Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of creatures in Primeval (3rd 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. Michig (talk) 06:39, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

List of creatures in Primeval
AfDs for this article: 
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This does not establish notability independent of Primeval through the inclusion of real world information from reliable, third party sources. Most of the information is made up of plot details better suited to Wikia. This differs from something like a character list in that it is mostly a Villain of the week listing, taking minute details belonging on the episode list and placing them here only for the sake of in-depth plot regurgitation. For the grand majority of them, simply linking to the dinosaur article would suffice in the first place. There is also the issue that much of the information is original research detailing the real creatures rather than the fictional versions. TTN (talk) 00:05, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:32, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Television-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:32, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science fiction-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:32, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:32, 14 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom - Characters is fine but "creatures" is OTT, All this crap's better off elsewhere. – Davey 2010 •  (talk)  02:45, 14 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep Same reason as the last two AFDs were defeated. What has changed since then? The show is cancelled, the deletionists are the only ones active now. Well, how about Category:Lists of fictional animals by work? Will these all be deleted? If not, why just this one? I know about WP:OTHERCRAP, but a category of 27 articles indicates a consensus allowing this type of article. 202.81.248.238 (talk) 04:20, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep The concept of Primeval was driven by the success of Walking with Dinosaurs and, while the human stars are important, the real stars of the series are the dinosaurs. There are simply too many to include in the the main article so this article was created. The article doesn't just cover the creatures from Primeval, it also includes creatures from its spinoff, Primeval: New World. As has alluded to, nothing has changed since the article was kept at two previous AfDs. The content can't be merged back to the main series article as it would bloat that article significantly, even if any non-encyclopaedic content was removed. The nominator is incorrect in stating that "most of the information is made up of plot details". In fact, much of the article consists of descriptions of the real creature and comparisons between the real and fictional versions of each creature, with some plot information naturally included. It should also be noted that more than 50% of citations used in the article are secondary sources. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 05:08, 14 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep This is obviously an appendix to the main article about the show so there's a clear alternative to deletion — merger back into that article. There's more real world information in this case than you get in most such fictional lists because these creatures were, for the most part, real at one time and we have articles about them.  Compare daleks, ewoks, klingons, &c.  The general notability of this sort of material may be seen in sources such as Dinosaurs in Fantastic Fiction. Andrew (talk) 05:27, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * This article is 125 KB. The program article is 52 KB. A merged article would be well overweight. 202.81.248.238 (talk) 12:19, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * If it were to be merged, it could easily be cut down to less than 20kb, so that isn't an issue. Just getting rid of the infoboxes and episode play-by-plays, which don't belong in even a regular character list, would probably bring it down by half in the first place. TTN (talk) 16:33, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * So you aren't really talking about merging, but deleting in two steps. 202.81.249.176 (talk) 01:56, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I disagree. The infobox was recently at TfD and nobody could credibly explain why the infobox content should be removed and, obviously, the infobox survived TfD. In order to cut the content down to 20kB, you'd have to eliminate virtually everything, leaving only a list of the creatures, without any encyclopaedic content. That isn't making a better encyclopaedia. I really doubt that you could cut this article down to anything small enough so that, immediately after merging you wouldn't have to consider splitting the article again. I note that you were the nominator at the first AfD and I think that if you could cut the article down to 20kB you would have done so in the past 6.5 years. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 17:07, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * It's quite easy to gut a crufty character list. I just don't see the point when I think it should be outright removed in the first place. The infoboxes are pure cruft, and you won't find any in a proper character list. Rather than there being no argument to remove them, I don't think there could be a solid argument to include them in the first place. For these entries, they are mostly plot information, which should be removed except the most relevant details like a brief description as to their introduction to the story and any extremely large impact they may have on it. Then there is stuff like the Dodo section which is mostly original research taken from unrelated sources for some reason. The entire point of a character list in the first place is to provide a brief summary to act as a reference when the subjects are mentioned elsewhere, rather than the bloated mess that makes up this one. The least important ones should have no more than a few sentences on a bulleted "others" list, while even the most important, the Future Predator, looks as if it could maybe take a paragraph at most. If this has to survive for a third time, even though it is no different than the hundreds of other lists that have been deleted, I'm definitely planning on doing at least that much. TTN (talk) 17:53, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * As I've earlier indicated, the article consists mainly of descriptions of the real creatures with comparisons between the real and fictional creatures. This is not cruft, it's encyclopaedic treatment of fiction. There are some plot points but this is normal in such lists, as it provides context. This is not cruft either. For the most part, the article doesn't go overboard on this; in fact some sections don't include any plot information. There are some sections that could be trimmed, such as the sections titled "Coelurosauravus" and "Future Predator" - Both of these were very significant in the series, which is why they are larger than the rest. Some of the infobox content such as "Humans killed" and "Returned to ear" is a bit crufty but claiming "the infoboxes are pure cruft" is very wrong. Some of the creatures appeared only in primevnal, others appeared only in the spinoff and others appeared in the books. The infoboxes provide a quick indication of when and where the creatures appeared. The alternative is to have 3 overlapping articles. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 18:52, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Ignoring that many of those comparisons are original research besides the few sourced to the series creators, how is any of that important? As I noted down below, this is a common occurrence in fiction. Noting every single instance is pointless. There is the encyclopedic treatment of fiction, but there has to be a limit. For most series, that is a list of actual characters, while those of plot elements like these are usually cast away for Wikia to catch. As for proper character list formatting, they are not meant to show every detail of a character. It is supposed to be a succinct summary of their most important aspects, so most of the info in the article needs to be cut just to follow that, ignoring the idea of cruft. Infoboxes should not be in character lists at all. That's just how they work in general, and all of the pertinent info can easily be told in the first sentence. If sorting them is important, it would be easy enough just to put them into different subsections. TTN (talk) 19:39, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The comparisons are not OR. They're based on observations of the creatures as shown in each episodes. Episodes are acceptable primary sources and any reader can simply refer to the episodes and arrive at the same conclusions. There is no reason why infoboxes cannot be used in the article; this was discussed at the TfD. They are used to summarise pertinent points about the creatures instead of including additional, repetitive prose in each section which would only serve to bloat the article further. As for sorting, I don't see that is an issue. The content is already sorted into separate subsections. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 08:00, 15 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep I was in the last AFD, and I don't see as how anything has changed. The series is notable for its creatures, that is what its all about.  Some of the first ones on the list are just real life dinosaurs, but then it gets into many fictional characters not found anywhere else.  All notable series have character lists and creature/monster list if there is enough content to fill them.  A perfectly legitimate fork.   D r e a m Focus  10:55, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * That doesn't really mean much. There are thousands of series where such things play a vital role in them, but this is one of the few lists of them still left over. Lists of weapons, lists of locations, lists of factions, lists of powers, and such have all been pruned over the years, mostly only leaving those that have been abandoned and those from really large franchises. For the most part, they have been migrated to Wikia where they belong. You can say that the series is about the creatures, but changing the links on the episode list to the real creatures and just providing brief descriptions for the original creatures would hardly change the average user's experience. At most, the "Future Predator" species could use an entry on the character list, while everything else original like "giant worms" and "killer birds and beetles" are pretty self-descriptive. As with any other briefly summarized plot element, the reader can find more in-depth information elsewhere. TTN (talk) 16:33, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * In most cases the creatures are fictionalised versions of the real creatures, so links to the real creatures aren't appropriate. There needs to be some comparison, which the article provides. An encyclopaedia is not a bunch of misleading links. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 17:10, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Such details are largely inconsequential for the most part. I don't think the average person will really care that a giant centipede was actually slightly smaller and an herbivore in real life. It's no different than wolves being portrayed as more viscous than in life or other animals being slightly changed for plot convenience, which would not require separate character entries to clear up any misunderstandings in any other series. Such detail is better left to a Wikia article that could point out every single minor detail that was changed. Basically, this is an overly in-depth analysis hardly relevant to anything but a fan interested in the minutia of the series, as would someone looking up specific weaponry in a video game. TTN (talk) 17:53, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The creatures are the main point of the show, not peripheral details. Appealing to the "average person"s interests is absurd, you could delete 95% of Wikipedia if that was your criterion. The person who looks up the detail of a creature he sees on the show wants to know things like how real it is, and its significance in the show. And if they don't find that, some will will do research of their own and start to insert it in random places in the main article. The list article began as a distillation of creature information from the main article and several separate articles about the creatures and sections inserted in articles about the real creatures. Having a article about the fictional appearances of the creatures gives it all a clear context instead of it turning up in "In popular culture" bits in articles about real dinosaurs. 202.81.249.176 (talk) 02:11, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
 * It's misleading to readers to point them to an article that doesn't represent the creature portrayed in the series, given that there was some serious artistic license taken with the creatures. Readers should be directed to an article that describes the creatures as portrayed. The beauty of this article is that it does take the time to point out, where necessary, how the fictionalised creature differs to the real one. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 18:52, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * There are tons of series with fictionalized real life objects and creatures. Your argument seems to be that we must provide context to each of these, but that is the very definition of cruft. It is not "misleading" to link to an article about an elephant if a minor character in a series happens to be riding a giant, fire-breathing elephant. Yes, it is a bit different for extinct creatures, but there is no reason to have something like this solely for the sake of such a non-issue. Such divergences are something that should be noted in the main article under a general production section, not a listing for fans. TTN (talk) 19:39, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * There may be "tons" of series but we treat each article on its own merits. Just because one article does something doesn't mean that another has to do the same. It is misleading to link to an article about an elephant if a significant creature in the series is a fire breathing elephant type creature that isn't actually an elephant. You're confusing cruft with encyclopaedic treatment. An encyclopaedia isn't a series of links. We usually have to describe something. It would be crufty to add minutiae about the creatures but, for the most part, the article doesn't do that at all. Even in the two sections that I mentioned, the cruft level is very low and I'd oppose any effort to hack the article as others have been hacked. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 07:48, 15 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep - Notable. Other article is too big. Thus it is better to have this article.  Occult Zone  (Talk • Contributions • Log) 05:32, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep per the overwhelming consensus in the two previous AFDs (from the same nominator!). The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 13:00, 19 July 2014 (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.