Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mushroom Kingdom


 * 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 redirect‎__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__ to Super Mario. This is pretty evenly split but the informal source analysis helped tilt this to a Redirect closure rather than another relisting. My hope is that since the content remains, an editor(s) can get going on creating Super Mario Universe and later Merge this content into that new article. Liz Read! Talk! 22:53, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Mushroom Kingdom

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

Procedural listing. This was WP:BLARed, restored, then BLARed a second time, and per that page, Most users believe that AfD should be used to settle controversial or contested cases of blanking and redirecting. ~ A412  talk! 23:09, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Fictional elements and Video games. ~  A412  talk! 23:09, 3 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Redirect to Super Mario. There's nothing really being said in the article and I trust in the previous redirector's judgement of the potential sourcing state. Has one ever considered Magneton? Pokelego999 (talk) 23:14, 3 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Merge or Draftify. As of right now there is nothing on this article that seems to suggest that the subject of this article holds enough water to stay up. This article is mostly filled with primary, situational or even unreliable sources. The only two positive sources here are the GamesRadar+ sources and even then one is a listicle. Now, I am not entirely sure if there is WP:SIGCOV for this subject, it wouldn't surprise me if there is but it would likely take quite a while to find the necessary coverage, which is what prompted me to suggest a draft because I believe the subject does have potential. But as of right now, I think any useful information from this article should be merged into the Mario (franchise) article, as it was redirected towards two weeks ago. Captain  Galaxy  23:22, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
 * To clarify, the problem with listicle articles is that often it's about one entry on the list, making it trivial coverage. For example, if an article lists "50 greatest Mario characters"... obviously, almost all characters of any import would be included. However, the listicle would still be quite significant if we were talking about a character list that needed reception. In this case, the listicles are entirely about the Mushroom Kingdom, and it's not a "10 best Mario areas" situation. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 06:01, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * That is a problem with listicles, but not the only one. Listicles are often a hallmark of low-quality and low-effort content farms, or in other words an indicator of a lack of seriousness and significance of coverage. xkcd's quip about the "17 worst haircuts in the Ottoman Empire" comes to mind. They typically do not in themselves indicate notability either of the individual entries or the overarching topic. TompaDompa (talk) 10:00, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm aware that the listicle is about the Mushroom Kingdom, but the problem I'm having with this is that the entries on this list are very surface level in terms of coverage, or that they aren't worth mentioning. In my opinion, it's quite fancruft-y. Captain  Galaxy  10:26, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Gotta love the snobbery here: GNG is met, but these aren't serious RS'es, so they don't count. Fancruft argument here is circular: looks like what some editors consider badly written Wikipedia article, therefore cannot be an RS. Sorry, folks, that's not how RS works. We judge Wikipedia by them, not them by Wikipedia. Jclemens (talk) 03:37, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * It's perfectly possible for a usually-reliable outlet to produce non-reliable content (and vice versa, for the matter), which I'm sure you're aware of. Likewise, it is possible for WP:Reliable sources to fail to produce WP:Significant coverage, which I'm also sure you're aware of. Furthermore, meeting WP:GNG (or some other standard for WP:Notability, as the case may be) does not necessarily mean that a topic is appropriate for stand-alone articles—sometimes we have a WP:NOPAGE situation. TompaDompa (talk) 04:04, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I didn't think that this would be needed for a long-standing editor, but describing people's AfD arguments as "snobbery" is a deeply explicit violation of WP:CIVILITY. If you aren't able to engage with the things people say without making these kinds of comments, I'm not sure you should really be commenting on things. It's also not snobbery, as TompaDompa points out, which makes the claim extra confusing. It is not snobbery to say that offering trivial coverage of a subject is of lower value, it's a common sense observation. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 11:52, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep Deletion is not cleanup. The article may not be in a good state but the topic is quite notable. I found articles from Kill Screen, GamesRadar+, TheGamer and that's totally ignoring stuff like ScreenRant that is debatably notable as they have an article on it too. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 02:29, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I really would not use that weirdly in-universe-feeling TheGamer listicle for establishing notablity (as per discussion here) but wow, that Kill Screen article is amazing and exactly what I needed back when I failed to improve this article. ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 08:29, 4 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Redirect/Merge to Super Mario. I tried cleaning up the article about a year ago, but gave up when I realized that strictly "cleaning up" the article would cut it down to almost nothing - pretty much the whole article would have to be redone. Sergecross73   msg me  02:32, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * In the spirit of WP:BEBOLD I will see about cleaning it up as this is clearly implying that if it was no longer WP:TNT it would be eminently notable. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 03:04, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I think that the implication of Serge's comment is that there is a lack of sourcing in the article, and comparatively little to say as demonstrated by said sourcing. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 10:48, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep - Per Zx's sources. Though the article is not in the best state, I don't think its bad enough for a TNT either. MoonJet (talk) 03:40, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep - per Zxcvbnm Koopinator (talk) 07:01, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Comment I haven't done a WP:BEFORE yet, so for now, I'm looking at what is present. I'll put it in a collapsible list to save space.
 * The Evening Standard is verifying information and is not about the Mushroom Kingdom, not GNG-relevant.
 * The next source includes info about its use in the theme park, which is generally understood to not be relevant to GNG (also article is not about the Mushroom Kingdom).
 * The next two sources are Nintendo sources.
 * The GamesRadar+ source seems to primarily discuss factual information. It represents a show that staff deemed the kingdom worthwhile to talk about, but there's also not much to be gained from the source for the article.
 * The Gamer source talks about information about Mushroom Kingdom, but does not themselves have anything to say about it. It's yet again an article about the Mushroom Kingdom, but not only does it provide only so much content to be included, being The Gamer makes it dubious as a show of significance.
 * 25YL source only talks about factual information, and the article is not about the Mushroom Kingdom.
 * The Advocate source is about Toad, not Mushroom Kingdom, and is only to verify the existence of a character in the Mushroom Kingdom.
 * The second The Gamer source is just about Goombas, while the Forbes article is just about verifying that coins are a currency of the Mushroom Kingdom.
 * The second GamesRadar+ article seems at first a significant source, but to be honest, it does not strike me as such. The article is primarily about a location **within** the Mushroom Kingdom, and discusses the Mushroom Kingdom only minimally.
 * The Smashbros.com source is a primary source used to verify the existence of a "Mushroom Kingdom" stage.


 * Keeping this one out because I feel it's an important part of the assessment, as it's what seems like the strongest show of notability on the surface. Finally, the Kill Screen source is one that, once again, feels like a source that is about Mushroom Kingdom, but in reality, is using it as an opportunity to discuss things that happen within it. Looking at the 'Development' section, the article is sourced to talk about the Super Mushroom, the designs of the castles (mainly Peach's Castle - honestly if that was an article I'd maybe think it'd have a chance), Mario enemies, and the Super Leaf. The Mushroom Kingdom appears to be an umbrella for these potentially notable topics to be discussed, but I think counting stuff like Koopa Troopas and the Super Leaf as showing the notability of Mushroom Kingdom is a pretty big stretch. It seems to me like an article with weak sourcing is trying to use whatever it can to inflate it, and to me, the proof of this is that Mario's design inspirations and ideas, despite being covered under "Mushroom Kingdom" like Koopa Troopa was, it would rightly feel odd.
 * In its current state, the article is extremely weak, with very little in the way of commentary, let alone notability. Most of the article is taking brief mentions to verify factual information about the setting, to the point that the article has exactly zero instances of anyone having anything to say about the setting themselves. I'm holding off on voting until Zx does some more work to address notability issues, as well as for me to do my own searching (especially Japanese sources, those can often be rather surprising). - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 10:48, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Sadly, I have been feeling the same way. There being no reception on the general design characteristics of the world (rounded hills, bright-green grass, lots of brown bricks) has always been the main pain for me here. If no one's talking about the Mushroom Kingdom being a blue skyed utopia or something along those lines, there's just so little to work with... ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 13:05, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Sources about locations within the Mushroom Kingdom still count as proof of notability for the Kingdom itself. The argument that they could never possibly do so is a bit ludicrous in my eyes and feels like a no true Scotsman-type argument. I doubt Peach's Castle can support an article, but this is the most obvious place to put that information by far. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 13:24, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * But I don't get why you think that, when the two sources that appear like significant coverage provide more sigcov on Peach's Castle than the Mushroom Kingdom. It's not a matter of saying that a source has to do a deep dive into the Mushroom Kingdom to be notable, but fact is, the argument for Princess Peach's Castle's notability is more adequately proven in the Mushroom Kingdom article than the argument for notability of the Mushroom Kingdom itself. The GamesRadar+ source doesn't even make sense, because the commentary in that article is almost entirely, if not entirely, focused on how it makes players feel to explore and experience the castle, about how they make it more lived in compared to Dinosaur Land. The article discusses it not as a setting, but as a level, and how it influences other Mario levels. As far as notability goes, there are multiple reliable sources about modding Peach's Castle into other games, there is creation info relating to how it was possibly going to serve as the basis for Ocarina's setup, multiple sources about how it was a significant part of why Super Mario 64 was a special game, multiple sources about a financial assessment of what Peach's Castle would be worth in real life, articles praising it as a standout hub world in gaming, and more. I find the notion that there's more to the article now compared to what I've found for Peach's Castle kind of incredulous!
 * I also do not believe remotely that sources for locations in the Mushroom Kingdom count as overall notability; at what point does that extend to, say, Mushroom World, the encompassing world of the Mario universe? Is Lordran notable because Anor Lando is notable? We can't argue that a location in a space makes that space notable, the only thing that can be used to say a location is notable is if we have reliable, significant secondary coverage of it. As it stands, and in the sources I've searched so far, there is virtually nothing that critics are saying about the setting. Based on what little I've found in my source search, I don't really feel like this article comes close to notability. As it is, all of the content is just descriptions of the setting and things that happen to exist in the setting. Redirect to Super Mario. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 15:28, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I do personally think this article serves as a coatrack (just don't look at that guideline) for the entire Super Mario setting, similar to a "Universe of .." article. I am quite happy with sources that dive into specific details from the Mushroom Kingdom, such as Peach' castle or even its cast of critters. I'm just not very happy with listicles that try to explain in-universe oddities between games or take those oddities literally. The Mushroom Kingdom isn't a kingdom. It doesn't have a clearly defined monarch or even any towns, and a source that suggests that Bowser used to be the king or some stuff like that I just can't take seriously... ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 06:17, 5 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Redirect to Super Mario per Cukie Gherkin's analysis. I do not agree with the idea that locations within a place can be used unsupported to make an article about the place itself. ― novov (t   c)  04:08, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Redirect as to someone who redirected this article before and per Cukie's analysis. I don't feel like the other sources were good except for Killscreen, though that talks about Mario and Koopa Troopa's design. not really that helpful, but at least we have a good source right there. Still not enough for me for that.  Greenish Pickle!   (🔔) 06:45, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Redirect I'm sorry, but the sources by ZX I feel are not significant enough to justify the article. Conyo14 (talk) 22:31, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Relisting comment: Opinion is divided between Keep and Redirect as implied by the nominator. A source analysis would be helpful since improvements have been made to the article. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 22:59, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Redirect as per Cukie Gherkin's statement. MKsLifeInANutshell (talk) 05:38, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * Redirect - Per Cukie Gherkin. There is, in fact, a source analysis above by Cukie Gherkin, but the list is hidden to save screen space. The article was updated on the same day as this analysis, but no new sources have been. That analysis addressed the independence of sources and correctly discounts Nintendo sources. It also addresses SIGCOV of the remaining sources, and is in line with my own view. Most of the sources are not about the page subject but merely mention it. Reliability is raised over a source that does speak directly about it, and even where the subject is addressed, there are SIGCOV issues. I think this source analysis is good enough, unrebutted, and indicates that a redirect would be the best outcome here. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:45, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Redirect I find redirecting to Super Mario fine where the subject is being mentioned. --Tumbuka Arch (talk) 12:25, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep I'm surprised that there isn't a Super Mario Universe article or something of the like. There are lots of sources that talk about this fictional universe, and an entire book called "The World of Mario Bros" (which would be another valid redirect). I see at least one more good source from Zxcvbnm, and arguably more. I can find at least a few more myself. I feel pretty confident that sources exist out there if this is approached as the main article for the game universe. Shooterwalker (talk) 17:09, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * This is currently the equivalent of "Universe of Super Mario", as it is the primary setting of the franchise. It could be a reasonable move, but that's a separate discussion. These sources have a lot of potential, though you did post the same Shacknews article twice. ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 11:40, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep I don't really see a rationale provided in the nomination, but I assume this is about notability. The sources found in this discussion and partially present provide enough coverage to be able to write a full encyclopedic article, so I see WP:GNG fulfilled. AfD is not clean-up, and some clean-up has already happened since the nomination. Which also leads to that all opinions which say that the Killscreen article is a good source but still !vote for redirect are contradictory and in conflict with WP:AtD: If that's a good source, what has now been added based on that source should at least be merged. Daranios (talk) 15:17, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think people !voting merge or redirect are praising Killscreen. I see that happening with a single editor. Meanwhile, I've made the argument that the Killscreen source does not say much at all. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 20:38, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I misread a name, so yes, only one opinion praising Killscreen but !voting redirect. Thanks for point that out. The fact that a reasonable paragraph of background has been created from that source shows me that it should not be discounted. And with all the sources listed, both above and more recently, as well as other sources containing short analysis like Geography and Maps, p. 99, or Material Game Studies: A Philosophy of Analogue Play (adaption into other media) can easily support a full article together, therefore fulfilling WP:WHYN. Always with the fact in mind that sources do not need to have the subject as their main topic. Daranios (talk) 10:27, 17 April 2024 (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.