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.
unmaintainable, potential POV-war flamebait. The truth is, while many of the people on this list could be seen as martyrs, many may disagree with that. It also invites vast controversy (9/11 hijackers - terrorists or martyrs?), as well as possible loss of control by people adding pop-culture "martyrs" (Tupac Shakur, et al). み使いMitsukai02:00, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete High potential for flamewar, per nom. There are already names listed who do not meet the Merriam-Webster definition of 'martyr' (for instance, Matthew Shephard died neither "voluntarily" nor "for the sake of priciple"), unless you use definition three which defines 'martyr' as a synonym of 'victim', in which case,... just delete this list as inherently POV. --CrypticBacon04:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete an actual list of martyrs would be useful, but that's not what this is. A martyr is a person who willingly dies for a cause. Most of these people were assassinated. --djrobgordon04:17, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A martyr is whatever a martyr is defined as being, to risk being circular. The page doesn't define martyr. Not sure about this one, but leaning towards delete as NPOV. Schizombie05:15, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete The list will be perpetually incomplete even if it grows to enormous lengths as the categories are too general and tend towards POV. One person's martyr is another's terrorist, so WP:NPOV violations are inevitable. Could see an argument for splitting the list in to seperate articles such as 'list of Christian martyrs', 'list of Muslim martyrs' an giving strict criteria for inclusion so as to reduce possibility for NPOV bias. (aeropagitica) 07:19, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep-ish Needs total reorganization based upon the existance of multiple sences of martyr. It should consist of a short list of real martyrs, with possibly an even shorter list of famous ones first, followed by a much longer list of notable people who have been refered to as martyrs. JeffBurdges16:57, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete even as a rather apolitical person who hasn't even heard of 1/3 of the people on the list, I can see myself taking issue with about 5 of people there. (There are also several notable omissions). The crux of the issue is of course the fact that there are variable definitions of who is and isn't a martyr. This makes the page a NPOV violation and a massive flame war and vandalism target. --Bachrach4418:22, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom, CrypticBacon, and Bachrach44. I expect that maintaining this list and keeping it up to encyclopedic standards would be difficult, to say the least. Also, no way to keep it NPOV, given disagreements as regards qualifications for martyrdom. ergot18:42, 2 March 2006 (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.
