Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lost further reading

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 delete. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 07:02, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lost further reading

Article was created purposely to be a spam db (see bottom of Talk:Lost (TV series)/Fansites, any internal links just duplicate Lost (TV series). Wikipedia is not a link database. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 08:32, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

• The talk page referenced above was an attempt to find a compromise between two very polarized factions. Extrapolating from that good-faith effort (which included two alternatives intended to span the range between the opposing editors) to assuming that the current article's motivation is vanity or "spam db" is a misrepresentation. --Santaduck 09:28, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

• Read: WP:SPAM#If you canvass, this as well, specificly: "Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article here would have once it becomes a Wikipedia:Featured article.", "Any site that contains factually inaccurate material or unverified original research, as detailed in Wikipedia:Reliable sources.", "A website that you own or maintain, even if the guidelines above imply that it should be linked to. This is because of neutrality and point-of-view concerns; neutrality is an important objective at Wikipedia, and a difficult one. If it is relevant and informative, mention it on the talk page and let other — neutral — Wikipedia editors decide whether to add the link.", "Links to sites that violate the copyrights of others per contributors' rights and obligations. Sites which fail to provide licensing information or to respond to requests for licensing information should not be used. (Knowingly and intentionally directing others to a site that violates copyright has been considered a form of contributory infringement in the United States.)" and also read Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. Hopefully "Do not spam." has sunk in now. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 09:34, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

• Your last sentence is mildly derogatory, and is not necessary. In response, I will reiterate that you are proving my point that you are focusing only on the external link / spam issue, which is obviously an issue near and dear to you, but only peripheral to the current article, to which you've nonetheless recommended a complete deletion rather than suggestions for changing its content. It also seems you've brought along other like-minded editors (I might be wrong, but you posted the afd twelve hours after article creation, then the next two delete votes by familiar editors follwed, the first (pjacobi) within 3 minutes, and the next (ptkfgs) within 21 minutes) from the previous debates. Also continued to be ignored by the current discussion are the contents of the article's talk page which were available before you made the afd. --Santaduck 11:25, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

• Delete, I'd prefer speedily. --Pjacobi 08:35, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. This all seems to have started with a dispute over whether to add an external link to Lostpedia from the article about the TV series. What a lot of collateral damage it's caused! Concur with nomination. —ptk✰fgs 08:53, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - Despite the comments of the above, this article is trying to avoid that counterproductive almost-flamewar to which the above two editors are frequent contributors. As a case in point, see their delimitation of the discussion to the presence of external links, which is not the primary motivation for this article. In contrast, justification for the current article was in article talk (and ignored in the above comments), as both Portal:Star Trek and Star Trek further reading exist (i.e. analogous articles for a fictional universe with an extended storyline and fanbase across various media), along the same parameters as this article. Any justification for deletion should take these articles, as well as others in to account. Thank you. As a further note, there is the WP-wide issue of statute vs. precedence, and the above editors seem biased toward statute.--Santaduck 09:16, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
  • If the concern is duplicate links, these could be offloaded from an borderline-long parent article. Note that many of the categories are not redundant between the two articles. Further the Lost Experience links are not duplicated in the main article. Also the presence of the navigation is analogous with the use of one in the Star Trek main article. I am trying to follow precedence of similar extant articles, and any constructive suggestions along those lines would be welcomed, and immediately implemented. --Santaduck 09:23, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Due to the existing pool of already-opinionated editors from both sides, I'd informally like to solicit commentary from long-time WP editors who frequent AFD pages, but are not previously invested in issues closely related to this article (Lost). Or, if someone could take the initiative as the vote goes on to identify which voting editors have already been involved in the issues related to Lost articles, and those who have not.--Santaduck 09:34, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Star Trek further reading isn't really a useful comparison here. Star Trek has been around for 40 years, there are five separate series, a slew of movies, hundreds of novels, etc. People have written doctoral dissertations on Star Trek. There are college courses on it, for crying out loud, and reams and reams of written material. I'm not sure we need a "further reading" article on it, and in fact I'd say we have about 20 times as much Star Trek crud here as we need, but it's clearly in a class by itself.

I haven't edited anything on Wikipedia related to Lost until this crap started spilling over into other articles. I've never seen it. I'm sure it's a great series. We don't need this article. —ptk✰fgs 09:38, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. Good God, this is supposed to be an encyclopedia, not a link depository. -- Steel 12:36, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete a cruft fork. The signficant ones are sources for Lost, the balance should not be here. Guy 14:46, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete WP:NOT a link directory. This is a complete spam magnet. Ultra-Loser Talk / Contributions 14:50, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Speedy Delete. This article is simply the latest foray in the months-long, ever-recurring battle by Lostpedians (who otherwise don't contribute to WP much at all) to get a link on WP to their site. See the long and contentious fansites discussion pointed to by the nominator. -- PKtm 15:47, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Untrue: your fallacy is that a link to Lostpedia is the primary motivation to this article; further there are no WP editors in this vote thread (thus far) who "other don't contribute to WP much at all". Santaduck 19:51, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete WP:NOT QuiteUnusual 16:58, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, but add a link to The Lostpedia (www.lostpedia.com) There should be a suitable link to the Lostpedia someplace in the Lost articles. The site is good, with lots of content, and such a link could drive fancruft off the Wikipedia to a place where it is needed. -Dr Haggis - Talk 17:58, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - per guideline WP:WEB, which notes, "There is also consensus amongst many Wikipedia editors that Wikipedia is not a web directory, in that it is not a site that specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links."--Leflyman^Talk 18:29, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• DELETE! DELETE! DELETE!!!, per above. SergeantBolt (t,c) 18:43, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. -- Wikipedical 20:10, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete-I think this falls under WP:POINT. --Kahlfin 20:18, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete This isn't even pretending to be an article, one of the defining elements of which is that it has... well... content. It's just a bunch of links. GassyGuy 21:00, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete --Yamla 04:20, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] fan sites re: afd

• Note: external links for fan sites have now been removed, as suggested above. Rationale for AFD, as listed by the above editors voting for "Delete" has now been addressed. Article structure is now analogous to the precedence of Star Trek further reading, with the exception of the removal of these links. Santaduck 19:57, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Exception: note that Web 2.0 external links have been retained to illustrate the strength of this phenomenon. IMHO they illustrate an aspect of Lost fandom without being spam. However if these links too are distasteful, they may be easily removed (without resorting to deletion of the entire article based on external links which no longer exist in the article.) Santaduck 20:04, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
    • Rationale for AFD, as listed by the above editors voting for "Delete" has now been addressed.
      No it hasn't. -- Steel 20:18, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
    • Web 2.0? It's a link farm. Please refer to WP:EL. —ptk✰fgs 20:21, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
      • Section removed as per your suggestion. At this point the primary rationale noted in the afd has been addressed. --Santaduck 22:38, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
        • Still a link db, ext/int or not, we have categories for this thing. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 22:41, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
        • Please stop saying that the rationale for the AfD has been addressed. Regardless of the nominator's comments, nothing short of deleting the entire article will address my concern. I'm sure this applies to others who've participated in this discussion too. -- Steel 22:50, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

• As far as I can tell, this is now an entirely pointless and redundant List. How is it any different than the actual LostNav template used on every actual Lost article, and the External Links at Lost Experience? -- Leflyman^Talk 02:32, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

• Attempting to remedy your concern; see section stub. However I am assuming the bad faith among the editors above will result in no substantive contributions from editors other than myself, as no constructive suggestions have been provided thus far. --Santaduck 18:35, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Equating disagreement with bad faith is both misguided and offensive. Please review WP:AGF. -- PKtm 18:45, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

I always begin assuming good faith. This assumption can change based on evidence, for example through comments I have seen of some editors in articles talks, such as yourself: 1) focusing on external links almost exclusively in this afd with "strong delete" with no reference to the article as a whole until this strange emphasis was explicitly questioned; 2) other misinformation as well as comments that have been construed by other editors as a vendetta in other talks such as the Lostpedia afd (see also the deletion review/DRV linked at the top of that page), are the reasons I have overturned my opening assumption of good faith. In other words, your own past comments subjectively suggest to me that the issue of Lostpedia has strongly affected the severity of your comments on this article. Also, based on your past comments, I further suggest that your posting of the obvious ( WP:AGF ) was possibly intended as derogatory toward me as well. --Santaduck 01:36, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Update Oct 23

• Still working on article to address concerns raised in the AFD. The most significant addition is the addition of a reading list with commentary on the significance of each piece. Working on getting sources for all of the claims.

The intent is that the content is substantially updated from the version that existed at the creation of the AFD (which signifcantly was opened by an editor who has been described by others as having a "vendetta" against one particular external link (Lostpedia.com) which was only a peripheral part of this article, and which in any case, no longer exists in this article. (See DRV here and AFD here). --Santaduck 01:58, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to ask that you please drop the talk of "vendetta", which borders on a personal attack. Again, equating disagreement with "vendetta" is misguided and dismissive of everyone's right to a respectful dialog here. You take the interesting logical leap of saying that because I've commented in the past about how I feel that a link to Lostpedia (a site I happen to enjoy quite a bit) is wrong for Wikipedia, I'm somehow part of a vendetta, and that my comments must be derogatory and/or in bad faith. Disagreement does not equate to derogatory either. So please dial it back. Thanks, PKtm 04:49, 24 October 2006 (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.