Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of fictional kangaroos and wallabies


 * 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. Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:04, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

List of fictional kangaroos and wallabies

 * – ( View AfD View log  •  )

Redundant to Category:Fictional kangaroos and wallabies, but practically all the entries have either no article, are redirects to list articles, or redirect to Kangaroo or Wallaby. And - surprise surprise - completely unsourced. Black Kite (t) (c) 18:26, 8 October 2010 (UTC) But an appropriate use is when we have many accepted articles on even fairly minor companies in a field, we should have articles on those of demonstrably greater importance. And another appropriate use, is when there is a type of article or subject that is considered generally useful, we should not reject one particular article in the class because it might be slightly weaker. We do not normally interpret the rule about not following precedent to mean that we make every decision anew from first principles. We interpret it to mean that we are not bound by previous bad or erratic decisions, that, for example, because we deleted the article of one type of character in fiction we must delete the articles of all other characters in fiction. Many of the inadequately subtle statements of general rules are based upon our earlier days when we were simply experimenting with making an online encyclopedia. We are no longer experimental, and we now are the overwhelmingly dominant online encyclopedia and for many people the only reference source that they use. This gives us a certain responsibility. Institutions as well as people find themselves--however unwillingly--forced into greater responsibility as they mature. One of the signs of majority is our growing insistence on good sourcing. Another should be our efforts towards consistency. People expect to find things here, on the basis of what they usually find here. We exist to serve them. We're not making an online free encyclopedia as a demonstration project or a game; we're making one for use.  DGG ( talk ) 21:29, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep Oh, no, not list vs. categories wars again. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 18:34, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep One doesn't need to even look at the list to know that characters like Kanga, Roo and Skippy are notable and make a reasonable basis for a list. I forget the name of Tank Girl's sidekick but he'll be in there too and many more.  The ostensible argument that this is redundant to the category is explicitly refuted by WP:CLS.  As for sources, this is feeble wikilawyering.  If some entry needs a source then tag it with a fact tag.  Bringing the entire list of AFD is disproportionate disruption contrary to our deletion policy. Colonel Warden (talk) 18:45, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Strongest possible keep per WP:OTHERSTUFF. Hans Adler 20:14, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment - Is there such a thing as WP:WTF??? Citing other things that exist is a suspect argument, therefore the strongest possible keep here? I have no strong opinion one way or the other here, but it seems that the axe has been falling on the "List of Fictional BLAHBLAHBLAH" articles pretty heavily. —Carrite, October 8, 2010.
 * "Per WP:OTHERSTUFF" is my way of saying that this completely non-notable list should be kept by the principle that lists about everything and anything are almost always kept with no regard for the fact that this is supposed to be an encyclopedia. In fact, some of the most silly and arbitrary lists even become featured (see WP:FL). It is not a principle I agree with, but sometimes you just have to follow the crowd rather than fight for even application of principles. Especially when there are additional concerns such as WP:ITSUSEFUL and WP:ILIKEIT. I am sure anyone who considers creating a kangaroo character for some purpose will be happy to find this compilation. I am not one of them, but presumably a huge percentage of our readers are, and I definitely enjoy reading such odd lists that are about nice fictional characters for a change, rather than things such as List of celebrities involved with WrestleMania whose title alone makes me want to throw up.
 * Anyway, it's not as if there are no precedents. In the second AfD of a similarly arbitrary, but much better-written list the creator admitted that it had been a joke and !voted for deletion. One of our most highly respected editors ever (later to become an arbitrator) voted "keep" twice. The end result of the AfD was of course "keep".
 * All that said, I am feeling a bit uneasy about !voting against my convictions. That's why I have added "strongest possible". "Strongest possible" (!)votes are typically made for no good reason at all and routinely have to be discarded. If I had found any valuable argument for keeping this list I would have marked it as "weak keep" to make sure that the closer reads it and gives it more weight. Hans Adler 06:59, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Hans' instincts are quite sound and WP:OTHERSTUFF is a valid argument when used correctly - just read it. In this case, the thing to understand is that these lists of fictional animals have arisen as a natural splitting of the master list.  Fictional animals are quite notable as entire books are written about them such as Talking animals in British children's fiction, 1786-1914 or The Wild Animal Story.  It then makes sense to list the notable fictional animals such as Tarka the Otter, Mickey Mouse, &c.  There are thousands of them and so it then makes sense to subdivide the list by type of animal and here we are.  This matter should not be addressed in a bottom-up way, by attacking the weak members of the pack.  Rather it should be considered as a whole and a sensible structure agreed upon.  OTHERSTUFF is therefore a very sensible and proper consideration. Colonel Warden (talk) 08:36, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
 * "Other Stuff Exists" as an argument has an appropriate and inappropriate uses. One obviously inappropriate use is when the presence of an article about something important in a subject is used to justify the existence of things in the same field that are totally unimportant, as when the producer of an insignificant computer program protests that we have an article about Microsoft. Another inappropriate use is when the existence of a few bad articles that have slipped into he encyclopedia is used as a justification for the existence of others equally bad, as when it is asserted that because we have not yet deleted a few articles on insignificant books we should include others on equally insignificant books.


 * Delete- per discussions like Articles_for_deletion/List_of_fictional_weasels, which establish that directories of fictional whatevers need to prove they can stand on their own just like any other article- there's no inheriting notability from one or two of the individual things on the list that might be notable on their own. A good rough rule to follow is to ask yourself, "If we chopped the words 'List of' from the front of the title, do we get an encyclopedic topic?". That experiment has been tried already with things like this, and shown not to be feasible. Reyk  YO!  00:03, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep, but feel free to prune all the non-notable entries that don't link to either the character or the work they appear in. 28bytes (talk) 05:58, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep per WP:CLN.  Lugnuts  (talk) 09:17, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep per CLN. If it's encyclopedic as a category, it's encyclopedic as a list.  The claim above that this is a fictional kangaroo "directory" is further evidence of how poorly understood WP:NOTDIR is.  Really?  It should go right on the shelf next to my telephone directory?  NOTDIR is about that kind of directory; exhaustive, real world directories of people and services without regard to notability, like a legal professionals directory.  As written, it's clearly meant to prevent the flooding of lists with non-notable entries (List of people from New York City should not list every person who lives there and duplicate the phone book) or non-encyclopedic information (List of law firms in New York should not include telephone numbers and mailing addresses).   #1 and #6 are the only parts of WP:NOTDIR that apply at all to indexing lists, and #1 basically just tells us some lists are encyclopedic and others aren't, and #6 warns against trivial cross-categorization of unrelated facts, which doesn't apply here because this list is just a categorization, not a cross-categorization.  Obviously a lot of people want to use it to delete lists they don't like, but it just doesn't stretch that far, and WP:NOTDIR just becomes a another acronym to vomit out to give the appearance of having a policy-grounded argument, without adding anything substantive to the discussion.  This list functions as an index of Wikipedia articles by a shared fact.  Wikipedia is, in part, a "directory" of its own contents.  Whether that shared fact is worth documenting in a list is a valid question, but as I noted, if it's conceded that it would make a proper category, then it can't be simultaneously argued that the list is unencyclopedic.  postdlf (talk) 14:57, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 20:32, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 20:33, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep or Split into Fictional Kangaroos and Fictional Wallabees PortP (talk) 05:13, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep I supported the deletion of the fictional weasels list, the reason being that the weasels list did not have a backbone with regular strong media appearances. This one is different. The problem with these lists is that they're character focused when they should be media focused, all it needs is a proper table format and a switch to focusing on media. Someoneanother 15:05, 11 October 2010 (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.