Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of United States companies by state
First of all, redundancy between lists and categories is a good thing, and deletion of one in favor of the other is discouraged, according to the guideline ''''''. Second, just because the sublists have had problems and were deleted, isn't a reason for abandoning the main list.  It can be rebuilt and expanded again to sublists as is normal for lists.   Third, lists are much easier and less time consuming to maintain than categories.  Categories require tagging or untagging potentially hundreds of different pages, with server and download delays for each and every page.  Updating the items on a list do not have those delays because they're all on the same page.  For a comparison of the benefits of lists and categories, see ''''''.  Lists are superior to categories in many ways, and are increasingly being used as tables of contents and indexes of Wikipedia's articles.  Fourth, almost any page on Wikipedia could be the target for spam/self-promotion.  The only way to prevent COI completely is to erase all of Wikipedia, but that would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  The same principle applies to any subject.  We shouldn't decline to cover a topic just because it ''might'' be spammed, or ''might'' be vandalized, or ''might'' be POV'd.  We fight those things directly by reverting or correcting specific instances of them.  We have thousands of volunteers/editors for this very purpose.  And once such problems have been identified, we deal with the source of the problem, by going after the spammers/vandals/POVers themselves, either blocking them or confronting them via Wikipedia's dispute resolution system.  Fifth, lists are still very useful as requested article lists even when some of the redlinks lead to an "already been deleted" notice.  Besides, links to deleted pages should be delinked when those pages are deleted.  If they aren't, then whoever runs into them should finish the job
— User:The, 06:56, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Stance: keep
Cited policy: WP:CLS||WP:CLS (Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates)