Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of mammalian alien species


 * 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   merge to List of fictional extraterrestrials. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 03:57, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

List of mammalian alien species

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Mammalianess is a non-verifiable trait. At best this article could be renamed List of mammal-like aliens or List of alien species that appear to be mammals. Even so, none of the listed items (apart from a few with suggestive names like the Canids from Penny Arcade or Simians from Thundercats) have any indication of what mammal they're supposed to be and many (maybe most) of these species are so indistinct even within their own source material, that it barely mentions them in passing, let alone going into detail into their gestational cycle, ability to produce milk or the number of inner ear bones they've got all of which are characteristics of terrestrial mammals. The only thing, as far as I can tell, that most of these share is fur and/or an appearance resembling a mammal. Like previously stated, appearance isn't enough to justify the list as it is and it is impossible to prove any number of these are actually mammals with any sources. Ncboy2010 (talk) 21:41, 11 July 2012 (UTC) Ncboy2010 (talk) 21:41, 11 July 2012 (UTC)


 * And to quote the actual wikipolicy of WP:LISTN "A list topic is considered notable if it has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources... " So the article fails a sub-category of WP:N. Ncboy2010 (talk) 21:52, 11 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete I came here thinking, if alien means extraterrestrial life, this should be a null list. Unfortunately (for me) it is not and clearly the aliens must be creatures described as such in fictional works. Even if the topic were notable (and no evidence is provided that it is) there should be references for each entry confirming the author intended it to be mammalian. Without verification, the class being Mammalia woiuld likely be contentious. I shall look back here and gladly change my view if references are provided or a merge target is suggested. Oh dear, I've just seen this was split off from Lists of fictional extraterrestrials. I give up at this stage and strike my vote. Thincat (talk) 22:53, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Explanation: Yes, I had originally split the article from List of fictional extraterrestrials, you can see the version before I even began to edit it here. As you can see it was an extremely long (≈60K), difficult to navigate and followed no logical layout style. I decided to remedy both issues by creating the following articles as basic splits:


 * List of ancient alien species
 * List of aquatic alien species
 * List of arthropod alien species
 * List of exotic alien species


 * List of humanoid alien species
 * List of mammalian alien species
 * List of non-sentient alien species
 * List of parasitic alien species


 * List of plant and fungi alien species
 * List of reptilian and amphibian alien species
 * List of robotic alien species
 * List of intergalactic communities


 * Then redirected List of fictional extraterrestrials to Lists of fictional extraterrestrials and added the following (related) articles which are similar but are lists of characters:


 * List of arthropod aliens
 * List of exotic aliens
 * List of humanoid aliens


 * List of mammalian aliens
 * ^^ I will nominate this article depending on the result of this discussion, it's extremely short and will need to be merged into this article (if it survives the AfD)


 * List of non-sentient aliens
 * List of parasitic aliens
 * List of reptilians and amphibian aliens
 * List of robotic aliens


 * I also added List of fictional extraterrestrials by name (A-Z), and I've been slowly going through it, which is apparently a list of /all/ extraterrestrials, characters or species, and I've been adding them to the appropriate (more-specific) articles. I've only just began this quest. It wasn't until I started doing this that I realized how ludicrous the mammalian articles actually are, and attempted PROD, which was removed. Ncboy2010 (talk) 11:26, 12 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Strong, hot-blooded delete as just plain wrong. The definitions in Mammal state that members share a common ancestor. The less stringent mammal-like would be WP:OR. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:22, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep and rename to something like "List of fictional mammal-like alien species". I think that most people would understand what mammal-like means, namely anything that is similar in appearance to an existing mammalian species. The main problem is that it doesn't say anywhere in the names of all these articles that they are about fictional creatures. Each and every page listed needs to be renamed to add the word "fictional" or "in fiction". CodeTheorist (talk) 13:05, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Reply: As pointed out by Clarityfiend, renaming it mammal-like would violate WP:OR. As to the naming conventions, I was going by a discussion (I believe it was in reference to a category, possibly.) that happened and the-then-consensus was something along the lines of Adding fictional to the title of an alien species/character/category is redundant due to the fact that there are no currently known alien species. (I've seen similar opinions about things like fictional werewolves)I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it, I have no qualms about adding fictional to the titles but that's besides the point; The issue is that the article (even if it were merged back into a section of another article) still fails WP:N;WP:LISTN and WP:OR. I'm not extremely well-versed with wikipolicies, but from what I do know it currently fails all three and, as far as I can tell, there's really no way to make it pass any of them. Ncboy2010 (talk) 13:36, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge into List of fictional extraterrestrials (per Thibbs) would be a better course of action, as you are right that the identification with mammals is somewhat problematic. The word "fictional" is essential as "alien species" can also mean Invasive species. I'd be in favour of merging all of these lists back. Then the article can be decrufted - only notable species, or species that play a significant role in notable films, books, TV series etc need to be kept. CodeTheorist (talk) 21:44, 12 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Merge into List of fictional extraterrestrials. As Thincat and Ncboy2010 suggested, there is no suggestion that the topic "mammalian alien species" is notable and we should be clear that according to WP:SAL this guideline applies equally to list articles as it does to non-list articles. I can't think of any reason to waive the guideline in this case. I applaud Ncboy2010's attempts to clean up "List of fictional extraterrestrials", but in this case I think the best approach is to impose a stricter inclusion criterion on the parent list in order to render it actually usable. WP:LSC suggests that "Every entry meets the notability criteria for its own non-redirect article in the English Wikipedia" would bring it in line with "most of the best lists on Wikipedia" - a worthy goal in my view. -Thibbs (talk) 13:26, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 14:28, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science fiction-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 14:29, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 14:29, 12 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Merge: It might be best just to revert the article back to the way it was before I began editing, establish notability criteron, reorganization, etc. Although I doubt that mammalian species will ever be able to stand alone. Ncboy2010 (talk) 22:16, 12 July 2012 (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.