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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Erik (talk | contribs) at 19:19, 19 April 2022 (→Redirecting articles on [mostly] minor The Wire characters: added). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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FAR Notice

List of fictional characters with disabilities has an RFC

List of fictional characters with disabilities has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you.A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 11:23, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of feature films with LGBT characters

Hello! Advising the project of this AfD which may be of interest to members of the project. Thank you.--Historyday01 (talk) 14:31, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Clark Kent (DC Extended Universe)

There is a request to move Clark Kent (DC Extended Universe) to Superman (DC Extended Universe). The discussion can be found here: Talk:Clark Kent (DC Extended Universe)#Requested move 10 February 2022. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 13:51, 26 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination of Diana Walter for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Diana Walter is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Diana Walter until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.

—Mahāgaja · talk 12:47, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Bruce Wayne (DC Extended Universe)#Requested move 15 March 2022

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Bruce Wayne (DC Extended Universe)#Requested move 15 March 2022 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 22:15, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Redirecting articles on [mostly] minor The Wire characters

There are a whole bunch of articles on The Wire characters that include nothing other than in-universe information and make no claims to notability. They are basically long descriptions of everything the character does in the show, i.e., the kind of stuff that belongs on a different wiki (like thewire.fandom.com) but not here. I believe the majority of these should be blanked and redirected to List of The Wire characters or one of the pages under it.

I started blanking and redirecting a few, but this was contested by another editor (see User talk:Interstatefive#Your_revert) per WP:PAGEBLANKING. So, following that editor's recommendation, I then went ahead and PRODded all the articles in question, but that was also contested by another editor (see User talk:61.18.156.43#Mass Proposed Deletion of articles), who recommended that this should be discussed in a bundled AfD. I have no problem with opening an AfD for that, but I can't for procedural reasons (I can't create an AfD page without registering an account, and I don't want to do that), so I figured I'd try to start the discussion here instead; if anyone sees this and agrees that an AfD is warranted, I hope they will create one [and feel free to directly copy whatever I've compiled here]). Alternatively, it could just be discussed here or at one of the article's talk pages.

The articles in question fall into several categories, shown below (ordered from most to least warranting of blanking-and-redirecting):

So far the only person who I've seen object to redirecting these on content-based grounds (as opposed to the other two editors above I mentioned, who only objected to the procedure with which I was going about it but didn't express any opposition in principle to redirecting these) is User:Premeditated Chaos, who reverted one of the prods (on the article Kima Greggs) and said "there's enough critical commentary available about the character in academic sources for a clear claim of notability", i.e., the article can be improved to a level that will meet the inclusion threshold. On this I beg to differ; I have not done a comprehensive literature search, but I skimmed the first few pages of Google Scholar and Google books and, while I found a lot of books and articles analyzing The Wire and many of these happen to mention this character, it doesn't look like any are specifically about this character.

Beyond that, I have not yet seen anyone actually suggesting these articles should be kept. There was an AfD on this nine years ago (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alma Gutierrez) and not one person spoke up in favor of keeping; all anyone said was that it should be discussed somewhere other than AfD. (One participant was in favor of merging them all, as I am proposing here, and two participants just said it should be discussed somewhere other than AfD.)

Ultimately I guess what we have here is a philosophical disagreement on Inclusionism (i.e., "some of these topics might merit inclusion, and the onus is on someone else to prove which ones don't") vs. Deletionism (i.e., "these topics have not been demonstrated to merit inclusion so they should be deleted except where someone can demonstrate on an article-by-article basis which ones merit inclusion), which I don't really want to get into, but I guess one of the other of these views is necessarily informing what people think of what to do with these articles (it's obvious which camp I'm in).

Anyway, I don't think redirecting all of these is necessarily contrary to the spirit of inclusionism anyway; it mostly entails just deleting a lot of unencyclopedic in-universe junk that shouldn't be here anyway, and someone with more time on their hands could always come back in later and re-create (i.e. un-redirect) some of these articles with actually encyclopedic stuff the second time around. I don't think any Wikipedian of any philosophical bent could possibly object to removing almost all the content of a trash page like this; the only real question is what the form of that removal should take, i.e., wholesale blanking-and-redirecting, vs. removing almost all the content but leaving the article there as a stub with a very brief synopsis and a big pile of cleanup tags at the top. Either way, I'm sure everyone agrees that most of the content in all of these articles needs to go. 61.18.156.43 (talk) 03:23, 9 April 2022 (UTC) 61.18.156.43 (talk) 03:23, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Wire is considered to be one of the greatest television shows of all time, #2 behind The Sopranos. These standalone articles were quite helpful for me to understand the plot when I was watching the show. I don't see why you want to remove information that readers can utilize and access. Hard disagree with your proposal. The show is significant enough to have standalone articles. LJF2019 talk 19:29, 17 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Notability is not inherited. Subjects that don't meet notability guidelines independent of the works they are associated with do not have the necessary level of coverage to produce a article that is verifiable to our standards. All topics, including all TV shows, are subject to the the general notability guideline. signed, Rosguill talk 20:00, 17 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Echoing Rosguill: the fact that a show is great does not mean that every trivial character from the show gets a standalone article. And the fact that an article was helpful doesn't mean it meets the inclusion criteria (see WP:ITSUSEFUL). 61.18.156.43 (talk) 00:46, 18 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Quick update: when I posted this proposal I also notified several editors who had objected to my redirects before. While none of them have replied here, a few replied on their talk pages, so I am noting those replies here for the sake of keeping all the discussion in one place. One user said he agrees the articles are bad, but did not address the substantive question (whether they should be redirected, turned into stubs, or left alone). Another said that, while they probably agree with redirecting the articles on minor characters, the ones on major characters (specifically Kima Greggs) have the potential to pass GNG and thus should be tagged for cleanup but not redirected. I agree with the latter editor so I started redirecting the articles on minor characters (the division between "major" and "minor" is of course subjective) but intend to skip Kima Greggs and instead turn that article into a short stub with cleanup tags. 61.18.156.43 (talk) 00:52, 18 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@61.etc: I'd say you prettty much have your answer. The editors that have contributed to those pages, along with the ones that reverted your blank-and-redirect edits, plus the "several editors who had objected to [your] redirects before", along with ediors here in favour of those pages, and, all the editors that have not shown up to to support you, demonstrates a consensus to keep those pages. (Plus all the implied consensus that built up since they were created.) Might be time to let this go.

On a side note, you wrote: "I can't create an AfD page without registering an account, and I don't want to do that"... why not? You've only made 144 edits with this account (all to The Wire character pages, but clearly you have more than 144 edits worth of experience, so what is all this about? - wolf 15:45, 18 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your reply. Does anyone actually have a reason these articles should be kept (i.e., evidence that they meet the GNG, which we presumably are all deeply familiar with), or just complaints about procedure? As far as I can tell, out of the three editors who have said anything whatsoever about the content of the pages here, one (User:LJF2019) said they should stay [but for reasons that are explicitly contra WP:AVOID—your own claim, FYI, is also in WP:AVOID, because "implied consensus" is not a thing AFAIK, see WP:ARTICLEAGE], and two (User talk:Rosguill and me) said or at least implied that they should go, so I don't see any consensus to keep (if anything, there is perhaps no consensus either way, partly because hardly anyone will even respond to the issue).
Regarding your side note, (1) you are wrong (if you look back in the contribs of this account you will see edits to other topics; the only reason there are a lot of edits to this topic is because (a) there are a lot of articles about it, and (b) this is the only topic anyone objected to my edits about); and (2) the reasons I do or do not want to register an account are patently irrelevant to whether or not these articles are encyclopedic, so I see no reason for either of us to discuss them here. Whether someone is logged in to an account or not has no bearing on a content disagreement (or is Wikipedia no longer "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit"?) 61.18.156.43 (talk) 17:54, 18 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
1) You linked a dab. You've also linked some essays, which are not WP:PG (just sayin). 2) Sure, it's the encyclopaedia that anyone can edit, but also the one where only registered editors can initiate AfDs. 3) You yourself just said there is "no consensus" here, so... why keep pushing with this? - wolf 23:19, 18 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I’m one of the realest editors you’ll find on this site. What it boils down to is that you want to remove a significant amount of useful information and you’re editing from an IP. People are going to oppose you; you come off as trying to damage the project rather than help it. The articles have been there for years. Thousands of people have used the information on those articles. And you want to remove it and redirect it so it’s no longer accessible. No thanks. LJF2019 talk 19:38, 18 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
We need to follow policies and guidelines. Information being useful does not mean that it is appropriate for an encyclopedia. Per policy at WP:PLOT, "Wikipedia articles should not be summary-only descriptions of works. Wikipedia treats creative works (including, for example, works of art or fiction, video games, documentaries, research books or papers, and religious texts) in an encyclopedic manner, discussing the development, design, reception, significance, and influence of works in addition to concise summaries of those works." When it comes to fictional characters, we need that treatment. A lot of these articles do not have that treatment, so their existence on Wikipedia for years does not matter if they are not following the guidelines. It is possible that certain characters warrant standalone articles, but that splitting-off needs to be evidenced because all of these characters exist under the umbrella of The Wire. See something like list of Smallville characters where notable characters have their own articles (and summary sections) where non-notable characters have a few paragraphs about them in the broader list article. Something like that should be done here. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 20:55, 18 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging Piotrus. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 20:46, 18 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Huh. Many of these articles should be redirected. Given there is some opposition to this, AfD is the way. Anon really should create an account and join us in the cleanup as a regular fellow editor. Hope to see you (and the articles) at AfD. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 20:51, 18 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I considered AfD as well, but the last time these were taken to AfD (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alma Gutierrez) everyone just said it should be discussed somewhere else; hence why I tried to open a discussion here. So far the experience I've had here is that every time I point out these articles have problems, almost nobody disagrees with that assessment but everyone just tells me to forum-shop elsewhere. (also: Hi Piotrus, good to see a familiar name here! I'm not using my account anymore but I remember your work from back when I used to be a regular editor and I appreciate all you do for the encyclopedia!) 61.18.156.43 (talk) 04:18, 19 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
How about following the process at Wikipedia:Merging or Wikipedia:Proposed article mergers? Have the discussion at Talk:List of The Wire characters. From what I can tell, any standalone article that has just in-universe information (and violates policy at WP:PLOT) should just have their articles' lead sections copied and pasted into the list article. For starring characters, probably possible to keep them standalone, but the rest likely best belong on the list. EDIT: You could use this as a starting point where characters with the least number of episodes could be assessed first, ignoring the topmost ones for now. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 19:11, 19 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So we can just decide not to make a Wikipedia account in order to bypass the AFD process? Neat. --SubSeven (talk) 03:10, 19 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I never said anything about bypassing AfD. As I've already said (I don't remember if it was in this thread or elsewhere), I didn't think AfD was appropriate because this was already taken to AfD before and, while nobody actually said the articles should be kept, everyone at the AfD said it should be discussed somewhere other than AfD. I did consider AfD at one point, but worried that it would just have the same outcome again, with everyone just saying "this should be discussed somewhere else". What's the point of opening an AfD when people have already done that and concluded that AfD is not the place? If we decide to open an AfD again, we need to have some new reason to argue why this stuff really does belong at AfD and the conclusion of the previous AfD was wrong. Anyway, the fact that I don't have an account is irrelevant to the discussion because if we do decide to open an AfD I could write the rationale here and someone else could post it or I could do it via WT:AFD (at the time I first started this thread I had forgotten that that route was an option), so it would be great if people could actually address the content issue instead of just constantly having hissy fits about the fact that I'm not logged in to an account [which, again, is a fact that's completely irrelevant to the content issue at hand]. 61.18.156.43 (talk) 04:18, 19 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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