Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Beanie Babies Official Club

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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 per consensus. Also deleting the recently created fork per same consensus. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 21:32, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Beanie Babies Official Club

Beanie Babies Official Club (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

Non notable group. Rob Banzai (talk) 16:55, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

  • Notice and reminder to closing admin:This discussion may have a lot of "deletes" early on. But these all came within a few hours following the time it was proposed for deletion. I (the creator) initially placed the {{Underconstruction}} tag on the page for a good reason, and I have since added a few references. I have plans to add many more in the future, but this is just the beginning, and I am working on a series of articles that take a long time to construct. Please keep in mind that decisions to keep or delete are NOT based on numbers of votes, but rather, points being made.Xyz7890 (talk) 18:25, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment This article has an {{inuse}} tag on it; clearly the article was just made and is under construction. I don't think the article is even talking about the same Beanie Babies Official Club that I remember -- I seem to recall sending some money to Ty in the late 1990s and becoming an actual card carrying member (I was 12, okay?). Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • (Broken clamshells•Otter chirps) 17:00, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment I will not hold your youthful beanie fixations against you. I still think that initial statement is pretty descriptive and is why I put the AfD in even though the article is under construction: "The Beanie Baby of the Month program is a program in which members can enroll to receive a Beanie Baby by mail each month for a 12-month period." Rob Banzai (talk) 17:06, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Note: The {{Underconstruction}} tag is there for a good reason. The article is, literally, under construction. What you first saw is only the tip of the iceberg. I have added several references to the article since you proposed it for deletion, enough for the article to be considered notable.Xyz7890 (talk) 18:24, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Speedy delete No notability assertion whatsoever. OhNoitsJamie Talk 18:06, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete. Nothing to indicate notability of any kind. Also, looks like WP:ADVERT. Nsk92 (talk) 19:23, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment: This is not an advertisement. Most Beanie Babies have been retired, and therefore, any articles about them are about history.Xyz7890 (talk) 18:26, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  • KEEP (Read comments, please): This article, as someone mentioned above, IS under construction. I have been undertaking a lengthy project in the past year or so to write a series of Wikipedia articles about Beanie Babies. Obviously, with more than 1000 of them made, it is not practical to have articles on single Beanie Babies, so instead, I have been writing a smaller number of article (about a dozen or so) on different categories of Beanie Babies.
Beanie Babies ARE notable. You can see this page to have a sense of how many books have been written about them (at least 2300). Not all the information that gives them notability can be found on the web. Still, the series of articles I have been writing (in Category:Beanie Babies) DOES qualify by Wikipedia standards. The purpose of these articles is to tell the unusual facts about many of the individual beanies, strictly that from third-party, reliable sources. During the 1990s, Beanie Babies were a very popular fad, and they were talked about by everyone wherever you went. They are not some obscure phenomenon. They are not my youthful fixation either. I am 47 now - I must have been in my mid- to late-30s then.
Nor is this article an advertisement. Most Beanie Babies are long retired now. So this and other similar articles are not promoting the product. They are actually about something historical, just like Cabbage Patch Dolls or Care Bears, things my kids had when they were little.
My plans for writing about Beanie Babies involve doing them one at a time, mostly in alphabetical order. I expect this effort to take a year or longer, as I have gotten only a little help. But the more I write, the more references will appear. The bottom line, regardless how many of you say delete here, if a topic meets Wikipedia's criteria, it should be kept.Xyz7890 (talk) 23:41, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Move To Clubby Beanie Babies and remove the Beanie Baby of the Month section. Beanie Baby of the Month can be covered in a full article about the Beanie Baby Official Club article later although the language should reflect that people "could" do stuff as opposed to "can". The language of that section at the moment does read like an advert though I am sure that wasn't the intention. Jasynnash2 (talk) 11:41, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

  • NOTE (Update): I have added some references to the article. Xyz7890 (talk) 18:18, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Comment - I stand by my original nomination. The Beanie Babies club is not notable (yet), even if Beanie Babies are. Unless there is something notable about the club itself it doesn't belong here, or at best should be part of the Beanie Babies main article. Is the club notable for number of members, length of existence, service to the community? In the end it's not my choice, it's up to the voting editors. I think the system works well and if you can establish notability your article will (of course) remain. It's not personal and I understand you are intending to put alot of work in it but quantity of work does not change the need for notability.Rob Banzai (talk) 15:27, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
Exactly. The three references listed in the article go some way to show notability per WP:N, but they are certainly not enough, in my opinion. Nsk92 (talk) 15:51, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
These three references are just the beginning. Writing on Wikipedia takes a long time, and this page shows over 2300 books that have been written on Beanie Babies, many of which describe interesting, unusual things about individual beanies. The work I have been doing on a large number of Beanie Baby articles can be referenced from these books. I own a few, and this entire project has been taking me a lot of research. Meanwhile, this article should be kept for now, and possibly relisted for deletion if not improved within a few months. Also, the decision here is not made based on votes or numbers, but on the merit of points made.Xyz7890 (talk) 05:07, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete or, preferably, Merge to Beanie Baby. I had decided that I could not be involved in this as an administrator as my earlier involvement in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Beanie Babies involved in lawsuits makes me feel tangentially involved in this one. I do not believe there is sufficient stand-alone notability to warrant a separate article for these. I do feel a merge would be appropriate, as the Beanie Baby article is not of such size that a merge of pertinent information would overwhelm it. I agree that it can take time to establish notability, but I don't believe that articles should hang around in article space for months while people attempt to do so. If notability can be established at a later time, this article can be created then. I must also note that while investigating to see what other Beanie Baby articles are currently existing, I discovered that during the active AfD of this article, it was split by the article's creator, here, to Beanie Baby of the Month. Splitting an article during an active AfD gives a strong impression of attempting to game the system, even if that was not the intent. Multiplying an article that is under consideration for deletion should not be done; if a spin-off is necessary, it should be done after the AfD is closed with some variation that results in keep. If this debate closes as delete, I believe the spin-off article should be deleted as well, as the information was included in consideration for this AfD until it was split on May 18th. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:26, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
Agree with Moonriddengirl: splitting off a new article while the present one is being considered for deletion is very inappropriate. If the result of the present AfD is delete, the spin-off fork article Beanie Baby of the Month should be deleted as well. Nsk92 (talk) 13:35, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
Comment merging this or other similar articles to the main Beanie Baby article would make that article too long and impracticl. That is the reason for having separate ones like these. Beanie Babies are very, very notable. They were one of the biggest fads of the late 90s, so much that they had a tremendous impact on popular culture, and were on everyone's mind's. They were collected by millions around the world. Especially many individual Beanies have stories behind them that can be referenced in encyclopedic fashion. There were thousands of books written on Beanie, and they influenced a lot of the media. All this makes them worthy of inclusion on Wikipedia.Xyz7890 (talk) 13:47, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
Comment Yes, Beanie Babies are worthy of inclusion on Wikipedia, and they are included on Wikipedia in the main article and in some subarticles about notable issues. This doesn't make every series of Beanie Baby notable, however. Wikipedia is not a collector's guide, so I'm not sure the value added of articles separately documenting series. If the information would overwhelm the parent article, then I would personally argue to delete this article and its fork unless some special notability can be documented. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:59, 23 May 2008 (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.