Talk:John Boone

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[edit] From VfD

These are stub-pages for characters who feature in the novel Red Mars. The content of the stubs has been merged into the main Red Mars page, thus the stub pages are redundant and can be deleted without a loss of content. See the discussion page for Red Mars for details. Mercurius 06:49, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  • Why not just make the 4 pages into redirects to Red Mars, and avoid the need for any voting? (and avoid the chance of someone creating sub-stubs for them in the future) —Stormie 06:58, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)
    • I agree. Change to redirects. Average Earthman 11:37, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • Agreed. Never delete when a redirect makes any sense. jallan 19:28, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • If we have Gimli, we ought to have these as well. Someone will fill them eventually if I don't get to it. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 19:29, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC) I've rewritten John Boone--that will give an example of what the rest of those could be. Obviously, my writing needs looking over (I'm a fan of the series), but again, if we have Gimli, there's no reason not to have these. Keep. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 20:07, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Redirect. Red Mars (and the whole trilogy + short stories) is excellent; I've read the whole trilogy twice and will no doubt read it again. And I learned to read by reading The Hobbit: great fun, and Gimli's a lovely Dwarf. That said, we have too damned many pages for favorite characters in favorite books/TV shows/Pokemon games. A page per book? Good idea. A page per character? Unless the character somehow transcends the book or series (Paul Bunyan, George Babbitt, Don Quixote) to become a cultural icon independent of the original work it appeared in, this is nothing more than Wiki contributors indulging and memorializing their personal tastes with an article -- in other words, another sort of vanity page. Redirects are fine for this; separate pages are pollution. -- orthogonal 00:37, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • I must say that I disagree. There's really no room for this information in Red Mars, yet I believe it belongs in any proper encyclopedia entry on the topic. It's just content that's too much for the main entry, and so needs to be split off. Nevertheless, I'll hold off on rewriting the rest until the debate period is finished. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 01:21, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Just to clarify and expand my above comment: I don't think we should have "one liner" articles on characters, far better to gather all the one-liners together into a "Characters" section in the main article for the book/movie/play/whatever. But when character descriptions get up to the several-paragraph point (as John Boone is currently, after Meelar's fine work), I think is is unwieldy to bundle them up and they should get their own article. But either way, there's nothing here which should be deleted, it's just a matter of article editing. —Stormie 02:54, Jul 2, 2004 (UTC)
    • From the perspective of a reference librarian, I would much prefer a "character section" on the page for a book -- not only because a separate page for each character seems wasteful, but because that makes things more difficult for the reader. (As someone up the page said, I would make exceptions for obvious iconic characters. Lazarus Long comes to mind.) Maybe wikiisnotpaper, but hyperlinking back and forth is still a slow process for many of us. I recently did a page for Cecelia Holland that includes only a few lines for each of her books, much less the characters in them, and I think it works very well. ---Michael K. Smith 22:56, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Continuation

I think we can have our cake and eat it too. In the main Red Mars article, we keep the bullet-point descriptions--but we wikilink the character names to more detailed articles (which I'll write as I get to it, as per John Boone). Satisfies? [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 23:38, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Meelar, the writing's on the wall for these pages

Meelar, it looks like you're the only one voting to keep the pages as separate. All the contributors have made good points:

  1. Where is the evidence that characters like 'John Boone' have influenceced any other literary works? Is he cited in other SF novels? No. Has he emerged as some kind of 'archetype' that pops up in SF literature elsewhere. No. His influence is confined to the Mars Trilogy. Thus he is of minimal encyclopedic interest.
  2. There is nothing more you can find out about John Boone on wikipedia than you could find out by reading the novels. Thus how is this contributing to 'human knowledge'? Encyclopedias are supposed to condense information from a range of sources about a topic. But there is only one source of information about Johnn Boone: The Mars trilogy.
  3. I think you're wasting your time writing a column on Boone for this encyclopedia. By all means write a fan page for Boone and the others, and host it somewhere else. I'd be the first to read it. I like the characters too. But they don't deserve a separate enyclopedic entry unless you can prove evidence of intertextual influence on other literary works.

Sorry to rain on your parade. But it's apparent from the comments that there's no place for these pages on wikipedia as separate entities. Mercurius 00:40, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Boone

Actually, looking at the Vfd, I would say that User:Stormie is a keep, as am I, matched against User:Mksmith (whose objection I addressed), User:Orthogonal, and yourself (note that I'm including only people who have looked at the page since the rewrite).

Lord knows that reasonable people can disagree on this. I suppose the root of my case to keep is the philosophical objection that we have an (IMO) decent article on John Boone. More information is better than less (when it's conveniently organized, as I believe this to be), and I don't think there's any way to fit this level of detail into Red Mars. Therefore, it gets split off into its own page--much like History of the Beatles off of The Beatles. I see this less as its own page and more as almost a virtual subpage of Red Mars.

Again, by my count, there's no consensus to remove this information. Perhaps a request for comment? I'm not trying to stonewall, but I do think that more community involvement might help settle the issue (especially since policy in this area doesn't seem particularly clear). Best wishes, [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 00:55, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)


What I don't see the need for is for all the characters in the book to have their separate pages. Better, perhaps, would be to have a separate page for all the characters in the book - i.e. you have the pages Red Mars and Characters in Red Mars. Average Earthman 13:30, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

That could work. I'd just like to keep this information (esp. now that I've spent so much time defending it ;). I should probably get on the rest of these, to bring them up to snuff. Perhaps today or tomorrow. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 17:18, 2004 Jul 19 (UTC)


[edit] From VfD 2.0

[edit] John Boone

- I missed a whole bunch of text and am altering my summary statement. Please have patience on this one as the 'pedia is running slowly! - Ta bu shi da yu 13:48, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

John Boon was proposed for deletion. This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was 9 to keep, 9 to delete, 2 to redirect.

Whether to keep or delete is 50/50. There appear to be two main camps here: those who wish to keep because they think the topic needs it's own article, or because they think this is of reasonably good quality. Those who wish to delete largely want to delete because it is "fancruft" (a site discussed to store fancruft on was proposed: "Wikicruft"). It appears that this whole deletion issue has been resolved by the editors of the article, as a redirect has been setup to Mars trilogy and all the material in this article, Red Mars, Blue Mars and Green Mars was merged into this. (apologies to editors - I missed a whole section of text in this VfD). Basically, the consensus on this one was split down the middle in the keep/delete camps and the merge & redirect seems to be a decent compromise.

Merge & redirect (already done). - Ta bu shi da yu 13:56, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Delete. As another Wiki member so eloquently put it, "Unless the character somehow transcends the book or series (Paul Bunyan, George Babbitt, Don Quixote) to become a cultural icon independent of the original work it appeared in, this is nothing more than Wiki contributors indulging and memorializing their personal tastes with an article." In other words, Fancruft. Radman1 04:57, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • Keep. On this basis, the entire Middle Earth canon could be safely excised, with maybe the exception of Gandalf and some of the more notable shorty hairy things with big feet. John Boone imo is an extremely important character in a major piece of science fiction, in stature not far short of Paul Atreides of Dune, and more than worthy of retention. Boone is certainly a cultural icon within the sci fi community and has certainly permeated beyond those margins. Moreover, Boone characterises a particular planetary ecological viewpoint which has considerable importance from the point of view of evaluating responsible usage of resources etc. He is moreover the subject of serious social analysis: q.v. STS and Utopian thinking, Ellsworth R. Fuhrman in Social Epistemology Volume 13, Number 1 / January 1, 1999 pp. 85 -93. This looks like an exceedingly spurious Vote for Deletion, verging on trolling or certainly time-wasting. Shall we add God or Christianity on the basis that they are spurious fancruft next???? Sjc 05:07, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Don't go over the top, it doesn't help your argument. You sound more like a troll for the over the top accusation and the ludicrous comparison to God (here's a question - how many wars have been started in the name of John Boone?). Does anyone have any cites of the use of this character separate to the books apart from in the occasional esoteric and not widely read journal? Average Earthman 08:38, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • God is just a character in a work of fiction. :) Moreover the current discussion regarding fictional characters in Village Pump is salient to this and a number of other articles currently in VfD. There is no logical reason whatsoever for this appearing in VfD. Sjc 09:06, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • So remove the entire middle earth canon. It's fancruft. As for the religions, they are notable and known to people who are not fans of their foundational works, and so religious detail is pretty distinct from fancruft. I like Radman1's metric. Delete as fancruft. Eventually we'll get around to zapping most of the Star Wars/Trek cruft too, I hope. --Improv 15:28, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. Boone is not notable outside the context of the Kim Stanley Robinson novels. So merge him into Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars. Or even better, merge all four articles into one called Mars trilogy. Gdr 08:59, 2004 Oct 19 (UTC) P.S. If User:Radman1 were willing to actually do the work and merge the articles then he wouldn't need to propose a vote for deletion.
  • Delete. This is a resurrection of a debate we had three months ago, and I personally merged every Red Mars separate character page into the Red Mars main page because the little tiny stubs of every single character were pointless. Including this one. So I did the work, and I'm mighty peeved to see people reviving the pages when the debate's been had, and the pages merged. Sheesh, doesn't anyone read talk pages before going ahead and editing? I'm a big fan of the character of John Boone, but even I know Fancruft when I see it. I know of no significant influence this character has had outside the text itself, either culturally, socially or intertextually with other literature. Sure, if there was a vast sub-culture of 'Booneheads' who went to 'Red Mars' conventions dressed in Mars Walkers and spent their time debating the finer points of omegendorph-popping, then you could argue for an entry under the 'cultural' category. But it ain't so. Just merge the pages back into Red Mars and lets rid the wiki space of the ramblings of fictional characters that have no influence outside the texts in which they were created. </rant>. Mercurius 10:56, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • keep, its a reasonably long article, and theres no good reason to delete it. This is not a stub, so there is no clear reason to merge it. As has been acknowledged time and again, one of the great aspects of Wikipedia is that it can contain encyclopedic articles about less notable topics than a traditional encyclopedia. Fancruft or whatever you wanna call it, I still vote keep on this article. —siroχo 11:29, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)
    • There's a Shock. Has there ever been an article you HAVE voted to delete? "wiki is not paper". Even paper has higher standards. Terrapin 19:16, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete, fancruft; but since the English-language Wikipedia likes fancruft (none of the others seem to have this problem: probably because far fewer children outside the US have access to computers), I vote for Gdr's suggestion: merge any useful bits into a Mars trilogy. — Bill 12:37, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Interesting point about toleration of fancruft in different Wikipedias. Wile E. Heresiarch 17:19, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Gee, that's the nicest thing anyone's said to me all day. I sure appreciate you mature response. Seriously, could we address this without personal attacks? [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 17:46, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)
    • And as we all know no one outside the US contributes to en.wikipedia.org, in fact no one outside the US even speaks english. I am also sure that the poor and impovrished people of japan, korea, germany, france, finland, australia, norway, england, italy, denmark, New Zealand, Israel, Canada... cant possibly afford to give thier children computers, becuase thier living standards are so far below that of the US The bellman 08:53, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • Hmm, didn't mean to start anything here — all of this now hopelessly off-topic — but this Swiss-born French interpreter and Italophile who learned to read and write in Spanish in Mexico, and who's lived much of his life outside the US wouldn't dream of saying such a thing; it didn't occur to me until you said it.... The standards of living are fine: but have you priced Internet connections in Italy for example? I have. Cable is also much less common overseas (as I can tell from watching my server logs), and parents still somewhat less permissive than in the States. Put it all together, and it's undeniable, far fewer pre-teens using computers outside the States. We need not confuse the equal value of people and of cultures, with observed facts as to Web use! — Bill
  • Keep. Doesn't fulfill any of the criteria for deletion. And what will be achieved by deleting this article? Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopaedia and is not running out of space. You are not going to stumble into this article unless you search for "John Boone" or you follow a link from the trilogy. There is no clutter - because it's not like a book. You don't have to turn pages and filter stuff out.--Tomheaton 16:15, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete: fancruft. Wile E. Heresiarch 17:19, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. Just like to note that this has survived Vfd before. Also, I'd appreciate if Radman would cease listing articles for deletion simply because I worked on them; see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Spinsane, Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Remorse 1981 (and the retaliatory Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Doink the Clown). That said, I can understand that some users think this sort of article merits deletion--I don't mean to attack any legitimate delete voters. However, I'm going to register my opinion and disagree. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 17:26, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. Someone should start a Wikicruft project. -- WOT 17:36, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. Non-notable fancruft. I can't believe someone compared him to God. Where's the "user ignore" button? Terrapin 19:14, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Weak Delete: We allow articles on fictions strictly on the basis of whether Wikipedians like them. That's what I've learned. We sure don't do it on a rational basis. People write up every stinking joke from their favorite movies as an article. They put up every character, every weapon, every article of clothing, etc. from the game they're playing. Then the VfD debate takes place, and we hear that Wikipedia isn't paper and that there are many people who play/read that thing. I personally address this two ways. One is coverage at all, and the other is a break out. Coverage I agree with. Let's cover those super power bracers of gloom #4 with phase shift. However, let's not break them out into long, detailed articles unless, and I say this every time, they are topics known outside of their fictions. You put them outside their fictions in articles when they're known outside their fictions. If this character is known by the whole science fiction reading community, then it can be a separate article. If not, then it just doesn't make any sense to have it as a separate article. It's not a value judgment: it's a question of whether people will seek and need the information on this common name to refer to this specific thing. A recurrent character in a series of novels is far better off than the single character of Vosk in Star Trek, and that's why this is a weak delete. Geogre 19:52, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I'm with WOT, 100%. There seems to be no solution to the flood of this stuff other than to let it inhabit its own world apart. It will have some value in a coupla hundred years to scholars analysing popular culture, just like 18c English broadsheets and scurrilous ditties do now: but it still won't be encyclopedic. I'm not sure that you mightn't have been joking, WOT, but a Wikicruft project is an idea we could take seriously; if we don't do something soon, there's a real danger of undermining the credibility of Wikipedia, and its appeal to serious contributors. — Bill 20:06, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
This is certainly an option. However, as I've stated before, one of the major problems is, what would its exact mission be? To serve fancruft? That would be useless in itself - Incidentally, there's already a "Wikipedia" style place for Joss Whedon's works, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. To serve television shows? Maybe, but then no one would post there except for the die-hard fans of cult TV shows - who would do this sort of thing for The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis? However, the major point that Bill makes - to help Wikipedia's credibility - may be reason enough alone. I won't vote here, since it's survived VfD before. But, such as it stands. Ian Pugh 23:09, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
As I have said before, a separate wiki will not be a truly viable option until the different wikis are more closely connected. At the moment, it is difficult for the average person to get from one to the next, and searches here would not bring up results from a fandom-specific separate encyclopedia. Also we would have to fight over the exact limits, and what goes where. (Besides, it's bad articles that damage credibility, whether they are about literary characters or concepts in physics.) [[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 00:08, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete as transparent fancruft. GRider 21:29, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep, Yes I know I tend to vote delete on this kind of thing, but this is a revenge posting and has survived vfd before (Meelar, do you have a link for the discussion.) -Vina 22:36, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • See Talk:John Boone. Best, [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 23:05, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. It attempts to be a serious discussion of the character, not just a reporting of the facts. Just because I don't much care doesn't mean it should be deleted. Mars exploration may not belong to the realm of science fiction much longer, and when it's in the news again, we'll be glad to have such information on Mars-travel science fiction. [[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 00:02, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Merge and redirect into Red Mars, as he only appears there. -Sean Curtin 01:37, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. Agree with Aranel. [[User:Rhymeless|Rhymeless | (Methyl Remiss)]] 05:46, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. It's clearly labeled as being about a fictional character, so I don't think it undermines Wikipedia's credibility with serious contributors. Some of the discussions about God probably hurt our credibility more. (I don't mean that God should be deleted; I mean that there are probably passages about God, in that article or others, that a knowledgeable scholar of religion would consider absurd.) JamesMLane 07:52, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I merged John Boone, Red Mars, Blue Mars and Green Mars into a new article called Mars trilogy. I took the liberty of removing the VfD tag since the issue is now moot; I hope that is OK. Gdr 22:17, 2004 Oct 20 (UTC)

  • Acceptable, but only as long as the content remains. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 23:40, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)
  • Good Solution, so when do we remove this listing? Should have been done when the info was merged?Keep, and IMHO the term 'fancruft' is bantered about too much. Don't we have a Mycroft Holmes? If Arthur Conan Doyle were writing today, it would be 'fancruft' (and that jargon seems unsuitable even when accurate). I think the custom is not to be insulting on vfd, and whatever it means, fancruft would seem insulting to a newcomer. I've been here a while and it seems so to me. " John Boone" won't just pop up without looking for it, so I don't see it as being a detriment to our credibility.Pedant 02:09, 2004 Oct 24 (UTC)

Pedant(continued): Ichabod Crane but not Lord Valentine or Captain Ahab? John Carter of Mars but not Thuvia, Maid of Mars, and though both the previous are titles of books by Edgar Rice Burroughs and are mentioned in WP, Thuvia is mentioned in Barsoom, Not in it's own article. Barsoom does not exist outside of the novels. Is "Barsoom" fancruft? No. Because it has entered into our cultural heritage. However, when Burroughs was writing about it, Barsoom was was not considered worthy of an encyclopedia entry. As I mentioned before Lucille Ball is not even mentioned in the World Book Encyclopedia, but is Lucille McGillicuddy fancruft? We have Gor and Oz and even Majipoor but no Lord Valentine even though he is the title character of the first book to mention Majipoor, and Majipoor is not the title of any book, but the Majipoor Chronicles -- which is the name by which the trilogy featuring Lord Valentine's rise is called -- doesn't have an article. Measure twice and cut once is what I say. Articles can always be deleted, but once they are deleted, it's a serious duplication of effort to recreate them. In most cases, simply the fact that an article has been created, and has been written well, and is factual even if it's about a fiction means it is notable. the exception of course being outright vanity articles or articles with misleading titles, etc. I think we should ease up on stamping out so-called 'fancruft'... and try to keep an open mind. I might not be interested in knowing that d2jsp.org provides bot scripts for playing Diablo 2, but then again, maybe I have heard of njaguar in another context, maybe he became famous for something else besides the Diablo 2 javascript parser...

I might think a discussion of Fermats Last Theorem is "mathcruft", does that make it not notable? But then I'm The Kind of Weirdo Who Sets His Browser's Home Page to Wikipedia's Random Page Becaus Everything is Notable] so I tend to be conservative when deleting, so I think User:Meelar's solution is excellent. I've been reading encyclopedias since the 60's, and I think the broader the topic base the better the encyclopedia. IMO many things dismissed as fancruft actually are a huge asset to wikipedia... a lot of people discover wikipedia by accident, searching for something that's obscure or meaningless to some, but which is of interest to them, including fancruft. I posit that the best way to improve the 'good-article-to-fancruft-ratio" is to write more articles about the things one personally finds to be notable and to spend less time deleting. Gardens need lots of weeding, when they are planted sparsely, but if you plant generously, the weeds are overshadowed by the 'good' plants and there is less weeding needed. More pruning, grafting and transplanting time.Pedant 02:09, 2004 Oct 24 (UTC)

Nuke. -Joseph (Talk) 02:52, 2004 Oct 25 (UTC)

Keep. There's a whole list of Harry Potter characters and the Lord of the Rings fancruft would make a wikipedia of its own. I entirely agree with Pedant. Interesting is very often in the eye of the beholder.Dr Zen 03:18, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like other '/delete' pages is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion or on the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.

[edit] Resolution

I merged John Boone, Red Mars, Blue Mars and Green Mars into a new article called Mars trilogy. I took the liberty of removing the VfD tag since the issue is now moot; I hope that is OK. Gdr 22:17, 2004 Oct 20 (UTC)

  • Acceptable, but only as long as the content remains. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 23:40, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)
  • Well done. By the way, I asked Frank Chalmers and he said "Of COURSE you should f%$&%$ delete John Boone!"  ;) Mercurius 09:48, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)