Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of fictional companies

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 TSO1D 18:50, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of fictional companies

Delete - another indiscriminate, unmaintainable list. Otto4711 10:10, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep — This list collects in one place what may otherwise be created as separate stub articles. It also avoids the creation of one or more categories for these stub articles. Val42 16:46, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep yet another useful list Jcuk 18:06, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per Val42. I don't see what's indiscriminate about it. — brighterorange (talk) 18:49, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

• What's indiscriminate about it is that almost every book, TV episode, film, comic book, etc. has at least one fictional company in it. If every such example of a fictional company were added to this list, the article would have tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of entries. There is no way that such a list can be useful or encyclopedic. Take a show like Bewitched as just one example, that takes place partly within the context of an advertising agency. Would Wikipedia become more useful if someone added every single client that Darrin ever wrote copy for to this list article? Otto4711 19:49, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

• Delete unmaintainable -Doc^g 19:40, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. This list would have several million entries if it were to ever be complete. I would guess that more fictional companies are created than we could possibly add to this list. How many books, stories, films, television series, plays, video games, etc. come out each year? Who decides which of those are notable enough to add the fictional companies mentioned therein to this list? This isn't really an encyclopedic topic and would be impossible to complete and maintain. VegaDark 20:56, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. I might just be a fan of list of fictional things, but it is interesting and useful. If it gets too long why not just split it up? Tartan 23:05, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per Doc glasgow. Also, where in lies the encyclopedic value? Really? Jobjörn (Talk ° contribs) 00:41, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep Valuable collation of material that would otherwise be too diffused for access. No more inherently indiscriminate or unmaintainable that Wikipedia IMHO. I could agree with arguments to develop better criteria, but that's not the same as outright deletion. Mister.Manticore 03:19, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
• Week Keep the list could be better, but I think the scope be reasonable enough.-- danntm ^T _C 03:42, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
• Weak Keep the formatting of these lists is something to be taken up in another forum (some standardization in sorting/format), but this is a good cross-reference for an e-encyclopedia. SkierRMH,05:05, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletions. -- SkierRMH 05:05, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
• Strong delete, WP:NOT#IINFO. To the closing admin, please note that none of the "keep" votes has managed to cite any form of Wikipedia policy, instead falling into the trap of WP:ILIKEIT arguments. "Valuable collation of material"? Valuable to who? Just because a writer/director/whatever invents a company for their fictional work doesn't mean Wikipedia needs to document it. Notability questions abound. Axem Titanium 05:31, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
• Strong Keep Useful navigational tool. Not indescriminate. Squarely within WP:LIST. AndyJones 12:49, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep WP:NOT#IINFO does not apply to this article. List of FAQs, travel guide, memorial, instruction manual, internet guide, textbook, plot summary, lyrics, something made up in school. Clearly none of these guidelines apply. --Canley 13:33, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

• Come now. You should know better than that. WP:NOT#IINFO is not limited to just those things. A list of all the people in the US who own a cat doesn't fall under any of those guidelines, are you suggesting that such an article would not correctly be removed under the policy? Otto4711 17:15, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

• The problem with this argument is that you haven't yet connected this article and the one about cats. People can recgonzie the problem with an article about every cat owner. But that doesn't mean we don't have list of cat breeds or other such lists. The real problem is, there is no policy argument that supports your position, and I just don't see a good articulation of why this list is bad. Sure, it's hard to maintain, it's potentially vast...so is Wikipedia. This list isn't any more impossible to manage than Wikipedia itself. Even if it reached the point where it was far too long, it could be broken up into "list of fictional X from American Media" or "list of fictional X from 20th Century Media" or whatever. Mister.Manticore 01:08, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

• "Unencyclopedic" and "unmaintainable" and "indiscriminate collection of information" are more than sufficient justification for deleting this article. It does not benefit Wikipedia to have an article consisting of nothing but the names of fictional companies that appeared in some piece of fiction or another. Is there any significance to the vast majority of the named businesses, even within the works themselves? Hard to say, because vast numbers of them offer no assertion of their notability or indeed any indication of what role they play in the narrative from which they are drawn. There is no value to Wikipedia in having a list to include business names that appear on billboards in video games and otherwise play no role in the game. There is no value in a list that gathers the names of, say, fictional groceries where the hero of the story buys his toilet paper. To which your answer undoubtedly will be that such entries should be excised. Which then brings up the inevitable maintainability issues, not to mention POV issues. If you don't like WP:NOT then how about WP:FICT? If this were a list of characters rather than a list of businesses there would be no question that the article should be deleted. Otto4711 01:49, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

• That would be only your opinion that it's not encyclopedic. However, I disagree. These companies themselves may be the subject of articles themselves, or they may not, but that they can, demonstrates to me that there is potential encyclopedic value to them. This content is real, and if any of it in particular doesn't belong, remove that. And yes, the criteria for this list is very important, and as far as your concerns go, clean-up is an option instead of deletion. I'd say establishing some good criteria would fix your concerns just fine. If you don't want to do it, you don't have to do it. Leave it to someone else to maintain. And I would not agree that there would be no question that these lists would be deleted or not. Your past experience with nominating members of various professions should demonstrate to you that there are questions to it, and valid concerns. So I'm not sure why you think it would be automatically done. While you may think there's no question of deleting these lists, obviously other people do. So perhaps you need to work on either improving your argument, or recognizing where it's not applicable? Mister.Manticore 02:30, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

• As far as nominating lists of professions, it remains my opinion that many of the keep opinons were in respnse to procedural concerns rather than the quality of the articles themselves. But that's neither here nor there in regards this discussion. If you can demonstrate in any convincing way that an encyclopedic article can be written about, oh, just picking a few at random, Big Bud Dean Construction from Heathers or Monumental Pictures from Singin' in the Rain or Ace Tomato Company from Spies Like Us then I will cheerfully concede your point. Otto4711 02:54, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't have to convince you of any of those companies, because I don't believe that they should have an article, though admittedly, I don't know much about any of them, so I really would refrain from expressing anything about them. Of the three entries you named, I only know I've seen one, and that was years ago. I wouldn't even know if they really were in the material. Personal ignorance therefore trumps argument. If you're concerned about those entries, bring it up to the people who added them. Besides, there is no requirement than a list be composed solely of entries with articles. Or even primarily. Still, even if they were, that the material they appeared in has a Wikipedia article is enough for me. And I think the general consensus is that almost any non-self published fictional work is going to be kept. Therefore, I believe that the standard you've created is a false one, and unsupported by Wikipedia practice. If you want me to agree to it, you're going to have to convince me of it first. And as far as the fictional professions go, while some opinions were on that reasons, many others were for actual ones. You should go back and look at them. There are real arguments there, not just procedurally kept ones. Mister.Manticore 04:04, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

But that's precisely my point, and the point of WP:FICT and WP:NOT. That something has a Wikipedia article doesn't mean that every aspect of it should be noted somewhere on Wikipedia. In tonight's episode of Desperate Housewives, Lynette mentioned two companies in single lines of dialog that she wrote ad campaigns for. These companies have never been mentioned before, it's highly unlikely that they'll ever be mentioned again, and we know absolutely nothing about them other than one of them once ran a commercial involving fleas dancing the tango. By your standard, those two companies which mean absolutely nothing in the grander scheme of the work of fiction should be included in the list article. If the criteria for the list are such that these two companies warrant inclusion, then the list is indiscriminate and unencyclopedic. Otto4711 04:22, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

But nobody is asking for every aspect of everything. I do not watch Desperate Housewives, so I don't even know if the companies Lynette mentioned were real or not, or whether or not they would be mentioned in a biography about her, or in the episode of the show. The real problem is, your arguments are worth altering the criteria of the list, not arguments for deleting the page. And as far as it goes, I have not developed a standard for this list, the principle I expressed above was not a criteria for inclusion on this list, but for existence of it. Sorry if that was unclear. I thought I had made the point that I did not disagree with the potential value of better inclusion criteria earlier, but I guess you missed it. However, it is still applicable, and you are certainly welcome to bring it up on the talk pages of that page. That's a clean-up problem, not a deletion one. Mister.Manticore 15:26, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

• If you can come up with some criteria that won't make the list become a nightmare of POV and verifiability (which it already is anyway) then feel free. I don't see the value in the list as it stands and I can't think of any inclusion guidelines which would make it any more valuable. Otto4711 16:16, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Comment What bugs me in debates like this is that those who want the "lists of fictional whatevers" deleted continually cite policy as an argument, to the point of notes to the closing admin that those recommending to keep are not citing policy. WP:LIST, WP:FICT and the oft-cited WP:NOT - none of these explicitly rule against such lists (and my reading of WP:FICT is that it practically recommends lists instead of an article for each entry). There is no black-and-white policy that "lists of fictional entities" are violating, and you have to ask yourself why? I would say, and this seems to backed up by the keep/no consensus results of the frequent AfDs on the topics, that there is considerable community consensus to keep these lists.

Then out will come a logical fallacy like the straw man argument or the slippery slope fallacy - naming a ridiculously broad and unverifiable list criteria (such as "List of Americans who own cats") and the assertion that if I think some lists are OK then I must want to keep the "List of straw men" as well. I'm not the ardent listcruft inclusionist you may think I am, I'll happily recommend delete where I think it is warranted (see List of fictional time travelers who have visited the Reign of Terror), but until it's there in black-and-white in a policy or even an unambiguous guideline, then I will continue to vote and argue as I see fit based on the merits of each list as I see them. --Canley 05:28, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

• I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding the list component of WP:FICT. The policy doesn't suggest making lists of every fictional thing. It states that minor but encyclopedic things should be listed together rather than broken out into separate articles. So a dozen minor but important characters from the same film or book would have one "list of" article rather than a dozen separate articles. Similarly, if there were a fictional work with several minor but important businesses then a "list of businesses in X" article would be appropriate. Nothing in WP:FICT endorses the notion of gathering thousands of unencyclopedic bits of information into a massive list like this. Otto4711 13:20, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

• My point is that WP:FICT does not forbid or even recommend against these lists - a guideline you have mentioned at least twice above as if it backs up your argument. I'm not saying it justifies or recommends creation of these lists... I am merely questioning your use of these same guidelines to back up your arguments when they do nothing of the sort. If I'm fundamentally misunderstanding these guidelines, which is entirely possible of course, please point out to me the statement(s) you think make your point, rather than saying that what isn't in the guidelines does. --Canley 14:02, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

• WP:FICT doesn't explicitly forbid creating a list of right-handed fictional characters or fictional characters who are shown milking cows or all sorts of other trivial things. Nor for that matter does WP:FICT explicitly bar creating a list of all characters who have ever appeared in fiction. Would any such list hold up under an AfD? Lord, I hope not. Yet this is exactly the sort of list this is. Even if one were to accept the argument that WP:FICT doesn't explicitly forbid this list so it's therefore acceptable under WP:FICT, it is still a violation of WP:NOT because the list is an indiscriminate collection of items of information. Otto4711 16:16, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep Valuable list for reseaching fictional works. Lumos3 15:45, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
• keepSome of the above discussion misses the point . It is not necessary for everybody to find a list useful. The analogies given to justify deletion are all about much more arbitrary subjects. There is a way to avoid redlinks, however: on the page for the work of fiction make a section for the company, and redirect to that sectio (assuming its important enough for a section.)DGG 18:56, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete this list is indiscriminant and overbroad. There are many thousands of possible entries, most with dubious notability. Eluchil404 09:10, 18 January 2007 (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.