Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Blue Harvest

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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 no consensus. This does not preclude merger, which doesn't require an AFD. W.marsh 14:51, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Blue Harvest

Blue Harvest (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Delete - no reliable sources attest to the notability of this code name. At best it merits a sentence or two in the production section of Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. And before anyone says anything, the fact that Family Guy named an episode after it does not make this any more notable. Otto4711 16:43, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

  • Keep - a quick Google News and LexisNexis search turned up quite a few references, some of which I've added into the article. The notability is there. TheRealFennShysa 17:21, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Google News turns up 21 hits for "Blue Harvest" and when "Family Guy" is filtered it returns five, none of which appear to be about Star Wars. The Wall Street Journal article you linked includes a single sentence mentioning the code name out of a seven-paragraph article about the sale of a movie poster. WP:N requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject" and "significant coverage" means "sources address the subject directly in detail." A single sentence mention in an article about another topic is not significant coverage. It confirms the existence of the code name, but the existence of the code name is not in question. Mere existence is not notability. Otto4711 17:55, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Otto, you only searched Google News, which only searches recent articles. If you search Google News Archive, you'll find that a search on "Blue Harvest" + "Star Wars" coincidentally also pulls up 21 articles, and none of these have anything to do with Family Guy, since the most recent article in the archives is from 2 years before the episode even aired. DHowell 03:08, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Yes, that has been addressed further down the page. These are not sources that discuss the code name directly in detail. They are mentions of the code name in articles that are about the film. They confirm the existence of the code name but they in no way confirm the notability of it. Saying "Blue Harvest" in a long article about Jedi does not make the article about "Blue Harvest." Would you seriously suggest that this article is under any reasonable definition of the word "about" about the code name? Otto4711 21:32, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete; Seems excessive to have an article about something that is essentially a working title for a film. This is quite common in film-making anyway, and is often the main reason for having a working title (to disguise the real production). Masaruemoto 18:58, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
    • And how many of these other films' working titles appear on collectible T-shirts and TV episodes named after them? DHowell 03:08, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep: Seems to more than meet notability requirements. There are 21 Ghits, including 4 Ghits from the time of the filming (1981-1983). DCEdwards1966 19:38, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
  • <sigh> And again, there need to be sources that are substantively about the subject, not just sources that mention it. Of the four Ghits from the time of filming, two of them are duplicates which mention the name, one is a trivia quiz that mentions the name and one (subscription site) also appears simply to mention the name. Of the overall 21 Ghits, several of them are duplicates and they all appear to merely mention the code name as part of a longer article about the film. None of them appear to be about the code name itself. Otto4711 19:56, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
<double sigh> The New York Times article is specifically about the secrecy surrounding the shooting of the movie. I'm not willing to pay $5 to find out what it says, however. DCEdwards1966 20:31, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Which raises WP:V issues. Regardless, that's one source about the general topic of the secrecy surrounding the filming, which includes the words "Blue Harvest" (as opposed to a source specifically about or substantially about the code name). This still doesn't meet WP:N and there is no reason why, as mentioned in the nom, this should be a separate article instead of being included in the production section of the film article. Otto4711 20:40, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
  • WP:V does not require that sources be free, only that they be available to the general public. We shouldn't be deleting articles because nobody is willing to pay the 5 bucks to access articles, or alternatively just visit one of the many public libraries which have access to The New York Times archives for free. And though the name of the article is "Blue Harvest", "the general topic" of the article includes "the secrecy surrounding the filming" as well as the name itself, so this news article appropriately supports notability for the article. DHowell 03:08, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
  • And again, the reason why this material can't reside in the film article is...what exactly? Otto4711 21:19, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Because the film article is already pretty long and this would be a valid summary style subtopic article. Anyway, does this comment mean you will change your argument from "delete" to "merge and redirect"? This might be a reasonable compromise, but if a merge is to be done, I would make Blue Harvest a disambiguation page to the film and the Family Guy episode, instead of a redirect. DHowell 22:58, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
  • The ROTJ is not so long that it can't absorb an additional sentence or two in the production section about the code name. Otto4711 02:56, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge and Redirect A quote from the article - "Around 1997, the website www.blueharvest.com began redirecting web browsers to www.starwars.com " If a redirect is good enough for George Lucas its good enough for me!. A redirect to Return of the Jedi and the merging of relevant information into that article would seem to me to be the best solution. -- Mattinbgn\talk 00:30, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
  • My only concern with that is that Blue Harvest (Family Guy) really should reside in the Blue Harvest article space, which can't happen with a merge and redirect. Otto4711 03:35, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Consider adding Blue Harvest redirects here; for the Family Guy episode, see Blue Harvest (Family Guy). Alternatively, turn Blue Harvest into a disambiguation page, with links to the Family Guy episode and to Return of the Jedi. Of course there is the third option of moving the Family Guy episode to Blue Harvest with a disambiguation link to Return of the Jedi. I have no preference between the three. -- Mattinbgn\talk 09:16, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
  • If the third option is done, then perhaps Blue Harvest should be moved to Blue Harvest (Return of the Jedi), then merged and redirected to Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi to preserve edit history of the merged content. Then Blue Harvest (Family Guy) could be moved to Blue Harvest. However, this is way outside the scope of this AfD; assuming this AfD is closed as a "keep" or "merge" this can be further discussed in the apporpriate articles' talk pages. DHowell 23:15, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete Belongs in the Jedi article. Even if there is a NYT article about the secrecy about producing Jedi, it is about Jedi. The JPStalk to me 18:05, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
    • Isn't this an argument for a "merge"? DHowell 22:58, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge into a section of Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, with a disambiguation to the Family Guy episode. Will (talk) 16:27, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
  • I second what Sceptre said. The article should be Merged into the articel on Return of the Jedi. There is important info here but it should be on the ROTJ page. --Mr Beale 16:31, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep The notability guideline requires significant coverage in multiple sources. I believe this applies even if no single source has significant coverage; if the coverage across the multiplicity of sources is significant, the subject is notable. Sure, each mention in the news articles or several books by itself might not be significant enough to confer notability, but I do believe that the number of independent reliable sources mentioning this title (including the article's cited references) does amount to significant coverage in total. And yes, the fact that Family Guy named an episode after it does make this more notable, in that it increased media awareness of the name and thus increased the number of reliable sources available. DHowell 03:08, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Trivial coverage in multiple sources does not equal significant coverage. I'm sorry, but it just doesn't. 100 articles that mention in a single sentence the words "Blue Harvest" don't add up to notability. It adds up to enough to mention it in the main film article. And if the Family Guy episode increases the number of articles that mention the Jedi connection in passing by some number that still doesn't make the code name itself notable. And you're leaving out an important part of the definition, which is that the sources address the subject directly in detail. Again, the mere mention of the code name in a hundred articles, a half-dozen books, whatever, do not address the subject directly in detail. Otto4711 21:27, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
  • "Trivial coverage in multiple sources does not equal significant coverage." That's your opinion. 100 articles which all say the same trivial thing might not equal notability, but 100 articles each saying different things about the subject (one about the Family Guy reference, one about the T-shirts, one about the secrecy surrounding the film, etc.), in my opinion, does indicate notability, even if I acknowledge that each of the individual references are "trivial", which I don't. Of course, you or I alone don't make the rules, that is what consensus is supposed to decide. At the very least, a significant amount of trivial coverage of the name does indicate that "Blue Harvest" is a reasonable search term, which supports a "merge and redirect" or "merge and disambiguate", not "delete". DHowell 22:58, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
  • If the Family Guy article were moved here, which since it's the simplest possible title for the article it should be in this article space, then it will (as it already does) contain a link to ROTJ as the name source and can also have a dab link at the top. "Blue Harvest" does not need to be a dab page because there is only one thing called "Blue Harvest". Otto4711 02:55, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge to some extent. It seems noteworthy enough because of all the references, so a small section should be added (with the main points from this article) into the Episode VI article. Zchris87v 19:48, 21 October 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.