Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of fictional antiheroes

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 no consensus. There are good arguments for retaining (and improving) or deleting the article, and they both pretty much cancel each other out. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 13:14, 13 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

List of fictional antiheroes[edit]

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The antihero is obviously a notable topic, but I'm not convinced that a list of them is notable in the academic sense. The contents are mostly rolling up listicles and similar non-RS, or sources that label specific characters in passing as antiheroes.

Aside from that, this 2008 CfD, along with prior CfDs under different titles, established that the label of an antihero is too broad and subjective for a category, so it is probably also too subjective for a list (WP:SALAT). In light of this, the quality of the references, the tendency to attract unsourced entries, and the removal of sourced entries that editors disagree with, are unsurprising. –LaundryPizza03 (d c̄) 00:07, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Fictional elements, Popular culture, and Lists. –LaundryPizza03 (d c̄) 00:07, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep 284 references in the article. Plenty of blue links in the columns, makes it a valid navigational list for those who want to find articles for antiheroes, and provides information about what notable series they were from and what author created them and what year they were published. Dream Focus 01:12, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep with much pruning. There are a few (not 284) references consisting of lists of antiheroes, so WP:NLIST is satisfied. However, due to the serious disagreements as to who is or isn't one, as alluded to in the intro, entries should be restricted to those that have multiple sterling sources. Clarityfiend (talk) 10:29, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- I would then suggest adopting WP:LISTCRITERIA analogous to those used at List of military disasters: only include entries where multiple (i.e. at least two) sources specifically dealing with the subject of antiheroes refer to the character in question as an antihero. Further refinement may be necessary. For instance, perhaps only characters with stand-alone Wikipedia articles should be included? And there is of course the issue of which sources to consider—an article in Review of General Psychology and a listicle by Screen Rant are not the same in terms of quality, after all. TompaDompa (talk) 17:34, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  Information in any article only needs one reference to prove it if its in doubt. No reason to require more. Dream Focus 19:54, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  That's not actually true across the board, since there are some circumstances in which we do indeed require multiple references. The clearest example is probably WP:Exceptional claims, where policy explicitly says Any exceptional claim requires multiple high-quality sources. For something like this list, where it's not a matter of facts but rather subjective assessments, requiring multiple sources may simply be a reasonable application of WP:WEIGHT so as not to unduly include the views of tiny minorities. That being said, I do agree with Reywas92 below that including a handful of examples that are discussed/examined in-depth by WP:RELIABLE sources in the main Antihero article is probably a preferable alternative (I'm reminded of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of films that pass the Bechdel test, where I made a similar point). TompaDompa (talk) 01:51, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Per WP:OLIST - the scope of the list is too large to reasonably maintain. A great deal of the characters in fiction can conceivably be called antiheroes. This is an example of a list that does not truly benefit people due to its vagueness. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 21:07, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete It's by no means special or remarkable that not every main character is flawless. Antihero is a fairly short article and would be improved with expanded discussion and even further listing (in prose) of the most significant antiheroes who have been widely analyzed, but a list spanning all forms of media with several hundred entries (but still obviously wildly incomplete) and no useful commentary is not a quality or appropriate list. Too many sources are low-quality listicles or passing mentions of the word "antihero", without encyclopedic usefulness. An example of how poor this is is Indiana Jones, whose first citiation is the above Screen Rant listicle that doesn't even mention him...and the second is this unreliable blog post that gives a mere passing mention after writing "The list of phenomenal Anti-Heroes is practically endless." I want to compare this to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of sex symbols (4th nomination), as here we also see inclusion criteria that are so overly broad the list becomes useless, being those that fall under a very generic term that is easily thrown around to describe something that is hardly uncommon and not consistently defined. This page does have some higher-quality sources, but they would be better introduced to the main article with more explained examples there rather than pretending that a sea of blue links in a list that is both incomplete and overly inclusive (Donald Duck?) is actually good for navigation. Like seriously, when the lead has to say "Each of these examples has been identified by a critic as an antihero, although the classification remains fairly subjective. Some of the entries may be disputed by other sources and some may contradict all established definitions of antihero", it's inherently not a good list. Reywas92^Talk 22:00, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Reywas92 explained the issues with this list very well. Having a list with potentially hundreds of entries just because some click-bait "Pop Culture Top Ten" style list somewhere on the internet happened to throw around the term "anti-hero" once when referring to them does not help navigation in any way. This list currently contains things ranging from heroic characters who may have a few flaws to outright irredeemable villains, all because somewhere, someone happened to use the word "anti-hero" when discussing them. Per Reywas92's suggestion, some of the actual prominent examples that have multiple sources that go beyond top-ten lists or simply dropping in the word "anti-hero" when describing them without any actual discussion can and should be mentioned on the main article on the topic. This massive list of poorly cited blue links, however, does not help supplement the information on the main article in any way, nor does it serve a useful purpose as a navigational list, per the discussion above. Rorshacma (talk) 15:56, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Yeah, it's awfully weird to have James Bond, a hero who can be a selfish womanizer, grouped with Hannibal Lecter, a serial killer. And then this time looking at it I see Sheldon Cooper, a comedic character with his ups and downs and I'd say neither a hero or antihero or whatever, but somehow sourced to this listicle, which doesn't even mention him.... This list is worthless junk and having it on the project is embarassing. Reywas92^Talk 18:57, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Merge/Weak delete. Classic list OR. Who calls them antiheroes (some are referenced, fine, so at minimum a pruning is needed)? But worse, which reliable work attempts to list "all antiheroes"? Failure of WP:LISTN is a major problem. Note, however, that some content here might be warranted merging into antihero. For example, IF [1] is a RS, the claim that Lazarillo de Tormes is the first antihero (rather dubious, IMHO) would be worth preserving. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:30, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep For a list to be suitable for Wikipedia, in contrast to what the nomination posits, it is not that secondary sources have to treat such lists. Rather it is sufficient that the group or set is notable. This is clearly the case for the concept of antihero, as the nomination itself admits. In contrast to other lists we have on Wikipedia, this is mostly sourced, so I can't see any poblem with subjectivity. Lastly, as has been stated before, with it's large number of blue links this list serves a navigational purpose. Failing that, I would obviously prefer a merge of relevant examples to expand the quite short antihero article to deletion, which would be the way supported by WP:AtD. Daranios (talk) 10:44, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete fails WP:LISTN and WP:GNG due to a lack of third party sources. The list is almost all WP:OR. To some other editors' comments, Antihero is a notable topic and already has an article. This does not support the creation of endless non-notable WP:CONTENTFORKS. Jontesta (talk) 18:14, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Jontesta: Why should this fail WP:LISTN and therefore WP:GNG, when antihero is a notable topic? Antihero is the corresponding "group or set" to List of fictional antiheroes, the discussion of which WP:LISTN uses as its main critereon. How is it "almost all WP:OR", when most of the content is referenced? And a list of notable instances of a topic, for navigational purposes, cannot be a case disallowed by WP:CONTENTFORK - otherwise every list which were to fullfill the WP:LISTN critereon would be a content fork of that topic! It's also explicitely not one of the cases listed as unacceptable by WP:CONTENTFORK. Daranios (talk) 10:43, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- I just don't think a list this arbitrary is really a group or set in the first place. If you someone asked what Bugs Bunny, Hannibal Lecter, Lester Burnham, Jason Bourne, Mike Zuckerberg, and Oscar the Grouch had in common, they'd be hard pressed to tell you. Having been called a subjective, broadly defined term that needs a disclaimer "Some of the entries may be disputed by other sources and some may contradict all established definitions of antihero" is not a well-defined group or set. A list this broad and subjective is not a useful way to navigate. The main article could and should have a lengthier list of the best examples with reasons why they typify this character role, but this isn't the way to do it. If "having blue links" is inherently navigational, what isn't going to pass that? Reywas92^Talk 14:19, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Reywas92: If this list is arbitrary, then why is antihero a stock character as recognized by secondary sources? I am totally fine with requiring secondary sources for each instance in this case to avoid making arbitrary judgements. Daranios (talk) 17:04, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't know what your question is supposed to mean. Just because it's a real recognized concept doesn't mean it's our place to catalogue any time a critic or listicle compiler applies a term that has enormous breadth of application. Nothing else in List of stock characters is so broad, and most are able to have appropriate contextual recognition of significant examples – which actually provides better information to understand the idea than a sea of times a word has been used – like Valley_girl#In_popular_culture, White_hunter#Representations_in_literature_and_film, Reluctant_hero#Examples, without going unencyclopedially overboard. Many of the sources are arbitrary as well and lack depth and meaning. Just someone throwing around a broad term doesn't mean we need to compile that. [2] just says in a game review (used for both the game and literature) "I'm a sucker for the anti-hero, and the star of this game, Geralt, seems like he runs with the best (worst?) of them." But so what? [3] describes a protagonist who uses heroin, [4] comments on a giant gorilla that develops a soft spot, and [5] applies it to a hypocritical boss. It doesn't take hundreds of disparate examples to inform that this recognized stock character is a broad concept with poor definition, and there's no legitimate navigation between these. And [6] is just citogenesis that plagiarized Rooster Cogburn (character)... Reywas92^Talk 19:06, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If this is too broad to be useful or not is something that can be debated. But I still can't see that this should fail WP:LISTN because it should not be discussed as a group or set, when there are various secondary sources about them, some in book-length like this or this. Quality issues in specific instances would be solvable by editing. Daranios (talk) 20:42, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- So use these books for antihero! A book subtitled "Figures and themes in modern European literature 1830–1980" and a collection of essays specifically on Alias, Supernatural, and The Vampire Diaries do not actually discuss this group of 500 vaguely defined characters across all media types. Reywas92^Talk 22:05, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as an WP:INDISCRIMINATE list of heroes. As the nom noted, this didn't qualify as a category either because the entries are inherently impossible to WP:VERIFY in a way that is WP:RELIABLE and consistent. At best, redirect to the notable topic, antihero. Shooterwalker (talk) 03:11, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep GNG is met, LISTN is met, and many of the above deletion rationales (e.g., the one immediately above this) don't cogently cite relevant policies--they name policies, but not accurately or appropriately. Jclemens (talk) 03:42, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Per Jclemens. Bookworm857158367 (talk) 14:02, 11 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, but consolidate substantially. There are four separate entries on the list for Catwoman alone. Is the focus on the character, or the depiction? There should be a single line for the earliest use of any given character in this vein, with all information on that character in that one place. BD2412 T 20:49, 12 June 2022 (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.