Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dinobots


 * 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 delete. TNT applies. No objection to recreating with proper sourcing Spartaz Humbug! 19:18, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Dinobots

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This fails to establish notability. Sources from the previous AfD were mostly just pop-culture articles about their role in a then upcoming movie. The only real significant real world information in the lead doesn't have a proper source. Autobots and Decepticons surely must be notable, but I don't believe this meets that threshold. TTN (talk) 14:48, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. TTN (talk) 14:48, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Comics and animation-related deletion discussions. TTN (talk) 14:48, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Anime and manga-related deletion discussions. TTN (talk) 14:48, 13 December 2019 (UTC)


 * May I ask what makes Playthings magazine not a proper source? It is publication that ran for over 100 years independently and continues to do so in a more compact form after business merger decisions, and it is still accessible for the most part. -2pou (talk) 17:55, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Not proper as in it doesn’t list the actual publication by the company or any indication that those toys in particular are even related to this topic. All it says is Transformers in general for that year, which certainly released more than just one set of toys in an entire year. TTN (talk) 18:00, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I see. You were trying to say that the claim in the article is not being sourced properly.  It reads as if you are claiming Playthings magazine is not a proper source to be used by people in the first place. That said, I'm not sure that this is accurate.  The publication is Playthings, and the publisher at the time was Geyer-McAllister Publications.  We can add publisher=Geyer-McAllister Publications to the cs1 citation template, though this is not a comonly used, nor required attribute.  You don't often see "{cite magazine |magazine=The New Yorker | publisher=Condé Nast...}", but I guess a full publisher citation can be added. The exact publication seems to be listed as the December 1985 issue.  I am not familiar with the work, but some periodicals only use a Date and not a Volume/Issue number.  Either way, Volume/Issue numbers are not required to track down the issue when a date is provided.  The title of the article itself is "Transformers named top toy of '85; buyers representing 3,500 stores cast votes for best-sellers in Playthings survey".  The lead seems to be claiming that within that article, the Dinobots are discussed somewhere, not necessarily THE top, but somewhere in there. I'd be willing to bet Barbie is somewhere in that article as well.  This can be confusing since Dinobots are Transformers, and Transformers topped the list and are used in the article name.  It could be read as a quote instead of an article title name, but journal/magazine article/paper names are in quotes when using a cs1 template, and they are not italicized.  Now, I could see an interpretation where someone just took that article name and put it into any transformers related article, which wouldn't apply to Dinobots specifcally, but I have to assume good faith that the editor that added the information actually read material related to Dinobots within.  I'm not willing to travel to the aforementioned museum in New York to find the issue in question to prove or disprove this, though. All that is just about one particular source, which won't establish notability by itself, but per WP:AGF I don't think it should be discounted. I just saw what I thought was a magazine being discredited and started digging. We'll see if more are brought to light, though. -2pou (talk) 20:35, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
 * The Transformers articles had a huge problem with improperly used sources to basically try to look important, so I wouldn't automatically AGF. There was a real problem several years ago with vehement defense of poor articles and the implementation of said sources to try to keep them. As for this source, I think that quote is a description of what the source is supposed to be rather than a name of an article. Putting the text into Google, all that comes up is Transformers Wikipedia and Fandom stuff. I feel like that text would be out there somewhere if it came directly from a publication. TTN (talk) 20:45, 13 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Merge the G1 part into Autobots, minus the long and detailed plot descriptions. J I P  &#124; Talk 19:50, 13 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep In between the film (and associated commentary), the games and the toys these things grind their way over the notability standards.©Geni (talk) 06:29, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Weak delete. Possibly notable, but this is a terrible article. I know the option of "blowing it up and starting over" isn't a policy position, but... Josh Milburn (talk) 07:57, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
 * TNT delete as having literally nothing of enyclopedic value. Whether or not there is potential for a notable article at that name, it needs to be rewritten in its entirety regardless.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 11:31, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Weak keep Sources found by Geni are good (I also found this but it is so-so), through a lot of content needs pruning, so overall I am on the same boat as J Milburn, but I'd lean to keep (preserve edit history, prune most of the content that's fancruft/primary info on toys). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 03:32, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep based on sources found above. BOZ (talk) 04:47, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
 * ??? I hate these articles! Easy when there's no notability, but this one has clear notability established above, plus discussion in scholarly works about insubordination but ultimately following leadership (there's a viewable copy out there, but marked not for distribution, so I won't)...  and more from Kotaku and Gizmodo and Collider showing their popularity.  Even Mother Nature Network? (that one is brief and arguably not very notable, but I include it to show my amazement at the breadth of who bothers discussing them). I remember loving the Dinobots, too, but this article is so, SO BAD!  I really want to recommend TNT, but Piotrus has a point about preserving the edit history.  The problem is that I don't know who will take the initiative to actually do the pruning... -2pou (talk) 18:44, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Most of those are just minor pop culture pieces without anything to actually say on the topic. As I said, it did get attention for their roles in the one movie, but that's a commonplace style of news reporting in the last decade to pick up Google hits. It doesn't help display anything more than a temporary interest based on search trends. TTN (talk) 18:57, 16 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Comment: I hear 2pou. I would be open to supporting keeping this article if I believed anyone was doing/was going to start doing the work to make it passable. My experience with Transformers articles, however, is that they languish indefinitely with maintenance templates with people tweaking the plot summaries. I've seen cases of AfDs closed as a merge that never even got merged as someone removed the "this needs to be merged" template or just reverted to an earlier version of the article after the fact. Josh Milburn (talk) 07:22, 17 December 2019 (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.