Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Deleted articles with freaky titles (3rd nomination)

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 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was Keep. — xaosflux  Talk 16:15, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Deleted articles with freaky titles


Suggest deletion of this list. Every entry is doing one of two things - either glorifying the work of vandals adding bullshit pages, or making fun of struggling new editor's mistakes. Both are covered, first by deny recognition, and second by don't bite the newcomers. There is no good reason to have this page. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 03:53, 2 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment. Not all these titles fall into those categories. "The problem of defining 'sanity'", for instance, was created by Larry Sanger. "Movies that feature head explosions", "Michelle Obama's arms", "Nick the Flying Brick", "Judaism and bus stops", "Night Of The Day Of The Dawn Of The Son Of The Bride Of The Return Of The Revenge Of The Terror Of The Attack Of The Evil, Mutant, Hellbound, Flesh-Eating, Zombified, SubHumanoid Living Dead, Part 5", and (one of my favorites for the silly image it conjures up) "Template: Collapsible Christ" were created by experienced and well-intentioned Wikipedians. So were many others. As I said at WT:Deleted articles with freaky titles, the most clearly vandalistic titles are holdovers from the page's early days, and I don't think they do any harm. In many other cases it's hard to tell why the page was created, especially once the page is deleted and I can't see it. To compensate, there's the rule against adding anything that was speedily deleted as vandalism. I'm not supporting or opposing, but I don't want DAFT to be misrepresented. A. Parrot (talk) 05:07, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep. A. Parrot (The Parrot!) is right. As one of the early regular contributors to this list, it did - in its early days - have difficulties from WP:Deny/WP:Beans. However it was substantially tidied and has been a long-standing part of Wikipedia's behind-the-scenes humour pages. It would be wrong to consider the page falling foul of WP:BITE - most of the articles are by newbies, and even where they are, those newbies are unlikely to discover their articles' additions to this page. It would also be wrong to delete it based on WP:DENY, since entries based on vadalism have in the past been routinely removed (and should be again). Hence the caveat in note 4 at the top of the page: Don't glorify vandalism. If an article title was clearly and unquestionably the work of a vandal, or was speedy deleted as a G3 or G10, it's better off forgotten. Many - probably most - of the items on the page were good-faith creations: many of them are items which actually exist but are not notable enough for articles (e.g., Zombie pigman, Famous watermelons, Concrete cleaning, Dog Fart Neutralizing Thong, Koala attacks in Australia, Toe names, Timeline of fictional historical events); others are accidental attempts to write essays in article space, or simply poorly named articles (e.g., What is Multi room AV?, What Is Mathematics Really, Garfield Comic Strips in Spanish, The Smurfs and communism); others still were probably caused by accidental but humorous typos (Video Games in the 1800s, Category: Flora and Fiona of Azerbaijan, Category: Belgian cycling teas) or mistranslations (Islam inside Hungarians)... or just good old-fashioned zealous overcategorisation (Category: Baseball players with kidney stones, Category: Fictional Toilets, Category: Songs about goats). Though I realise WP:OTHERSTUFF is hardly a good reason to keep a page, I definitely see it as no worse than, say List of unusual articles, Lamest edit wars, or April Fools/April Fools' Day 2014. The header at the top says it all - it is kept because it is considered humorous, and brightens up more than a few dull days. This page may need another prune to remove the obvious vandalistic entries, but it does not warrant deletion for having a few removable items. It should be left as part of WP:Humour. Grutness...wha?  08:05, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
 * List of unusual articles are actual articles that belong here. Lamest edit wars is a legitimate cautionary tale to help avoid future edit wars. April Fools includes content that was actually published here on that day. You're using the lame other stuff arguments, but your other stuff is significantly different. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 16:57, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't quite see how. WP:DAFT is a list of actual articles that don't belong here under those titles, so it is instructive. WP:DAFT is thus also a legitimate cautionary tale to help avoid future strange titles. WP:DAFT includes content, in the form of article titles, that was actually published here in Wikipedia. Perhaps you'd prefer it if I'd compared it with List of hoaxes on Wikipedia, Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Helpdesk Emails, or Best of BJAODN, which are far more dubious in terms of WP:DENY and WP:BITE than the current nomination. I already stated that WP:OTHERSTUFF is not one of the best arguments, but it is a valid one in this case. As the essay (yes, not policy) which includes WP:OTHERSTUFF says in its first line: The following are a list of arguments that can commonly be seen in deletion discussions for templates, images, categories, stub types, redirects and especially articles. No mention is made of items in Wikipedia-space. Grutness...wha?  00:39, 3 November 2014 (UTC)


 * What this again? There is no reason whatsoever to delete this. I know we are all about the encyclopaedia-building here, but that doesn't mean it should be a totally humourless endeavour. pablo 15:29, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep: First off, let's go through the list presented by WP:Humor:
 * "Humor needs indicators": Well, the use of humor is a pretty clear indication of that.
 * "Humor in articles": Moot here.
 * "Humor outside of articles": As it says about humor, "...but being a human community, humor appears as well". What's the first type of humor it presents? "Sometimes Wikipedians just highlight the humor (in articles or otherwise), without intending to criticize at all." That's what this definitely is.

Having not been around for the early days of Wikipedia, I can't say much about the state of it early on and whether or not this was critical back then, but now it's simply a collection of ridiculous-sounding deleted articles without any sort of biting the newcomers or glorifying trolls, to the best that I can tell. For what it's worth, I consider this to be one of the funniest humor pages here (Yes, I know that WP:ILIKEIT is generally bad, but I'm not entirely sure that the normal guidelines apply here, given the subject matter). Supernerd11 Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 17:44, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It wasn't critical in the early days, SN11, but it did contain a lot of obvious vandalous entries. The notes at the top of the page were added to reduce this and other less-savoury uses of the page. Grutness...wha?  00:39, 3 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep I notice that sometimes anonymous people add entries, so you can't say that it is unwanted. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:40, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep per WP:ILIKEIT. That's right, I used it in a deletion discussion. Guess I better not go for admin any time soon. Seriously, though, I enjoy these bits of wiki-nostalgia, perhaps as cautionary tales, or evidence of the ingenuity of trolls, or whatever. If users are actually recreating these article titles over and over, these titles could be appropriately seasoned. Ivanvector (talk) 21:05, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep no good reasons for deletion I can see. I think the thing the about pages like this, is that they manage to keep some humour about Wikipedia, which isn't normally allowed for obvious reasons. I don't think it glorifies trolls: the fact that you can read about stuff like this actually helps me keep serious. It probably makes them not want to bother when they see it's been done before. Messagse about what you shouldn't do emphasises what you should do. Don't bite the newcomers? Well most of this is trollish, so I don't think that applies. --Mrjulesd (talk)  00:08, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep because other similar joke pages are kept, e.g. List of hoaxes on Wikipedia. Also, get a sense of humor; it's funny to at least some people, as evidenced by how long this page has existed and the fact that this was nominated for MfD twice and kept. If it comes down to anything, the articles should be salted, and this page not deleted, as a record. – Epicgenius (talk) 02:18, 6 November 2014 (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 page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.