Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of most-followed Twitter accounts

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 no consensus. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 02:31, 7 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

List of most-followed Twitter accounts

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

This page is far from a properly sourced encyclopedia article about the topic, which seems to have no actual significant coverage. This is a WP:ELNO-violating index of primary-source offlinks to numerous Twitter accounts, violating WP:NOTDIRECTORY. Wikipedia isn't a platform for hosting links to other websites' content. Links in a list article should be internal links to other Wikipedia articles, not offsite refspam links to other websites. ~Anachronist (talk) 00:50, 30 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Related discussions:

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 11:08, 30 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Internet-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 11:08, 30 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: none of the external links even appear inline. They are used as bona fide primary sources that appear in their designated place in the footnotes. As far as actual deletion issues are concerned (WP:AFDNOTCLEANUP), the topic corresponds to what WP:LISTN has to say: "a list topic is considered notable is if it has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources". I don't think it's a WP:NOT item. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:47, 30 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Whether the links appear inline or as refspam is irrelevant. Either way they add no value, and simply serve as a directory of external links to content hosted offsite. The issue is whether the subject "most followed Twitter accounts" meets WP:GNG. ~Anachronist (talk) 17:16, 30 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What reliable sources are there which compare the relative popularity of Twitter accounts? Bearcat (talk) 20:46, 30 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. For starters, the number of people who follow any given Twitter account changes daily for any number of reasons: new followers adding it, old followers removing it or getting deleted from the platform as Russian bots, and on and so forth — so it's a characteristic that's in a state of constant flux and renders a list dynamically unmaintanable. Secondly, with just one exception here the references aren't reliable sources, but merely the primary source Twitter feeds themselves — and the one reliable source exception just discusses Katy Perry's number of followers without being about the concept of comparing different people's Twitter followings. Which means that ranking people by the size of their twitbase isn't a thing that reliable sources do — it amounts to original research that we're doing ourselves. And at any rate, does it really matter how many Twitter followers a person has? Is Alicia Keys a better singer than Adele just because she has more Twitter followers? No, it just means that Alicia Keys' audience skews a bit younger and Adele's skews a bit older, so Alicia Keys' audience is somewhat more likely to be on Twitter in the first place. Does having more Twitter followers make Demi Lovato more important than Narendra Modi? Hardly; there just aren't as many people in India using the platform. And furthermore, the number of followers the person has doesn't necessarily correspond to the person's influence on the platform — as witness the fact that the one person on the list whose tweets get talked about in the news more than anybody else's doesn't even actually rank in the Top 20 by number of people and/or bots who follow him directly. Who over the age of 12 really gives two hoots about such twaddle as who has more or less Twitter followers than who else? Bearcat (talk) 20:46, 30 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Keep – Many sites compile similar lists of the most popular Twitter personalities; surely we could use them as sources. Contrary to some Delete arguments, the list does not assert relative importance, talent or fame of people mentioned, it's just a Twitter ranking, no more no less. The argument about frequent updates makes little sense, when precision of the follower count is by the million: the list has seen barely 500 edits in a year. By the same token, we maintain List of most-viewed YouTube videos, which is informative or trivial depending on your POV. — JFG ^talk 01:47, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And why is Twitter ranking a thing that an encyclopedia needs to give a flying fig about? Who in their right mind thinks that tells anybody anything important? Bearcat (talk) 18:50, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Your personal opinion of what may or may not be of interest to our vast diversity of readers is not a reason to delete. Such lists are evidently notable, and their thousands of daily page views demonstrate their popularity towards the WP audience. — JFG ^talk 21:25, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Page views isn't a valid reason to keep. So far, nobody has offered a policy-grounded rationale why the topic of "most followed twitter accounts" is notable and should be kept. Nobody has offered any sources that discuss the topic in depth. That's really all that matters here. This isn't a matter of WP:ILIKEIT or WP:IDONTLIKEIT. ~Anachronist (talk) 21:55, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There's a difference between "popular" and "relevant to an encyclopedia". Articles about every currently viral meme-gif would be popular if we had them, but we keep or delete them based on whether reliable sources independent of the topic can be shown to discuss their notability, not just whether KnowYourMeme verifies that they exist. Bearcat (talk) 22:21, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Keep — Ditto to what JFG said. — Gang14 (talk) 16:06, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Twitter is one of the most important social networks. Figures are available directly from the tweets and not disputable. Wykx (talk) 23:07, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Non-sequitur, and irrelevant to any Wikipedia policy. Nobody is disputing any figures. This discussion proposes that the topic of Twitter accounts as a group isn't notable. It doesn't comply with WP:LISTN in any way whatsoever. ~Anachronist (talk) 23:42, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
There are every week articles in the newspapers on twitter rankings of personalities. Just random articles of this month to illustrate: [1] [2]. Wykx (talk) 06:36, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
That's getting closer, but still not coverage about twitter rankings as a group, rather coverage of individuals in the context of twitter followings. ~Anachronist (talk) 06:53, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You mean [3] or [4] or [5] or [6]? Wykx (talk) 08:50, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per Wykx's sources above, "X is #Y on Twitter by followers" is commonly mentioned in the news. As for your proposal "that the topic of Twitter accounts as a group isn't notable", well I disagree. jcc (tea and biscuits) 17:29, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, as list must be constantly updated to be accurate. If you want to break it out to "most followed in November 2017", etc, that could work, but not this format. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 22:11, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - As per nomination. This isn't an issue about reliable sources—the issue is that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia covering notable topics of encyclopedic interest, not storage for a website's stats. Maybe some of the information could be merged into Twitter, but that is all. Reaper Eternal (talk) 22:49, 6 December 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.