Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of minor characters in the Firefly universe


 * 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. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 05:08, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

List of minor characters in the Firefly universe

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

Per its own definition, this is a list of minor characters, which do not meet notability requirements, fail WP:FICT and fall under multiple sections of WP:NOT. Completely unsourced fancruft that belongs in a Firefly wikia or the like, not as an encyclopedic article. Collectonian 19:58, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete and Soft Redirect to Firefly Wiki. Per nom. Malinaccier (talk • contribs) 20:49, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep. When it comes to pop culture, one of the reasons I come to Wikipedia is to learn information about minor characters from television series or movies.  One of the strengths of Wikipedia is the ability to include information about things that are minor and perhaps not as notable as they would have to be to be in a print encyclopedia. If the requirements for inclusion in wikipedia is going to be as strict for Wikipedia as it is for a paper encyclopedia, then basically there is no call for wikipedia to exist.  In this particular case, just about everything on the page could be sourced to the original sources. Shsilver 21:53, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete - Article must establish its notability through out of universe referencing. Judgesurreal777 22:28, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Then tag with a request for sources before trying to delete.Shsilver 14:16, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Strong Keep - You have got to be kidding me. This does not fail anything. Do you realize how many lists of minor characters there are on the Wikipedia? Here, I will name one right away: List of minor Star Wars characters. On that one, the lead is even smaller than the one currently up for deletion. Still not convinced? Ok. List of minor Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters, List of minor Angel characters, and just click on this link to bring up a slew of minor character lists. If you are going to put this up for deletion, you might as well put all those others up for deletion.--Kranar drogin 15:42, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Are you comparing the minor characters of a 14-episode show (plus movie) to those of a 40-year franchise and a 144-episode show (plus movie) and a 110-episode show? Also, WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS. – sgeureka t•c 17:07, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes. It's not apples and oranges, it's apples and slightly different apples, well worth comparing. This is precedent, not just otherstuffexists, and Firefly was critically acclaimed, highly popular, and certainly notable. --Cheeser1 14:37, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete or merge with the other characters to Characters of Firefly. They don't meet WP:FICT on their own and probably can't/won't ever. Possibly transwiki. – sgeureka t•c 17:07, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You're proposing a merge to a page that doesn't exist? --Cheeser1 17:44, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Why not? – sgeureka t•c 17:50, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Because WP:BEANS tells a cautionary tale, not a hopeful one. - Dravecky 23:30, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * ??? – sgeureka t•c 23:55, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep - The number of episodes does not tell the story of how notable or important this series is/was. There is clearly room for this content - Wikipedia is not going to fill up, and it's not a gigantic mass of fancruft (each character has a small paragraph or two). If each character does not merit their own article, that does not mean the list is not appropriate. --Cheeser1 17:44, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * WP:NOT. And WP:FICT disagrees with you as well. – sgeureka t•c 17:50, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * No, your interpretation of those guidelines disagrees with my idea of what they mean and how they apply. That's how a deletion debate works. "I disagree with you in my reading of policy" is not a valid rebuttal. --Cheeser1 14:37, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Strong keep - If this was a raft of individual articles about individual minor characters then perhaps the nom would be meaningful but as it stands this is a reasonable collective article on a useful and notable subject with sufficient secondary sources. It doesn't matter if some Star Wars character article is more notable than this one. Wikipedia is not a competition.  Notability and verifiability should be enough, especially on topics of proven interest. - Dravecky 20:32, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep - if we delete this, we will face the question of which characters to include in a likely "Characters of Firefly" article. I guess I am inclusionist on these things, although I would oppose an article on any of these on their own. I would also support a merge/rename to an all-char.s article where these are listed as minor and maybe given some sort of max. lines per entry, with the major cast on top with more information. Lundse 22:20, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep for now. It looks like the guideline that allowed many pages of characters to be consolidated into these lists was changed, without being well advertized, back in August 2007. One editor, in fact, changed how the policy reads, although supposedly this was a stylistic change of some sort. Since that seems unfair, we should retain these lists and return the guideline to its pre-August state, and then debate it openly later. Fee Fi Foe Fum 00:51, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science fiction & Fantasy-related deletions.   --Gavin Collins 12:59, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep per Fee Fi Foe Fum. Rray 03:31, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete unless evidence of real world content can be found and included in the article as required by WP:FICT - (which after much discussion was changed by consensus to match with other existing guidleines and polcies such as WP:NOT and WP:NN). Guest9999 (talk) 12:52, 5 December 2007 (UTC)]]
 * Comment - Doesn't look like that issue is entirely settled yet re: discussion and consensus on key features and notability. ◄   Zahakiel   ►  22:45, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * That is a discussion on what wording to put into an essay, an essay is formed by the consensus of those who wish to use it. Two essays can say completely opposite things, the policies and guidelines I mentioned are supposed to be formed by the consensus of the whole community. Guest9999 (talk) 20:21, 6 December 2007 (UTC)]]
 * Quite right, they are... but I've been following the discussion related to WP:NOT, and it doesn't seem like the issues being discussed in that essay and the changes being made to the guideline are at all distinct concepts. Since we're talking about consensus, though, there seems to be something of a discrepancy between what you're saying is a legitimate change to that guideline and the outcomes of some recent AfDs.  It turns out, from my informal observations, that the guidelines themselves often reflect the consensus (and oft-times imperfectly at that) of those editors who are primarily concerned with editing those guidelines.  This is one of the things that leads to the "blind spots" another poster mentioned during the course of the discussion I mentioned above.  This isn't necessarly meant to be a rebuttal of what you were saying, per se, or even a criticism of the process... I'm just pointing out that the guidelines appear to be pretty fluid, especially with WP:FICT, particularly at this point in time.  ◄   Zahakiel   ►  22:22, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Just a technicality but WP:NOT is part of a policy not a guideline. The ongoing discussion on the talk page seems mainly to be about fair use/copyright concerns currently but the previous proposal was to change the wording so that it directly refered to all fictional aspects rather than just plot summaries. I would say that this AfD and many like it may reflect the views of a small group of users rather than the community as a whole; but like the policy pages and discussions any editor is free to contribute. Guest9999 (talk) 01:00, 7 December 2007 (UTC)]]
 * Of course, policy, not guideline - sorry about that. I wouldn't be able to agree, though, that keeping the elements of very notable topics where there's enough data to generate distinct articles is reflecting the view of only a small group of users.  It's pretty standard at this point, unless by "small group of users" you mean that contingent that contribute to AfDs, which is probably a smallish percentage of Wikipedians.  I agree with some of the criticisms of these articles that the sourcing tends to be weaker than stand-alone topics, but the alternative is to either have very long base articles or limit the amount of information we can have about well covered topics.  I don't think that either's an acceptable course of action.  ◄   Zahakiel   ►  02:00, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep - Finite, discriminate list of features from a notable show. ◄   Zahakiel   ►  22:45, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep per Shsilver, Cheeser1, Lundse, Zahakiel all who make valid points about notability, fan cruft, inclusionism, and What Wikipedia Shoud Be. As long as the editors keep the OR off the character pages, it will be fine.--Knulclunk (talk) 19:44, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Provisional Keep. - When I first looked at this article, I was not convinced of its keepability. As an inclusionist, I tend to err on the side of keep, but this one is marginal. Better to modify the article to List of Firefly characters in the same way that List of A-Team characters is done: One top section for majors with links to their main articles and then the current information in a second top-level section of minor characters. Perhaps even divide that into "recurring guest characters" and "non-recurring" characters. This article needs work to keep, but I think it could be transformed into a keepable page. VigilancePrime (talk) 19:48, 8 December 2007 (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.