Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Terror Titans (2nd nomination)


 * 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 (non-admin closure). --Falcon Darkstar Kirtaran (talk) 05:32, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Terror Titans
AfDs for this article: 
 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

db-repost declined. This article was recreated with the assertion that a future eponymous comic was in the works. Current sourcing for that claim in the article is limited to forum posts. Aside from the new rationale, the article is not substantially different from the deleted version. The same arguments that resulted in a consensus to delete then apply now. Protonk (talk) 21:59, 17 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete Until meaningful coverage shows up. Gwen Gale (talk) 22:03, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment The article sources have changed. The status of the comic is now referenced by the DC comics website and Comic Book Resources .  I don't know enough about comics to note if that is enough, but it looks like it is getting there.  Some discussions of the sources are here and here. Protonk (talk) 22:21, 17 August 2008 (UTC)  To clarify, the article itself hasn't changed, but those links have been posted on my talk page. Protonk (talk) 22:22, 17 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete. We don't use a company's self-promotional materials to get around WP:CRYSTAL, nothing has changed since the last deletion, and all those reasons still apply equally. ThuranX (talk) 22:25, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep seems perfectloy notable to me. Artw (talk) 22:54, 17 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Comics and animation-related deletion discussions.  -- Artw (talk) 22:56, 17 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep the previous version was rightly deleted as the upcoming limited series was "sourced" to a forum thread, which is why I made sure I had as many of the relevant details as possible to hand when I restarted it (for the record I was going to start the article but then I saw it had been deleted so spent an extra day to get it to a point where I was happy with it). The mere fact that it is forthcoming doesn't automatically qualify the article for deletion - WP:CRYSTAL says "All articles about anticipated events must be verifiable" which this is. It also states it should be included if it is "almost certain to take place" and while we can never be 100% sure until we have the actual comic in our hands, given the fact that the publicity machine is rolling in earnest, it has been solicited  and the details posted on DC's site  we are as certain as we can possibly be. (Emperor (talk) 23:58, 17 August 2008 (UTC))

At this point, it feels like this article is falling short, though maybe not by much given the standing practices. Is there more right now, today, that can be added to the article from a real world context? (added due to edit conflict) Question specifically for Emperor: Is this a case of an actually notable title or a case of "New book coming, has to have an article?" - J Greb (talk) 00:04, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Comments
 * There is a little more than just DC solicitation material. Not much, but some.
 * The general frame of mind has been to treat announced comics series like announced movies. There can be an article if there is more than just rumor.
 * That being said, the bulk of "more" here is translating into a minor team in a single story arc. There isn't anything inherently notable about the team, or that arc.
 * There is also a question about just how notable the announce limited series is.
 * No I don't feel every comic needs an article but a spin-off series from one of DC's big titles (it is one of their top 10 ongoing titles which consistently charts in the top 50 comic titles with sales around 50,000) is a relatively big deal. (Emperor (talk) 00:17, 18 August 2008 (UTC))

I disagree with ThuranX's interpretation and statement (above) that "self-promotional materials" are being used to circumvent the the Crystal-balling guidelines. The apparant knee-jerk dismissal of "promotional materials" is out of place here, as the solicitation information is not being used to promote anything, nor to make original or qualitative judgements, merely to fulfil - as Emperor notes - the WP:CRYSTAL guidelines call for verification. Solicitation is that verification of (impending) existance. Incidentally, reading the original AfD discussion for the "reasons that still apply" I can see Five "Delete" calls, and one "Keep". The reasoning behind those five calls are: So I fail to see which arguments from the initial AfD are supposed to support this new one.
 * Keep and Comment: As Emperor - rightly - notes, the WP:CRYSTAL guidelines in no way prohibit the article, nor the use of promotional announcements to source things that will be released.
 * 1) Delete ONLY to then redirect to Teen Titans; as then noted, this section doesn't exist anymore. Invalid
 * 2) Agreement with ThuranX's initial AfD reasoning. Valid
 * 3) Delete due to unreliable sources; Solicitation of a new series is reliable; comics in which the Terror Titans are mentioned are reliable. Invalid
 * 4) Delete as the TT are only notable for one thing (appearance in Teen Titans); this will no longer be the case come October. Mostly invalid
 * 5) Delete based on sources: "If someone can find a reliable, independent source in that bin of usenet, blogs and db's... I'll help save the article."; Emperor resourced the impending solicitation, and Protonk (above) is not now calling for re-deletion. Invalid (as 'Delete')

J Greb's points are worth considering, although it seems inaccurate to equate (as it appears) "a DC solicitation of a DC comic" with "a rumor" - the intention (announcement) to make a film is not a valid comparison to a concrete two-months-away-publication-date solicitation. Very few comics are solicited and not released - fewer still from one of the bigger companies. There are still unanswered questions about how notable to mini-series will be, McKeever is talking about a "new era" for the Titans, but then he does have a vested interested in saying that..! Nevertheless, this is clearly intended to boost the Titans' profile in a manner similar to the Sinestro Corps War. And that was a crossover, not even a mini-series... Time will tell, but in the meantime the Terror Titans are a team, have made a notable enough appearance in Teen Titans to be given a spin-off mini-series and will soon star in that mini-series. Seems notable enough to keep. ntnon (talk) 01:12, 18 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Just keep firmly in mind that the solicits are not concrete. Books can, and have been delayed and/or cancelled even though orders were taken. Also, IIUC, retailers have recourse if the issues they receive do not match up with the solicitation. This is an industry acknowledgement that "things change". Solicits are something that should be taken with at least a grain of salt. Also you may want to watch comparing intents and publications. "Sinestro Corps War" was billed and planed as an "event". To date zip has been presented that "On the Clock" and Terror Titans had the forplanning and intended effect. "Clearly intended" is one person's interpretation, an assumption. It is just as valid to say DC is milking a story arc for a second financial hit. We don't know. We're guessing on a convention announcement and a solicit. That is akin to starting an article for a film only based on a studio's announcement of "W intend to...". - J Greb (talk) 01:53, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Again, fair points. Although potential (and frankly unlikely) delays don't invalidate the article as it exists, neither do changes in explicit content don't - in both cases Terror Titans #1 will be published. Cancellations after solicitation are - as I wrote - very rare for DC and Marvel - I can only think of a couple for DC, and none are analogous. Yes, comics are generally made returnable if the contents/writer/page-count changes after solicitation - but again, that's only a factor here if this article is structured to refer to explicit potential events - it is not. It is primarily an article on the team which HAVE appeared already, with notability added to by the mention that they will be spun off into their own title. "Sinestro Corps War" was a surprise sleeper hit, intended as a reasonably minor crossover which suddenly sold well and gained critical and fan approval. The "Terror Titans" arc was also fairly well received - hence the spin-off mini-series. Geoff Johns retooled and spruced up Green Lantern as well as the Teen Titans. Both were slipping in sales and reception; SCW was intended to (and did) boost the profile of GL, the Terror Titans are intended to do the same. Of course it's an assumption, but the intent is there - stated by the author. As I wrote, we don't know if it'll pan out that way or fizzle, BUT this page is first-and-foremost about the team. The only issue is whether the team is a flash-in-the-pan or has any kind of longevity. That they've been granted their own spin-off goes some way towards answering that question. It's not at all comparable to compare two announcements (film/comic) since the team was already in place and in existence. A far better comparison would be to a short film which has been announced as the subject of an expansion/remake. Thus the article details the short film (team) and the intention of the expansion/increase in profile & notability (spin-off title). That's surely a fairer comparison - there's substance without even noting the future comic, while the transient theory of notability is given credence by the future comics potential existence. (...maybe that's a little convoluted, sorry!) :o) ntnon (talk) 05:28, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Three things:
 * The potential for solicitations to be with drawn or wrong makes them unrelaiable as an initial or only source. "But DC and Marvel really don't..." is fine if you are assuming that this won't be a minority case.
 * Before you present the argument that Terror Titans is to "highten the profile" of the Teent Tians, find a reliable source other than your own gut for it. This also means look at what you are comparing it too. "Sinestro Corps War", as you have stated was a cross-over running through the GL books, and that is a good indication of where DC wantred the sales. Terror Titans is positioned as a stand alone, self contained mini.
 * As Protonk points out, the impitus has been "The got a mini, that has got to be notable." That's asssuming facts not in evidence. And even if the mini is found to be notable when published, using that as windowdressing to bring back a much larger chunk of content that was seen as non-notable is a tough sell.
 * -J Greb (talk) 10:40, 18 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I feel my position is being misrepresented somewhat (although I think the misrepresentation is a good faith mistake). I nominated the article for a repost deletion under CSD-G4 and later AfD because I felt that the article fit the criteria.  When I made the AfD nomination I tried to be as equivocal as possible.  The line at the end of this nomination where I noted that previous arguments apply means only that the article (at the point AfD2 started) was substantively identical to the deleted article.  My promises at that AfD and on the restoring admin's talkpage remain.  I'm trying to look for some reliable sourcing to pin this future comic claim.  Once I do, I am happy to withdraw this nomination and help further build the article.  I didn't think at the moment of renomination that the forum posts predicting a new comic sufficed (and I don't know enough about the biz to judge CBR's reliability), so I'm not sure where the insinuation that I'm breaking some solemn promise comes from.  Either way, this AfD can stand on its own.  I can think of two reasons:
 * This article could still be considered (in some sense) crystal balling it. See my and emperor's talk page for some good reasons why it shouldn't be thought of as such, but the fact remains that the subject is somehow going to become notable in the community's eyes when they are the subject of an eponymous comic series and they are not yet subject of one.  The article then hangs on the prediction of that comic series.
 * I hate to argue that we should follow process for process's sake, but the community decision regarding this article has already been made. At this point, as we are discussing things, circumstances haven't fundamentally changed with regard to this article.  Nomination and consideration of this article seems to be a perfectly good community check to see if consensus has changed on the subject.  If it has, it has.  If it hasn't, then we can wait until circumstances change significantly.


 * This is the kind of article where policies and guidelines are fuzzy. We have what seems to be a good gut sense of CRYSTAL over at WP:MOVIE, although that only applies to films, but we don't have a running consensus on how to treat future project in other situations.  I have no problem with hashing out this in practice and applying what works.  This AfD is part of that process.  As such I'm inclined to watch it finish. Protonk (talk) 05:47, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment I would argue that things have changed since the article was previously listed for deletion. If the previous version had been listed in the comics and animation deletion sorting (as it should have been) I would have voted for it to be deleted. Articles are deleted for all sorts of reasons but it doesn't mean all of them should stay deleted forever - Final Crisis was deleted for crystal ball gazing and I voted in favour of deletion, because it was started far too early - I recommended it be restarted closer to the launch. Since Terror Titans was deleted we have had the actual publication date published and the publicity build up to the launch (the movie equivalent of the release days in each territory being announced and the leads doing interviews - well based the crystal ball limit for films). WP:CRYSTAL criteria include if it is verifiable (it is now, it wasn't before) and if it is "almost certain" to appear (it is now, it wasn't before. It doesn't require a 100% guarantee, as no one can offer that, but nearly all comics solicited get published close to the date the companies say they will be released on - this surely ticks the "almost certain" box). It is a pity someone jumped the gun on this one, and unfortunate this got deleted so close to time it became possible to satisfy the requirements to show it isn't crystal ball gazing, but things like that are going to happen occasionally. We should be able to deal with that and the article should be judged on its own merits. (Emperor (talk) 14:56, 18 August 2008 (UTC))
 * I certainly don't mean to insinuate that you have no basis to make that argument. All this AfD is (to me) is a good faith disagreement over that judgment.  If this article hadn't been deleted by AfD rather recently, this disagreement would amount to a note on the talk page.  As it stands, I think an AfD is an appropriate venue to determine this. Protonk (talk) 16:39, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. I'm inclined to keep this article, for a few reasons. Mainly, if the series came out this Wednesday, we'd have an article, I think. I'm all for blamming speculative, "This-might-happen-at-some-point" articles, but we do have some well-sourced confirmation that this is in the pipeline. Given that it will likely be a notable series once it is published, I see no reason to delete this version of the article, only to have it recreated once the series comes out. If we lacked sources that confirmed the series, or if the article was all speculation, then a delete would be in order - but I'm not seeing that here. UltraExactZZ Claims~ Evidence 16:32, 18 August 2008 (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.