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. Given that these people are not notable for being janitors, this list would have to be notable as a concept. While Andrew Davidson provides one example of such a list (the second one is not WP:RS), Clarityfiend provides a compelling refutation that the media regularly makes such lists and that it fails WP:LISTCRITERIA. There appears to be precedent on Wikipedia to include somewhat odd-seeming lists as a section in a broader article. However per WP:OSE we must consider each case on its own merits. My suspicion is that Janitor will not want this content there, but if you gain a consensus at Talk:Janitor to include the list feel free to request restoration at WP:REFUND to allow the merge to happen. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:35, 21 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

List of janitors[edit]

List of janitors (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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AfD rationale is the same as my PROD rationale: Not a list of famous janitors, or even people whose janitorial work is notable (are there any? with COVID, maybe there will be soon), but a list of notable people who once worked as janitors. This is no more relevant than would be list of notable people who once worked in retail - everyone started somewhere.

De-PROD'd by Fayenatic london with the rationale (copied from talk page) "There was no consensus to delete Category:Janitors. IMHO the list should be kept as well, as it presents more information than the category, namely the grounds for the notability achieved by each janitor that has an article."

Category:Janitors was indeed kept by virtue of no consensus in 2015, but that doesn't mean we need a list of people who were once janitors and then went on to be notable for other things. (The category might be worth revisiting as well, but that's not so much my forté.) ♠PMC♠ (talk) 09:26, 5 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 09:26, 5 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 09:26, 5 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 09:26, 5 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Posting links to precedent discussions:
  • Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_December_22#Category:Janitors – closer stated "There's no consensus to delete this category, that is clear."
  • Similar Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2012_April_1#Category:Electricians – no consensus to delete a similar category, nor about the similar List of electricians

– Fayenatic London 14:44, 5 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per my rationale already pasted above. For the record, although most of the notable janitors are notable for other things that they went on to do later, or things that they did as well as being a janitor, at least William Rodriguez was notable for what he did as a janitor (namely, evacuating survivors of one of the Sept 11 attacks). – Fayenatic London 14:50, 5 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per Fayenatic london. Satisfies WP:LISTPURP and WP:CLN. postdlf (talk) 15:30, 5 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Trivial list. Practically every name on the list are not famous because they were janitors. Ajf773 (talk) 20:07, 5 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• KEEP Anything written about these notable people will mention their humble beginnings as janitors. Dream Focus 05:57, 6 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

What does that have to do with anything? Chris Pratt was a waiter before he became an actor. Do we create List of waiters and put him on it? No, because he's not notable for being a waiter. He's notable for being an actor. Same thing for the people on that list - they're generally famous for something other than having been a janitor at some point. Hell, even the ones you could conceivably say are "famous janitors" are actually famous for other things. James Hampton is notable as an outsider artist. He happened to be a janitor, but it's the art that elevated him to notability. William Rodriguez is (rightly) notable for being a hero during 9/11. He happened to be a janitor, but it's the selfless heroism that made him notable. Ronnie Woo Woo is notable for being a superfan, not for his achievements in being a custodian. It is absolutely absurd to retain a list of people based on a characteristic that has nothing to do with what the entries on it are notable for. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 07:43, 6 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Not only that, the article on Ronnie Woo Woo makes zero reference to janitors other than being lumped into a category called Category:Janitors. Ajf773 (talk) 08:34, 6 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It does mention that he worked as a custodian, but the fact that it's so easy to miss only highlights how little it has to do with his notability, and the pointlessness of this list. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 08:42, 6 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete some of these people were not really janitors at all, many others it is a trivial background detail with no relevance to them. On the other hand I can come up with lots more notable people who at one point were paid as janitors. This is especially true because some universities have a large part of their janitorial staff as as students.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:48, 6 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Passes WP:LISTN – see this and that, for example. As we have a category too then WP:CLN applies. And the worst case would be merger into the main article janitor per our policy WP:PRESERVE. So, there's no case for deletion. Andrew🐉(talk) 16:24, 6 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Publications create silly lists all the time, e.g. people with moles, people who were homeless, people who owned islands, ad nauseam. Fails WP:LISTCRITERIA: "If this person/thing/etc. weren't X, would it reduce their fame or significance?" (Also, CLN says categories and lists can coexist. It doesn't say they have to.) Clarityfiend (talk) 06:49, 7 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• See People with notable beauty marks; Homeless people; and List of high profile island owners. Andrew🐉(talk) 07:21, 7 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• See WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Ajf773 (talk) 08:22, 7 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• None of those are standalone lists. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:30, 7 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Those examples, which were selected by Clarityfiend, are all valid content which we store in various ways. That's the point of WP:CLN – that we structure and format lists in various ways; that they are all valid; and we don't delete one particular format, such as the stand-alone list, because they all have their merits. Andrew🐉(talk) 14:13, 7 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Unless it's backed up by WP:RS, the list should be deleted for failing WP:V. It was completely unsourced until today. buidhe 22:52, 12 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per solid reasoning presented by Fayenattic london, Dream focus, and Andrew Davidson. Woerich (talk) 02:17, 13 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• None of them have provided what could be considered "sound reasoning". The list of people are wholly famous for other reasons than being janitors or custodians which they may have had an insignificant experience undergoing. Ajf773 (talk) 02:38, 14 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge to Janitor. It is very clearly showcased above that the standard for things like this is not to have a standalone list, but to put the content into the main article or a category. Neither of these articles are that long anyway, so page size is not an issue. In any case, the information is almost certainly more useful at the main Janitor page than as a standalone list. Devonian Wombat (talk) 23:56, 17 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge to janitor sounds quite sensible to me per above. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:15, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge to Janitor mainly because of the small length of the list. Aman Kumar Goel ^(Talk) 18:40, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge to Janitor per Devonian Wombat. I'm leaning towards the argument that the only people that would be appropriate to be on such a list would be people who were notable as janitors, as opposed to people who were notable for other reasons, but had happened to have been a janitor at some point in their lives completely unrelated to their notability. And, as such a list appears to be relatively small, it would be more appropriate to integrate it into the main article on the topic, rather than exist as a separate list. Rorshacma (talk) 05:50, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. I oppose a merge, I can't see how this list adds any value to Janitor. Ajf773 (talk) 10:21, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: I also oppose a merge as WP:UNDUE. Again, none of these people are famous for being janitors, or their contributions to the janitorial profession. They are people who were janitors at one point or another who then became notable for other reasons unrelated to being janitors. We do not maintain a list of people who were waiters once at waiter.
  If this is merged, it should be stripped down significantly to only those people who were janitors at the time of their fame (James Hampton, Ronnie Woo Woo and William Rodriguez), and not include anyone who was incidentally a janitor and then became famous for something else they did. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 19:02, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. I agree with PMC that only a very selective merge is appropriate. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:19, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete because of lack of verifiability and notability. Oppose merging. There's nothing that can be salvaged from this page -- why does a page about the duties of janitors need a list of random actors? None of these people are notable for being janitors and I am unsure if this could ever be notable. erc ^{talk/contribs} 23:32, 20 April 2020 (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.