Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tri-Man


 * 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 redirect to Smash! (comics). (non-admin closure)  ❯❯❯  Raydann  (Talk)   05:54, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Tri-Man

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Zero real world notability. Fails as per WP:NOTPLOT.  Onel 5969  TT me 22:29, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep featured in a national comic; has been significant enough to be revisited by Alan Moore, Grant Morrison and Mark Millar; and is referred to in publications by at least two comics historians that are cited below the article. IMHO this means at least some debate, discussion or attempt to improve the article is warranted rather than a redirect to a page which contains very little of the material, which does not seem to improve Wikipedia or follow the principles of good faith. BoomboxTestarossa (talk) 22:31, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Regarding WP:NOTPLOT the article is roughly 50/50 between plot summary and out-of-universe history. BoomboxTestarossa (talk) 22:33, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * @BoomboxTestarossa What two historians? See below for my comment about Gifford's coverage, IMHO it's trivial / non-academic quality, unfortunately. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 07:26, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Again, "academic" seems like a needlessly high bar, and not one that seems to be needed for many other comic pages. It's been mentioned in dead tree sources by Gifford, Murray and possibly Holland, all restricted in terms of coverage by being niche paper books with a finite page count, possibly subject to editing for pressures of space. As you said itself the character has been mentioned in an encyclopaedia, and surely the point of Wikipedia is not being bound by the restrictions of an paper encyclopaedia in terms of space? I'm not sure what the point is in having the ability to cite books and other media (Lew Stringer, for example, probably would have had to have published a restricted paper version of Cor! but instead can run it as a blog because internet) if they can just be dismissed as non-academic. Outside of The Big 2 and some of the weightier indie comics, how many comics get academic coverage?
 * I also find it curious that you've chosen to respond to this rather than the longer reply below, which does little to make me think Wikipedia guidelines are being applied in anything other than an arbitrary and - dare I say - petty fashion. BoomboxTestarossa (talk) 14:13, 4 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Fictional elements, Science fiction and fantasy,  and Comics and animation.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 22:52, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete as non-notable. I disagree that it's 50/50 between plot summary and out-of-universe history, as the Publication History section is basically just a list of appearances and more plot summary. The only info that would show real-world notability is the first couple of sentences of that section, which are sourced to a blog that can't be used to establish notability. OliveYouBean (talk) 02:02, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Regarding the content, would this be something that could be solved by a re-write? I'm not saying the article is a finished work ready to be framed, I'm just desperately trying to understand the wildly different standards that seem to exist compared to, say Sweet Tooth (comics). There seems to be a different set of criteria between new additions to Wikipedia and pages that have sat around in a lousy state for years and it strikes me as very confusing and inconsistent. BoomboxTestarossa (talk) 08:12, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Relisting comment: Relisting as I don't see a consensus here yet. A redirect or merge is an option that has been mentioned. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 22:51, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Smash! (comics). Catalogue+plot summary, no analysis, nothing to show that character is significant - just that it existed. There is no indication that any source cited in the article is non-trivial, meets WP:SIGCOV and goe beyond plot summary. Btw, Encyclopedia of comic characters is in IA and Tri-Man's "entry" can be seen here. I wouldn't call it an academic work, most if not all entries there are just few sentences long and consist of catalogue and plot summary info. Denis Gifford is a reliable author, but many of his works were aimed at popular audience, not scholars. This work is not scholarly, it's at a level of a fanboy book of trivia (as evidenced by it having zero academic reviews). Academic work would contain analysis of the topic, not just description. However, there is no harm in redirecting this entry to Smash! (comics) in the spirit of PRESERVE. Anything that has entry in something called an encyclopedia, even if it's a non-academic, fanboy one like this, should have a redirect and be mentioned somewhere in Wikipedia. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  07:24, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * But surely very few British comics have been the subject of academic analysis? Do we junk all of the pages? I mean I've been looking for a copy of Steve Holland's Fleetway Companion to try and flesh out some of the British comics entries with another dead tree source, but is there the chance that any additions would be dismissed as "non-academic" and "fanboy" (which seems like an unhelpfully pejorative term)? Significant is a relative term and one IMHO wide open to recency bias. Is Roocket Girl significant? Is it more significant than Tri-Man? The answer to both seems to be that it's come out in an era when comics attract a lot of 24-hour news cycle bumf, which by Wikipedia criteria seems to make it more notable than something which came out pre-internet. The IPC weeklies had six-figure circulations, before trying to untangle what exactly was exported to the "dominions". For significance I'd again point to being revisited three times by significant comic authors, note WP:NOTPAPER and apologise for forgetting to put a stub tag at the end of it, as it was never the intention to give the impression the page couldn't do with further work; my original plan was to expand sections further but I opted to try and find out more about the notability status before I invested more time and effort into it, and it was intended as a stub which would hopefully get expanded by myself and others in days, weeks, months and years to come.
 * And again I'd like to question what appears to be a haphazardly-implemented set of criteria regarding newer articles and letting others just sit there for years when not subjected to such stringent attention (leading to the possibility of circular reporting considering how much content is drawn from Wikipedia). Smash! (comics) itself is beautifully written but seems to fail many of the criteria applied here (e.g. I was unable to find any source to allow the comparisons with Spider-Man and the Green Lantern to be worked into the article, and it would seem likely that any that would be discovered would be dismissed as "non-academic, fanboy" ones.
 * I really, really am trying to add to Wikipedia while having fun and not treading on anyone's toes. I've done the reading (which seems rare, but hey) but the lack of consistency with which many of the principles are applied is making it quite frustrating. I do, however, appreciate everyone's effort to explain this openly in a discussion rather than just blanking the page. BoomboxTestarossa (talk) 08:46, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * (I've not gone back and added the stub template or anything while this discussion is going on as that would feel dishonest) BoomboxTestarossa (talk) 08:56, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep What is on the page seems already enough to make it appear notable. As for Gifford  ...er..  I really cannot understand why he should have written work aiming at scholars to be considered worthy of trust by Wikipedia. Lacks a world-academic-review-that-is-not-mainly-written-as-a-description so far? Ooooookay but still, what is on the page shows a certain notabilty.MY OH MY 17:04, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Weak Keep - I'm struggling to see how the character is notable, the article says it only appeared in 20 issues then reappeared later but only as a background character. The sources seem good to me though, two proper books about comics. Eopsid (talk) 22:43, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep I think it serves the encyclopaedia to have an article about this character who appears in multiple notable comics, especially since (at least to me) the source material is the most obscure of them. From what I can see, the coverage is significant enough. HerrWaus (talk) 19:15, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Smash! (comics) - There are only two potential valid sources for establishing notability listed in the article, and neither coul be considered WP:SIGCOV at all. The Encyclopedia of comic characters, for example, is only three sentences long that pretty much does nothing but briefly describe the most basic premise of the character. Regardless of how "academic" the book or is how reliable an author Gifford is, that is simply not significant coverage. That is pretty much the same case with the The British Superhero book - a couple of sentences briefly describing the character's powers, and another stating the character was unpopular and soon canceled, which is not significant coverage. Being mentioned or appearing as a background character in later books does not confer notability (and the comics where those cameos happened are not valid reliable sources for the purposes of establishing notability), and if two very brief descriptions in books is the best that can be found at this time, the character does not pass the WP:GNG. Redirecting to the main Smash! (comics) article, where he is already described, would preserve the article history, and in the case of further reliable sources being found that contain more significant coverage of the character, it could potentially then be spun back out in to a separate article. Rorshacma (talk) 16:36, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * Redirect The only two reliable sources don't provide WP:SIGCOV, and this does not pass the WP:GNG. Shooterwalker (talk) 01:44, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Redirect Rather clear GNG fail, though it may be a viable search term for a redirect. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 22:03, 13 February 2023 (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.