Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sandman

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. Nom considered withdrawn per the statement below. 88.108.233.96 (talk) 16:58, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sandman[edit]

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Sorry for being over the top, but what a shit article: about 9% of it is of any relevance, the rest is simply an example farm of extreme triviality, many being very poor or irrelevant (game characters, movie lines), and there is little to scavenge from this article after a cleanup (merge with Rheum or folklore?); almost equivalent to an "In popular culture" article. 99% unreferenced and highly unlikely to ever be referenced. -- 李博杰 | —Talk contribs email 03:29, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and expand. Being poorly written is not a criteria for deletion, and the subject is obviously a notable one. Umbralcorax (talk) 03:35, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep: A very notable mythical character. Joe Chill (talk) 03:57, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Notable meme, as in Mr. Sandman. At Google book search, see [1]. Edison (talk) 04:04, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

However, how are many of these instances going to be referenced? A large majority fail to meet WP:V and WP:RS, and many of the WP:TRIVIA entries lack relevance:

In Team Fortress 2 computer game, the unlockable weapon for the Scout class, "The Sandman", is a baseball bat that hits a baseball that upon hitting the enemy's head, stuns him for a couple of seconds.

in SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 2: the main character's Codename is "Sandman".

In the Special Unit 2 episode "The Grain", the Sandman is depicted as a link, made out of sand, who enters a person's body while they are sleeping, possessing them and unleashing their Id.

In the 2000-2002 series Dark Angel (starting in Season 2), a character known as Sandman (whose true last name was "Sandeman") was noted as being the father of all the transgenics.

Jim Fullington, a wrestler formerly contracted to World Wrestling Entertainment and Extreme Championship Wrestling, wrestles under the ring name of 'The Sandman'. He is known for smashing a can of beer on his forehead prior to matches, sometimes cutting himself open and bleeding. Also, he has a tradition of using a Singapore Cane to hit his opponents on the head during Hardcore matches.

Nilus the Sandman is the main character of a same-named children's television show (1991-1997) [2] and a Christmas movie, "Nilus the Sandman: The Boy Who Dreamed Christmas". [3]

Blue Velvet has a scene where Ben (Dean Stockwell’s character) lip-syncs the Roy Orbison tune, "In Dreams," which features the Sandman in the opening lines.

Northern Exposure tv series aired an episode called "Mr. Sandman", 10 January 1994 (Season 5, Episode 12). The episode was built around a strange effect that the Aurora Borealis had to the dreams of a small Alaskan community, with people seeing other people's dreams.

Another possible problem could also involve WP:N of certain examples. However, once the examples are removed, all we have is a tiny stub; currently prose in paragraph form only accounts for 1,600 bytes, while the whole page makes up 16,711 bytes. -- 李博杰 | —Talk contribs email 04:14, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Please remember that AfD is not a place to punish articles for being bad, but a process for filtering out articles on non-encyclopedic topics. This mythical/fictional character easily meets notability requirements and documenting the appearances of the character in notable cultural works is not difficult. Ben Kidwell (talk) 05:33, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. A notable subject, and however the article looks at the moment, it can be improved.--Michig (talk) 07:24, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I might have to call WP:SNOW on this one. If there is no change in the wind in five hours from now (07:40 UTC), I shall withdraw. -- 李博杰 | —Talk contribs email 07:40, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, a very notable character in Western folklore. The huge list of pop culture references should be trimmed, though. JIP | Talk 16:24, 10 October 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.