Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of fictional institutions (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 delete. Consensus is that this is so overbroad as to be indiscriminate.  Sandstein  07:43, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

List of fictional institutions
AfDs for this article:


 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

"This is a list of notable fictional institutions". Notable how? The majority of the entries here do not have stand-alone articles. ALL entries are unreferenced (the article sports ZERO footnotes). The division/structure is chaotic and ORish. Political/Governmental grouping includes terrorist and criminal organizations but not "inter-political alliances". It sports both "Other" and "Miscallenous" headings This fails NLIST and GNG; I could not locate any reliable work that tackles this topics (attempts to list important fictional institutions, widely defined). As a navigational aid this is also a failure, since most entries don't even have redirects and many are minor, of little importance to the work they originate from, and are not even mentioned there. For example the long and confusing entry for "Church of the Virgin of Guadalupe" (one of only three churches on the list...) doesn't even link to the fictional work it references (my best guess is George Lopez (TV series) but that article doesn't even mention any church, suggesting it's a very minor location in the setting). I am afraid there is nothing to rescue here. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 10:25, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  10:25, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  10:26, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Lots of entries, but no indication that the vast majority of them are notable. Fails WP:NLIST and WP:LISTPURP, since from a navigational perspective, the few notable entries are better covered by other lists in Category:Lists of fictional things. Qwaiiplayer (talk) 14:09, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Changing to Keep and convert to list of lists. provided evidence below that this article can meet WP:NLIST with the coverage in various sources. However, the primary concern of those !voting delete is that "institution" is simply too broad of a category to be useful. I propose moving any notable entries to an appropriate list with more narrowly defined scope (e.g. move the entries in List of fictional institutions to List of fictional secret police and intelligence organizations) and have List of fictional institutions be an appropriately sorted list of notable lists in Category:Lists of fictional organizations. Qwaiiplayer (talk) 15:34, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
 * That works for me. Thanks for the suggestion, Qwaiiplayer. Daranios (talk) 20:36, 14 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom, overly broad types of "institutions", few of which are notable or and which do not have a navigational relationship to each other even within their categories. This is the kind of list that's so hopelessly incomplete to be useful as well, with the hospital from one of the few shows I watch, The Good Doctor (TV series), missing. I mean, List of medical drama television programs can be lot better than junk like this even when the mostly-fictional hospitals are in fact significant parts of the stories. Reywas92Talk 14:40, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom - No indication that this concept passes WP:LISTN, and very few of these are actually notable enough to have independent articles - even the amount of blue links is misleading, as most of those do not actually link to articles on the stated institution at all. As Reywas92 stated, the concept of "institution" is hopelessly broad for such a list to be either feasible or useful. Rorshacma (talk) 19:30, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete As currently laid out, it includes insane asylums, hospitals, research institutes, retirement homes, several types of government agencies, prisons, law enforcement agencies, paramilitary organizations, terrorist organizations, activist groups, international organizations and their sci-fi equivalents, political parties, secret societies, clubs, youth organizations, charity organizations, places of worship, libraries, "paranormal organizations", labor unions, professional associations, and sports leagues. Fails WP:SALAT as an incredibly vague list, unlike the more specific lists that cover some of the aforementioned "types". –LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄ ) 20:28, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. –LaundryPizza</b><b style="color:#b00">03</b> ( d  c̄ ) 20:40, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment I think it is not correct that the subject of this list fails WP:LISTN (as in "a list topic is considered notable is if it has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources"). While there are many sources discussing fictional institutions of specific types (especially educational ones), a search in Google books also reveals secondary sources discussing the topic as a whole: "Fictional Institutions: On Radical Imagination", a multi-page essay on the topic; more specialized, The Renaissance Utopia p. 132 has a paragraph on fictional institutions in utopias; and Abject Spaces in American Cinema is a whole book on the portrayal and function of fictional institutions!, focussing on film; Fiktionalität has a chapter about fictional institutions starting on p. 485. What do you think? Daranios (talk) 21:20, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I would say that even those sources are still much more narrowly focused than the topic of this list, and don't really help the fact that this list, as it is presented, is too broad to be useful. For example, the book you link above very specifically is only defining its use of institutions as things such as prisons, hospitals, and asylums, and the Turn Turtle book appears to be specifically about art institutions. This list, on the other hand, is just a massive conglomeration of every possible definition or use that the word "institution" can refer to, and even the sources you bring up don't cover that broad of approach. As mentioned by a couple other already, there is merit in more concrete sub-topics having articles (and I would not be surprised if some of them already exist), but just the overall concept of an "institution" in general is just too broad of an approach to work.  Rorshacma (talk) 22:07, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I have to disagree here in detail: The Turn Turtle book picks a Zoological Institute and the Enfield Tennis Academy as examples, so not specifically art institutions. In Abject Spaces in American Cinema, your three examples come from the introduction. Part I then adds very broadly "institutions that contribute to the development of a coherent adult identity", choosing high school and military boot camp as examples. Fiktionalität picks fictional corporations as examples. All three sources, however, make general statements about fictional institutions. How many different areas do you want covered? I'll grant one thing: The sources do not cover all imaginable types of institutions by name. So see my overall opinion below. Daranios (talk) 15:07, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with Rorshacma above. Each of these sources, while addressing fictional institutions, has a more specific definition of "institution" from what is being portrayed in this list. I'll stand by my !vote that this content should be covered in more narrowly defined lists of fictional organizations. Qwaiiplayer (talk) 13:09, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
 * If you are in favor of "more narrowly defined" lists, would you consider supporting my suggestion to split rather than wholesale deletion? Daranios (talk) 15:07, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
 * This may be salvageable as a list of lists to compliment Category:Lists of fictional organizations, effectively splitting the content of this article into existing lists and new lists as needed. I'll change my !vote to detail my proposal. Qwaiiplayer (talk) 15:27, 14 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete as this list does not pass WP:LISTN or WP:GNG. Many of the entries are WP:OR, and perhaps even the whole grouping is WP:OR. I do see some merit in the approach that Daranios is suggesting, but even the topic institutions in fiction is so abstract that I can't imagine it as anything other than a disambiguation page to more discrete topics (e.g.: hospitals in fiction and sports leagues in fiction, which are very different topics). Shooterwalker (talk) 21:41, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. "Institution" is far too vague a term. Clarityfiend (talk) 05:28, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete A much too overbroad list that is so vague as to be difficult to maintain properly.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 11:35, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Split into definable types of institutions, in the spirit of the previous discussion, all the "too broad" arguments, and WP:AtD. As discussed above, there clearly are secondary sources which do discuss "fictional institutions" as a group, as suggested by WP:LISTN, which I therefore consider fullfilled (and thus WP:GNG). And purpose-wise such a list would make sense to help in navigation, one proper reason for the existence of lists. However I do agree that "instituion" is to vaguely defined to be ultimately helpful here. What is both managable and talked about in secondary sources are "medical institution". So at the least that part should be preserved by splitting it out. I also agree that the list we have now in general and the "medical institution" section contain examples where it is unclear why they are included. This is easily fixed (and AfD is not cleanup!) by limiting to blue links and those where secondary sources can be found. And merging the prisons, another type of fictional institution clearly present in secondary sources, to the existing List of fictional prisons. And if it should be decided that the medical institutions section should be the only one to be preserved, the best way probably would be to trim the rest and rename this list in order to preserve the history (and the other content in case someone wanted to use that in a proper way in the future). Daranios (talk) 15:07, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep and convert to list of lists I agree with . I suggest moving the notorious entries to more specific lists and turning that general list into a category. As you can see when accessing the articles contained in the list in question, several of them meet the WP:GNG Luidje (talk) 06:41, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete Still fails WP:SALAT with the extremely broad scope, and Rorshacma has shown what seem to me reasonable objections to approaching the problem from the angle of sourcing and notability. The fictional gangs' list may just be adequate, but this one is harder to defend. A list of lists will serve as an added burden and redundancy rather than a complement to the category; and there's no need to have two pages listing bluelinks if only one of them is self-maintaining. Avilich (talk) 15:37, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. If this is split into pieces, the pieces are going to come right back to AfD. -- asilvering (talk) 21:00, 20 December 2021 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. <b style="color:red">Please do not modify it.</b> 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.