Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Elaine Komandorski

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 Delete, Nakon 05:55, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Elaine Komandorski

Non-notable, unsourced, in-universe, plot summary; tagged over a year ago for clean-up [1] and no resolution of concerns. Jack Merridew 08:22, 16 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as nom. Cheers, Jack Merridew 08:23, 16 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science fiction-related deletion discussions. — Jack Merridew 08:23, 16 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. — Jack Merridew 08:25, 16 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to List of Honorverse characters: I ran the three synonyms through Google Scholar and Books in search of notability. The first has no hits, the second gives a link only to one of the novels in which she appears, the third returns hits for a different character in a novel by another author. A broader web search for the main name, minus overt Wikipedia mirror sites, also returns nothing in the way of reliable sources. Therefore notability is not established and an independent article not merited. Gonzonoir (talk) 08:45, 16 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, and then discuss whether or not to merge at the appropriate talk page. I'd support the merge, almost certainly, at the right place. As Jules correctly says, if they're not important enough as separate characters, combination articles preserving content are the way to go. The only real problem is that the combination articles may then be deleted — as is currently being attempted at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Treecat, and then the articles about the characters as a group, and all reduced to bare lists of names. I cannot tell if this string of nominations against characters and character groups in this fiction is a statement that the fiction as a whole in not important enough for detailed coverage (about which I have no real opinion), or whether no fiction at all should get detailed coverage. If the latter, its the attempt of a small group to wear down the opposition based on the stated view of the nominator that popular culture is not worth substantial coverage. DGG (talk) 15:04, 16 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment — I reviewed many of the Honorverse articles a year ago and my attention was drawn back to these when someone took one of them to AfD earlier this week; it's likely whichever one I first commented on recently (I have a huge watchlist;). I certainly do feel that detailed coverage of some fictional characters is warranted — the ones other parties believe worth covering, not all of the ones wiki editors believe should be covered. That's the core idea of the concept of requiring reasonably detailed coverage by independent reliable sources to warrant the inclusion of an article. In the cases where pretty much no coverage exists, a mention in a list with about one sentence is all that seems appropriate; i.e. a merge is not appropriate either. When Wikipedia gets ahead of the independent reliable sources on coverage, we're implicitly serving to promote the material, which in this case, and others, is a commercial franchise.
As to the fact that a few potential merge targets are also at AfD; I believe it's a coincidence. I made 5 noms yesterday, all characters. There are dozens of leaf-node articles in this garden and others see this, too. Once editors see a few up, there is a natural tendency for them to recall other articles that they have concerns about and that will typically lead to organic growth of the range up for discussion. Cheers, Jack Merridew 04:58, 17 April 2009 (UTC)][reply]
1/ How can the nomination of combination articles be inadvertent, if you are examining the articles? The reason for nominating them can only be because you think not even merged content acceptable.

2/ I consider the importance of the character and the importance of the fiction at least equal considerations, because otherwise we're bound to the chance accumulation of easily findable references — or are you asserting you did a proper search, per WP:BEFORE? But even for those who accept that secondary sourcing is the main consideration, that does not apply to merged sections, which are suitable for sub-notable but relevant content. You argue otherwise, but I do not know on what basis. it has been continually rejected that individual parts of content in an article must be notable.

3/ I asked about the specificity to see if you thought similarly about other material, because deletion based on the grounds that this particular fiction is not sufficiently important requires a different rationale in discussing — and for fictional genres I have little familiarity with, I fell less competent to do that, as compared to discussing fiction in general, which both you and I are essentially trying to do.
4/ any article on any current fiction or other book, any commercial product, any college, any author or painter or musician, can have the effect of promotion. The prevention of an excessive influence of this is proper editing. Even discussion of non-plot elements such as sales and awards can have just the same effect, perhaps even more so than plot and characters. DGG (talk) 17:20, 17 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I was referring to the fact that I had seen some Hoververse articles up, had then nominated 5 that I had previously looked at a year ago, and that I then saw that yet more had been nominated by others. I'm not going to nom any more until these discussions have run their course and I take another look-see. I did review a bunch more yesterday, and tidied and tagged things. There are something like 50 character articles and maybe 50 others about planets, navies and spaceships. The List of Honorverse characters is already over 200kb with some huge number of characters in it. There's simply far too much coverage here. I've never read any of these books, and don't care to. I read a lot of such fiction, back in the day. I can't tell which of these articles are genuinely notable. If you, or anyone, comes up with a solid sort of source on any of them, great; I'll change my !vote. Promise.

I did do the usual Google searches on these first; pretty much across the board I found the primary sources or some real individual with the name. There are copies of the articles out there; there's Wikia and other such fansites. I even visited the Honorverse wiki (the blue skin hurt my eyes, and the top-level domain is a deterrent for me;). I don't see Weber's work as particularly important to anyone. The books sell, people get checks, there are reviews on the books (right?) and the girl must have gotten some notice. The sprawling level of detail, original research, synthesis and whatnot in here is ridiculous. I don't feel comfortable performing merges of content I'm unfamiliar with; those who are familiar with it will invariably disagree with my cuts. Besides, the ice is rather thin in that area. Merge proposals on talk pages are exercises in futility; there's no closure. The results are invariably disputed, the redirects often undone. I'd be all for a more formalized Articles for Merging system.

I do believe that this 'verse is a particularly egregious example of a pervasive problem with a lot of our pop-culture coverage. Wikipedia is not a fansite; this degree of coverage is obsessive, not encyclopædic. My view of notability as an inclusion criteria is as a gatekeeper for this sort of stuff. As much as some want to cover everything in near infinite detail, we can't, and we shouldn't. There is an inexact alignment of my personal views on what's important and what has been genuinely been taken note of by the independent reliable source crowd. Professional athletes, for example, are surely well taken note of; there's no pissing in that wind; and I wouldn't — they met the bar. As to whether said sources are actually cited — I wouldn't know; I've not looked.

Wikipedia coverage of most any commercial property is incredibly valuable to those behind it, sure. This is well enough understood, but for the most part folks focus on the obvious spammers; the SPAs that link-spam. Every major marketing department, advertising agency, and Search Engine Optimization consultant is well-aware of the effects of Wikipedia on their fortunes. We should fully expect to see ever more aggressive attempts by those interests to influence coverage of their bread and butter on our projects. We should also expect them to seek to satisfy our inclusion guidelines where they can by, for example, putting up quasi-independent reviews et al on the web where the ghit crowd will easily find them. Marketing is relentless and pernicious.

I've said elsewhere that this is not really about fiction; it's about entertainment. While here we are in fact talking about a block of fictional books, the core of this is ephemeral pop-culture — that doesn't honestly meet our inclusion criteria. I strongly support having comprehensive coverage of the truly notable works of fiction. Tolkien, Tolstoy, Austen an Asimov to name a few. Such works will meet even a very high standard of notability. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, as we say, and we do discriminate against certain content and one of the determinants is true notability as defined by others, not ourselves. Weber is no Asimov and Elaine Komandorski is no Lady Macbeth.

Others; sorry to clot up this page with all this; we'll take it somewhere else, soon enough.

Cheers, Jack Merridew 06:57, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: DGG, I understand what you're saying, but I'd be reluctant to try to head off AfDs against the combination lists by giving their potential constituent articles immunity from deletion. Would we lose much by having the merge discussion here, rather than closing the AfD and then rehashing the discussion on the talk page? (This is a sincere question; I'm not super-familiar with process so I don't know if there are drawbacks to doing it this way). Gonzonoir (talk) 12:27, 17 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
But people are trying explicitly to suppress merged articles. In that environment, experience unfortunately shows that a strong defense of the content here is advisable to help a proper merge into a section, and discourages a submerge into a list item — as the nom in fact suggests doing. It's unfortunately not just a matter of process. DGG (talk) 17:24, 17 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Not explicitly; that potential merge targets are also up is a mere happenstance of the wiki-process. The treecats and list of, right? I didn't nominate those. My one sentence comment above does not imply a merge to me. There has been quite a flurry of merge proposals; this is not about moving the bits around, it's about too much fancruft. Cheers, Jack Merridew 06:57, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep There is enough information to justify its own side article. You couldn't possible merge that much information, and the List of Honorverse characters doesn't have summaries for the characters listed there, just their names, ranks, and whatnot. So you can't merge it, that ending up in this case being exactly the same as a delete(except the history of the article is preserved, and there is a redirect added. Dream Focus 17:29, 16 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete fictional character with insufficient independent coverage to sufficiently establish notability outside of the context of the work of fiction the character inhabits.Bali ultimate (talk) 18:29, 16 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete- I wholeheartedly endorse Gonzonoir's analysis of the sources. Reyk _YO! 22:52, 16 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete entirely in-universe content that violates our content provisions elaborated at WP:NOT. Eusebeus (talk) 17:18, 17 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to List of Honorverse characters Edward321 (talk) 15:03, 19 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, without merge, and redirect to List_of_Honorverse_characters#Kleinmeuller_to_Kuzak. Entry there appears to cover essential bases. --EEMIV (talk) 18:17, 20 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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.