Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Snowball (Hurricane Katrina dog) (2nd nomination)

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 let count... 1, 2, 3, ... 11m, 2k/m, 15k(2anon) ...uh.... no consensus. Surely it's not a delete closing though. I suggest having a discussion on the article talkpage on whether to merge or not would be good. - Mailer Diablo 14:18, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Snowball (Hurricane Katrina dog) (2nd nomination)

For the previous nomination, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Snowball (Hurricane Katrina dog).

I'm nominating this on AfD as a response to User:Khatores's comment on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Patrick Thomas Kycia, which I closed as "delete" and deleted. I'm just a janitor - I don't decide consensus, I determine it and carry it out. As for this dog, sure it has had media attention, but so have a lot of humans. Surely humans are more important than dogs? Weak delete. — JIP | Talk 07:08, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Can you say 'POV'?! ;) Trollderella 02:51, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I change my vote to merge per everyone else. — JIP | Talk 07:43, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

• Merge into one of the Hurricane articles - the previous AFD was a sockpuppet-fest and should probably have been closed as a merge. Alphax ^τεχ 07:29, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
• Trim & Merge with Hurricane_Katrina#Animal_concerns, as was suggested in the previous afd. --anetode¹ ² ³ 08:50, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
• Trim lots and Merge per Anetode - mholland 10:37, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
• Hey, Snowball. Nice to see you again. Let's hope you never have to come back. Merge and redirect as per Anetode, delete otherwise. Lord Bob 14:48, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
• Merge and redirect as per Anetode. Worth noting but not as standalone article. Capitalistroadster 16:36, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
• Merge as above. Radiant_>|< 00:50, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
• Keep - I would vote merge, but there's a lot of material. Trollderella 00:52, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
• Merge and Drastically Cut Down - way way too much info for a minor footnote to the Katrina disaster. Bwithh 01:22, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Too much for what purpose? If someone is interested in these stories, and many people are, then it's not too much information. It's not like we're hurting for space! Trollderella 01:31, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

• My personal opinion is that the article should be deleted (nn, minor ephemeral news story), but feel compelled to vote keep as a matter of policy, since there was an AfD about a month ago with a fully-realized discussion. I wouldn't mind revisiting this in a year or so, though. MCB 01:37, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
• Merge a few lines or so into Hurricane Katrina per others. Even though there was an AfD a month ago, the issue was still very new at that time, a current event which may have influenced the decision to keep. I think a month is a good amount of time for a reevaluation of this matter.--Kewp (t) 09:45, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

• KEEP* - My vote is to keep this article. It is well written and documents an incident (the AP story about 'Snowball' and the subsequent media fuery -- that prompted a change in US government policy relating to evacuees being allowed to take their pets with them. This change in FEMA policy would likly not have occured without the story of Snowball's plight. (left by 68.99.130.81)
• Merge does not deserve its own article and cannot really stand solo. Merge into Hurricane Katrina as a small paragraph.  ALKIVAR™ 11:21, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. Why would anyone want to delete this? It's a great story, nicely written with references. There are no grounds within the deletion policy for deleting it. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 11:26, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
• Keep for all the reasons it was kept last time. There is far too much of an article to justify merging it.--Nicodemus75 12:49, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
• Keep Notable story OmegaWikipedia 14:22, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
• Merge and chop out 90% of it. Repeated block quotes from news stories doesn't qualify as good writing. Notability over-stated: "Snowball's plight became a vocal point for criticism..." Hm. Marskell 14:29, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
• Strong Keep When I heard about this story, I came to Wikipedia first to find out more about it. I'm sure I'm not the first and only person to do so. I agree with the anon poster above how there were changes made at the federal level so people could take their animals with them in the event of a disaster. I do think it is a notable story and while this may not be of interest to some, it is to others. Maltmomma ^(chat) 17:19, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
• Strong delete. In fifty years, is this going to be of any reasonable notability? For that matter, is it of any reasonable notability now? This is the sort of thing that belongs at Wikinews, and not here. Encyclopedia articles are about topics of high importance, not stories about a boy's lost dog, no matter how sad they may be (although I'm certain this couldn't possibly be any more sad or involving than the stories involving thousands of children and babies seperated from their parents. Are we to write articles for all of them as well?) --FuriousFreddy 19:46, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
• Keep or Merge, just don't delete... Redwolf24 (talk) 23:04, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. This article has grown well enough that it's rather pointless to pare down the content in a merge, and it has references to coverage in national news media. --Idont Havaname 03:44, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Widespread media coverage establishes notability, and the article is well-sourced. As to the 50 years question, I think Snowball will likely end up as one of the enduring images of one of the worst natural disasters in American history, sort of like Eddie Adams's photo of the executed Vietcong soldier became a sort of historical shorthand for the events of the Vietnam War. Merge would be better than delete, but there's enough info here that like Trollderella, I worry about whether a merge could be unwieldy. -Colin Kimbrell 03:51, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
• As before, delete. It was glurge the first time, it's putrefied glurge now. There is nothing notable in this article to merge anywhere; any merge that would be of encyclopedic merit would consist of nothing more than During and after the hurricane, many people were separated from their pets. One of those pets, Snowball, was the subject of minor media attention that lasted about a week until the next human-interest story surfaced to claim column inches. Come on. News is news; an encyclopedia is something different. Not every media circle-jerk is encyclopedic, and certainly not this one. -EDM 07:18, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Notable story - disk space is cheap. Unbehagen 20:26, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
• Keep because there is plenty of information, it is a notable story, and merging would be unwieldy. Speculating what will or won't be important 50 years into the future is not a good idea. Yamaguchi先生 03:21, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
• Keep or Merge - It cant be ignored as if it never happened. --AGruntsJaggon 06:38, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
• I simply cannot understand what some of these people are doing working on this encyclopaedia. It's enough to make you weep. Keep. Grace Note 03:33, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Everyking 12:16, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Do not merge, do not pass go. —RaD Man (talk) 05:08, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Very notable, and too much information to merge. --Deathphoenix 15:57, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
• STRONG KEEP: This story does matter and a place for updates is important. Too many people miss the point of this story. It is not just about the little dog, it is about the little boy too. What an especially horrible experience for him! He will carry this burden with him for the rest of his life. Of course we still care about him. (Unsigned comment by 204.42.16.169

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.