Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Samuli Torssonen

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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 of the debate was keep – Gurch 14:33, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Samuli Torssonen

  • Delete. Vanity article, non-notable bio, Star Trek fancruft. — WCityMike (T | C)  ⇓ plz reply HERE  (why?) ⇓  02:48, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. Completely non-notable. Erik the Rude 03:39, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep - directed the most popular movie ever made in Finland, and one of the biggest internet phenomenons and downloads of 2005. Absolutely notable. MikeWazowski 04:18, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
    • comment No reference in article to above claims. — WCityMike (T | C)  ↓ plz reply HERE  (why?) ↓  05:58, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
      • the most popular movie ever made in Finland What was its box-office gross? Was it more than The Man Without a Past or Leningrad Cowboys Go America? --Calton | Talk 07:42, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
        • For a film that was never released to theaters, you know as well as I do there is no box office gross, and as such, that qualifier is useless. However, this is from the Star Wrek: In the Pirkinning article: Within two months of the movie's Internet release, it was estimated that more than 2.9 million copies of the movie had been downloaded from the official site alone. In comparison, the most popular Finnish movie, Edvin Laine's The Unknown Soldier (1955) has a theatre attendance figure of 2.8 million (which, of course, doesn't include TV screenings, video sales and rentals from the past 50 years). The film's service provider, Magenta sites, reported over 2 petabytes of data transfers and estimated that actual amount of downloads, including all mirrors, would be in the range of 3.5 to 4 million. [1] - There's your reference, with documented links. TheRealFennShysa 20:12, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Very Weak Keep or Merge into the main Star Wreck article. If he has no notability outside of his creation of Star Wreck, then I'm not sure that he really needs a full bio - merging useful content is sufficient. BigDT 06:11, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom. I'm seeing a lot of hyperbole with these things. Tychocat 07:40, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep, notable person, well-written article. What's with all this hatred of Star Trek? JIP | Talk 08:39, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Merge with Star Wreck. -- GWO
  • Merge into Star Wreck and delete. Re: JIP's comment. Clearing out non-notable fancruft from Wikipedia does not equal hating Star Trek. - Motor (talk) 10:06, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Merge into Star Wreck for now (or keep). May merit a separate article in the future, but for now he is only known for the series. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 11:59, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete, only reference on IMDB is to the Star Wreck fan movie. If that article is kept per previous VfD merge this article into that. SJennings 14:38, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep per Wazowski. And Comment to WCityMike: I'd suggest you reread the articles you're nominating - I quote from this article: After 2 weeks of its release the movie had been downloaded over 1.5 million times, so it could be one of the most watched Finnish movies, especially outside Finland. The article needs to be updated, but the info is there. TheRealFennShysa 15:55, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
    • comment Directed the most popular v. could be one of the = the difference. Lack of cites to same = WP:V = the difference. "Biggest Internet phenomenons and downloads of 2005" = no reference for same = WP:V = the difference. — WCityMike (T | C)  ↓ plz reply HERE  (why?) ↓  16:36, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete nn-fan/cruft-maker— Milkandwookiees (T | C) 16:38, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep mentioned here[2]. That barely slips on WP:BIO Yanksox 16:48, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Merge into Star Wreck? (I don't think the additional movies deserve separate articles, so that he should go there.) Alternately, keep. per Yanksox. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 18:18, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep per MikeWazowski. Note he is also working on Iron Sky which appears to be non-Star Wreck related (and needs to be mentioned in this article). -- Hawaiian717 19:24, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep per User:Yanksox; article needs TLC as it's rather effusive at present. Angus McLellan (Talk) 19:27, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Do not delete. Not quite abstaining, but I don't feel it needs a deletion. Either keeping or redirecting/merging, I don't know. -- Consumed Crustacean | Talk | 21:32, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete or Merge into Star Wreck. Not notable enough for own article Bwithh 23:23, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Ridiculously strong keep. Are you kidding me? He produced, starred in, made the special effects for and edited what is most likely the most popular movie to ever come out of Finland. (It has already been downloaded at least 3.5 million times, as reported in Helsingin Sanomat, the largest Finnish newspaper about six months ago -- I wasn't able to track down how many more times it's been downloaded since then.) Yes, it's free to download from the internet, but that's not really the point; I think he easily passes WP:BIO on the "Multiple features in [...] national newspapers" front; the movie and Torssonen himself have gotten a lot of coverage in Finland. He's been on national TV more than once. He was just recently featured on the popular and influential Finnish IT business web publication digitoday.fi over the deal his production company made with HP. He gets over 40 000 Google hits (and his movie gets over six million of them). I mean, what exactly are we debating here? This is not some guy in a garage who makes a five-minute clip of crappy lightsaber combat for TheForce.net, he's pretty much responsible for a minor (inter)national phenomenon. Seriously. -- Captain Disdain 04:44, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
    • But you have to understand he doesn't work for Paramount. JIP | Talk 06:16, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
      • Neither does Aki Kaurismäki, so I fail to understand the relevance of that comment. --Calton | Talk 07:42, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
        • I was being sarcastic. The point was to illustrate that film directors should not be automatically considered non-notable just because they work independently and not for a major international studio. JIP | Talk 07:45, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
    • I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but I want to be absolutely clear on this -- the national significance is pretty big, here, and I don't think Americans or Brits really understand this unless I elaborate. Internationally, Torssonen is not a huge name, of course, and I'm not going to pretend that he's a household name in Finland, either. But as far as WP:BIO's requirements go, this one's a cinch. There's really no argument. He absolutely meets the criteria therein, as far as the publicity requirement goes. The "made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in their specific field" criterion is also fairly applicable, since his work is getting a relatively wide international audience -- previously, Finnish films have been internationally known for Aki Kaurismäki, and that's really just about it. Obviously, that's not registering at all on the Hollywood scale, but when it comes to Finland, that international audience is extremely significant on a number of levels, and it has certainly been noted as such in the media. I realize that a lot of people consider the film a crappy Trek parody, but quality is not the issue here at all. To compare him to, say, the thousands of Americans who make parodies or fan films that never really make a blip on the radar is just uninformed. If, say, Kevin Rubio (whose inclusion nobody really contests, I would imagine; at least that article has never been up for AfD) had been featured on CNN and Fox News, and Troops had been aired on a national American TV channel and gotten, say, in excess of fifty million viewers who then, went to work the next day and debated whether the movie was as good as Citizen Kane and representative of American moviemaking to foreigners, that would be a comparable level of fame... even if the general public couldn't really remember or care who Kevin Rubio was a couple of years later. Tempest in a teapcup, absolutely. But in a country that has a population of only about five million, shit like this just doesn't happen every week. Not even every decade. -- Captain Disdain 19:57, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Weak Keep. Famous in Finland, Captain Disdain raises a good argument. JRP 14:06, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep per Captain Disdain. Furthermore, I see no evidence of vanity here. That sort of accusation should never be made without some serious proof. --JJay 00:29, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
    • Not vanity, vanity. — Mike •  01:18, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
      • I'll take that as a bit of a vanity post since everyone here is aware of the guideline pages, particularly the unintentionally humorous and largely misbegotten vanity guideline. Instead of evasion,User WCityMike, why not expand on the reasoning behind your vanity claims? --JJay 02:35, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
      • I'd like to know too. From all the information given in this AfD discussion, the reason could just as well be "I haven't heard of him", or "He's a fan". Could you give a specific, detailed explanation on why you think this article was written by Torssonen himself or a friend of his? JIP | Talk 11:28, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment: I'm starting to have a feeling that if Torssonen's film hadn't been a Star Trek parody, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. There are articles about smaller, less-known, not professionally funded indie film projects on Wikipedia, and no one is complaining about them. But I guess reading the words "Star Trek fan" triggers a reaction towards fancruft. JIP | Talk 10:32, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Merge and redirect to Star Wreck, his source of notability. Kusma (討論) 00:40, 10 June 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.