after the war, while others would argue that any veteran who played a significant part in the war "notable". Making the list infinite or at least close to it Freetheangels (talk) 20:05, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The main reason the word notable is used is to limit the number of people adding relatives to the list. It basically means they need a wikipedia page to be on the list, since otherwise there would be a lot of redlinks. Emk9 (talk)

"Notable" is a Wikipedia term. It means anyone with their own article. We're still at least ten years away from anyone being notable simply for being one of the last, as with List of last surviving World War I veterans. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:09, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I just worried that this is gonna turn into a giant memorial

• Strong Keep I was wondering when you'd get around to this article. Just because it needs work doesn't meet it should be deleted. Czolgolz (talk) 00:57, 3 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete for now. It's (currently) too general/indiscriminate, as there were tens of millions who served in the war, and even the tiny fraction of notable living individuals is still too many. As time goes by, that is becoming less and less of an issue. Other than those who were underage and lied to enlist, they would be in their late 80s at best. As Hawkeye7 has noted, the list will become manageably encyclopedic in about a decade when there are a lot fewer survivors. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:23, 3 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Clarification. Survivors of the war aren't notable for being survivors because they're still too common. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:22, 4 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Per Emk9 and Nate. Into the Rift (talk) 20:20, 4 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Well, then keep and you're free to improve it. MaeseLeon (talk) 15:46, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep No valid argument for deletion has been made and the list seems quite reasonable, especially compared to some others I have seen survive AfD. That said, it is a bit long and we might want to look at breaking it up into multiple lists. -Ad Orientem (talk) 03:30, 9 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep passes WP:NLIST, not seeing a good reason for deletion Atlantic306 (talk) 17:16, 9 September 2018 (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.