Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Eh! Steve

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 of the debate was MERGE to List of Homestar Runner characters. -- Jonel | Speak 05:04, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Eh! Steve

Unimportant fancruft--Mister D 21:58, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

• Keep, recurring Homestar Runner thing. Possibly merge somewhere appropriate but not the main article. Kappa
• Merge to List of Homestar Runner characters. Nifboy 01:34, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
• Merge to List of Homestar Runner characters. This isn't the Homestar Runner wiki. --Malthusian (talk) 10:30, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
• Merge per Malthusian. Stifle 16:52, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep; other Homestar Runner characters have articles, which are in general pretty well done. MCB 23:50, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
• Merge to List of Homestar Runner characters. —BazookaJoe 02:05, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
• My heart cries out delete but my inner sheep says Merge per above. But if everyone else by some miracle changs to "delete as not encyclopedic", it's still my first option. - brenneman^(t)(c) 12:01, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
  • This is where I point out that a Homestar Runner encyclopedia wouldn't be complete without it. Kappa 12:04, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
    • And this is where I point to WP:NOT and we engage in some circular discussions. I have some arbitrary standard for what merits inclusion, you have a different one. - brenneman^(t)(c) 12:34, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Well it would be clearer if you said "doesn't meet my arbitrary standard for what merits inclusion" instead of using the word "encylopedic" in a such a confusing way. I don't think there is anything arbitrary about trying to provide the users with access to all the information they would hope for. Kappa 12:38, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Sigh. If we must do this yet again. Encyclopedic: Of, relating to, or characteristic of an encyclopedia. That's not that confusing. An encyclopedia's job is not to provide users with acess to "all the information they would hope for". Speculation about the next Pokemon, day-by-day acounts of the size of Katie's baby bump, who's gotten bone-thin this week: the ephemera we do not include is almost endless. Every time we do include a sterling example of fugacious nonsense like this, it crowds out real information (you know, like art and calculus and democracy) in several ways:

1. It takes up a small but real portion of disk space. That actually costs money. We have fundraising to pay for things like new servers in part because articles take up space.
2. It takes up a small but real portion of people's time. The "don't like it? don't look at it." argument is completely fallicious. Shall I somehow expunge this article from my recent changes list? How then will it be kept free of vandalism and innacuracy? Leading to...
3. It erodes in some small way our reputation. Little crufty corners can get ignored, and that's actually a bad thing. Every time it hits the news that we've dropped the ball on WP:V it means that any real information we give to our users will have just a little bit less value.

Delete the crap, the unsourced, the trivial, the mundane. Let us cease the endless bickering and how we cling like drowning men to these tiny articles of little utility, and concentrate on doing something meaningful instead.

brenneman^(t)(c) 13:20, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

This project job's is to provide every human being with all the knowledge they would wish for. As the encylopedic branch of the project, wikipedia's job is to provide the portion of that information that fits inside an encyclopedia of some sort. The amount of money that the storage of homerunner pages costs is probably about a cent per decade and falling. The time it takes up on 'recent changes' is outweighed by the time Homestar Runner contributors would give back to wikipedia, if their work wasn't being destroyed. I find it hard to believe that USA Today or Nature magazine would run a headline story saying "Wikipedia gets Homestar Runner character wrong", I kinda think they are more likely to be interested in more significant topics. What you consider crap, trivial or mundane may be the most important thing to some users, for example my favorite band doesn't pass WP:MUSIC any more, and I would really, really like to be able to read about my local churches. If an article has utility, however little, why not leave it alone and concentrate on doing something meaningful instead? Kappa 23:49, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

• We could also go even futher with this discussion on Talk:Homestar Runner. The volume of HR-related articles which can be classified as a waste of resources on WP is astounding. We could do away with most, if not all of the character pages which people would not read WP for, because they can be pointed to HRWiki. Not to mention that List of Homestar Runner characters is not only incomplete, but a factual and grammatical mess with a subpar reading level which no one wants to fix, because they can find it all on HRWiki anyway. —BazookaJoe 22:40, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per nom Incognito 05:40, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
• Merge with List of Homestar Runner characters per WP:FICT guidelines. All but the most trivial fancruft can be kept in some form even if we don't give them separate articles. Sjakkalle (Check!) 09:06, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• Merge as stated above. Treima 22:25, 19 January 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.