Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Donovan (DOA)

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 of the debate was keep (no consensus). Sjakkalle (Check!) 08:07, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Donovan (DOA)

This is fancruft for the video game. I'd merge it myself but there are other articles (e.g. Bayman (DOA), Leon (DOA), Helena (DOA), Fame Douglas (DOA)). My view would be that they should all be burned as vacuous fancruft merged into the parent article, or a single article on characters, but there may be - ahem - consensus issues. What does the panel think? - Just zis Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C] :: AfD? 12:47, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. Clean up, of course. But there are heaps and heaps of precedent for this. For just two examples, see Ken Masters and Yoshimitsu (video game character). In a perfect world, these would be merged into "Characters from Game X" articles, but this is a hot point of debate at the video game wikiproject. BrianSmithson 13:03, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
• Someone who knows enough about the game to condense each article into a paragraph or two should create List of Dead or Alive characters (or something appropriately named) and merge all DoA charcter articles into this. Trim to fit where necessary. Do not merge into Dead or Alive. If it helps to build consensus, count this as a delete all. Saberwyn 13:07, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Oookay... there apparently is a List of Dead or Alive characters article, but its nothing more than "Hey, that's character x's name, they've been in games A, B, and C. Here, have a wikilink." I will support a merge of the smaller articles back into this main list, and a keep of the extremely large ones. Saberwyn 13:11, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep and clean up Only because of the existing precedent, as mentioned. But I do look forward to seeing these numerous game character articles merged with their parent articles...one day. PJM 13:17, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, there may be precedent, but it isn't a good one. This is simply gamecruft that is better merged into List of Dead or Alive characters. I'd support a delete of all DOA videogame character articles.--Isotope23 15:06, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep verified information, merge if necessary. Trollderella 17:25, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
• Delete as fancruft. Sorry, guys, as you've done nice work, but it's not notable in my book. And I'm with Isotope23 on the similar articles. Has anybody considered forking off a separate project so that fans can document their fictional universes while we keep on with the real one? --William Pietri 19:12, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but we don't do it, for the same reason we don't hive off all the science into another project. Trollderella 21:49, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

• Not the same reason. Science is real, fancruft is something which, when you reach adulthood, you are ashamed to realise you were ever interested in :-) - Just zis Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C] :: AfD? 22:32, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Tell that to George Steiner. It is the same reason, it's just that there is stuff you like, and stuff you don't. Trollderella 00:50, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Good effort, but I'm sorry to say that I'm still unpersuaded. Even for things people aren't ashamed of at adulthood, there's a pretty clear difference between fictional universes (of which there are an infinite number) and the single real one. (Unless you're arguing for epistemological relativism, in which case no notability criteria are possible.) Keeping our science here while letting the Star Trek fans track Star Trek science elsewhere seems pretty reasonable to me. Similarly, some fiction is notable for its cultural effects in banal reality, so a short article on Sherlock Holmes here could happily link to the exhaustive (and to most, exhausting) pseudo-biography that fans and academics yearn to compile. --William Pietri 06:23, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

It's not about like vs. don't like. I'd say that a good half of the books I read are science fiction, I have a collection of several thousand SF books. Do you not see a fundamental difference between documenting a fictional reality and a real one? - Just zis Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C] :: AfD? 09:50, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Comment Agreed... here is a good example of what could be done with the DOA characters: House Stark. I don't know if you are in any way familiar with the work of George R. R. Martin, but his books have hundreds of characters. Rather than create a separate article for each character though, the information is collected by family. To me this is a preferable way to collect the information, rather than cluttering things up with 100 separate articles about each character. This isn't a question of "liking" or "not liking" something. If I saw articles about every single character in The Song of Ice and Fire, I would vote to merge and delete, even though it is my favorite fantasy series ever written.--Isotope23 16:11, 10 November 2005 (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.