Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of LSD users

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. Animalparty's interpretation of LISTN is broadly accepted, and the consensus to delete (in which BLP considerations play a part as well) is clear. Drmies (talk) 20:07, 2 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

List of LSD users

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Hard to see what function if fills. It will never be exhaustive and falls under WP:Trivia -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 21:08, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

delete as trivia. While many notable people have tried LSD (or have been arrested, or used marijuana, or eaten a corndog...), and some publications have commented on the affects LSD may have had on certain people's careers, the list of any old notable person who has tried LSD at least once in their life is indiscriminate, and I don't think "individual LSD users" is commonly and consistently discussed as a group or set by reliable sources, contra WP:LISTN (note: this and especially this do not appear to be reliable). Selective mention of some very noteworthy figures, whose use of LSD is commonly and consistently mentioned with regards to their persona, may plausibly be mentioned in History of lysergic acid diethylamide (many already are), or similar articles like Altered state of consciousness. But an open-ended list with nothing in common but a recreational choice is not a good list to maintain. --Animalparty! (talk) 23:39, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: per Animalparty. This article feels like a bad idea, an opportunity for trolls and libel. Is it sufficient to include Bill Gates on the list if he "implied" that he used it (WP editor's analysis) in an interview? Vrac (talk) 00:03, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. postdlf (talk) 02:03, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, largely per Animalparty's reasoning, above. I really don't see any evidence that this satisfied WP:LISTN. That aside, there's a potential WP:BLP issue; from a BLP standard, I'm not at all certain that we should be deeming someone who has used a drug (often only once) as a "[drug] user" due to the specific connotations of that phrase. And, of course, should this be kept, inclusion in the list is controversial or negative material and demands the more stringent BLP sourcing threshold. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 13:53, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Many sources cited have presented the use of this drug as a noteworthy event in the lives of the people listed here. "List of LSD users" is a Wikipedia shorthand for saying "List of people whose LSD usage was noteworthy for inclusion in reliable sources about them", and if sources find this notable, then it seems reasonable to me that Wikipedia include it. Comparable Wikimedia content includes List of teetotalers, which is about people known for not using a drug, Thalidomide#Notable_people_affected, about people who took that drug, and Category:Cannabis activists.

Lists like this, if deleted from Wikipedia, could have a home on Wikidata. It might even be better there. I wish there were a way to better present lists like this as structured data on Wikidata. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:55, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The issue here isn't noteworthiness of LSD use to any particular person, but the concept of the list as a collective, coherent, group per WP:LISTN. The possibilities for creating lists, verified from scattered independent sources, are endless (e.g. List of marijuana users, List of filmmakers who cite Citizen Kane as an inspiration or Lists of people inspired to become lawyers by reading To Kill a Mockingbird). I see nothing wrong with including a few examples of notable LSD users in the articles mentioned above, but we need to have some discretion on stand-alone list topics, with or without BLP consideration. I have no comment on Wikidata, other than by contrast to note that Wikipedia is not a database, nor necessarily a repository for every verifiable factoid. --Animalparty! (talk) 18:24, 28 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Animalparty

Lists of LSD users have been created and published elsewhere. [1] [2] [3] I think that these sources are good enough to establish that a list of users of this drug already has coverage in pop culture, which is more than most lists on Wikipedia have.

A "List of marijuana" users might be too long - endlessly long lists are not appropriate for Wikipedia. The other two examples you give cannot be verified by reliable sources, or if there are sources which specifically say that those attributes are defining characteristics of a person, then I would support a list. Merely mentioning a piece of art as an inspiration may be too little, but if journalists narrated an especially close connection then that might be appropriate. Sometimes this is described as membership in a certain school or social circle of art.

Some of this is factoid material. Perhaps the article could be renamed and cut to "List of people known for LSD use", which would shorten the list to people who have reputation defining media coverage of their use of this drug. That would eliminate trivial coverage, and keep the list short and more clearly defined. In some of these cases it seems like the drug use was a fundamental characteristic of the person's life story.

Overall - I am not too sure, but there seems like a lot of information compiled from reliable sources here. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:59, 29 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with moving it to Wikidata, and we might not need to think about use for now. Eventually someone will go ahead and build the type of module you mentioned. Things are moving at a blistering pace over there. -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 16:58, 29 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Useless, unencyclopedic compendium of trivia that holds no independent notability. North of Eden (talk) 00:34, 29 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Trivia and an unjustified intrusion into the lives of the people mentioned. Some of these admit to using the drug once, and others don't even know whether they took it or not. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:25, 30 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: per Animalparty, much of this is 'maybe' anyhow.Pincrete (talk) 11:58, 2 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Unencyclopedic list. Carrite (talk) 12:17, 2 August 2015 (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.