Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of minor Biblical figures

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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 of the debate was Keep. kingboyk 05:39, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

List of minor Biblical figures

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Delete. List is short, incomplete, and will never be complete or useful. All five entrants are profoundly nn and some have lost AfD's. The Bible has tens of thousands of characters and this list will never capture all of them. Prod remover's well-stated rationale is on the article's talk page. See also, this recent discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Adina (Biblical name). - the.crazy.russian τ ç ë 22:38, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Strong keep - this article was initially created to house minor Biblical figures who should be noted in a truly comprehensive non-paper encyclopedia, but who lack sufficient information to merit an individual article; see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Uel. It is incorrect to say that the entrants completely lack notability: they are named in the Bible. It is equally incorrect to say that the list will never be complete - there are a finite number of persons so named for whom individual articles would be inappropriate. Granted, some Biblical figures maybe beneath mention on any list, but there are always bound to be some who are worthy of listing, even if they can never be articles. BD2412 T 22:41, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep As long as it is complete, this list will serve a great purpose. Jonathan235 23:22, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments: (1) The Bible does not satisfy the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy or the Wikipedia:Reliable sources guideline as a history source, but the topic here is a subset of Biblical figures, so this is the absolute authority without requiring faith. (2) The problem is the existence of many versions of the Bible, with variations on spelling for some number of those tens of thousands of names. Fact-checking the "begat's" alone would take many hours. (3) Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of trivia, and minor characters in literature are not inherently notable (even if the work is the most-published and most-read book). Major characters like Abraham and Judas Iscariot can be documented showing enough significance for their own articles. Tens of thousands of stubs, each citing a single verse or minor mentions through a single chapter, won't add meaningful content to Wikipedia, and an unmaintainable (or nearly so, even with a 'bot and a problem space limited to a couple of Bible versions like KJV) list won't really improve Wikipedia. We're here for WP levels of completeness, not Biblical or multibiblical levels of completeness. Barno 23:57, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak delete or somebody who cares build a bot for just a list, no links nor stubs, in accordance with WP:NOT and my comments above. Barno 23:57, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. I think the decision to delete Uel (biblical figure) was a mistake; being mentioned in the Tenach is good enough for being notable, and whereas Wikipedia seems to have a hang-up with short articles, other encyclopedias have no qualms about one-line articles if that's all there is to say about the topic. But given that hang-up, this is the next best. LambiamTalk 00:07, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. There is particular reason why this list cannot be complete; there are a finite number of characters mentioned in the Bible (elsewise the Bible would be infinitely long!). —Cuiviénen, Tuesday, 18 April 2006 @ 01:45 UTC
    • Are you familiar with the Jewish mystical tradition (I don't remember if it's gematria or one other one) that the Torah (Bible's Old Testament) can have its letters rearranged to reveal true meaning? That would be "technically finite, but might as well be infinite". Barno 02:34, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Useful. The Bible does not have tens of thousands of named individuals - my guess is a 100—200, tops. Fishhead64 02:23, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • WP's Bible article claims there are 773,692 words in the King James version. Do you believe such a low percentage are names and such a low percentage of those are non-repeats? I don't. There are whole chunks of genealogy in there, tribal histories, battle histories. Barno 02:34, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Response I rather doubt that the single mentions of those in the geneaologies and battle histories would be included (and I wasn't), but even if they were, do you really think the number of names will exceed 1000? I don't think they would exceed 500. Fishhead64 02:52, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Hey, I'm not saying every single name in the Bible should necessarily be listed here - but names that are just below the threshold for individual articles definitely should be, and the rest... well, if they don't make it in that's fine, and if they do, that's gravy. BD2412 T 02:41, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - it seems that at least one of the names (Abdeel) was originally an article (not a redirect) created as part of the WikiProject for missing articles, in particular for the public domain Easton's Bible Dictionary. The redirect was created without discussion. I would not like to see this list developed as an excuse/reason to delete/redirect Easton's articles because they are short articles. —ERcheck @ 04:45, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • It's better for the encyclopedia - and better for the reader - to have such names for which there is scant information grouped together. Note that no information from Abdeel was deleted, it was simply moved to a different location. Any person interested in learning what there is to say for Abdeel would have found the information, surrounded by other fascinating tidbits. BD2412 T 13:00, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep: A single article with Biblical figures that merit a line or two would be better than dozens of stubs that will never be expanded. Maybe rename as it's not really in the style of most 'List of...' articles, and it doesn't seem that it was intended to be an exhaustive list of obscure names. Peter Grey 07:35, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Its all gravy, baby. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 10:58, 18 April 2006 (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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