Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/President of Earth

 This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was Keep. Deathphoenix 17:59, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

President of Earth

 * Delete Stancel 18:13, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep - This is an informative article that clearly indicates its main use is in speculative fiction. -Acjelen 18:18, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep - Decumanus 18:33, 2005 May 19 (UTC)
 * Keep -- Stancel, if you can't be bothered to justify your nomination for deletion, you can't really expect to generate a consensus to remove the article. I'm not a big fan of this article (another useless collection of SF trivia), but it's the sort of stuff SF fans love, and you're going to need some solid arguments to get rid of it. "I think it's dumb" is not enough. If nobody has more than that, let's not bother arguing about it. ---Isaac R 18:36, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Someday Jimbo will occupy this office, and we can say we knew him when... :-) -- BD2412  talk  18:48, 2005 May 19 (UTC)
 * Keep, notable concept of sci-fi. Martg76 19:21, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete A figment of imagination - President Earth's ruling party faces stiff electoral challenge from Marsian Democratic Party - Thats what I call Sci-Fi Crap . --IncMan 20:55, May 19, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. It's a prominent and almost universal sci-fi role. Mr Bound 19:04, May 19, 2005 (UTC)
 * Is it almost universal? There's no president of the earth in Star Wars, Dune, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Stranger in a Strange Land, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Close Encounters of the Third Kind or many other SF stories. Did Star Trek even have a President of Earth? I only remember of President of the Federation. There are probably more SF stories without a President of Earth than with one. Perhaps it's prominant. But is it any more prominant than starship captain, robot servant, or evil overlord?--Heathcliff 04:56, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. I think this is a great idea for an article. We should have article on trends as well as things. Gamaliel 19:10, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Weak keep and rename to President of Earth (fiction). I know I am in the minority here, but I am still bothered by the fact that Wikipedia makes no quick and easy way to distiguish actual persons, groups, and events from invented ones.  Typically, the fictional or invented nature of the subject is noted somewhere in the body of the article in no standard way.  (If it were up to me, I would give all invented subjects a separate namespace.)  As far as statements like "The President of Earth is a theoretical future political office", that appears to me to fall squarely under Wikipedia_is_not_a_crystal_ball --Tabor 21:15, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Tabor, I believe that under the rules of WP:DAB, an article named President of Earth (fiction) is not allowed if an article named President of Earth either does not exist, or the latter just redirects to the former. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 21:39, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Anyone seeing an article titled President of Earth isn't going to assume that there really is a President of the whole Earth, because every single person reading the encyclopedia will know otherwise. Besides, it's noted in the very first sentence that it's not real and is common in science fiction works. Most people do not learn about things by only reading the article titles. I do agree that the first sentence should probably be reworded in accordance with the crystal ball policy. -Doozer (Talk) 21:45, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I wasn't really expecting support; just wistfully wishing there were a way to clearly, unambiguously mark articles that are on subjects that are invented or fictional. The current everything2-style free-for-all mélange doesn't really work for me--but I'm just one person. Not every title will be as blatantly obvious as President of Earth, so when (for example) going through search results it would be nice not to have to load each article and scan it for whatever non-standard way its fictional nature is indicated in order to find out if it has something to do with the real world, or is just part of the increasing body of articles about something someone imagined one day.  Also, I generally find it is risky to make too many assumptions about what "every single person" knows.  People constantly surprise me.  --Tabor 22:08, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Well we could try to come up with a fictional tag or category or something, and have that filtered out from the search. Kappa 23:29, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I resemble that remark (about everything2). This seems to be a reasonable, unremarkable article, so keep it. AlexTiefling 15:28, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Instead of yet another tag, simply identifying it as fictional in the intro, as this article does, should be sufficient. Gamaliel 18:15, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Future History. No potential to become encylopedic Wikipedia is not a crystal ball
 * Hmm we'd better delete every article in Category:Science fiction by that logic. Kappa 23:49, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
 * How so?--Heathcliff 03:56, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
 * For instance, Star Trek is set in the future, so it would seem to be future history by your thinking. Kappa 04:01, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
 * On the other hand Star Trek is a TV series from the 1960s so it is something from the past. The article in question begins, "The President of Earth is a theoretical future political office," that's theorizing what might happen in the future, that is what I am talking about when I say future history and that is not something that belongs on Wikipedia (see Wikipedia is not a crystal ball). We could of course delete the future history parts of the article, and we'd still have the list of science fiction stories which have a character in them whom is the president of earth. That is not future history, but it isn't really encyclopedic either in my opinion. If the president or earth was an archtype like the mad scientist or the evil genius I might disagree, but I don't feel that it is so I voted to delete.--Heathcliff 04:37, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree w/ Heathcliff .President Earth does not deserve a seperate article in a encyclopedia - 2 basic reasons : 1 ) President Earth is not a popular fictious character 2 ) Its a imaginative future-history character . It can be mentioned in some list of sci-fi personalities though .--IncMan 10:27, May 20, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, cleanup and expand. Notable sci-fi concept. Megan1967 07:16, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, notable concept. --the wub (talk) 09:12, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep and expand. Notable uses in fiction.--JiFish 17:58, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Better known than a ton of cruft that has passed VfD. Besides, it is a very well known concept.  Scimitar
 * Keep Saswann 20:35, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep and expand. It has been shown that it exists the sci-fi world. Ablaze 13:38, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep and create other speculative Prime Minister of Earth and Emperor of Earth  &#08492; astique &#09660; talk 21:59, 25 May 2005 (UTC)


 * This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.