Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of fictional mustelids

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. postdlf (talk) 03:22, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

List of fictional mustelids[edit]

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This list fails WP:IINFO and WP:NOTDIR. It is also essentially unsourced fancruft. Consensus has always been that lists of this sort are untenable if the parent article (in this case Mustelids in fiction) would not be notable; see e.g. Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_fictional_weasels. Reyk _YO! 07:42, 14 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - there are a ton of these lists, navigable from the template at the bottom. Lists of fictional bears, fictional raccoons, etc. It seems like per your argument, none of these should exist. I personally don't care either way but it seems like this needs to be dealt with as a whole. —Мандичка^YO 😜 08:06, 14 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I'm aware of the other articles and I do not think any of them should exist. There was a big cleanout of these terrible articles around 2010-2011 IIRC, but someone's gone and recreated them all again. If consensus is still that articles like this one should be deleted, then I will mass-nom the others. Reyk _YO! 08:10, 14 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Fictional animals/Animals in literature are legitimate categories, and this functions as a subdivision for ease of navigation. Colapeninsula (talk) 09:06, 14 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Also, here's a book on weasels in culture, literature and art[1] and some stuff on otters in literature and cultural discourse[2][3]. There is more. Colapeninsula (talk) 09:19, 14 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Seems more like WP:IDONTLIKEIT with a threat of WP:I'll scweam and scweam and scweam until I'm sick. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:19, 14 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment on the article, don't make mendacious attacks on the nominator. Reyk _YO! 10:25, 14 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  - Oh get over yourself. Do you have a policy-based reason why you want to delete this article, because so far it's all down to your personal opinion and nothing else. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:28, 14 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There is a case to be made for this article, List of fictional mustelids, to be deleted as poorly written and inadequately sourced – neither of which are policy-based reasons. However Reyk's rationale for deletion here seems to be much more about then setting a precedent (Which from WP:OSE et al. isn't a policy-based reason for working either) from which they have already threatened to start going after all related articles. That would include lists like the rather more substantial List of fictional badgers; the talk: page of which is worth reading BTW, for a rather long-running debate on inclusion criteria relevant to all of these articles. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:32, 14 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think you'll find WP:V and WP:BURDEN are policy, so don't pretend that "unsourced" is not a policy basis for my opinion. You also seem to be saying that, if a bunch of cookie-cutter similar articles all suffer from the same policy flaws, it's inherently a bad thing to try to delete them all. There is nothing wrong with gauging community consensus on one of those cookie-cutter articles and then acting (or not) on the result. There's no need to insinuate some sort of malicious motivation on my part. Reyk _YO! 10:42, 14 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Fictional animals are quite notable - see Talking Animals in British Children's Fiction, 1786-1914, for example. As there are lots of them, it's then a matter of of how to divide them up. I'm not sure that the family of Mustelidae is the most common name for such but it's easy to find examples for particular types such as badgers and otters so that WP:LISTN is satisfied. The rest is then a matter of ordinary editing, not deletion. Andrew D. (talk) 12:16, 14 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- No it isn't simply a matter of how to divide them up. Each subcategory must have its notability proved independently, see WP:NOTINHERITED because the notability of the parent group can't be inherited to the subgroup. If the subgroup isn't notable, it can't have a standalone article. In this specific case you have a single source to prove notability of animals in fiction. The references you cited seem reliable but I dispute they are enough to constitute WP:SIGCOV significant coverage. AadaamS (talk) 18:46, 14 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  - That source was just an example. Here are 10 more books of a similar sort:

What Animals Mean in the Fiction of Modernity
Animals in Young Adult Fiction
Talking Animals in Children's Fiction: A Critical Study
Animal Victims in Modern Fiction: from sanctity to sacrifice
The Animal Fable in Science Fiction and Fantasy
Victorian Animal Dreams: Representations of Animals in Victorian Literature and Culture
The Philosophy of the Animal in 20th Century Literature
Among Animals: The Lives of Animals and Humans in Contemporary Short Fiction
Reading the Animal in the Literature of the British Raj
Representing Animals

So, we see that there is a substantial body of scholarly work about this general topic. All that has happened is that, because there are numerous cases which are regarded as classics of literature, such as Aesop's Fables, Just So Stories, Tarka the Otter and Wind in the Willows, the number of animals of various types has caused the list to be split. If the level of splitting is not quite right then the remedy is to merge not to delete. This is our editing policy. Andrew D. (talk) 12:37, 15 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Andrew D., I have suggested in my "vote" that we merge to a new section of Mustelids named "in culture", below. I must also say that I am impressed with the hurricane of references you provided for the parent group animals in fiction. So you mean that several of these references have sections especially devoted to mustelids which amount to WP:SIGCOV and WP:GNG? AadaamS (talk) 20:58, 16 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:42, 14 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:42, 14 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Merge this is not a suitable topic for a list according to WP:SALAT. It should instead be made a section of the Mustelidae article like "Mustelidae/In popular culture" or similar. Not one single source of this article verifies the notability of "badgers & otters in fiction" as a group. AadaamS (talk) 18:46, 14 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Valid subdivision of Lists of fictional animals, which has plenty of sources (see Andrew Davidson) but would be too broad a list. I have no objection to further splitting into more common names (List of fictional raccoons, List of fictional badgers, List of fictional ferrets) instead. The Steve 08:52, 16 July 2015 (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.