Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/UNIT dating controversy

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 No consensus. —Quarl ^(talk) 2007-03-08 11:19Z

[edit] UNIT dating controversy

UNIT dating controversy (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Consists by definition of fan speculation. Indiscriminate jumble of dates and contradictory "evidence." Compare to a similar, now-deleted article for The West Wing. Andrew Levine 23:24, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

• I confess WP:ILIKEIT, but perhaps this is material best suited for Wikia's Tardis. Quelle surprise! Unit dating controversy. Delete. --Dhartung | Talk 00:45, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. Just because an unrelated article on The West Wing (which has really no similarities to this one) was deleted on its third nomination, does not set a precedent that this must be. The UNIT dating controversy is a major element of discussion regarding Doctor Who and I believe was created in order to prevent the main article on UNIT becoming overlong. It's sourced, and it is not OR nor is it a fanon concept. I'd support renaming the article if people think the title is a bit too POV-ish. 23skidoo 01:06, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
• Strong Keep - Your description of the article is very inaccurate, Andrew Levine. The page is not jumbled, as you say, and even if it was, that would be a reason to cleanup the article, not delete it. By you putting quotes around evidence, you presumably mean that most of this stuff is just made up, but in fact each and every fact as a direct link to an episode of Doctor Who or other spin-off media, confirming the fact's verifiability. I say the same for 'fan speculation', this article just states the facts as they appear. Unless a proper reason is seen for deletion, other than 'It happened somewhere else so it automatically happens here', you do not have a case for AfD. Smomo 01:25, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep - It's not OR - the evidence is contradictory because it has to be; any attempts to reconcile it would be OR. I'd like to see the off-screen evidence section expanded, and the sources cleaned up a bit, but I don't see this a candidate for deletion. --Brian Olsen 01:46, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep - Information is detailed and relevant. The separate page is justified given its length and that of its parent page. I think that whether or not the details on this page are duplicated elsewhere online is largely irrelevant. --The Missing Hour 02:36, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep — the West Wing page was deleted in part because of OR concerns. This page cites two published works which have dealt extensively with this controversy. The article could be reorganized to rely more heavily on the secondary sources (AHistory and About Time) and less heavily on the primary sources (the conflicting evidence from Doctor Who episodes, etc.), but that's an argument for improvement, not deletion. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 02:41, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
• Merge anything useful into the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce article. The bulk of this article is trivia/speculation, and come on, is it really a "Controversy" that there is continuity errors across series of a long-running TV show? - fchd 08:04, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Just take a look at Star Trek: Enterprise... DrWho42 23:26, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

• Keep page is necessary per The Missing Hour and not OR per Josiah Rowe. Probably should be renamed to avoid "controversy", though. Percy Snoodle 11:05, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep - cites reliable secondary sources, plenty of content to justify a page of its own. Matthew 11:15, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep - This has been written about in quite a number of secondary sources, plus several of the stories that contradict each other have tried to cover this on their own pages but it proved a mess that got out of sync. Even putting it on the UNIT page got out of hand and distorted an article that should be about the organisation. Timrollpickering 12:59, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep with Comment Regarding the sources, above all else this article needs a footnote right at the end of the first sentence to verify that the controversy exists and is notable enough to warrant an article. I respect the references as published works on the overall subject of Doctor Who, and in and of themselves those references satisfy WP:V but a direct page citation regarding this specific subtopic is desperately needed for WP:N. Show me this is an ongoing controvery, don't tell me. -Markeer 17:35, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment FourSeven such footnotes have now been provided. Incidentally, I was considering the argument that "controversy" was too strong a term to use for this fan debate, but it turns out that it's pretty much what the two most significant sources use (see the footnotes). —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:07, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Comment Well, I wish all AfD critiques got that level of quality response, excellent footnotes. Far as I'm concerned those completely eliminate any question of WP:N, WP:OR and WP:V. -Markeer 14:34, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. This is fancruft that is suitable for a fan website, but has no place in a serious encyclopedia. And anyway, this article is of the kind that would only be started by someone participating in the debate, and the same is true of all subsequent edits - this is just a small number of fans talking to themselves, and since they all are all participants in the debate we have CoI, so this article should go. WMMartin 13:48, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: Erm, did you see the footnotes and references? It is true that this is a controversy limited to Doctor Who fans, but there are many reliable sources who discuss this. To my knowledge, none of the authors mentioned in the article have edited the page, so there is no conflict of interest. If this were an article about an obscure academic controversy, the number of individuals in the discussion might be even smaller. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 16:51, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Comment, I saw the references, but for the life of me I still can't see why this discussion about a series of continuity errors merits an article in a general-purpose encyclopedia. - fchd 17:23, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
      • Comment: Sounds like WP:IDONTLIKEIT to me. "Arguments that the nature of the subject is unencyclopaedic (for example individual songs or episodes of a TV show) should also be avoided in the absence of clear policies or guidelines against articles on such subjects." —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:32, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
        • Comment. I am content to rest on WP:IGNORE here. While this article may technically meet our guidelines, common sense tells me this has no place here, but would be better suited to a fan forum. Being an encyclopedia doesn't mean we have to cover everything in the universe that might be of interest to someone, somewhere. WMMartin 15:03, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. There are, after all, plenty of other places online where this sort of thing can be written about and / or debated. I'm not saying it shouldn't be here at all, but I think by far the best course of action would be to condense it and fold it back into United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, turning this page into a redirect there. Angmering 23:30, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment Last itme that happened, that article got so over complex and confusing that this was article was created. This is just history repeating itself over and over, which is silly. Keep. Smomo 16:56, 7 March 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.