Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mandy Hampton


 * 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. This should not be taken as a precedent against selective nomination of individual characters. Courcelles 13:01, 11 December 2010 (UTC) (Addendum: I was talking to a fellow admin the other day about mass XFD nominations where different levels or types of articles/categories/images are included, and how it tends to lead to either no discernible consensus to do anything, or a poor decision regarding at least some of the items. I think we're firmly in both camps here.  I can sense at least some consensus that some of these articles are good candidates for merging, or maybe in extreme cases even deletion. Which ones?  Unless the closing admin decides to make it up out of whole cloth, s/he is not going to be able to tell. Some, however, there is a fairly clear consensus towards keeping as separate articles. Anyone who is considering individual nominations of a character should read this discussion closely. Courcelles 14:42, 11 December 2010 (UTC))

Mandy Hampton

 * – ( View AfD View log )

The article fails to meet real world notability and is solely In-universe. The article fials to meet the critria of being Veifiiable and well sourced. This shows a lack of notability and as there is no notability the article is not warrented and must be deleted. The show also finished since 2006 and has lost its notability. Lucy-marie (talk) 12:35, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I am also nominating the following related pages for the same reasons as above and as they are all from the same T.V show and all fail to show lasting notability and do not warrent individual pages:


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions.  --  pablo 13:31, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Television-related deletion discussions.  --  pablo 13:31, 4 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Selective keep - without doubt, some of these lack any sort of notability, and should just be folded up into Recurring characters from The West Wing or something. However, main characters such as Josiah Bartlet I think are quite notable in of themselves. For instance they've spawned cinema adverts, other TV shows - heck, around the time of the 08 presidential elections, BBC3 I think devoted a fair amount of time to a comparison of Santos/Vinick and Obama/McCain. So, in short, keep the main characters (Bartlet, Ziegler, Seaborn, Lyman, Cregg, McGarry, Santos; maybe Moss, Young, whoever the replacement Sam was), merge the rest. -mattbuck (Talk) 13:54, 4 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment Please be aware the article on the 2006 West Wing presidential election which was devoted mainly to the parallels with the 2008 US presidential election and cited the sources listed above was deleted some time ago as lacking in notability.--Lucy-marie (talk) 14:04, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
 * please see Articles for deletion/The West Wing presidential election, 1998 (2nd nomination) for the discussion relating to the deletion of the article.--Lucy-marie (talk) 14:10, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying that that article should have been kept, I don't think it's that notable, but notability is relative. As a comment on say Josiah Bartlet it could be easily sourced, but there wouldn't be enough sources for an entire article. -mattbuck (Talk) 14:41, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment All of that information can easily be covered in the main West Wing article. Seperate articles for characters are not necessarry and the inidivdual characters all fail to meet the stadard required to warrent and article.--Lucy-marie (talk) 15:44, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment Nominator seems to be of the wrong impression that notability is lost over time. The cancelation of the show has no bearing on our ability to reliably reference or determine notability of the subject matter.   The359  ( Talk ) 04:01, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment I am saying that some of these articles the have been tagged since 2007 for verifiabliity and notability and the show finished in 2006 so there has been 4 and a half years to esatblish notability which has not been forthcoming.--Lucy-marie (talk) 13:45, 5 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Selective or procedural keep: there's just no realistic way for me to be able to check if these are notable or not. Seeing as it's an emmy award winning show with a lot of attention on the ensemble cast, some most certainly are notable... and some most certainly are not. It would be better to nominate a few at a time and deal with them on a case by case basis. Shooterwalker (talk) 20:20, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Selective keep - As Mattbuck said, although the existence of articles for all of these characters is a little ridiculous, some of these articles have shown enough real-world notability to merit being kept. I will agree with Lucy-marie that most of these articles currently contain little more than in-universe plot summary, but that does not mean that they inherently lack notability or verifiability and so, like Shooterwalker, I question the wisdom of nominating them all for deletion en masse. Just because they are not good articles right now does not mean they don't have room for improvement. (Josiah Bartlet and Sam Seaborn come to mind as two articles that have undergone dramatic improvement in terms of including out-of-universe information over the past few years.) I also completely disagree with Lucy-marie's claim that the notability has been "lost" because the show stopped airing in 2006. Notability is not temporary. I concur with Mattbuck's recommendation that we retain the articles for the Josiah Bartlet, Ziegler, Seaborn, Lyman, Cregg, McGarry, Santos, Moss, Young, and Bailey, and possibly also Abbey Bartlet, Vinick, Schott, Hampton, and Gardner (since they were all considered part of the main cast at one point or another, although they didn't appear in the main credits every single episode). --Hnsampat (talk) 20:29, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
 * If this route of selective keeps is gone down how are the retained articles chosen. For example there is no way Hampton or Schott should be kept but there could be an argument made, although I firmly believe in the deletion of all the articles, for Bartlett or McGarry or possibly Vinick. Characters who were periforary or only appeared in one or two seasons clearly do not. Wikipedia is not simply a repositroy for Characters from TV shows. I am almost certian that the characters including Bartlet, Vinick, etc can be covered in the main West Wing article and the list of character articles. A far better place for individual character articles is a dedicated Wiki on the topic.--Lucy-marie (talk) 01:36, 5 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I strongly disagree with the idea of merging all of these character pages into the main The West Wing article, as that article is already way too long and one of the reasons for creating articles is so that one article doesn't become insanely long. There is enough real-world information in many of these articles to justify their being kept as separate articles. I strongly disagree with what I perceive Lucy-marie's current premise to be, namely that all of these articles are inherently unworthy of being kept as articles, possibly simply because they are articles about TV characters. Articles about TV characters are not inherently wrong, nor is a character "clearly" not worth of having an article simply because he/she only appeared in one or two seasons. That being said, Lucy-marie does have a fair point that we need to come up with some kind of objective criteria for which articles to keep and which ones to get rid of. I think that, for now, we should keep the articles for every character appearing in the main credits (Josiah Bartlet, Abbey Bartlet, Ziegler, Seaborn, Lyman, Cregg, McGarry, Santos, Moss, Young, Bailey, Schott, Vinick, Hampton, and Gardner) and delete the rest. Afterwards, we can attempt to develop the other articles to include more real-world information. If, at that time, they still fail to meet real-world notability, we can bring them back up for deletion. --Hnsampat (talk) 02:00, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I have said that the charcters can be covered in a list of charcters article and the main West Wing article. Not all in the main West Wing article.--Lucy-marie (talk) 13:52, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep or Merge to List of characters in The West Wing. That's what we have character list articles for: maybe NN individually, but critical plot element of notable work, but too much info for main article == character list time. Articles with individual RS coverage should be kept separate. Jclemens (talk) 06:17, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep and consider merging the less important. A nomination that combines in a single list  the most minor of the characters and the protagonist shows a total lack of understanding. And in fact the first named character here, though certainly minor, has an article with out-of-universe content about the production, just as an article about fiction ought to.    DGG ( talk ) 00:11, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment The above comments miss the point wholly and entirely as just because a work of fiction talks about the production does not make it notable fictional characters which are notable are characters such as the following Michael Tritter and Nadia Yassir. The Hampton article is in no way notable when held up to the standard which the Notability guidelines state. The Hampton article also one cites one source so the majority of the tiny article is unverified.--Lucy-marie (talk) 16:06, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * But, the question is that is the article inherently non-notable? You've pointed out a problem with the article(s) in question that needs to be fixed. This is not what an AfD is for. AfD is not for clean-up and remember that articles are not necessarily worthy of deletion just because they are poorly written or have not been improved in a long time. Articles should only be deleted if they are inherently and irredeemably non-notable. If you're saying that the Hampton article should be deleted, then you are saying that even if it becomes picture-perfect in the future, it should still not exist because it is inherently non-notable. Is that what you're saying? If so, please provide an argument for that. Thank you. --Hnsampat (talk) 21:49, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I genuinely believe none of these articles are inherently not notable but I am willing to be proved wrong. Hampton only appeared one season and the character didn’t even appear in all the episodes. There are no sources outside of the West Wing circle or west wing episodes on the character and the character has no real world impact such as the character being ground-breaking or being the first to break certain stereotypes. The character is not notable in the real world and should be deleted as this is not a repository for all TV characters.--Lucy-marie (talk) 22:16, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * You cite the Michael Tritter and Nadia Yassir articles as being models for articles about TV characters. How are they notable in the real world? They were never ground-breaking nor the first to break certain stereotypes. I get that Wikipedia is not a repository for all TV characters and you don't need to keep making that argument; NOBODY is arguing that these articles should be included solely because they are about TV characters. Remember, we all agree that most of the above articles should be deleted/merged. The point of contention is with your claim that all of these articles should be deleted. I repeat my earlier point that just because the articles currently have no outside sources does not mean that they inherently lack outside sources. --Hnsampat (talk) 23:01, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * of course that an article includes the real world substance doesn't make it notable, but it avoids the NOT PLOT restriction that some people think applies to articles about specific elements of fiction & that the nomination specified as a problem. To nominate saying entirely in-universe when it is not entirely in-universe is rather misleading. (myself, I think it applies only to overall coverage of the work). I think everyone agrees that not all these characters are notable  enough for a separate article. But can it be seriously argued that the protagonist of one of the most significant series of the last few years is not notable? That you give as the reason for the group nomination that they are all characters in the same show can only mean that you think all the characters in a show equally notable or important.
 * Further, your argument in the nomination " The show also finished since 2006 and has lost its notability" is totally false to the meaning of notability here. Once notable, always notable. By this principle we'd not be an encyclopedia , but a guide to current productions only. The point of being an encyclopedia  is that we cover whatever was ever notable.    DGG ( talk ) 05:32, 7 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Selective keep. Not all the characters are as notable as others.--Karljoos (talk) 20:12, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Selective keep. Main characters which play an important role throughout the show should be described in seperate articles. I disagree that these articles are per se not notable, as The West Wing is one of the most notable TV series. There are not many shows which can look back at so many Emmys and Golden Globes, and the main characters should therefore be described at least in some detail. However I would object the idea to put all characters in a single article, because this article would to be very very long to cover the characters and their (for a TV series) rather complex connection to each other and the story line. To integrate them in the main article would be even more insane, because it is already to long im my opinion. And I can't follow the argument, that the show was finished in 2006 and therefore the articles are not notable anymore. Either they were notable and thus still are, or they were not notable and will never be.  --93.196.6.219 (talk) 05:46, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment - Please be creful when making comments on this deletion., as the IP address above has only mad eone edit and it is on this article, which may indicate it is not be an independent contributor.--12:39, 8 December 2010 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lucy-marie (talk • contribs)
 * And you touted two articles that you contributed to (Michael Tritter and Nadia Yassir) as examples of "model" articles! The fact that this user contributed to the article does not mean his/her comment should be discounted. In fact, I think it's a rather well-written comment. Besides, most of us here have at some point contributed to these West Wing articles; that's why we care enough to actually have a discussion about it here. --Hnsampat (talk) 20:38, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Neither was touted as a model article but as simple examples of articles which are notable. It should be noted when IP addrsses make substative comments when it is their first and only comment. I also do not see the point of the attack in the above comments on showing example articles which are notable.--Lucy-marie (talk) 21:42, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
 * But that's exactly my point: why does it need to be noted when IP addresses make comments and it is their first and only comment? Why should those opinions be discounted? We don't discount your comments just because you have your own biases or my comments because of my biases. That was my point in bringing up your article examples. In any case, this is digressing from the main point of this discussion. --Hnsampat (talk) 21:50, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Single edit IP addresses are common use for voting on issues, I am though not claiming that it is being undertaken here. Registered users who have a long history of edits have no chance of being accused of voting but single edit IP addresses are frequently used just for voting purposes. As has been said though these discussions are digressing from the original point of the topic at hand. --Lucy-marie (talk) 02:04, 9 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment Under the same principle, I nominate the following articles for deletion. These fictional characters have no real-world notability and are solely in-universe; the works in which they appear were published long before 2006, so they must not be notable either.
 * Huckleberry Finn
 * Atticus Finch
 * Prince Hamlet
 * Doctor Watson
 * I hope it is obvious to all that I am arguing in favor of keeping several of the West Wing-related articles in question, at least those for the core cast and the more interesting of the occasional characters. The West Wing won nine Emmys in its first season alone, won the Emmy for best drama series four years in a row, and won 27 Emmys total. With all due respect to the OP, if she thinks it's lost its notability in a mere four years, she hasn't done her homework. I recommend a more selective deletion discussion, listing only the truly non-notable articles. Tualha (Talk) 01:57, 10 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep I'm opposed to these mass-merge AFDs as a rule, let alone one with 49 (!) different article. It's completely inappropriate to lump them all together like this, and makes it very difficult to determine notability for all of them when presented in one shot like this. Some of these may very well be non-notable, but those should be nominated individually, rather than with articles that are clearly notable as fictional characters like Sam Seaborn, C. J. Cregg, Josiah Bartlet, etc. —  Hun ter   Ka  hn  02:56, 10 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment Being idealogically opposed is not a valid reason for opposing. These articles in some case have been tagged for years to be inmproved for verifiability and notability but nothing has ben done. If some articles can be bought up to a notable standard, then plaese do so but do not say these are notable without providing any sources to back up those claims.--95.147.55.234 (talk) 10:06, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Your arguments are contrary to WP:RUBBISH and WP:NOEFFORT. For my other comments, see below. —  Hun ter   Ka  hn  19:08, 10 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep. I am also opposed to mass-merge AfDs and this case is a particular example of its problems. You may have a reasonable case with Don Butler and Seth Gillette, and I'm not necessarily opposed to deleting minor characters who really have no notability anymore. But to lump those characters in with President Bartlet and Leo McGarry, for instance, makes no sense. There is no way to accurately and efficiently debate AfDs for so many different characters at once. I would have gone for "selective keep" but I really think the best way to stop these mass AfDs is to prevent them from achieving their purported purpose in any way. Overall, I think notability concerns must be raised by individual names and articles and thus I vote keep on this AfD. JasonCNJ (talk) 07:23, 10 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment As I have said above some of these have been tagged for years and no sources or verifiability have been forthicoming, if you can proivde those then please do, but just saying they are notable when some of these have been tagged for years is just rediculous as there is no proof to back up your claims. --95.147.55.234 (talk) 10:06, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
 * As you say, some of these articles have been tagged for years. Some, not all. But by lumping them all together, it makes it nearly impossible for us to comb through 50 articles, separate out the ones that need sources and then find sources for them, all in the week that the AFD requires. It would have been much better for the nominator to either take them individually, or do a mass-merge AFD with only the non-notable noms, so we could identify the ones that actually need work. —  Hun ter   Ka  hn  15:31, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
 * However, in response to your point about the lack of verifiable sources, I chose to focus on Mandy Hampton, as she seems to fit the description of the kind of articles you are talking about, and in any event she is the main nominee in this mass-merge AFD. I expanded the article with a great deal more information from verifiable sources, and did some restructuring to the article as well. These were just a few sources I was able to dig up after a brief look, and I know for a fact there are others out there. And this is one of the more minor characters who had only been around for one season. In my opinion, this shows that most of these articles can be expanded and improved with a minimal effort, which is yet another reason that I feel the mass-merge AFD is inappropriate. —  Hun ter   Ka  hn  17:29, 10 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep. You're lumping in central characters for which a solid article could easily be supported with characters that only appeared in one or two episodes that could easily be merged into a list article.  There's no way a blanket judgment should be passed on all of these articles. This isn't an AFD issue, this is a job for a bunch of editors to get shovels and start digging. Gamaliel (talk) 19:42, 10 December 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.