Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Toto (Oz)


 * 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. Withdrawn by nom/WP:SNOW keep. Not a snowball's chance in Hell that it will result in a Delete outcome. (non-admin closure) ZXCVBNM (TALK) 22:39, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Toto (Oz)

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Fictional dog, secondary (if not tetriary) character from a famous work (but WP:NOTINHERITED. His only claim to fame is being part of the famous quote 'Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore', but that's not enough (and the quote is often used committing reference to him). The coverage (references, external links, etc.) does not seem sufficient to justify this article passing General notability guideline requirement nor the more detailed Notability (fiction) supplementary essay. WP:BEFORE did not reveal any significant coverage on Gnews, Gbooks or Gscholar. The 2001 book I, Toto is about a notable dog actor Terry (dog) who among others portrayed the role of Toto in one movie adaptation, and I was not able to find any evidence the book contains any WP:SIGCOV of Toto, the fictional dog. (it does contain some discussion of Terry's role as Toto, but that's not the same, and belongs in the article about the real dog; again, NOTINHERITED - if a notable actor portrays a certain role, that role does not become notable by the virtue of that fact). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 02:21, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  02:21, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  02:21, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose the dog does not have to speak to be famous. he has to be present in key scenes, such as when he gets lost (at start and end of book) and when he pulls of the curtain to reveal the Wizard. Google scholar gives over 18,000 cites to scholarly books and articles with the "not in Kansas Toto" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=1%2C27&q=toto+%3Dkansas&btnG=  Toto is surely one of the most famous dogs in all of literature. He has his own scholarly studies-- (1) Hsu, "Where’s Oz, Toto? Idealism and the politics of gender and race in academe." Power, race, and gender in academe (2000): 183-204. (2)  Barnes,  "Toto: The Dog-Gone Amazing Story of the Wizard of Oz." The School Librarian (2018); (3) in Italian: Scrivere E Rappresentare (2017): 165+.  (4) "Fictional Faithful Companions." in Faces  Oct2016, Vol. 33 Issue 2, p38+ features "the most popular television dogs" which are Toto, Snoopy, and Scooby Doo. (5) in USA TIME Magazine (Aug 13, 2015) includes Toto in "The Most Famous Dogs in Movies and Television". (6) in England the Daily Mail (May 30 2020)_ celebrates the Prime Minister's dog who is famous--in the same league as " Scooby Doo, Pluto, Lassie, Snoopy, Mutley, Pongo, Gnasher and Toto".  (7) also in England, Neil Oliver. writes in The Sunday Times (June 28 2020) that 2020 "has been a tornado of anxieties....Like Toto, the little dog in The Wizard of Oz, we find ourselves far from home. I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more. Also like Toto, no one understands our small voices. In this incomprehensible new place, we are to be silent while others speak." -- the last point emphasizes how important it is to be a quiet observer.
 * Toto plays a central role in several critical points: he runs away at the beginning and end of the book and Dorothy changes plans to catch him' he pulls away the curtain to reveal the Wizard is a fake. Scholar Keri Weil analyzes the role:"Toto is the driving force behind Frank Baum’s narrative because it is Dorothy’s love for the dog that leads her to run away and escape the dreary moral landscape of Kansas and its arbiter, Miss Gulch. “It was Toto who made Dorothy laugh and saved her from growing as grey as her surroundings,” wrote Baum in the original version of the story. Rjensen (talk) 04:13, 10 July 2021 (UTC)"


 * It's good to look at sources, but you have to go beyond google hits. I see no evidence that 1) ""Where’s Oz, Toto? Idealism and the politics of gender and race in academe" contains the discussion of the dog at all. Can you present a quote from the inside of this article that proves the author did not use the dog's name solely in the title? 2) "Toto: The Dog-Gone Amazing Story of the Wizard of Oz" - this is a children book, a novel, written children novelist Michael Morpurgo. Toto is its main character, this book (being a children's book and a WP:PRIMARY source) is not a reliable, nor independent, source for establishing notability. 3) You have not presented any evidence that your third source discusses the subject 4) one-sentencers do not meet WP:SIGCOV, we need in-depth treatment of Toto, discussing his importance in paragraphs if not dedicated chapters, to meet GNG. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 04:26, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete This article would better fit a fan wiki. I don't believe an article for Todo is needed on Wikipedia.  However, the more notable facts from this article could be merged with other Oz related articles to create a more complete picture.  Coopman86 (talk) 04:29, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
 * We have infinite space, as Wikipedia is WP:NOTPAPER. Is there a fan wiki with an article on this character? Why would you want to make this information harder to find? NemesisAT (talk) 16:19, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. He has appeared in multiple Oz books in addition to the movie, and Michael Morpurgo has written Toto: The Wizard of Oz as told by the dog. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:25, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Appearing in x books of fiction doesn't make something notable, and the book you cite is a children's book (fiction). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 04:29, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep In addition to being one of the most famous movie characters of all time, I actually was able to find some sources analyzing Toto's role in the story, which is about as significant as coverage can get in regards to a fictional character. The quote which Rjensen cited above is one, and this article is another. Mlb96 (talk) 08:34, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
 * "I actually was able to find some sources analyzing Toto's role in the story". Excellent. Can you cite them here? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 04:14, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep There's an interesting investigation of the origin of the dog's name here. The article doesn't go into this yet and so we see that there's scope for improvement and so our policy WP:ATD applies, "If editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page." Andrew🐉(talk) 12:17, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Surprisingly enough, Andrew provides us with the first half-decent source, as it is actually in-depth (about Toto). Thank you. Now, is Bleeding Cool reliable? I couldn't find their about-us page, and I can't tell if they have any fact-checking or quality control; this unfortunately means that they seem to be more of a blog than a real news site. If someone can find their 'about us', please correct me, and we can of course discuss this at WP:RSN. PS. The status of BC as a blog is confirmed by our Bleeding_Cool - it won some awards in the blog categories. Now, it is a "good" blog, given those awards, but still, a blog is a blog is a WP:SPS... Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 04:34, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep. Come on, people. The guys who did "Africa" named the band after this dog. This plus the fact that this character has had so many appearances in so many other adaptations of all kinds (albeit all of Wizard of Oz books) does make a stand-alone article like this not only allowed, but necessary. 👨x🐱 (talk) 15:44, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep - Let this page stay. Toto has made a lot of appearances in the Oz books. Plus, I agree with the claims of, , , , and . --Rtkat3 (talk) 17:53, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. We have articles about a lot of Oz characters that are much less well-known than Toto, some of which are much less sourced than this one. See Category:Oz (franchise) characters. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 19:12, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
 * WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 04:14, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  04:37, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Comment - Since I am a cat person, I don't want to vote here due to an apparent conflict of interest, but most of the arguments above are of terrible quality. - GizzyCatBella  🍁  05:17, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep I'd be surprised if it wasn't one of the most famous fictional dogs ever. If any fictional dog article should exist it would probably be this one.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 12:24, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
 * But we still need reliable sources to say so... Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 16:11, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep based mostly on common sense. Toto is clearly a well known fictional character with a huge impact on popular culture. I feel like in cases like this we can get so focused on policy and the details of finding multiple paragraphs of analyses or whatever that we can't see the forest for the trees. I don't see how deleting this article benefits readers or Wikipedia. It feels like a disservice. Rhino131 (talk) 15:42, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep, this article has attracted over 5,000 views in the past month so is clearly valued by our readers. There is evidently enough to write about here to warrant a separate article for this character. NemesisAT (talk) 16:59, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep, I am in agreement with the posters above, and their reasoning for keeping. Timmccloud (talk) 19:03, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep per nom. That is, Piotrus has indeed found sufficient evidence of notability during his WP:BEFORE work in the form of ISBN 978-1419709838, but has missed the point by suggesting that the title of a real-world book detailing the most famous fictional dog portrayed by the thespian canine in question would not be sufficient to establish notability. That, and per everyone else above noting the other RS coverage. Jclemens (talk) 19:21, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. I think Toto has been more influential in popular culture at large than in the field of literary criticism. Nonetheless I found a few literary articles that discuss him:
 * “Are we cannibals, let me ask? Or are we faithful friends?”: Food, Interspecies Cannibalism, and the Limits of Utopia in L. Frank Baum’s Oz Books mentions Toto as an important animal throughout its argument and has one paragraph just on him, concluding "In a civilized land but with an uncivilized appetite, Toto hides his vocal abilities so that he can respond to the natural appetites that motivate him." (This strikes me as pretty good coverage.)
 * Money and Politics in the Land of Oz is one of those articles insisting that the whole book is an allegory, and it has a short paragraph asserting that "Toto" is a pun on "teetotaler." (This strikes me as garbage analysis, but still RS coverage.)
 * EXPERIENCING THE WORLD AS HOME: Reflections on Dorothy's Quest in "The Wizard of Oz" has two paragraphs interpreting Toto's importance to the story's narrative arc and returns to him near the end. "When it seems as if she cannot have both Toto and home, she chooses Toto and runs away. Yet that is not a happy choice..."; later, "Dorothy's concern for joy, expressed at first in her desire to save Toto, is grounded in a belief in the reality of joy." The idea is that Toto represents joy itself in the story. (This strikes me as "ok" coverage.)
 * Most of what I found was outside of literature and seemed to treat him as so notable it wasn't worth actually talking about him, e.g., two articles about nursing which use him metaphorically as a model for becoming a better nurse (1 2), both of which briefly recap who Toto is but clearly expect readers to already know him. Overall I can see why Toto himself seems unimportant to his main current 'claim to fame' (the "Not in Kansas anymore" quote), but especially if we also consider, e.g., sources that discuss how Toto's role was filmed, I think there is enough coverage and cultural influence for GNG. ~ L 🌸  (talk) 02:37, 12 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Withdraw. LEvalyn sources and analysis suggest borderline notability if we interpret guidelines strictly, but clearly, nobody cares to very strict here, so let's go with what is an apparent consensus and call him notable per WP:IAR. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 03:04, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Guidelines such as WP:N are, by definition, not strict. They are all "best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply".  Even our policies are not strict – see WP:BURO; WP:IAR; WP:NOTLAW. Andrew🐉(talk) 10:35, 12 July 2021 (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.