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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 was Keep. While I agree that there is no reason to have a list of all characters of fictional work "X", a list of notable, important, major, ... characters for a notable work of fiction is perfectly acceptable (within our policies and guidelines, and to the majority of people commenting on this AfD). So I would recommend a discussion on the talk page of this list (or on a more general page, like the talk page of the fiction guideline) to decide which criteria will be used to include some characters and exclude others. If people want to preserve the full list anyway, they can transclude it. Fram (talk) 14:44, 29 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

List of Honorverse characters[edit]

List of Honorverse characters (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

150kb dump of in-universe information. Delete per WP:PLOT (it can be transwikied to the honorverse wiki (http://honorverse.wikia.com/)) --TS 17:47, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note to closer: I (TS, the nominator) also use the account Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The —Preceding comment was added at 19:13, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Transwiki and Delete - WP doesn't need this level of detail. JohnCD (talk) 18:05, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Referenced, notable. I can understand and support deletion of individual non-notable characters, but lists are pretty notable, and this one is way above average. Why not delete the much worse List of Harry Potter characters or List of Star Wars characters? They have their own wikis, too, you know. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 18:32, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    It's not notability that concerns me, but the nature of the list. I think we can agree that the article gives no external context--it really is only useful as a guide to somebody reading the books. The external relevance of the characters (whether they're referenced, for instance, in any works of fiction or non-fiction by other authors) is not given. "WP:PLOT" is just shorthand for "we're not just trying to fill the wiki up with information here, we're organising it according to its relationships." Where no such relationship is apparent, I think, the information is only of in-universe relevance and would be better off on a wiki that covers the subject in depth. --TS 18:43, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    As I said, how does it differ from any other fictional character list? If the intro is bad, we can always improve it.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus|talk 19:20, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    The subject of character lists is addresed in the article Wikipedia:Notability (fiction) under the heading "Notable topics merit individual articles" . This should be used in determinining the status of the article. --Unak78| talk 03:14, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, but only characters that play a significant role. Iris Babcock should be kept, but not Barbara Bancroft - she doesn't even appear in any of the novels, she's only mentioned. Clarityfiend (talk) 18:57, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    If we have a list, why not strive for a comprehensive one? After all, Wiki is not paper...--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 19:20, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Because it's also not an indiscriminate collection of info either. Does anybody really need to know that someone named Bergren was a prison guard? Clarityfiend (talk) 20:30, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • That the list contains too much information is no reason for its deletions. And who knows, maybe somebody will need this information one day. Who are we to judge? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 21:08, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • We obviously don't want the information to be destroyed (although of course it's already in the books). The Transwiki process would make the article available as an external link from related Wikipedia articles. There are already quite a lot of articles about significant Honorverse characters. This is a sort of directory of honorverse, indiscriminate in the sense that it seeks to document the most minor characters alongside the most significant, and that's a different matter. --TS 21:18, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • We draw a distinction between significant and non-significant characters all the time. Bilbo is highly significant. His aunt Lobelia Sackville-Baggins less so. Samwise is significant in his own right, but Gaffer Gamgee only insofar as he's Sam's dad and he reveals significant information to a Nazgûl. At some point we might decide that the fact that a character is mentioned in a published book does not require that we record that fact in Wikipedia. --TS 23:28, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, no opinion on transwiki. Excessive level of detail for a general-interest encyclopedia--even a sci-fi encyclopedia or literary encyclopedia wouldn't attempt to list every named character in an entire book series. Nor are there any sources besides the books themselves. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 18:59, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Transwiki and Delete - No establishment of notability through reliable sources. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 19:00, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep: Valid summary style spin-off of the series articles. Needs a fair bit of cleanup, but as we are all constantly reminded, AfD is not cleanup. —Quasirandom (talk) 23:31, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep AFD is not cleanup. Remove the insignificant minor characters, keep the rest. -- ShinmaWa(talk) 05:27, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Transwiki and Delete Keep - I wouldn't support simply deleting or truncating this information; it's too useful and too much work has gone into it. However, this article would fit better in the Honorverse wiki. -- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 18:53, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Addendum (commenting on my own comment): The reason I don't think any names should be removed from this article is that the list is invaluable to people who are reading the series. David Weber introduces so many characters that it can be impossible to remember who is who without a list like this—in fact, I believe this list started life as someone's notes to keep track of the Honorverse characters. -- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 05:31, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
However, the nice thing about having the list be licensed under the GFDL is that we can, in fact, have it both ways. We can transwiki the whole list to the specific Wikia as-is for those people who want it, while keeping a shorter, more concise list on the general-purpose Wikipedia. Despite how it appears by some of the !voting here, a transwiki to Wikia does not necessitate a delete from Wikipedia. -- ShinmaWa(talk) 04:55, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is however the issue I mentioned: how do we decide who is notable enough to stay and who is not? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 07:42, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That, like all things, is a matter of consensus. However, that discussion is outside the scope of an AfD and this is not the appropriate forum for it. -- ShinmaWa(talk) 14:49, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think you (ShinmaWa) have a point, so I've changed my vote from "transwiki and delete" to "transwiki and keep". I think the Wikipedia version of this list could be pared down significantly just by removing characters that only appear once, briefly, or are even only mentioned in passing. -- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 02:04, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Why are we having this conversation about this particular one? Am puzzled. Relata refero (talk) 08:04, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Because it's one of our largest articles and it's completely in-universe. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 18:58, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Very questionable rationale for putting this up on AFD. This is clearly a cleanup issue. Under the rules the rules established according to the Wikipedia:Notability (fiction) series is notable as a whole due to booksales. The notability of this page in particular is clarified as notable if you read the section under the heading "Notable topics merit individual articles" . I admit to a vested interest in this article having worked on it, but having read the guidelines of Wikipedias policies for other AFD discussions, this article does not fall into that status. --Unak78| talk 02:24, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    The grounds for deletion has nothing to do with notability (we do have articles about the Honorverse). The grounds is that this particular article is, and is intended to be, "a comprehensive list of the names of even minor characters in the Honor Harrington series and its related works". As such it's indiscriminate. There are many articles about the Honorverse, its main locations, organisations, events and characters. Only this one, as far as I'm aware, contravenes WP:PLOT in such a gross manner.
    To get the issue of "notability" out of your mind, consider instead whether you would countenance an article about every single character, even minor, in the Tolstoy novel War and Peace. Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn't, but that has nothing to do with the question of whether War and Peace is "notable". --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The (TS) 18:55, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    We are however not talking about articles for dozens of non-notable fictional characters, but a list containing both notable and possibly non-notable characters. Unless anybody can present a reasonable way to draw a clear line between notable and non-notable characters (we can all agree on examples, but the middle ones I doubt), such lists should remain, as an alternative is no lists at all. I prefer a comprehensive list with some useless data than no information at all.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 01:23, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    The alternative isn't "no list at all" in this case. There are over two score separate character articles pertaining to the Honorverse. If someone want s to make an encyclopedic lists, those can be used as the core. What we've got at the moment is an estimated 500 characters (I didn't actually count, of course), with important characters mixed up with the less important. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 08:04, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    That sounds like you are retracting your AfD nomination, Tony. Are you? If not, could you clarify your stance? -- ShinmaWa(talk) 14:55, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I think you may have misread it. I favor nuking the current list article because it would be much easier to start again from a nucleus of the two score or so characters who have their own articles than to trim down a list of 500, most of whom are the novelistic equivalent of "extras". The full list article might well be considered an asset on Honoverse wiki, which is why I suggest a transwiki option. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 14:59, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you for the clarification. I do agree with you that there's no reason in the world that the full list as-is can't be transwikied over to Wikia. However, we certainly don't need consensus here to do that. Piotr, or whoever else is interested in copying the list over, can do so at any time. -- ShinmaWa(talk) 15:29, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. The quality of the article isn't really the issue. If it's inadequate, improve it, don't delete! Other fictional series get character lists. I agree with Piotr. SpaceCaptain (talk) 02:50, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy Keep AFD violates the current Arbcom injunction. Jtrainor (talk) 21:03, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please, let's not wikilawyer. I may not agree with Tony, but I see nothing bad faithed about his actions.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 23:00, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Actually, Jtrainor placed this same thing on a bunch of fiction-based AFDs. I don't think it has anything to do with Tony. However, I scanned through ArbComm's archives and don't see any such "injunction" against any good faith AFD -- period. Perhaps Jtrainor would care to explain? -- ShinmaWa(talk) 00:39, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Update: Jtrainor inappropriately is applying an injunction against television series character deletions. However, that injunction doesn't apply here because these characters are in novels, not on television. Also, there's nothing in the injunction about aborting the AfD process with speedy keeps. I've recommended to Jtrainor to strike his speedy keep. -- ShinmaWa(talk) 01:42, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm unaware of any injunction, but I'll obviously withdraw this without prejudice if there is any applicable injunction. I would be very surprised if arbcom has attempted to interfere with the good faith listing for deletion of articles. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 01:51, 27 February 2008 (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.
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