Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Villains from comics and graphic novels

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. Nishkid64 22:27, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Villains from comics and graphic novels

Villains from comics and graphic novels (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) - (View log)

Indiscriminate list, there are way too many comics with villains for this page to be manageable (also, neglecting to point out that the article is a list in the article's title is not a "keep" reason). A similar category surely exists and other indiscriminate lists are being deleted as we speak. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of fictional heroes. Axem Titanium 05:07, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

• Strong Delete per nomination. Indiscriminate, massive, near useless list that will grow wildly out of control, is not cited and likely never will be. -- wtfunkymonkey 05:19, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. Waaaaay too broad a topic for a list. 23skidoo 07:15, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. Note this list was broken out from the article List of villains which is also up for deletion and that the article's creator is OK with the notion that this article could be deleted. Otto4711 12:47, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
• Strong Keep and no I'm not OK with the notion of this article being deleted: merely OK with the matter being brought here for discussion. Anyway my vote is strong keep: this is a useful navigational tool, falling squarely within what lists are intended for (see WP:LIST). It is neither indescriminate nor too broad to be useful. Categories and lists are never redundant with one another (see WP:CLS). I'm mystified by comments like "useless" above: surely useful to someone looking into, oh I don't know, maybe villains in comics. Obviously, if kept I agree with a move to List of villains from comics and graphic novels. AndyJones 13:31, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

• Sorry. Didn't mean to misrepresent your thoughts about deletion. Otto4711 16:54, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

• • The article is a mish-mash across dozens of genres of comics and graphic novels. The concept of "villain" is poorly defined (a cursory glance shows Catwoman is villainous enough for inclusion, as well as Elektra (comics), Emma Frost and others). For example, List of Batman villains is a more manageable list of decent scope and actually provides basic info about each entry, which is the defining characteristic of a good list. Axem Titanium 17:01, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
• Strong Delete totally uncontrolable listcruft. --Larry laptop 17:31, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep and move per AndyJones Jcuk 01:32, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per Andy Jones. Might work better if there were separate lists by publisher, but that's not an issue for AfD. --JJay 23:20, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of lists-related deletions. -- Axem Titanium 20:53, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - All the villains & heroes categories are getting deleted at WP:CFD so lists are preferred over categories. (That doesn't speak to this particular list, however, which may indeed be too broad.) --lquilter 22:29, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Browsing the categories today, I didn't see any CfD nominations for the comics-related villain and hero categories, or even for Category:Fictional villains for that matter. --GentlemanGhost 01:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete The purpose of this list is better served by existing categories, such as Category:DC Comics supervillains, Category:Marvel Comics villains, and Category:Supervillains by publisher. --GentlemanGhost 01:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
• KeepShivaDaDestroyer 02:55, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
  • No rationale? I guess your vote doesn't count. Axem Titanium 03:02, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
    • As noted in the link cited above, these decisions aren't made by a direct vote anyway. Rather than saying that his opinion doesn't count, perhaps we be more encouraging to Shiva to elaborate. --GentlemanGhost 04:07, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
• This is certainly better than a category. Even so, "villain" is a tricky word. "Supervillain" is fairly objective because it has specific criteria, generally the characters are specifically labeled as such, but "villain" in general involves a lot of opinion and interpretation. I question the need for this list, though. Most villains in comics and graphic novels are supervillains. As for the minority who aren't, how have they been defined? Does the list cite outside sources that identify the characters as villains like the strict criteria we follow at the anti-hero list? For now, I'll say delete (and a pretty strong delete at that) for the use of a vague term that invokes POV. Should the list gain more objective criteria with external references like the anti-hero list and define itself in a way that reduces redundancy to the supervillain lists, I could easily change my "vote." Doczilla 04:15, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I think there's too much worry about what is subjective in these debates. (You just mentioned opinion and interpretation, someone in a related AfD voted "delete all subjective lists".) If it were genuinely the case that subjective or normative things are inherently POV and shouldn't be on wikipedia, we would have to delete pretty-much everything on the humanities, leaving just an encyclopedia that covered math and science. But that would be to ask the wrong question. The real question is about verifiability. Someone is a "villain" (or whatever other subjective term you're worried about) if reliable sources say that he is. AndyJones 09:26, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Yeah, classifying someone as an anti-hero is also subjective, but that list survived an AfD because it is carefully sourced and policed by a number of editors to reject any additions that don't have external sources labeling the characters as anti-heroes. This villains list, however, does nothing of the sort. Doczilla 19:02, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
      • I agree, although WP:V issues are matters for cleanup, not AfD. AndyJones 20:27, 19 January 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.