Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Portable hole


 * 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 no consensus. Opinions are mostly split between keeping and merging, both of which can be done outside of this discussion. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  10:56, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Portable hole

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This is a collection of trivia, with not a single reference present (or that I can find) that defines this concept, or collects this trivia for a list (WP:LISTN...). Many of the objects discussed are not called 'portable hole' but just function in a similar way (so, WP:SYNTH/OR). The coverage (references, external links, etc.) does not seem sufficient to justify this article passing General notability guideline and the more detailed Notability (fiction) requirement. WP:BEFORE did not reveal any significant English-language coverage on Gnews, Gbooks or Gscholar. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 14:05, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  14:05, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science fiction and fantasy-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  14:05, 2 July 2020 (UTC)


 *  Weak keep. I agree this has long been a magnet for unsourced trivia, and what sources there are, tend to be poor.  I've gone through and removed the worst of that.  I also added a bunch of external links, partly as a place holder for sources I didn't have time to research fully.  Most of what you can find is related to the D&D magic item, but I think there's enough outside of that to justify keeping this around.  The concept certainly seems to be real.  -- RoySmith (talk) 15:24, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Update: I added some more about non-fictional uses of the term. I know this is still not a well-written article.  Maybe it should be recast as List of things called portable hole.  Maybe this needs to be chopped down in size a bunch.  But, there's no doubt this is a widely recognized term.  That it's being used in a peer-reviewed scientific journal (even in a whimsical way) and in a world-class art museum, shows that it's an accepted part of the lexicon.  We would be doing our readers a dis-service if typing "portable hole" in the wiki search box didn't bring them to a page that discussed the concept in some way.  -- RoySmith (talk) 18:03, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Some sources from a Google Scholar search, potentially useful: . XOR&#39;easter (talk) 19:31, 2 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment I can't really recommend this one being kept unless some sources that actually discuss the overall concept in some depth are found. Without that, the article is just a list of times similar objects have shown up in fiction, which borders on just being pure WP:TRIVIA.  If no sources on the overall concept can be found, maybe this could have a light merge to The Hole Idea, which seems to have been the origin of this fictional oddity, in a kind of "Legacy" type section?  Rorshacma (talk) 15:30, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Merge to Hole per BD2412 below. There is not a lot in reliable sources to build up a full article that goes beyond a list of trivia, but adding in the basic information to the section suggested would probably be the best fit for it.  Rorshacma (talk) 16:08, 3 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete Per failure of WP:GNG. WP:ITEXISTS is not a sufficient reason to keep an article. This is great for TVTropes, but Wikipedia is not TVTropes.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 16:30, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep There are 16 years of history of people working on improving this article, and granted it still needs work, this article has a place here. This concept is widely recognized as per RoySmith, and although I recommended this article for cleanup and possibly complete overhaul, this is a definite keep in my book. Timmccloud (talk) 18:21, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * delete. In addition to being collection of various trivia, it becomes a collection of unrelated things called "Portable hole". Staszek Lem (talk) 19:01, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete . "It exists", "The article has been around for a long time", or "Readers might want to see it" are not valid keep arguments. The only valid keep argument is "There are a substantial number of reliable and independent sources which cover this subject in depth (not just mention it)". In this case, I cannot find any reason to believe that assertion is true. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:28, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I will add that I have read through the proposed references by . The first paper's abstract does not mention a portable hole at all, and generally the abstract will mention any topics the paper is to cover in any depth. The second mentions the subject only in passing. The third also does not even mention the subject in the summary. The fourth mentions it once in passing. I can't access the fifth, but it gives no indication of in-depth coverage. The sixth again mentions it only in passing. If these are the best sources that can be found, I stand by my statement to delete the article, as this would indicate the subject is not notable. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:03, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Merge as suggested by BD2412, per the same reasoning as previously. Seraphimblade Talk to me 16:25, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Merge to Hole, where everything cited in this article can be condensed to a paragraph in a section under the current "Metaphorical holes" section. BD2412  T 20:54, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * , I'm still in the (possibly IAR) keep camp, but at least your proposal (assuming it also includes a redirect) satisfies my typing "portable hole" in the wiki search box (brought) them to a page that discussed the concept in some way requirement. -- RoySmith (talk) 21:30, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I like the merge idea, but the problem is what can we salvage from what is right now a mix of trivia and OR? Did anyone find as much as a one sentence defining this concept or a paragraph that says something like "notable examples of the concept of a 'portale hole' in fiction are x, y and z'? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 03:10, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm satisfied that the citations in the article generally show the concept exists (and is noteworthy, if not independently notable). I would scrap about half of it (including the "Guards at the Taj" part, the non-fiction part, the 8-Bit-Theatre) and condense the rest into a paragraph, except for the Unicode section, which is applicable to regular holes and should be included as a separate section or subsection in Hole. BD2412  T 03:57, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Chronicles and Commentaries: More Explorations of Jewish Life and Learning, found by XOR&#39;easter and already added by RoySmith (Thank you!), provides exactly what Piotrus asks for: A paragraph has a sentence of definition and gives three examples where the portable hole appears in popular culture. The source then goes beyond that and relates the portable hole to stories in ancient Jewish tradition. Daranios (talk) 10:31, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Nice find. Can anyone find more about Quid Pro Books? Are they a reliable publisher? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 11:56, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * , I believe what you're asking is, "Are they a vanity press?". They do not appear to be (a vanity press).  http://quidprolaw.com/ -- RoySmith (talk) 13:11, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * They do say that they will review the manuscripts, so they don't at least say 'pay us and we publish anything'. I guess they are reliable per a form of AGF, if we cannot find anything that shows that a small publishing company is unreliable, the default I guess is to conclude they are ok. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 04:33, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
 * , I'm confused about this. On the one hand, people are arguing, "This is just a TV Trope".  But, here you're arguing that we should delete everything which talks about it outside of the realm of TV Tropes. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:14, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * We should delete everything that is not noteworthy. The portable holes are a thing in roleplaying is noteworthy; that a novelization of a film character has them use the portable hole while role playing is not worth mentioning in hole any more than the The Wolf of Wall Street character doing his "sell me this pen" bit is worth mentioning in pen. For the purposes of having a section on fictional use of holes, we should delete the non-fiction content because it isn't about fictional use of holes. The molecular structure is not an actual instance of the trope, but is merely a tool that can create a hole in a cell. That might be worth mentioning elsewhere in the article (in fact, there is a section, Hole), but not in the context of a fictional concept. BD2412  T 18:08, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I have gone ahead and added the Unicode and molecular items, which should be in hole irrespective of the outcome here. BD2412  T 19:41, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * , Regarding the unicode character, I've been doing a little digging and can't find any authoritative source that "portable hole" really is an official alias for /U+1F573.  It says so at https://codepoints.net/U+1F573, but I don't know if that's a WP:RS or not. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:50, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * The key thing is that it is the Unicode character for "hole", and can be included in the "hole" article on that basis. In fact, whether "portable hole" is an alias is not particularly important, so I'm fine removing that aspect entirely. BD2412  T 20:01, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Squeeze dramatically and merge to hole, as suggested above. The material I've been able to find mentions this trope/plot device as part of a larger ... whole, be that a magic system or the general scheme of cartoon physics. We can show that the trope exists, it's plausible that someone would search for it, and the meaning is not really ambiguous, but it's also not our role to gather up a lot of examples and systematize them (though that might be an interesting thing to do, in another venue). XOR&#39;easter (talk) 07:45, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Merge seems fine to me, based on the sources so far. We have one really good one, and a number more which, as far as I have seen, do not go into detail. Or we could keep it as per RoySmith, simpler and no real drawback to Wikipedia. Daranios (talk) 13:58, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep or merge per above comments since there are WP:RS to retain, per WP:PRESERVE and WP:ATD. BOZ (talk) 15:15, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * If merged, I expect that it would be section-redirected to the section created in the target article for this purpose. BD2412  T 20:01, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * KeepXor'easter and Roy Smith make cogent points. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 22:00, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Xor'easter's recommendation was to reduce dramatically and then merge, not keep. Rorshacma (talk) 02:02, 5 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Clean-up and merge per Xor'easter and BD2412. I might also support a target of cartoon physics, given the subject matter. But I support hole if it would produce a consensus. This article doesn't have enough substantial coverage in reliable third party sources to support a notable article, and covering it in the context of another notable phenomenon would help protect it from excessive primary sources and original research. Shooterwalker (talk) 23:01, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
 * , I still think this should be kept stand-alone, but if it is to be merged, Cartoon physics is a much better target than Hole. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:06, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
 * To what extent is cartoon physics relevant to portable holes as a roleplaying or other gaming device, though? BD2412  T 23:20, 7 July 2020 (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.