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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of mainstream pop performers

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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 was delete‎. ✗plicit 23:33, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

List of pop music performers

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List of pop music performers (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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List with subjective and arbitrary inclusion criteria. "Mainstream pop" is not a genre in its own right per se, but just a term which positively or negatively (depending on your perspective) distinguishes pop musicians who have succeeded in becoming famous from pop musicians who haven't -- for instance, there's no major stylistic difference between the music of Adele (who is here) and the music of Emeli Sandé (who isn't), Adele has just had more big international hits than Emeli Sandé has had, so the distinction between them hinges on fame rather than genre differences. So essentially this is just an arbitrary list of pop musicians that the page creator has heard of, rather than a list of people operating within the context of a clearly defined "genre".
But if you restrict it to pop musicians who've achieved certain specific levels of fame, then it's based on invalid arbitrary inclusion criteria -- while without that restriction, anybody whose music fits into the parameters of "pop" at all could be added, making it indiscriminate. And the referencing here consists entirely of some (but not all) of the artists' AllMusic biographies, which genre-tag them as "pop" rather than "mainstream pop" and thus don't constitute support for a "mainstream pop vs. non-mainstream pop" distinction. Bearcat (talk) 17:22, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Already edited Cjnava482253 (talk) 07:38, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The title isn't the only problem here. Pichpich explicitly said that even if the title were made more general and less subjective they'd still support deletion, because a general list of "all pop musicians" would be too large to be useful. But also, moving pages while they have open AFD discussions about them is not proper process, and neither is creating a whole new alternative AFD discussion that just replicates the page's explanatory header as if it constituted an argument for keeping the page all by itself. Any keep arguments you want to make have to be made in this discussion, not in your own separate forked-off alternative discussion. Bearcat (talk) 17:37, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Already new page here in article. Cjnava482253 (talk) 11:06, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Creator Cjnava482253 (talk · contribs) has moved this first to List of pop performers, then to List of pop music performers (such pagemoves are at best generally discouraged during AfD discussions); they also created the very similar List of pop perfomers (note the misspelling) that has also separately gone to AfD. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 20:26, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    That article has been speedy deleted per A10 too. This is now the only AfD on this topic to which the article is no longer List of mainstream pop performers but rather List of pop music performers. Also, the article's creator has been blocked by Ponyo due to WP:CIR issues. Conyo14 (talk) 21:48, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Procedurally, this has become something of a mess due to the page moves during the discussion—don't do that (we have had examples of page moves being agreed upon during the AfD discussion and performed at the close, which is the proper way of doing things—WP:Articles for deletion/List of knitters in literature is a recent one). Fundamentally, it does not change the substance of the issues here, however. The WP:LEAD says This is an alphabetical list of mainstream pop performers spanning all subgenres and fusions within the genre of pop music. Artists included are known for creating material predominantly within a style of pop music (Pop, Dance-pop, Soul, R & B, etc.); have enjoyed considerable success on singles or album charts; recorded multiple songs that have endured or increased in popularity over time and continue to receive heavy airplay, streaming or downloads; and garnered a significant following. Those are not proper WP:LISTCRITERIA as they are not unambiguous, objective, and supported by reliable sources but rather run afoul of the requirement to Avoid original or arbitrary criteria that would synthesize a list that is not plainly verifiable in reliable sources. As noted above, removing the arbitrary and subjective elements of the criteria would result in a scope that is WP:INDISCRIMINATE/too broad per WP:SALAT; even just the category Category:English women pop singers contains no fewer than 318 articles at time of writing, and that excludes all the pop performers that aren't English, aren't women, and/or aren't singers (e.g. guitarists). TompaDompa (talk) 20:00, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per the above. No way to maintain a list that is both verifiable and manageable. Eluchil404 (talk) 23:17, 2 March 2025 (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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