Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/USS Farragut (Star Trek)

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 Merge to List of Starfleet starships ordered by class. —Quarl ^(talk) 2007-02-26 08:52Z

[edit] USS Farragut (Star Trek)

USS Farragut (Star Trek) (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Delete Yet another page on non-notable Star Trek starships. This article is about one starship that appeared in dialogue in a single television episode and never appeared on screen, another that appeared on film for about ten seconds without having any significant role in the film and another that appeared in a single television episode for about ten seconds without playing a significant role.} AlistairMcMillan 14:40, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. Star Trek has its own wiki for this kind of page. Feeeshboy 14:42, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
• Delete WP:N is the notability guideline for Wikipedia, and says "A topic is notable if it has been the subject of reliable published works, whose sources are independent of the subject itself." This article has no such references, and none are likely to be found. A Wikipedia-like source is cited which is devoted to Startrek, but that is inherently unreliable. The other possible cite is to the episode where it is mentioned, but that is not independent. Inkpaduta 14:50, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
• Delete a ship which plays only a minor role in the star trek universe.-- danntm ^T _C 15:06, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep or redirect per WP:STARTREKISALWAYSNOTABLE. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 17:23, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
• Redirect - ship from notable series. - Peregrine Fisher 17:25, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes Star Trek is notable. Every single piece of minutiae is not notable. AlistairMcMillan 21:57, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

• Redirect to List of Starfleet starships ordered by class which seems to be the appropriate page for this kind of information. Mister.Manticore 19:23, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Why redirect? The "List of Starfleet starships..." doesn't actually tell us anything that isn't already covered in the articles that link to "USS Farragut (Star Trek)". What do we gain by keeping this around as a redirect? AlistairMcMillan 21:09, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Redirects are cheap, why not redirect? It might also discourage people from re-making the article in the future. Mister.Manticore

Not as cheap as not having them (and the associated page history) in the first place. AlistairMcMillan 21:56, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Too late for that, the only way you can permanently fix that problem is a time machine. But honestly, there's no great cost associated with keeping the history, storage space is cheap in the details, it's only in the aggregate that it gets costly. So as arguments go, I'm not convinced. You'd be better off working for more efficient methods of data storage or pruning of the whole of Wikipedia. Mister.Manticore 22:56, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

• Keep The vast amount of information is what makes wikipedia great. This is that kind of things that is so notable with wikipedia in comparison to other encyclopedias. Ask yourself what encyclopedia would have such great nerdy information like a complete listing of all episodes of every damn TV series or an explanation of the timelines in 'Back to the future' Movies. Just like that kind of information makes wikipedia great, this information adds equally to the greatness. Lord Metroid 22:20, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, Wikipedia is great because we have articles on fictional starships that even to Star Trek fans or even the people that created the series are hardly notable. Fabulous. And hey it's not like Wikipedia has rules about notability or anything... AlistairMcMillan 00:57, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I think I see a problem here. I don't know about you, but I see any rules on Wikipedia as methods to help improve the content of Wikipedia, and as such, saying "But this violates the rules" is not a persuasive argument. That just comes across too coercively for me. You need something more than that to persuade me, like explaining why it's a problem. And that's not even getting into the problems with notability anyway. It is a contentious subject on a lot of fronts. Mister.Manticore 02:08, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

This issue is real simple. These starships are only notable for the roles they play in the episodes/films, as such they should only be mentioned in the articles on those episodes/films. We aren't talking about ships like Enterprise or Voyager that appear throughout whole series, or even ships like Excelsior that make multiple appearances in more than one film/episode. We are talking about one ship that was mentioned in one episode, never appeared in that episode or any other, and was never mentioned again. Another ship that appeared for seconds at the end of Generations with no significance whatsoever and never appeared again. And one or more ships that were briefly mentioned in throwaway lines of dialogue in DS9. Only the Original Series Farragut even begins to approach something that is worth mentioning, and it is only interesting from the point of view the character Kirk or the episode Obsession. The ship is mentioned in both articles. There is nothing else that can be said about it here, so why do we have this article? What does Wikipedia gain from having this article? AlistairMcMillan 03:02, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that given the disagreement here, it's not as simple as you claim. I could say that it's simply obvious to me that this should be kept, but I doubt that would persuade you. You might even find it offensive. So I'll try to explain in a better way. The point about having other articles is that it provides information that may not be apparent on reading the episode's article. How would you know from reading any of those episode articles that the Farragut or the other ships you nominated also had ships of the same name in other episodes? Perhaps this information doesn't interest you, but it does interest many people (in fact, I'd say that the use of names like Farragut and Enterprise reflects an ongoing interest in historical names for ships that the Trek writers are presupposing as continuing into the future). So while I can understand the desire to condense information, there's also a desire to present it explicitly as that can be more helpful in terms of presentation. I find a page like List of Starfleet starships ordered by class to be an excellent way to present information about a reasonably interesting and notable subject that is far more helpful to me than just having the information spread across articles on dozens of different television episodes and movies. Thus I would support merging and redirecting this page to that. It'd serve the need of presenting the various ships separately from the episode pages, by collating them into one logical place. Any that get sufficiently long can be split elsewhere. I really don't see a need to delete. This isn't bad content, and as Wikpedia is not paper, it makes sense to take advantage of the ability to cover minor topics. Mister.Manticore 03:31, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay I'm only going to respond to one thing here. You say you like List of Starfleet starships ordered by class, please go look at the edit history, specifically the first fifty or so edits. Then how about you look at the edit history on an article like Rick Sternbach. I'm not suggesting this article be deleted because I hate Star Trek, or because I'm not interested in the specific subject.

Wikipedia has policies. If you want information included here you have to follow the policies. This article fails WP:NOTE and more specifically WP:FICT. If you don't like the policies please devote your energies to changing the policies, not suggesting we ignore them. AlistairMcMillan 03:55, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Again you refer to policies in a way that troubles me. The point of policies is use them to improve Wikipedia, not to have some set of rules that simply can't be violated. If those policies inevitably lead to the deletion of otherwise valuable information, then I would say those policies need to be changed, not information deleted. And I don't know why you want me to look at the history of those pages. Is it because you think you're going to show something about yourself? You're not going to show me anything other than you want to try to make your arguments matter more because of some past actions. That you weren't even direct about it makes me even more doubtful about doing so. I don't know about anyone else, but speaking for myself, you'd have been better off directly saying something more like "I am concerned about Star Trek articles and I do not oppose their existence" . It wouldn't be a particularly good argument, since it'd still be asserting you over the merits of your position, but it'd at least be forthright. Sorry, but what you've done before matters not to what I think you're saying here(and your chosen method makes it irritating to me), and I still think that you are mistaken in your insistence on deletion. Deletion is not the not the only solution, there are other methods available. Deletion is but one tool in the Wikipedia improvement shed, there are others. Mergers, redirects, clean-up tags. In this case, I would have used them. I doubt anybody would have protested, and this long AfD wouldn't have happened, or any of the numerous others possible. Mister.Manticore 07:30, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

You think Wikipedia is improved by having an article like this? AlistairMcMillan 19:22, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I fail to see how Wikipedia is harmed by containing the information, this isn't patent nonsense or absolute trash. It's a reasonably well-written article on a distinct subject. As far as it goes, I find this kind of article several orders of magnitude more valuable than any number of articles on politicians, musicians or state highways, but I also think it might be better to present it in a combined page rather than many separate pages. Mister.Manticore 23:10, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

They are not rules they are policies and guidelines and there are other statements of wikipedia policy to tell you to throw these guidelines in the garbage if they are inapropiate. Lord Metroid 11:16, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

• Delete No attempt to establish notability. Kyaa the Catlord 09:33, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
• I agree that there are ST-wikis into whih this could go. OTOH, re notability, the article points out an instance of three ST vessels, all canon, with the same name, which to the best of my, is (outside the Enterprises) an unique occurrance. Keep as notable and as useful disambig. -- Simon Cursitor 12:37, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Three vessels about which we know... nothing. Kirk served on one, another bussed the Enterprise crew at the end of Generations and the other(s) were only mentioned briefly in throw-away lines of dialogue. AlistairMcMillan 19:22, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

• Merge and delete merge into List of Starfleet starships ordered by class and then delete. WP:NOTEVERYPIECEOFFREAKINGSTARTREKTRIVIAISNOTABLE (hi Matthew :D ) --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 22:14, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
• Delete WP:FICT: "Wikipedia articles on works of fiction should contain real-world context and sourced analysis, offering detail on a work's achievements, impact or historical significance, not solely a summary of that work's plot." No real-world notability, no reliable sources cited. Take it to a fan wiki. -- IslaySolomon | talk 23:44, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
• Commet Let us at least consider merging these articles of lesser vessels in Star Trek to one article and redirect. That way the information is adequate for an article and preserved for interested people as well as easier to maintain. Lord Metroid 15:34, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
• Redirect to List of Starfleet starships ordered by class. Per above redirects are cheap. VegaDark 08:46, 26 February 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.