Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of composers who died before age 50

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. If anyone wants the content userfied to create a different article that is more likely to meet WP:LISTN, let me know. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 09:42, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

List of composers who died before age 50

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Wasn't sure what to say about this list, now granted a list of who died before 50 is interesting for some (and kind of sad actually), but as you may notice the majority are hundreds of years ago-which is expected. Also the term most famous-most famous to who? Also seems like a original research project. For now I say delete. Wgolf (talk) 00:40, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been notified to WikiProject Opera and WikiProject Classical Music. Voceditenore (talk) 08:55, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Music-related deletion discussions. Voceditenore (talk) 09:01, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. Voceditenore (talk) 09:05, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Move to List of composers who died before age 40, and retain only those. That would catch all of the significant early deaths (and let's face it, composers who died young is indeed a "thing"), and avoid the problem that age 50 was not unusually young to die prior to the 20th century. Softlavender (talk) 01:26, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Found a few that just link to DAB pages also. Wgolf (talk) 01:31, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Additional comment: Moving the list to the younger cut-off of 40 would eliminate approximately half the list and make it a much more useful and readable and notable list. It might also be useful to make it a sortable table -- that is, sortable by age of death (which should be added for each), by last name, and possibly also by birth year. Softlavender (talk) 02:41, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 02:57, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That could work-also removing the bold font for "most famous" for sure. Either delete or move for now, need more comments of course. Wgolf (talk) 03:22, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Delete – subjective list. No references whatsoever. Untenable inclusion criteria. There's some literature about composers dying young: instead of looking up that literature (which rather would go in the direction of an article than a list), there's some discussion above about the cut-off age based on all sorts of editor preferences' arguments instead of the only thing that should count: what do reliable sources say? Why exclude John Lennon? Less famous than Fausto Romitelli? Not dead enough? Not a composer to the subjective editor's taste? How about Johann Gottlieb Goldberg? Less famous than Georg Matthias Monn (only known by his name according to the Wikipedia article – while Goldberg's compositions are still occasionally performed)? This is all beyond repair, starting from the article title. --Francis Schonken (talk) 04:34, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment – we have Curse of the ninth (not entirely unproblematic if you ask me, but feasible in Wikipedia); ~~List of composers who composed less than 10 symphonies~~List of composers who composed fewer than 10 symphonies would, on the other hand, be an unreferenceable disaster, comparable in its infeasibility to the list under consideration here. --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:44, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, as it should be composed fewer than, and not less than. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 07:18, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tx, corrected. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:32, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Lekeu? --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:53, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Francis, there is nothing subjective about facts. Either a composer died before a certain age, or they did not. If they did not, they are excluded from the list. Softlavender (talk) 08:37, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- It aren't the facts that are subjective, it are the inclusion criteria (they were reworded a few times since I wrote my original comment above, but as said below, it only became worse). "Composers dying after age 13.5" is an objective cut-off age, but would make a terrible, subjective, inclusion criterion while no reliable source can confirm that dying at age 13.5 is a "thing" for composers. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:56, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

[1]. Your arguments appear to merely be a version of WP:IDONTLIKEIT, because there is nothing that precludes List of classical composers who died before age 40 in WP:LISTN. -- Softlavender (talk) 08:58, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop your bludgeoning: you've made that argument below, I'll reply there. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:02, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per Francis Schonken. Double sharp (talk) 05:09, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- There is nothing subjective about facts. Either a composer died before a certain age, or they did not. If they did not, they are excluded from the list. Softlavender (talk) 08:37, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  - But where are the sources declaring 50 or 40 or any other number as a somehow significant cut-off, when one can find them so easily for 9 as a number of symphonies? Any cut-off is going to be somehow arbitrary, and as your links show both 40 and 50, I don't see a good case for either. "Dying young" is just not a very clear-cut line. Double sharp (talk) 09:05, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    - [2]. -- Softlavender (talk) 09:49, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      - I am not sure what you are trying to accomplish by repeatedly posting the same link to a Google search without comment, but I can assure you that it does not become any more convincing by simple repetition. The very idea of either of these cut-offs to illustrate the phenomenon of composers dying young is anyway nicely ruined by this article by Tom Service linked below by Francis Schonken, which has among its "died young" list Gustav Mahler, who died at 50 (the article mistakenly gives 51), and is beyond the proposed cut-off. (And amusingly I already suggested him as an example in an edit summary). Double sharp (talk) 15:24, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Move to List of composers who died before age 40 and edit accordingly. I'd also suggest limiting it to classical composers (perhaps with a title change to reflect that, i. e. List of classical composers who died before age 40. Per Softlavender, this is a potentially useful list which can be improved by simple editing. The cut-off date needs to be lowered to 40 for the reasons given above. The "original research" aspect can be easily fixed by not making judgements on who is the most famous in the list and bolding those names. I've started doing that now. Ditto "unreferenced". It's very easy to add references. There are references for all the entries who have Wikipedia articles (or there should be). I've added one as a sample. I'd be happy to do them all if the list is kept. Note also that there is nothing to preclude adding an introductory paragraph based on the literature in this area. Improve not delete is the way to go here. Voceditenore (talk) 07:12, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- There is no literature whatsoever grouping composers who died before age 40 – that qualification attempts to introduce objectivity where there is none. "Dying young" (or synonyms such as "early deceased") appear in literature, not any artificial cut-off age, and certainly not a cut-off age where all reliable authors writing about composers who died young could agree upon. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:32, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  - [3]. -- Softlavender (talk) 08:36, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    - this one looks promising. Any other reliable source confirming that "composers dying before 40" is a thing (WP:GNG does not consider a single reliable source sufficient, and launching Google queries without discrimination about the reliability of everything that turns up, without even checking which cut-off age, if any, is actually used by the source, is alas just missing the point)? --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:49, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      - Francis, if you do not believe that dying before the age of 40 is dying young, or that Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin et al. famously died young, then I believe you are in the minority in classical music listeners. Your arguments appear to merely be a version of WP:IDONTLIKEIT, because there is nothing that precludes List of classical composers who died before age 40 in WP:LISTN. -- Softlavender (talk) 08:55, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        The only thing we need is enough reliable sources that confirm that 40 is broadly considered as a suitable cut-off age (and not too many other reliable sources that start from a different cut-off age): your Google search link turns up at least one forum (not a reliable source), the Wikipedia article we're considering for deletion here (can not be counted per notability guidance), etc. etc. Until now composers "dying young" (without giving a precise cut-off age) seems far more spread as a topic than whatever cut-off age for a composer's death. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:13, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        
        Compare also List of child music prodigies not List of music prodigies younger than 13 (the hard age delimiter in the article title doesn't seem to work very well for this kind of lists; also the "classical" delimiter is questionable when comparing with that list). --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:29, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        None of your demands are factors in WP:LISTN. That's even above and beyond the fact that composers who died before 40 gets 4,000,000 web hits, 57,000 GoogleBook hits, 76,000 news hits, -- Softlavender (talk) 09:38, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        I have no demands. My !vote is "delete", supplemented with a rationale, that's all. "Notability guidelines apply to the inclusion of stand-alone lists and tables" is a factor in WP:LISTN, thus WP/GNG's "received significant coverage in reliable sources" is a viable consideration. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:50, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        Composers who died before 40 gets 4,000,000 web hits, 57,000 GoogleBook hits, 76,000 news hits: [4]. -- Softlavender (talk) 09:54, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        Again, raw Google searches are virtually unusable in this discussion. "Composers who died before 40" returns zero reliable sources as a Google search — none of that proves anything: that search doesn't even turn up the single book I'm thus far prepared to accept as contributing to the notability of the "Composers who died before 40" topic. Without more than a single acceptable source, this fails WP:GNG. Without a check whether other reliable sources use other criteria for covering roughly the same subject, the article title based on "age 40" would still be undesirable (per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:CRITERIA). --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:12, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- @Voceditenore: I think your recent changes to the page have acerbated the problem, instead of remedying anything, e.g. your latest which, besides producing a grammatically incorrect lead sentence, made the page fail WP:NOTDIR #7, which is explicit that "Simple listings without context information" have no place in Wikipedia. What is the context of a classical composer dying before age 50 (or 40)? Absolutely none, while (WP:GNG:) classical composers dying before the age of 50 (or 40, or 30, or whatever) is not a topic that "received significant coverage in reliable sources" so that a context could be sketched. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:30, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  - I have re-added the word "died" which I had inadvertently removed when I copyedited the lede. It is no longer ungrammatical. I do not believe that the page fails WP:NOTDIR #7 which in my view you are interpreting too broadly. Some will agree, others not. That's why the page is up for discussion here. Voceditenore (talk) 08:47, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    - Yes, but WP:NOTDIR #7 is an additional aspect to consider now, which it wasn't before your change, whether you agree on that point or not, my main point being that most of your mainspace edits (apart from maybe removing the boldface) were hardly helpful for increasing the odds for this AfD. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:22, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  - Francis you are cherry-picking the wording of WP:NOTDIR, which prohibits or discourages "Simple listings without context information. Examples include, but are not limited to: listings of business alliances, clients, competitors, employees (except CEOs, supervisory directors and similar top functionaries), equipment, estates, offices, products and services, sponsors, subdivisions and tourist attractions." That has nothing to do with a list of notable classical-music composers who meet a certain noteworthy criterion (and I've already established that this is a noteworthy and much-discussed criterion). Softlavender (talk) 09:46, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    - The current single-sentence introduction to the list lacks all "context information", such a why the topic has any significance to begin with, nor is any context information appended to the individual entries in the list. There was a tiny bit of (unreferenced) context information which was removed from the list intro: context information requiring a reference is imho better than no context information at all, while in the latter case WP:NOTDIR #7 needs to be considered. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:58, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  - this suggestion added in the "further reading" section doesn't help much either: names a few that don't fit under a "classical composers who died before age 40" umbrella (Schumann: 46; Mahler: 51; Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain: not classical composers), and the main subject of the article (Whitney Houston) was neither a "classical composer" nor did she die "before age 40". --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:03, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    - I have now placed three articles (including the one you noted above from The Guardian) in the "External links" section. They all contain information which can be helpful for writing an introduction to the article, and can also be helpful to the reader in understanding what the "big deal" is about composers who died young. Note that another one which you had summarily removed because only 2/3 of the composers discussed were under 40 when they died was from the BBC Music Magazine. It discusses the possible implications for the development of classical music of the early deaths of Mozart, Purcell, Schubert, and Gershwin). Voceditenore (talk) 11:47, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      - Re. "... what the "big deal" is about composers who died young" (emphasis added): as I said from my first comment above, the topic is rather "died young" than anything that can be circumscribed by a hard "age" delimiter. Any article title that mentions an age for this topic remains up for deletion as far as I'm concerned. While none of the listed external links refer to an upper limit for age, I've tagged the section as failing our external links guidance: these external links are not germane to the current article title, nor to the article titles proposed above, nor to any of the list definitions that have appeared on the page. --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:08, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        They are highly germane to writing an introduction to the list. That is the whole point of external links. They contain material which could be usefully added to improve an article. Your insistence that they coincide with and/or contain the article's actual title is bizarre, but I'm quite happy to live with the tag-bombing. Voceditenore (talk) 12:27, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        Re. "They are highly germane to writing an introduction to the list" – not this list, while not one of them combines "died young" with a hard "age" criterion. There's not really a coherent body of reliable source for that, and the suggestion thus kind of misses the point. --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:55, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per all the above. If there are any who died at 27, add them to the 27 Club. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 07:18, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- [5]. -- Softlavender (talk) 08:36, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete I'm afraid - arbitrary (and very unfair to those who died at 50+). Smerus (talk) 12:53, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Comment, this title appears arbitrary/subjective, are there any books/articles that specifically discuss composers who died before age 50, not just about those that died young? btw, 4mill ghits doesn't mean much here is 2.1mill hits for "composers who died before 39" and 1.9mill before age 49 so i don't really see the relevance. Coolabahapple (talk) 13:38, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Due to likely OR. 47.208.20.130 (talk) 22:48, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I feel that the article reads like someone's contribution to a casual conversation; it's an arbitrary pile of facts without any meaning attached to it (which is a no-no on WP). If "composer-lifespan-ology" exists as a scholarly field (which I really doubt!) then we should have an article about composer-lifespan-ology. But not a list. Opus33 (talk) 21:35, 16 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Composers who died young is definitely a "thing". I created this list because I often needed to quickly check which composers died young, and conveniently link to the Wikipedia page about them. My original list was limited to clearly notable composers. A number of lesser-known composers have been added. That kind of devalues the list for a broad audience, although I did find it interesting to see some of the composers added. I have not read all of the comments above, but may attempt to rebut some of the Delete comments a bit later. The suggestion about 40 years is interesting, but for now, I think 50 is valid, especially for more recent composers, since these days, dying before 50 in developed countries is considered dying "early".Tetsuo (talk) 04:45, 21 September 2017 (UTC) BTW, do those of you favoring deletion make the same arguments about the many morbid lists in Wikipedia of pop-culture and even fictional deaths such as:[reply]

List of deaths in rock and roll
List of suicides in the 21st century
List of suicides in fiction
List of deaths from drug overdose and intoxication Tetsuo (talk) 05:05, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Re. "I think 50 is valid, especially for more recent composers, since these days, dying before 50 in developed countries is considered dying "early"" – This is WP:Original research 1.0, and should therefore be rejected as against policy. We don't make articles (and that includes list articles) based on a Wikipedia editor's opinions, but for which not a single WP:Reliable source can be found to support the idea. Further:

"...more recent composers..." – why would "more recent" all of a sudden be a principle on which the list is built? The list contains Jacob Obrecht (not a "more recent composer", not even sure he died before 50, and not even sure "before 50" was considered "young" in his day), but not John Lennon ("more recent", certainly died before 50 and certainly a composer).
"...in developed countries..." – this is definitely a no-no: Wikipedia articles, including lists, should not be built on such biased discriminations.

I don't think we can come to an agreement, anywhere soon, and built on what reliable sources consider to be valid, on a reasonable set of inclusion criteria for this, or a similar, list. I do consider "musicians who died young" a valid topic, which can be supported by plenty reliable sources. "Composers who died before age 50", with or without supplementary even more arbitrarily discriminatory inclusion criteria, is however not sustainable on any level as a basis for a list. Not a single external source has been brought forward which can be shown to have used "before age 50", i.e. 49 or younger, as a valid criterion in this sense. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:52, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Redundant list that to me meets WP:NOTDIRECTORY. Optakeover^(U)(T)(C) 17:09, 21 September 2017 (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.