Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Statutory Instruments of the United Kingdom 1996
Reasons like "this ridiculous list"; "Statutory instruments are by definition non-notable - if the issue is important an Act of Parliament is required instead."; "The list is already available on the OPSI website"; "is basically listcruft, with no encyc. nor useful content" show that those claiming them are either ignorant of Wikipedia's policies or of what SIs are. There are many lists that I would consider "ridiculous" on Wikipedia and yet I have never nominated them for deletion. Claiming deletion on that basis is not in line with Wikipedia policy. Claiming that SIs are by definition non-notable is extremely ignorant. A great deal of important legislation in the UK is promulgated by SIs. For example much of current copyright law, road sign law, standards for road vehicles, and pretty much all EU legislation is implemented via SIs. The SIs with (Amendment) and the like in the title do tend to be less important, but that is not a reason for excluding them from the list. It is a reason for not writing an article about them yes, but not for excluding them from the list. The list on the OPSI website is reproduced here at the moment, but if you take a look at the list you will see that there are many, many, many gaps in the numbering sequence. As Richard B says, this is those SIs published in 1996, which number about 2,100 Instead of there being 2,100 odd SIs, there are a large number of local SIs not listed on the OPSI website. I know of no easily accessible list of those but having one on Wikipedia would be useful for those who try and track legislation. Wikipedia is indeed not merely a collection of external links, but many of those SIs could easily have articles written about them. Failing that they could be redirected to main articles, say about copyright law for example. |Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, and while this list could perhaps be further sub-divided to make it less unwieldy there is no call for deleting it
— User:David, 16:40, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Stance: keep
Cited policy: WP:NOT (Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not)