Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Omega-level mutant

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 Redirect to Mutant (Marvel Comics). Editors may wish to perform a light merge (though it'll have to be very selective; as the article states "..an exact definition of the term is unclear"). BLACKKITE 10:21, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Omega-level mutant

Omega-level mutant (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Subject is a fictional term from Marvel Comics that was never meaningfully defined in the comics, leaving the article to be original research. The term has no substantial cultural impact, and so all information is going to be in-universe. And, more to the point, it's just not that important a term in comics either. Phil Sandifer (talk) 15:14, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

• There's been an attempt to redirect this to a better suited article, Mutant (Marvel Comics), but if the redirect won't stick I guess deletion is the other option. Hiding T 15:31, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Comics and animation-related deletions. -- Hiding T 15:31, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
• I couldn't find any books discussing this, which is a bad sign given how many books there are that analyse Marvel Comics' fiction. I couldn't find any scholarly articles. Looking at the WWW, all that turns up are thousands of Wikipedia mirrors, articles on other wikis whose fact checking and peer review are nonexistent, vague pseudonymous discussion forum postings, and fan fiction. This article is in part sourced to fictional dialogue, presenting it as if it were fact, and in part (as can be seen from its talk page) an original analysis of raw data being constructed directly in Wikipedia by Wikipedia editors. Fiction is not fact. And Wikipedia is not the place for coming up with a solid definition of something from scratch when no such definition exists outside of Wikipedia. There's nothing worth keeping here, and, given that as far as I can tell no-one has actually documented it properly outside of Wikipedia, no way to write an article on this subject. Uncle G (talk) 16:03, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
• Delete Uncle G gave sound reasons for deleting this article. Delete as WP:OR. Edison (talk) 16:44, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
• Delete as per nom and Uncle G. Original research. Capitalistroadster (talk) 18:59, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per Phil Sandifer and Uncle G. WesleyDodds (talk) 19:15, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
• KEEP There is no duplication of this information anywhere else on Wikipedia and deletion without any incorporation of this info somewhere else would do a disservice to the encyclopedia. You're using the absence of scholarly articles on this topic as prompt to delete it? What do you mean by scholarly article - do you mean thesis type of articles written by professors at a university level or just newspaper articles? First, let me point out that thousands of article on Wikipedia have no scholarly articles devoted to them and I'm not seeing those being deleted? While I'm not accusing anyone of targeting this article just because, using the absence of scholarly articles as a impetus to delete it is rather odd considering a search can be made by others and outside articles found, albeit not written by professors. Second, how many other Marvel related pages have scholarly articles as support for it? If we use your reasoning for deleting this article, 99% of the articles dealing with comics would currently be subject to deletion and I'm not seeing any of those 99% of the articles being subject to deletion discussion, which leads me to believe that this article in particular is being targeted and the absence of secondary evidence being used as an excuse albeit most other article dealing with Marvel don't have secondary evidence currently (again, with those articles not even being mentioned in deletion prompt). If you're going to argue that the absense of secondary evidence or scholarly articles requires deletion, go ahead and start the deletion discussion on 50% at least of Wikipedia material (and not just marvel). Also it's just not that important a term in comics either? Well, considering the term is used to describe the most powerful mutuants and has been incorporated into the X-Men United movie, how is the term not important. It is part of the ranking of the power level of mutants. If you want to expand the article to incorporate all other qualifications, like Alpha level or Betta level, please do so, but don't just delete the article that has been worked on and discussed in 2 archives and more than 2 years. Instead of giving up on the article entirely and deleating the article that you don't like, how about proposing expansion of it and work on it so that it corresponds more to your liking. It is not beyond salvation and it's not totally worthless. The term has no substantial cultural impact? Again, 80% of comic book characters in both DC and Marvel have no substantial cultural impact aside from big ones like Superman, Batman, perhaps the main X-Men team, Fantastic Four, etc. So, by your reasoning, 80% of comic book pages should be deleted? Would you like to start that process right now just because you find this one particular article lacking? How about improving it and adding alpha and beta description and incorporating the Professor X's files on mutants? Redirect to Mutant article would work if it made any mention of omega-level mutant. If it has a description of omega-level mutant, I would not be opposed to the redirect. But, currently, the Mutant article that this article was redirected to made no mention of omega-level mutants. Fiction is not fact. Duh? Fiction is not fact, that's correct, but the entire Mutant universe is fiction, not fact? If you mean that omega-level mutant definition has been entirely created by wikipedians with nothing in the comic books, you'd be wrong. No, there has not been any point at which a character in Marvel gave an exact definition, but there have been mutants named as omega-level mutants and the definition is not just invented, but is taken from the descriptions of those characters that were named as omega-level mutants in the comics. So, it's not pure invention or fan fiction of Wikipedia editors but stems from characters who have been clearly been identified as omega-level mutants and then with their description and abilities being accurately described. All that the Wikipedia editors did was put two and two together. Nothing has been created out of thin air (as evidenced by the resistance to adding suspected omega-level mutants to the article). There's nothing worth keeping here, and, given that as far as I can tell no-one has actually documented it properly outside of Wikipedia, no way to write an article on this subject. Again, I beg to differ. While I agree that the article can be slimmed down and perhaps moved to a different page and combined with another article, the description is valid given that it is unlikely that it will just be defined in a monologue by anyone in the comics. So, given that the characters have been identified, it's not difficult to use those characters' descriptions as part of the definition for the omega-level mutant. While I'm by no means putting anyone down, so please do not attack me for accusing you of anything or attacking your personally, I'm just arguing with the points you made, not actually attacking you personally. As such, just because you did not find any documentation, doesn't mean that there is no documentation or that there will be no documentation in the future and to just delete this article with no part of it preserved after more than 2 years of fine-tuning seems rather rash action just on the impetus of one editor. --RossF18 (talk) 20:38, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

"You're using the absense of scholarly articles on this topic as prompt to deleate it? What do you mean by scholarly article - do you mean thesis type of articles written by professors at a university level or just newspaper articles?" No we mean basic, out-of-universe secondary sources that discuss the topic. And those just don't exist. Therefore, according to Wikipedia notability guidelines, this article shouldn't exist. WesleyDodds (talk) 22:08, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Please read my entire post. Even if you mean secondary sources, you would need to delet 80% of the comic book articles based on your reasoning because 80% of the articles, at least, have no secondary sources. --RossF18 (talk) 03:30, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, we should probably do that. WesleyDodds (talk) 09:05, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

• Redirect and light merge into Mutant (Marvel Comics) - a similar discussion that led to this afd can be found here. It was first regarding all powerlevels mentioned within comics though some good reasoning came up as to why that would be rather unwise. A brief mention of the implementing of mutant powerlevels within comics and handbooks in the Mutant page should be sufficient for this information. -- Paulley (talk) 21:16, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
• Delete as term has no reliable secondary sources to demonstrate notability outside of the Marvel canon.--Gavin Collins (talk) 22:58, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

• Delete as per nom and Uncle G. And agree with Paulley to a degree, the most this material warrants is a brief mention in the Mutant (Marvel Comics) article. - J Greb (talk) 23:47, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per Uncle G. This is a vaguely-defined term that is mostly fanbased. JuJube (talk) 00:10, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
• Redirect and light merge into Mutant (Marvel Comics) per Paulley - much of the article itself seems to be OR, but I have seen the concept mentioned in numerous comics (or was that Alpha-level mutants? see, even I'm not sure) so undoubtedly the Mutant article would be a good article for people to be redirected to. A lot of the content might need to be deleted though, but perhaps not all of it. BOZ (talk) 00:13, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
• Merge and redirect to Mutant (Marvel Comics). What little content there is that is not original research should be added to the Mutant article. --GentlemanGhost (talk) 03:44, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

What he said is what I meant. ;) BOZ (talk) 06:20, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

• Keep per RossF18's extensive reasoning. Sincerely, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles^Tally-ho! 18:09, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
• Merge and redirect - Agreed with Ross that this is a non-repeated topic. This is a topic that is prominent, featured thru multiple mediums and additional external sources of IGN cited. A merge would help to better establish it context. -66.109.248.114 (talk) 22:09, 20 December 2007 (UTC).
• Keep. The article is terribly written, but this is an important concept in Marvel Comics publications. Doczilla (talk) 11:10, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Not really. It's not integral to understanding X-Men comics. I've read a number of X-Men comics, but the first time I heard it was in X3, where it was a throwaway detail to establish "Here's how powerful certain characters are". It's more in-universe jargon than meaningful terminology. Out-of-universe notability of the term also hasn't been established yet. WesleyDodds (talk) 05:27, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Really. So you read a number of X-Men comics, but never read Phoenix Endsong or X-Men: Deadly Genesis? Even if you are recent to reading comics, these are just two of the recent comic arcs that use the term. And Iceman has been named as omega-level mutant by Emma a while ago. So, having read comics and not encountering the term speaks more to your own reading than the term usage. In-universe jargon, hmm, that has been used by different writers on a number of different books. A way to convey the strength of a mutant in a few words in a word bubble is rather meaningful I'd imagine, and that's why writers are using it. Out of universe use has, as you yourself admit, has been seen in X3 with the ranking from 5 to 1 used only for clarity sake for those unfamilar with X-Men comics. Further establishment needs further time.--RossF18 (talk) 20:56, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

"A way to convey the strength of a mutant in a few words in a word bubble". That's the definition of in-universe jargon. "Further establishment needs further time". No, its out-of-universe notability needs to be established now. X3 doesn't count because it's another work of fiction. WesleyDodds (talk) 22:26, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Agreed on all three points. Use by characters in works of fiction, stemming from the same source does not establish real world context or notability. It only establishes the jargon as a common element in the fictions.

And if the real world notability cannot be established at this time, to defend the article on the grounds that it "needs further time" or any variation of "notability will happen at a later date" is crystal balling. - J Greb (talk) 22:46, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

The information is vital information is the X-Men universe. As such, it should either be kept or (preferably) merged into the Mutant (Marvel Comics) page. I will never understand the desire to eliminate information, regardless of the increasingly bureaucratic Wikipedia guidelines. This discussion should be in a merge article, not AFD. Keep, or merge. DestradoZero 07:13, 27 December 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.