Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/History of Crayola crayons


 * 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. I suspect there's a certain amount of WP:ILIKEIT going on here, but there's clear consensus to keep. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:24, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

History of Crayola crayons

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Listcruft. Mostly sourced to crayon-collecting sites and Crayola PR material. Lojbanist remove cattle from stage 23:01, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Visual arts-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 23:08, 22 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep Somewhat mad but I don't know what other types of sources can be expected here- it's not PhD material. Gets a steady 80+ views a day. Johnbod (talk) 03:08, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep This was split off from the list of Crayola Crayon colors because the history discussion was too detailed for that article, and the different tables presented historical arrangements that would not have been appropriate there. Your idea of "cruft" is someone else's useful information, and here it's cited to suitable, documented, and apparently reliable sources.  Denigrating Crayola's website as "PR material" is disingenuous, when presumably the company that produces a commercial color is authoritative as to that color's official representation in RGB/HSV, at least in the absence of other information suggesting an error or discrepancy.  P Aculeius (talk) 04:38, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Stub. This is a legitimate subject and there is some legitimate content here although there is enough garbage intermixed that you might not notice it on a first glance. All the multicolour tables have to go. The text is far too obsessed with individual colours when it should talk a lot more about the actual subject of the article, which is the history of the crayons business. We need facts like: Which markets did they operate in at different times? How many crayons or packs do they sell each year? Do they make they crayons themselves or are they licensed to other manufacturers in some areas? How has this changed over time? Have they ever had to change the pigments or wax for safety reasons? The text needs to drop most of the trivia as it strongly greatly detracts from the actual on-topic content. Once we have this cut down to size then the referencing can be improved. A major international brand with such a long history must have more independent RS written about it than this. --DanielRigal (talk) 22:11, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Just because you think the colors themselves are trivial, or as you put it, "garbage", doesn't mean that they are. If you want to add information on those other subjects you think worth discussing, go ahead.  Nobody could possibly object.  But the solution to missing useful and interesting information isn't to delete other useful and interesting information, much less to remove everything and turn a substantial article into a stub.  From the mass nominations listed below, in which you and the others persistently describe information about Crayola crayon colors or related topics "listcruft" and "fancruft", while dismissing or ignoring reliable sources, it seems that you've just prejudged everything to do with the crayons and their colors as worthless.  But I think most readers are more interested in the colors themselves than in the history behind them, which is understandable: while I agree that the history is well-worth exploring (and have tried to document it to the extent necessary for this article), and doubtless could be expanded, it would be pretty pitiful if there were no display of the colors themselves, or indication of their RGB/Hexadecimal equivalents, and how the lineup has changed over time.  Since crayons and the colors they produce are the subject of this article, it makes no sense whatever to delete that information and have only text about the company or its production methods and merchandising techniques.  P Aculeius (talk) 13:17, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
 * You miss my point about how this detracts from the good content. If an article has 10 sentences of good content then it is obvious to all that the content is good and that that the article could be expanded with more good content of a similar type. If an article has, say, 10 sentences of good content and a 90 sentences of WP:OR fan writing (and I accept that what is garbage to Wikipedia might be valid content for other people's websites with other objectives but that is irrelevant here) then that 10 sentences will be completely obscured by the rest. If an article is 90% garbage then who is going to read it to pull out the other 10%? People might not even notice that there was anything but garbage in the first place. In effect, the extra cruft reduces the value of the other good content. It is not, as you claim "useful". It is is the opposite because it subtracts value from the rest of the article. Besides, usefulness is one of the arguments to avoid. Do you think this article would even be up for deletion if it stuck to its core topic? The topic is clearly valid and the article can be saved. We just need to find and rescue the real article from underneath the accretion of fancruft layered on top of it. The article should focus on the history of Crayola's crayon products (not individual colours to any great extent), markets, sales, competition and so on. I'm sure some colours may end up being mentioned but the tables with the unverifiable colour data are just no good.
 * Now, I have been using the terms "unverifiable" and "OR" but it is clear that some of the details in this article are simply made up. Sure, they have been made up in an honest but misguided attempt to approximate the real colours, rather than to mislead people, but that is still not valid. Let's look at some of the "references" for the colour values:
 * Reference 4 (used 176 times): This refers people to the "Crayola: Explore Colors" website which does not even provide the hex values it is alleged to support. Even if it did it is not clear how much effort they would put into making them exactly accurate given that this is an e-commerce website for kids to decide what colour crayons to buy and then buy them. I'm not saying that I think its content is incorrect but it clearly does not support the weight we are trying to put on it and policy is to avoid using such sites anyway
 * Reference 5 (used 84 times): "Color values estimated using swatch of original crayon." Nothing even to verify there. That just counts as "made up".
 * My best advice is for somebody to set up a Crayola fan wiki and to copy all the articles there. That way we can slice our versions down to what is appropriate for Wikipedia and the fans can avoid losing all their hard work. Everybody gets what they want that way, right? --DanielRigal (talk) 16:14, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
 * None of these are valid arguments. "It may not be garbage, but it's garbage for Wikipedia" and "it's 90% garbage" is just insulting and provocative, and doesn't belong in this debate, to say nothing of prejudging the outcome, and circular reasoning ("this content is unencyclopedic because it's worthless").  Stop calling it garbage, stop calling it cruft, fancruft, useless, and get off your high horse, or stop arguing.  "Do you think this article would be up for deletion if it stuck to its core topic" is just another example of circular reasoning: deletion is justified because it was nominated for deletion.  Why bother having a discussion at all if nominating something for deletion proves that it needs to be deleted?  Your ridiculous assertion that this is "fancruft" has been refuted repeatedly on the other pages you've spammed with deletion arguments.  It wasn't created by a "fan" and you're the only one who feels the need to insult it.  Contrary to the repeated arguments on this and other pages, it's not a sales catalogue, and it's not intended to be an exhaustive treatment of every product ever produced by Binney & Smith.  It's a discussion of one main subject and how that subject has changed over time.  That's why it doesn't have prices, availability, sales figures, or the number of rivets used to hold up the roof of the crayon factory.  If you want an article that talks about that stuff, go ahead and write it.  Don't demand that other articles about other topics be eliminated because you don't personally think they're important!  The possibility that someone somewhere else might devote a book or an article in a magazine or an external wiki to a topic does not and has never justified deleting content from Wikipedia.  "It could be covered by another wiki" is not a valid reason to delete an article!
 * Instead of making up policies that don't exist, maybe you should spend more time familiarizing yourself with actual policies. For instance, key to this and other color-related topics, as explained in detail elsewhere, is that the contents of a work (whether a book, article, movie, television show, song, web page, or object such as a crayon) are valid sources for themselves.  Note, I said contents, not opinion or editorial.  You can describe the plot of a book, or the characters on a TV show, or the color of a crayon without editorializing.  If someone else can do it better, they can edit what you write about it.  You don't need a third-party source to tell you what color a red crayon is.  But if, as is the case here, you have multiple reliable sources that provide a digital (or digitized) swatch of the color, then you also have a third-party source for the RGB/Hex codes!  Just as content that anyone who reads a book or listens to a piece of music can hear (i.e. content that is obvious), a digital color code that anyone can read for themselves is a valid source.  Go ahead, test them with a digital color meter, or use the eyedropper tool from Photoshop or Gimp or any other program to test swatches, and show that they're not identical to the values shown here.  The swatches based on actual crayon wax on paper may have some variation depending on which part you sample, but Crayola's digital swatches are pure color, and should be exact matches no matter how you do it.  Anyone who checks the colors should obtain the same results, just as if you looked up a quotation from a book on Google Books and found a copy of the page it's from.
 * But again, you bypass the real issues and instead focus on made-up policies. A commercial website is not a good source for opinions about a product, or comparisons of one product against another.  But it's perfectly good as a source for the product's description, its official name, spelling, the dates from which it was produced, and other similar information for which the company's web site is likely to be as accurate a source of information as any other.  You cannot ignore reliable sources for the description of a product merely because the manufacturer provided the information.  If the claims were, "this is the best product of its kind" or "this product is produced using the unique, patented widgetry design", then there would be a problem—although it would still be a valid source for the claims, if presented as the manufacturer's claims.  The number of times that a source is cited is not relevant to whether it's a valid source, or whether a page citing it should be deleted.  If you want additional sources, find some.  The fact that you think there should be more of them is not a valid argument for deletion!  In all, the arguments for deletion depend entirely on misapplications of policies, policies that don't exist, circular reasoning, and prejudicial claims about the article needing to be deleted because it's worthless, the contents needing to be deleted because they're garbage, the article needing to be deleted because it was nominated for deletion, and other pointless reasons that simply demonstrate why this nomination is a colossal waste of time for everyone.  P Aculeius (talk) 03:49, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
 * If you think the policies are made up then please read WP:V and tell us whether you still believe that the hex values are validly verified? Then maybe read WP:OR and see if you can spot any of the things it prohibits going on in the articles up for deletion. Then please read WP:GNG to see where the line is drawn on notability. If at any point you think we are making stuff up then please hit "View history" and check that we have not been editing the policies to tilt them against you. The only thing made up here is those damn Hex values. I am not saying that they were pulled out of somebody's backside, in fact I think they are a genuine but deeply misguided attempt at original research, but I am saying that there is nothing here to verify that they weren't pulled out of somebody's backside. --DanielRigal (talk) 18:18, 29 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Comment Listed for deletion by the same nominators:
 * Articles for deletion/List of Crayola crayon colors (3rd nomination)
 * Articles for deletion/History of Crayola crayons
 * Articles for deletion/Timeline of Crayola
 * Articles for deletion/List of Crayola paint colors
 * Articles for deletion/List of Crayola marker colors
 * Articles for deletion/List of Crayola colored pencil colors


 * P Aculeius (talk) 12:59, 27 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep - Legitimate encyclopedic topic. If you don't like aspects of the article, fix it. Carrite (talk) 15:54, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Indeed, although I'd like the result to be "stub" rather than "keep". With a "keep" I fear that, when we remove all the multicoloured tables in order to rescue the article from the crushing weight of cruft it has on top of it, all the bad content will just get reverted back in with the "keep" cited as justification. I'd like to head off that really stupid edit war. --DanielRigal (talk) 18:18, 29 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep. I'm not sure of some of the other articles, but this one is encyclopedic, and justified.  DGG ( talk ) 18:03, 29 July 2018 (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.