Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bug (Starship Troopers)


 * 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   keep. (non-admin closure) buffbills7701 12:19, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Bug (Starship Troopers)

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Unreferenced article (outside primary sources) on fictional concept. The topic could be salvaged, perhaps, if rewritten using sources on Heinlein's political and social analysis, but note that the current article doesn't touch upon those topics at all. It is pure fancruft, describing fictional aliens without any serious attempt to provide a social or literaly analysis of the concept. As such, there's precious little content to salvage for encyclopedia, through we may want to ping http://starshiptroopers.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page which could use this content. CC editors who expressed interest in this topic before: User:DGG, User:Wellspring, User:Noclevername, User:TheMightyShoeHorn Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 07:41, 20 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Speedy Keep The nomination acknowledges that the topic could be salvaged and AFD is not cleanup. See our editing policy. Warden (talk) 08:39, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Sigh. It can be salvaged - by rewriting it from grounds up, not keeping anything but few unreferenced generic sentences in the lead. As written, this fails GNG. Check our deletion criteria. That something may be saved, if it was written differently, doesn't mean we cannot delete the present, unreferenced, unnotable, mess. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 08:53, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Per WP:NNC and WP:NRV, "Notability is a property of a subject and not of a Wikipedia article. ... Editors evaluating notability should consider not only any sources currently named in an article, but also the possibility of notability-indicating sources that are not currently named in the article. Notability requires only the existence of suitable independent, reliable sources, not their immediate citation. Wikipedia articles are not a final draft, and an article's subject can be notable if such sources exist, even if they have not been named yet.". Note also that, per WP:V, citations are only expected for "quotations, and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged".  Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a search engine.  The main content of the article is our original text, not the citations to external sources.  Where fictional material is readily available, as in this case, detailed citations are otiose and that's why editors commonly don't bother to add them.  Deletion on such grounds is disruptive because it obstructs article improvement and wastes time upon unproductive discussions such as this. Warden (talk) 12:15, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Merge cited information into Starship Troopers and the other works of fiction discussed. The Bugs in Heinlein's book are pretty much standard sci-fi enemy aliens; the book's really about the humans. The versions of Bugs in the other, much less important--they don't read 'em in West Point, works can be discussed in their articles; and the differences between each and the original also there. I object to an article which puts all versions of Bugs together on the grounds of WP:OR and WP:Fancruft.Kitfoxxe (talk) 15:13, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep As the article on S.T. explains, the reason these are on of the standard types of sci fi aliens, is that these were the prototype, the original back in 1959 that was widely copied and adapted . As they occur in all the works, they need a separate article, and since they're discussed in all work about he novel , there's enough information. What might more realistically be considered fancruft would be separate articles on each individual caste of them==that's the sort of material to go in the Wikia. This is just a summary, and therefore appropriate here.  DGG ( talk ) 19:04, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * User:DGG: I think this is an excellent point why this article "could be useful if rewritten". Because as it stands, it's pure funcruft about fictional aliens (purely descriptive), without any discussion of the impact this concept had on a wider culture. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 05:53, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:38, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Film-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:38, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science fiction-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:38, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:38, 20 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep. I'm not an expert on this subject, but actually that's why I think we should keep this. I only found myself noticing that this debate was going on because I was trying to find out something about Juan Rico, who's the protagonist of Starship Troopers. Of course I started clicking through to other articles about the book/film series, and I found this article. Is it something that I'm particularly interested in? No. I certainly don't play any of the various computer games that contain these various "bugs", but if I were such a player I'd really appreciate this article. Right now my own little task on Wikipedia is tidying up articles about villages in Burkina Faso. I'm pretty sure that not many people care about this, but for the few people who do consult Wikipedia on Mangodara Department it's helpful information. In the same way, this article about "bugs" is what I think is called "domain specialist" information: 99% of the people on the planet don't care about this, but for the 1% who do it's probably very useful. It's also useful to keep the information on a separate page, because that way it doesn't clutter up the main Starship Troopers article with stuff that most readers would probably not need. The thing is, one day I (or anyone else) might suddenly decide to take an interest in "bugs", and if I (or they) do Wikipedia will be the first place we'll look for information. If we had a Wikipedia that only contained things that I, or even all the people in this debate, currently thought were important, we'd have a much diminished project, and I'd rather not have that. I hope this is OK. Thank you. RomanSpa (talk) 20:02, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * User:RomanSpa: I appreciate your thought, but - try again. See Arguments_to_avoid_in_deletion_discussions why your current argument, as I see it, is not valid. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 05:53, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * User:Piotrus: Sorry for phrasing this wrongly. I'm basically just an ordinary editor, so I may not have phrased things right. What I meant was that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, but it's a really big one. It's like we're really a whole bunch of specialist encyclopedias: you can start by reading the main article about something, but then if you get interested you don't have to go away and find a separate encyclopedia just about that subject, you can sort of "drill down" (I think that's the phrase) to get more and more depth. In some areas we can "drill down" a really long way (e.g. battleships, Star Trek): Wikipedia is already a great specialist encyclopedia for those subjects, if you need it to be. In other areas we can't do this yet, but as time goes by we will improve in these areas. This article should stay because an expert in the adaptation of Heinlein's work to different media would regard the way that bugs are differently portrayed in these media as an important issue. Exactly how the "bugs" differ in different books and films is certainly specialist knowledge (in the same way that the different Starship Enterprises are specialist knowledge - a Star Trek expert needs this information and would regard it as significant, but most people wouldn't), but to a "domain specialist" this is significant and notable information, and that's why the article should stay. RomanSpa (talk) 22:54, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep per others but purge fancruft. The book American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film has a good passage for this topic: "The main enemy is the Bugs whose organisation resembles that of ants, the 'ultimate dictatorship of the hive'... They embody a 'total communism' presided over by bug 'commissars'. In short the Bugs represent the perceived characteristics of Soviet Communism transposed, after a defeat of the 'Chinese Hegemony' in the novel's future history, on to an alien species." Also, the Futures journal article "Bug Planet: Frontier Myth in Starship Troopers" states, "Heinlein and Verhoeven's construction of the Bugs... is at the centre of this machine's functioning: despite their blatant Otherness, despite the fact that 'they look the way they do' they are far from being 'just stupid insects'. In fact, crucially, 'they co-operate even better than we do', 'don't know how to surrender' and are thus a lethal enemy, exhibiting a frightful intelligence, and Heinlein intimates, the expansionist urges intrinsic to any successful race... The machine is thus granted a teleological grounding: it must be thus because it can only be thus: without violent expansionism, the human race would be annihilated, not by its own self-destructive 'closed world' frustrations, but by the territorial ambitions of the alien Other." This is most definitely a viable topic. Erik (talk &#124; contribs) 20:19, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * User:Erik. Nice finds, would you care to add those to the article? If a section on cultural impact, using reliable sources like this, is added, I'd be happy to withdraw this nomination. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 05:54, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I hope that material is already in Starship Troopers. Kitfoxxe (talk) 05:19, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Would an article titled Insect-like alien be possible? That would make more sense to me.  Rather than saying all the others are really Heinlein's, as this article, not intentionally, suggests. Kitfoxxe (talk) 21:07, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Why do you think that title is better? I think the current title indicates that it is the alien species in the Starship Troopers media. "Insect-like alien" is vague, and I'm not sure if we have the sources to have that kind of more general scope. Sources are more likely to exist in the context of Starship Troopers. Erik (talk &#124; contribs) 21:11, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Because some people here have suggested that insect-like aliens are a major trope in science fiction, which a quick WP search showed existed before Heinlein. I expect this article to be kept, and really have no problem with that.  Interested readers might also check out Extraterrestrials in fiction, which could be improved and expanded quite a bit. Kitfoxxe (talk) 21:21, 22 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep per Erik's finds of RS'ed commentary showing the topic meets the GNG. Jclemens (talk) 01:51, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * 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.