Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of public domain characters (2nd nomination)

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. BJ^Talk 00:49, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

List of public domain characters[edit]

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The subject named by this article has no international criteria or finite scope, and furthermore is chronically unsourced and orphaned.

The laws determining what is in the public domain vary widely from one jurisdiction to another, including "everything" (Afghanistan), "works by people who died over 50 years ago" (Canada), "works by people who died over 70 years ago" (EU), "works by people who died before 1928" (Mexico), and "works created before 1923 plus those failing paperwork requirements" (USA). The country of origin is not helpful in determining which rule to apply for a given work, because it is not relevant under international law. So there's no single standard for Wikipedia to apply to this list. For a work which is in the public domain in a given jurisdiction, every character in it might be listed, and the works in question stretch into the ancient past (and into debates about historical figure vs. fictional character). Additionally, this article has lain unreferenced and orphaned for far too long to expect these problems to be resolved. Because of the nature of copyright law, there are usually no sources to cite for any given character, unless the question has gone to trial somewhere (and there again we have jurisdiction limitations). It's unmaintained because it's unmaintainable. It'd be a worthy project for a site which doesn't have to abide by WP:V, WP:OR, and WP:BIAS, but doesn't work as a Wikipedia article. -JasonAQuest (talk) 15:07, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - while I recognise the potential usefulness of such a list to some, I fear that being unsourced, it could lead people to infringe copyright etc. Since WP:V is one of the big 3, and this case presents such a good example for just why verifiability is important, I think this must go. – Toon ^(talk) 16:31, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. JasonAQuest's points are enough to show why a "list of public domain works of fiction" would be impossible. A "list of public domain characters" is even worse, since it can't account for characters who are strongly associated with works inside and outside the public domain (for example, Sherlock Holmes in the US). People looking for preexisting characters for use in an original work of fiction would do better to start by looking at Category:19th century novels and the like. EALacey (talk) 20:18, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete This is crawling with ^{[citation needed]} and has been since at least February. ^{[citation needed]}. I think this article consists of the assumption that since these are characters created long ago, and that therefore they are "in the public domain". But I wouldn't rely upon this article to determine whether I could have free use of a character. Mandsford (talk) 00:18, 6 October 2008 (UTC) ^{[citation needed]}[reply]
- To be fair, the article was created with more research than that, but the research is mostly Original, and the rest of it is also US-centric. - JasonAQuest (talk) 01:06, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional characters-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp | talk to me 22:11, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I have to agree. Owing to the nature of Wikipedia, it would be impossible to maintain an article of this nature that would not run into issues involving different laws. I could see, perhaps, separate articles on different countries. But the problem is copyright rules change from time to time. Didn't the US recently add a bunch more decades to the copyright term, for example? 23skidoo (talk) 23:08, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Besides the complicated legal issues, this list could run into the hundreds of thousands and can never be complete. Squidfryerchef (talk) 03:08, 7 October 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.