Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Timeline of South African history

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The result of the debate was nomination withdrawn. Mailer Diablo 02:12, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Consider this nomination not just for this article, but also all the articles listed in it. With apologies to User:Jcw69, who appears to have put a lot of work into this mess, this appears to be a colossal collection of useless information documenting every mundane event that took place in every year of South African history for the past 500 years. How could this possibly be considered encyclopedic? Who could find this useful? And, most importantly, what purpose does this serve that "History of South Africa" does not fulfill? If you ask me, this violates the "indiscriminate collection of information" principle. Obviously it's up to you guys to decide, but if you ask me, an admin should wipe this landfill of information clean off Wikipedia ... IMHO. Aplomado - UTC 06:22, 2 May 2006 (UTC) Nomination withdrawn due to no delete votes. Aplomado - UTC 22:42, 7 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge with each individual year (and remove the unimportant and mundane events). Make it look like Timeline of Australian history, which IMHO is a very important and helpful article. --Mitch119 06:44, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• This whole thing is simply following an already-established precedent per Category:Years by country — 23 other countries already have their own dedicated "Years in country" categories filled with year-by-year articles just like these, and a "Timeline of country history" master list. I see no particularly convincing reason why South Africa should be excluded from that, especially since it's a country with a rather important and interesting history. Keep. Bearcat 09:09, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep plenty of other timelines at Category:Nation timelines --Astrokey44 11:19, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge per Mitch119; timelines are useful, but not in the format that this one is. Angus McLellan (Talk) 13:15, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep but please improve it. It's quite useful, actually, but almost none of these factoids are sourced. wikipediatrix 17:05, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Africa-related deletions. -- Humansdorpie 17:17, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep as there seems to be a solid precedent for this kind of stuff. Besides, it's interesting, informative and took a lot of work. Grandmasterka 18:48, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep all. Precedent, don't see why South Africa is less of a country than the others. CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 23:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak Keep, but the article really needs big improvement. The article could be pointed to Timeline of Australian history in order to get ideas of how to improve it. -- ReyBrujo 02:21, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong Keep - I disagree with Aplomado, timelines are important, it links the history and supports the History of South Africa. I based this article on the Canadian one. The indiviual articles off it are still growing. If I make it like the Austrialian one it would be way too big. I think that the Austrialian one should be improved.--Jcw69 19:59, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep as per Bearcat and others here; I also believe it could be expanded slightly towards the Aussie version, although I share Jcw69's concerns about its size. dewet|✉ 20:20, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep and continue to improve. It's a nice resource. Guinnog 21:16, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - It's useful and interesting, and a strong precedent for this sort of thing has already been set. I would not object to a move more towards the Australian version though, in which the most important even in each year is highlighted. — Impi 21:43, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep This vote is well on the way to Keep, but as a comment, Jcw69 has done an amazing job on detail for South Africa, and I couldn't possibly support removing all his hard work. Wizzy…☎ 06:41, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Conditional keep - These articles are a great resource. However, they need to have references for some of the more obscure factoids. If the consensus is to merge, I would not oppose, but prefer to keep. Páll ^{(Die pienk olifant)} 06:46, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. There are lots of timelines on Wikipedia, from countries to the Muhammad cartoons controversy to years in music. Elf-friend 09:50, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Like many of the other people who've commented, I think a timeline of SA history is interesting and useful. A tidy up would be nice, and I also prefer the format of the Australian version, but that's no reason to delete this. Joziboy 4 May 2006, 17:44 (UTC)

• Strong Keep. This is a very useful timeline for South Africa, which makes historical understanding far easier. Chris 20:07, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong Keep I agree with comments around improving it to a similar look and feel of Timeline of Australian history but what a great start! Good for anyone researching SA history. Find it ironic that the strong comments come from Aplomado who is creating stubs about individual players in a single team's NFL offensive lineup in the 80's!?! I think this falls much closer to Lists or repositories of loosely associated topics such as quotations, aphorisms or persons in indiscriminate collection of information! PappaG 17:24, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • You obviously know nothing about American football. Aplomado - UTC 22:34, 7 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per, well, everybody above. As I understand it, we vote based on the potential for encyclopaedicity (is that a word?) of the articles, not necessarily just on their current contents. Since it seems to be accepted that articles like Timeline of Australian history, 1902 in Canada (and so on) are encyclopaedic, I can't see why similar articles about South Africa should be any different. Although it would probably be better if it used the format of Timeline of Australian history, there is precedent for how it looks now; see Timeline of Canadian history. - htonl 22:24, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Obvious keep. It is important to have this kind of articles. — mark ✎ 11:44, 6 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - Wikipedia is not running out of space. The article could do with some improving, but it would serve absolutely no purpose to just delete it. Wikipedia would be better off with MORE articles on Africa (which is severly under-represented due to WP:BIAS), not less. Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 11:28, 6 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Note For Aplomado's information TUF-KAT has a table of topics by country and in it he has timelines of counties history--Jcw69 16:11, 6 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Maybe an embarrassment of riches, but on the whole worth having. Runcorn 15:39, 7 May 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.