Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Villain (2007 film)

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. The arguments for deletions are rooted in policy. When the film is actually released, or some reliable references are released, the article can be (re)created. There's no rush - see meta:Eventualism. Proto::type 10:13, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Villain (2007 film)

Villain (2007 film) (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Non-notable film, as well as recreation of previously deleted article - see prior AfD. Film is listed on IMDB, but that alone is not a standard reference for notability. Article contains many crystal ball statements and unsourced speculation and/or personal speculation about this future film. Initial Google searches were inconclusive due to the film's common name, but search on "villain +Benfer" yeilds only 127 unique out of 591 total, which is fairly low, and only about half of those unique actually refer to this film. With the exception of a passing reference on the FilmThreat website, no other mentions are from major sites. Until the film is ever released/and or can provide reputable citations, I recommend Delete. MikeWazowski 19:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

• Delete Exceptionally non-notable. Articles on unreleased films should be avoided unless there is extensive press coverage, which clearly does not exist here. Fan-1967 19:42, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete unimportant, if the movie is made then article can be recreated. ReverendG 04:55, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Keep. Let us see the criteria at WP:NF. "Has the film actually entered production or is it just rumored or expected to be made?" The people involved with the film (not just the director) have made independent statements about their work on the film, so it would seem that the film is more than a rumour. Some links: ([1] [2]) [3] [4]

"Will the film be notable upon release?" It will be, because according to IMDB it will feature work by several notable people, including Warwick Davis, Hunter Gomez, Nathan Furst (music), David Rand and Jason Yanofsky (visual effects). It is also being partially produced by Newgrounds (Tom Fulp is the CEO).

Perhaps the problem here is that those notable people haven't yet made official statements confirming their roles in the film (EDIT: with the exception of Hunter Gomez - see "further comment" post below). However, neither has any of them tried to get it removed from their profile on IMDB, and some of them have been there for months now (Warwick Davis has been there since September, I think). You would think that ONE of them would have noticed and tried to get it removed by now if it wasn't true. Of course, I'm not sure exactly how the IMDB system works - perhaps I'm wrong and they wouldn't be able to.

So it is established that the film IS being worked on, but its notability rests on the trustworthiness of IMDB. I think that we should take a wait-and-see approach here. It can be mentioned in the article that those people have not yet independently confirmed that they are in the film. However, it could well be a big waste of many people's time to delete this article now. Being UNSURE if something is notable or not is not the same as being SURE of its non-notability, and in this case it is the former which is true. Until more information appears, I believe that this article should stay, but with "citation needed" notes for the involvement of those people who give it notability. As I see it, there is not currently enough information to judge whether it is notable or not per wikipedia standards, but there seems to be more likelihood that it is notable at the moment than the opposite. We SHOULD NOT make such a decision until the information becomes available, one way or the other - it is far better to err on the side of caution and wait. Esn 09:17, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

• Comment IMDB frequently has unreliable information on unreleased films, unless you really believe that Saw IV is going to be a musical with Jessica Alba and Goran Visnjic. As for deleting something because we're unsure, that is exactly our policy. We must be sure of something in order to keep it. Fan-1967 14:49, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Comment: I can't seem to find that passage. However, I've looked at WP:DP and found this: "Repeated re-creation of an article by previously unassociated editors may be evidence of a need for an article, but repeated nominations for deletion are not necessarily evidence that an article should be deleted, and in some cases, repeated attempts to have an article deleted may even be considered disruptive. If in doubt, don't delete." There's another reason to doubt here, which is that the director, Robert Benfer, may in fact be notable. The admin who deleted his entry and prevented its recreation this october (see page logs) based his judgement on this deletion vote in February 2005. A review of his notability since that time has not been undertaken despite the release of a feature film in 2005 which (according to Filmthreat [5]) sold 2000 copies in its first month despite being sold only online. According to WP:BIO, "a large fan base, fan listing or "cult" following" and "Name recognition" may be signs of notability. It would seem to me that he satisfies those criteria: he's the 6th-most bookmarked artist on Newgrounds (a website with over 1 million members), he's recognized within the stop motion animation community (a search for "knox", on animateclay.com results in 369 news & forum entries - to compare, a search for "Wallace and Gromit" results in 755 entries), his home page has been visited about 13 million times and his films on Newgrounds had been viewed 10,959,036 times as of Oct. 12, 2006.

I realize that this is not the place to vote for undeletion of the Robert Benfer article - I am just pointing out here that there seems to be more evidence leaning in favour of this film being notable than the opposite. To review what we have so far:

1) The film IS already being produced - this by itself fulfills one of the requirements of WP:NF

2) The film would be notable if the cast list on IMDB was true

3) The film would be notable if the director (who was last checked for notability on wikipedia over a year and a half ago) currently fulfilled the requirements on notability. This deletion discussion will finish soon, and there is not enough time to get a proper deletion review on the director, so I am presenting the evidence that I would have presented over there here for your judgement.

4) WP:DP says "If in doubt, don't delete." Not only are we in doubt, but there seems to be more likelyhood currently that this film is indeed notable.

Esn 21:11, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Further comment: Sorry, I said before that "those notable people haven't yet made official statements confirming their roles in the film". That's slightly wrong - Hunter Gomez has (in the "current projects" section on his website, here). I'm not quite sure if his record so far would make him notable per wikipedia standards (he had some minor roles in some famous projects), but I thought I'd mention it. Esn 23:18, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Comment - Benfer's notability has been discussed much more recently than February 2005. See AfDs on name variations here (2/06), here (3/06), and the original AfD on the Villain film and Knox together (2/06). And for reference sake, a Google search (a better reference point than animateclay) on "Wallace and Gromit" brings back nearly 1.2 million returns - a striking difference to the 591 I got on "Villian +Benfer". Also, without an independent verification, site counters, especially on sites like this bent on self-promotion, are easily modified or misleading - it the counter for hits or actual visitors? The site doesn't say. Also, "views" on sites like Newgrounds are misleading as well, because, if say one person watches a video 100 times, that counted as 100 views, not 1 viewer. Totals can be run up that way. However, all of that is beside the point - we're discussing the notability of Villain, and based on reputable secondary sources, right now, it has no notability and does not need an article. Should the thing actually get released and achieve some level or notoriety, come back then. MikeWazowski 03:19, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Comment: My bad, I did not notice those later nominations. However, the first of them at least only seems to prove my point - most of the responses are favourable to the article, and the nomination was withdrawn. The reason given by the admin for deleting the article in that case was that it had been recreated many times and always deleted based on that decision on Feb 13, 2005. The admin explains it in the talk page here, and it should be noted that there were some reasonable arguments made against his decision there. The March, 2006 deletion review featured two "keep" voters whose arguments were not adressed by any of the other users who voted "delete" (none of the "delete" voters gave much reason for their votes except to say "per nom" and none of them attempted to discredit the points made by the two "keep" voters). This 2/06 AFD was made when the article was considerably more crystal-ballish than it is now. There is now confirmation from several different sources that the film is indeed being worked on, and there seems to be a probability that the film will indeed be notable when it comes out (if Benfer is telling the truth about the people involved on his website - and so far, what he's said has been eventually confirmed by other people). Your comment about the unreliability of the counter seems a little dubious, considering that he uses a regular free counter from freelogs.com to count the hits on his website (unless you're suggesting that he bribes the company to get it to show ~13,500,000 hits). As for Newgrounds, it is true that every single view is counted, not every single user. However, he has ~11,000,000 views on Newgrounds, spread out among 101 films. That's about 110,000 views per film - someone would have to have a LOT of time on their hands in order to fake that many views. Even if each film was watched twice by the average user, that's an awful lot of views. Also, as of this date, there are 30,885 individual reviews for his films on Newgrounds (about 300 a film on average - far more than most submissions to Newgrounds, which typically get about 20). But you're right, that's besides the point. My point is that I disagree with your opinion about the notability of this article, based on all of the evidence that I've presented so far. I'll leave it to other wikipedia members to decide which of us presents the best argument. (by the way, just as an extra note: a google search for "villain +knox" turns up 125,000 searches, but things are made difficult because even though Robert Benfer is known as "knox" more often than as himself, "knox" is a fairly commonly used word in general) Esn 04:41, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

• Keep: Though the article appears to be a little crystal-ballish, the entire article seems to be fairly legit and like several other non-considered-for-deletion upcoming movie stubs . I think it's pretty harsh to just consider the article for deletion instead of just taking out the non-preferable stuff. -- D•a•r•k•n•e•s•s•L•o•r•d•i•a•n•••CCD••• 21:39, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
• Weak keep; seems just barely notable enough. - A Link to the Past (talk) 22:20, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. Dionyseus 23:38, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per Esn. Kc4 18:08, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nomination. Fails notability guidelines for film, in my opinion - no non-trivial published references that I could find. TheRealFennShysa 19:58, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Comment: it is true that it fails one of the three "factors to consider" for unreleased films on WP:NF (that being the "multiple, non-trivial news stories"). However, as I explained above in my posts, it seems to fulfill the other two. Esn 20:56, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

• Delete for now. If it becomes notable later, can always re-write. 38.100.34.2 01:08, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Comment: just a general question to anyone who may know - if the page is deleted, would someone be able to restore the version that is here today later on or would a complete rewrite from scratch be necessary? Esn 05:26, 25 November 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.