Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Terence the Tractor


 * 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 merge to List of Thomas & Friends non-rail vehicles. czar 04:12, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Terence the Tractor

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I prodded it with the following rationale: "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." It was deprodded with no helpful rationale (despite the fact that I explicitly asked for one in the PROD). Yet another example that PRODs are vulnerable to abuse. Let's discuss then - can anyone find anything to salvage this? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 02:02, 31 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  02:02, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. Toughpigs (talk) 02:39, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Television-related deletion discussions. Toughpigs (talk) 02:39, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Keep The page already contains some interesting details and sources and the nomination says nothing about these. I'm therefore not convinced that the article has actually been read as the nomination just seems to be a cut/paste drive-by performed in haste using Twinkle.  There's more to be found such as The Politics of Popular Culture; The Beatles: The Ultimate Recording Guide (Ringo recorded a track about the subject); Thomas and Friends Character Encyclopedia; &c.  Applicable policies include WP:ATD; WP:BEFORE; WP:IMPERFECT; WP:NEXIST; WP:NOTPAPER; WP:PRESERVE and these all indicate that we should not be deleting this. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:34, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete: This character has not received significant coverage in reliable sources; full stop. The ones mentioned above are casual mentions and namedrops. A redirect wouldn't work, per WP:XY. (That being said, while we're tossing around essays, perhaps there should be one along the lines of WP:DON'TINSULTNOMINATORSBECAUSEYOUDISAGREE.)   Ravenswing      15:13, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Weak delete or merge and admittedly allowing some special pleading, based on what I'm observing at similar AFDs. I just don't see the sources to support an article like this. The fiction is obviously very notable, and if you could even find a single source, it should be covered somewhere, and probably somewhere else. The List of Thomas & Friends characters is in a sorry state, as are the linked / sub-articles. I suggest a merge because there's a shred of primary sourced material (not independent enough to support notability) that could be WP:PRESERVED at a broader list. If there's a chance at making this better than a fandom wiki, it's to work on a better quality list. Jontesta (talk) 19:26, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   10:34, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Merge to List of Thomas & Friends non-rail vehicles, per . Doesn't seem to pass WP:GNG; I thought it might be worth going through the sources, so I've done that in a collapsed box below. YorkshireLad  ✿  (talk) 14:09, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Of the sources in the article, I can't find any way to view the inside of the book; the webpage fails the "reliable" part of WP:GNG, being someone's personal site. Of the sources that lists above:
 * The mention in The Politics of Popular Culture fails the sigcov part of WP:GNG. There is one sentence that mentions Terence, noting that an episode of the series features a moral lesson involving him.  I'm not even sure how this could be cited in the article: "in one episode Thomas makes fun of Terence" would be WP:FANCRUFT, which would leave "like all the other characters, Terence is used to teach moral lessons to children", which is singling out this character unnecessarily.
 * The mention in The Beatles... is also a passing mention: the track that Ringo recorded appears just to be him narrating the story "Terence the Tractor", so isn't a fact about Terence beyond the fact that Ringo Starr narrated T&F stories.
 * Thomas & Friends Character Encyclopedia is plainly not independent of the subject, given that it's an officially-licensed T&F work. Though I'm sure there's a metaphysical argument to be made about whether that constitutes poor Terence's involvement...

So for sources that count towards WP:GNG, we have at best one so far, the book that's mentioned in the article already. That is a biography of the Rev. W. Awdry, who wrote the books, so I find it hard to believe that it contains more than a passing mention either. (My suspicion, based on what it's used for, is that a copy of a map is included in the book, and that's the extent of the mentions of Terence.) Even if more, however, we've only got one source, so that's a failure of WP:GNG. I've looked on Google Books myself, and all I can find are either episode listings or lists of characters, which suggests Terence is fairly WP:MILL. YorkshireLad ✿  (talk) 14:09, 8 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Merge to List of Thomas & Friends non-rail vehicles; I notice that those characters that have their own articles have cleanup tags over them, and generally lack third party notability. User:YorkshireLad's comments are both helpful and reasonable. --Whiteguru (talk) 08:39, 15 August 2020 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it.</b> 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.