Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Gundam Universal Century mobile units (2nd nomination)


 * 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 think User:EEMIV put it best: "This list looks like a packing receipt mixed with the last page of a VCR instruction manual." From what I gather, it's the remarkably poor structure of this list combined with the total lack of references of any sort that is making this list the victim of repeat AfD's. This list does appear to have been the target of several merges, and so those merges have simply dumped information in without doing much to clean it up. I believe, and it seems a consensus here believes the same, that a very substantial cleanup effort would go a long way toward improving this article; finding references, adding information, and possibly splitting back out as recommended in this discussion. If you are a member of a relevant Wikiproject, please work with your fellow editors to get some sort of collaboration done on this list, because it really really needs it. Hers fold  (t/a/c) 21:05, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

List of Gundam Universal Century mobile units
AfDs for this article: 
 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

Previously nominated in 2007, but no consensus was reached. Does not establish notability with independant sources, Fancruft list of mostly extremely minor mecha, no references. Dandy Sephy (talk) 02:34, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Anime and manga-related deletion discussions.
 * Keep as it's been established that list sub-articles related to an individual series (and in this case, quite a large number of series) do not need to establish notability independent of the main article (or in this case, articles). ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 03:01, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment such consensus has been established for lists of characters; I've yet to see any consensus for lists of robots or ships. Doceirias (talk) 14:16, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
 * For Gundam series, the robots and ships (especially the robots) could be considered characters given how much merchandising is created for them, even 30 years after they were first introduced. I think this is a good application of that consensus. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:35, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
 * It may help to note that this article has been the merge target for the following articles:
 * Uncle G (talk) 03:57, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Not sure about voting delete here, but wow that's an incredibly useless article. For lists of characters and the like, isn't it customary to have some sort of description or whatnot instead of just a list of random names? This is made more distressing here because the names of these mechs are all model numbers made of jumbled digits and letters. - Norse Am Legend (talk) 04:03, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment: I suspect that's what will eventually be there, but as you noticed, there are a large number of them. It will take some time, but this is what lists are for and Wikipedia isn't on a timeline for completion. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 04:06, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, well, at one time there WAS a LOT of information - most of these mobile units had their own detailed webpages. Then someone got a wild hair up their ass and afd' the lot, and "merged" everything.  You are now seeing the results of this "merging."  Now we're looking at deleting this article too, which is skirting WP:NOTAGAIN. 76.116.247.15 (talk) 04:50, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment: I suspect that's what will eventually be there, but as you noticed, there are a large number of them. It will take some time, but this is what lists are for and Wikipedia isn't on a timeline for completion. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 04:06, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, well, at one time there WAS a LOT of information - most of these mobile units had their own detailed webpages. Then someone got a wild hair up their ass and afd' the lot, and "merged" everything.  You are now seeing the results of this "merging."  Now we're looking at deleting this article too, which is skirting WP:NOTAGAIN. 76.116.247.15 (talk) 04:50, 29 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete Keep As per user:Nihonjoe. On second thought, user:Themfromspace is correct. Proxy User (talk) 04:23, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete I'm not sure where Nihonjoe and Proxy User see that its been established that this type of article doesnt neet to establish notability independant of the main article, because when I read Stand-alone lists I see it clearly stated that "stand-alone lists are Wikipedia articles, and as such are equally subject to Wikipedia's content policies such as Verifiability, No original research, Neutral point of view, and others." Themfromspace (talk) 06:12, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment: As far as I can tell, WP:N isn't a Wikipedia content policy. Though, I don't agree with Nihonjoe either. Statements like "list sub-articles related to an individual series [...] do not need to establish notability independent of the main article" have been made by many editors, but I've yet to see it written in a guideline/policy. -- Goodraise (talk) 00:57, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete. Themfromspace puts it very eloquently. Lists are not exempt from notability and verifiability policies and guidelines. Stifle (talk) 19:25, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep A very strong keep, actually, for this page where other articles were merged. The practice of removing content by first redirecting/merging it, and then trying to delete the combination page, is harmful to the encyclopedia, and prevents orderly consideration of how to handle these articles. I think this is POINT, a determination by a few individuals to press their view that more than minimal coverage of these topics is unworthy of an encyclopedia. The argument that the information is not verifiable is not correct, for primary sources will do to verify this sort of content. DGG (talk) 08:13, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep--The list may be a valuable information source for someone interested in the subject, meets wp:list.--Jmundo (talk) 08:22, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
 * It's useful isn't a compelling reason to keep something. --EEMIV (talk) 08:13, 3 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep per DGG. Hobit (talk) 21:15, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Further note: each of these have 100+ non-wikipedia hits at least. Most (all?) seem to have at least a few (self-published but apparently well-respected) website hits where there are gory details on each "unit".  Not traditional notability, but I'm good with it.  Add a copy of DGG's arguments here too. Hobit (talk) 19:31, 31 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep While the article is currently rather horrible, it is a legitmate spinoff article to keep the main article from growing too long.  The main problem is the Gundam franchise is large, comparable to the Star Wars or Star Trek franchises, yet the Gundam Project has only a handful of editors, so cleanup and improvement can take a while. Edward321 (talk) 22:45, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete – it's one thing to have a list of characters separate without looking at notability. It's another thing to have a list of fictional objects separate. I'm not seeing the notability that makes such a thing a legitimate spinout. — sephiroth bcr  ( converse ) 00:46, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Lists of fictional objects? Like List of Star Wars weapons, Weapons of Star Trek, Technology in Stargate, Technology in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, List of Middle-earth weapons and armour, List of fictional swords, etc?  Seems there's ample evidence that that lists of fictional objects  can be notable. Edward321 (talk) 03:03, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * comment Of course, those pages all have proper descriptions of the items "listed", whereas this article has a couple of paragraphs and then a very long list, some wikilinked but much of it isnt. People are concentrating on notability and verification and ignoring that its still fancruft. If this page was like the others, I'd not have started the Afd. However as it stands, much of the page is only useful to hardcore fans who can get the information elsewhere. About half the list is just a plain text list of minor variations of minor mecha even within the Gundam universe. If even the minor models had a paragraph at least describing them with the variations below, it would be a decent page for everyone. As it stands we have a article flagged for rescue, people asking for it to be kept, but not a single person has tried to improve the article. Dandy Sephy (talk) 12:05, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep per DGG. This meets list policies. I also note the perjorative term used by the nom. Jtrainor (talk) 07:39, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep Again per DGG. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 10:23, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete. Bereft of even an inkling of notably. Totally unencyclopedic original research.  No redeeming qualities whatsoever.   Hi DrNick ! 16:25, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
 * But tell us what you really think! Seriously, how on earth is a verifiable list OR?  Could you explain your comments? Hobit (talk) 20:47, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
 * In other words, WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Jtrainor (talk) 22:25, 31 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Mmmmrphgrbl. Bad articles combine into bad lists. One-off AFDs don't fix this. This needs a real parent article, like "Mechanical design of Universal Century Gundam series" and needs to be upmerged (and NOT in list form) there. Failing that, it's more or less a harmless salvage yard, but I wouldn't miss it if it were gone. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 06:18, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: I would be happy to work on it, but I do not have the resources to do so. There have been hundreds of books published in Japan on Gundam and the robots which populate the series. You can go into some bookstores there and see whole sections devoted to Gundam reference books. Unfortunately, I don't have any of them. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 02:13, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment In the past, when some of these reference books were used as sources, people complained because exact page numbers weren't cited. Jtrainor (talk) 02:59, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Depends on what you mean by "Gundam reference books." If you mean artbooks/licensed guides, you'll end up making more of this, only with more footnotes. That's somewhat better, I guess, but those aren't very good sources. Now, if we found some decent sources about concept, creation, influence on other works, etc. we'd have a hope of making a decent article. Until then, it's just shuffling around paraphrases of the most recent Gundam universe licensed guide. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 11:16, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Speedy Keep, per above Keeps. -- MISTER ALCOHOL  TC 05:10, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Foxy Loxy  Pounce! 02:01, 3 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep The article requires editing, not erasure. Ecoleetage (talk) 03:07, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep per Nihonjoe. From a notability standpoint, the mecha in a Gundam program are actually more relevant than the characters themselves. MalikCarr (talk) 03:23, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep Gundam Mobile suits are a notable topic, and since they can generally be ordered by serial number, a list provides a way of keeping them in order. It's certainly possible to write properly-sourced articles about many of these, like Z Gundam and RB-79 Ball. — PyTom (talk) 03:33, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment - This list looks like a packing receipt mixed with the last page of a VCR instruction manual. I really can't wrap my head around all this Gundam stuff. However, I've been clicking around the WikiProject the last hour and it seems clear that a huge chunk, if not the vast majority, of the articles and lists in this WikiProject consist of poorly edited and in-universe plot summary, trivia, and speculation; much of it should be nuked from above (it's the only way to be sure). In comparison, however, to another list and yet another list, this one isn't that (or, rather, as) bad. The other two lists are laden with too much sheer unencyclopedic content; this list up for AfD instead suffers from a lack of context and a clear explanation for what all those sigils and characters mean, and an explanation for just how down into the nitty gritty of minutiae appearances does this list delve (i.e. is there an entry here for the might-be-a-bat-but-could-possibly-be-a-robot-because-it-has-a-shiny-piece thing?). I'm not !voting delete, however, because I think this is an arbitrary and not especially effective jumping-off point for culling through this franchise; probably the project is better served by merging all these disparate lists together and giving the WikiProject folks some specific "either cite this to the real world or it gets deleted" suggestions. Yes, I know that's the tacit requirement for all content added/restored to Wikipedia -- but, really, some of these niche fiction franchises have been working here in their own bubble for so long, with so much cruft (there, I said it) scattered around, that putting random holes/redlinks in their WikiProject/navigation templates probably won't help much. Rather than swooping in to delete stuff piecemeal, a little more engagement on their talk page to gauge involvement and willingness to revise would be most useful -- -- and perhaps this suggests that backbone isn't around, in which case, delete away. Anyway. I won't be upset to see this deleted, but I think it's only a superficial measure. Sorry for the rant. (And, yes, I appreciate the irony of hammering out all that just a few minutes after putting a specific suit of armor up for AfD -- then again, I differentiate between lists that amalgamate blurbs on multiple specific topics for which there generally is only in-universe content and articles focused solely and exhaustively on one such topic. Meh.) --EEMIV (talk) 08:13, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep and rewrite for the inclined, there are literally tonnes of Japanese language references for several of the items on the list. It could be trimmed though. 76.66.198.171 (talk) 10:27, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete A long list of combinations of letters and numbers does not make an encyclopedia article. The references appear to be from the franchise owners, and are not the "independent sources with substantial coverage'' needed to show notability. Edison (talk) 21:22, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete: I agree with keeping lists that other cruft is "merged" to, but this list is a poor example of this. It contains only one-line entries, thus showing that not much content from a deleted cruft article is merged there, plus these entries can be of little use. Ryan 4314   (talk) 13:47, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep The list needs a major overhaul. The main problem with the list is that it is trying to cover way too much at one time—11 anime series and 11 manga series, games, novels, and models. That means that the list is unfocused and unhelpful. What needs to be done is that individual lists for each of the anime and manga series needs to be split off with more details about the mobile suits' roles in the plot line along with other out-of-universe information. This main list can then become a navigation list between the series specific lists. I would also suggest that only the main mobile suits featured in each series be listed instead of every mobile suit ever mentioned or makes an appearance. --Farix (Talk) 15:09, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment Sounds like a plan to me. Dandy Sephy (talk) 15:48, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Woah, keep in mind that each and every list must assert the notability of the subject just as a major article would. I can't imagine that most of these mini-lists would meet Wikipedia's criteria of notability, especially if the major list is having trouble. Themfromspace (talk) 20:13, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
 * commentSmaller, more detailed lists (with more emphasis on major models and less on listing every extremely minor variation) would be easier to prove notability and to reference then an extremely long list with a couple of odd paragraphs like this. If I had come across the sort of artcles The Farix is talking about, I'd most likely have left them alone (I've nothing against Gundam itself and am in fact watching 00).It's the long list of minor variations that led me to look over the article as a whole as a potential afd candidate. Based on current votes and comments, I expect the afd to be closed as keep/no consensus, so I hope to see attempts made to follow the suggestions made by various people to improve the article so it's useful for the common wikipedia user and not just for hardcore fansDandy Sephy (talk) 04:17, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * 'Comment' +1 with the above comments one center node redirecting to either smaller lists for those which gathered enough notability & references/sources or to the mecha section of their related parent-article for those which are too weak and have been merged. The current one big list will always be unevenly sourced as it depends heavily to each franchise success which is obviously uneven.--KrebMarkt 09:54, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep but needs to be split by series in the future to allow for more content without getting too long. --Polaron | Talk 15:30, 5 January 2009 (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.