Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alternative names of Crayola crayons

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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 delete. Although nobody cited it explicitly, the strongest argument here is essentially that this fails WP:V. The vast majority of this is referenced to a single source (crayoncollecting.com) which most of the discussants here believe not to be a WP:RS. The next biggest chunk of references is to a HuffPost article, which in turn is based on crayoncollecting.com and an interview with it's creator, Ed Welter. Judging the reliability of sources is one of the things that happens at AfD, and in this case there's strong agreement that this source doesn't meet our standards.

There's a strong chorus of arguments to merge, but merging material that fails WP:V isn't an option, so I'm going with a straight delete. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:30, 10 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative names of Crayola crayons[edit]

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Alternative names of Crayola crayons (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Listcruft sourced to a single website. Lojbanist remove cattle from stage 22:10, 22 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete. I'm not sure how reliable that single website is although clearly somebody has put a lot of work into it. I don't think we should be rehashing their hard work to such an extent in a pointless, indiscriminate, list article when we can just refer to it as and when required (if required at all). Even if this is not actually copyvio it does seem to fall within the spirit of plagiarism. Let them be the undisputed god of Crayola trivia and good luck to them. We have an encyclopaedia to write. --DanielRigal (talk) 22:46, 22 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It's not "pointless", because it has a point: to help readers figure out what colors different names used at different times referred to. It's not "indiscriminate", unless by that you mean "comprehensive". I'm not even sure how to respond to something as absurd as "the spirit of plagiarism." Plagiarism has a definition: the presentation of someone else's writing as one's own. Citing someone's durably archived research to support a claim, without unattributed quotations of that material, is not plagiarism by any definition. Don't use imaginary bogeymen like "a whiff of copyright violation" and "the spirit of plagiarism" to cast shade on the legitimacy of an article, when your real argument is that articles about crayons aren't important enough to be in Wikipedia. But I don't see why having one line to tell readers what colors with names like "flesh tint", "pink beige", "light green", "Prussian blue", or "torch red" refer to is any less worthwhile than knowing the chart position of a Katy Perry song was in Austria in the summer of 2012. P Aculeius (talk) 05:03, 23 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Crayola crayons are notable and Crayola is a notable brand. We have an article about Crayola as, of course, we should. This isn't that article. A separate article about the crayons is legitimate, as they are a major product sold worldwide in large quantities over a long period of time. This is not that article. This is... Um... Something else entirely. This attempts to track "alternative names" of the various crayon colours. This is a verifiability minefield. Are they truly the same colours or just similar ones? Is the source WP:RS? This article is the very depth of fancruft. I so think we have far too many articles about them when one would suffice. Others might argue for more than one article and I might be persuaded not to object strongly if the arguments are sound. This article however is indefensible. --DanielRigal (talk) 18:06, 23 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
See below: this article exists because the content needed to be split off from existing articles about the crayons themselves. The main topic describes well over one hundred different crayons, several dozen of which have been known by different names throughout their history for various reasons. It wasn't practical to include all of that information in the same article due to the sheer volume of the material in question, which was impossible to present in tables without the tables becoming unwieldy walls of text with highly variable width due solely to the number of alternative names for certain colors. If you delete this article, then all of that information needs to be folded back into articles that are already very large and cumbersome. It makes more sense to keep the information here. P Aculeius (talk) 12:06, 26 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. DanielRigal (talk) 22:51, 22 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. It would have been useful to consider the reasons for this page's existence before claiming that it's useless. This material was split off from the list of Crayola Crayon colors because the tables presented there were too cluttered with alternative names to be easily read and understood. Since numerous colors have been officially or unofficially renamed, some concordance was appropriate for the subject, but it couldn't be properly explained and fit into existing articles. Your nomination of both this and the history of Crayola crayons using the pejorative "cruft" suggests that you consider the subject of crayons trivial and therefore not worthy of extensive coverage. That's not what this nomination is about. You want more sources? Go find some. The fact that most of the information in an article can be cited to one source isn't a reason to delete it. P Aculeius (talk) 05:03, 23 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You say that "numerous colors have been officially or unofficially renamed". The question is whether this is notable and verifiable. Clearly an "unofficial renaming" is not going to be verifiable and I would question whether an "unofficial renaming" is even "a thing". I am dubious about "official" renamings too. I mean, does Crayola issue press releases saying "We renamed a colour"? If so, that would be verifiability. Does any WP:RS source pick up on these renamings and cover them? If so, then that that could start to prove notability. And if anybody can show significant coverage in multiple reliable sources then I'll even change my !vote to keep. I'm pretty certain that nobody can though. Finally, I will remind you that it is the responsibility of people adding content to reference it. It is not everybody else's job to spend ages hunting for almost certainly non-existent reference material. --DanielRigal (talk) 18:06, 23 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
But you're missing the key issue: there is a reliable source cited. If you investigate the source, you'll find it's of long-standing duration, carefully written and curated, giving examples of actual color swatches from crayons produced during certain time periods and included with different boxes; you'll see the author documenting different boxes and their contents, how they can be identified from their labels, and much more information that makes it clear that the source is about as authoritative as it's possible for a source other than Crayola itself—which pays scant attention to details from even its recent history, perhaps understandable as it doesn't stand to profit from documenting it—to be. That doesn't mean that everything linked on the website is equally valuable; there are some essays written by other authors who don't go to the same lengths or treat subjects in the same detail, as the site host did in his own material.
Now, given that the source is evidently reliable, and archived, information provided by it is prima facie reliably sourced. If you want more sources, more detail, or want to contrast sources that give different opinions, that's fine. But you can't delete reliably sourced material because you think there ought to be more sources. And the fact that you keep using pejorative words like "fancruft" really doesn't inspire me with confidence that you're willing to accept any sources at all. It's not at all trivial to know that "torch red" is in fact the original name of the "scarlet" crayon, since people out there right now might be expected to run across that colour and wonder why there aren't any like it now. Or that "pink beige" and "flesh tint" were both names for "peach", or that "Prussian blue" was renamed "midnight blue". In fact that's one of the most commonly cited "factoids" about Crayola crayons, even though the reasons given for the change vary from one version to another, and don't seem very credible (American schoolchildren being "unable to relate to Prussian history"; prussic acid used to make Zyklon B). The 50 states color contest was highly publicized; I paid attention to it even though I hadn't colored with crayons in more than twenty years, and was somewhat dismayed to discover that my state's official crayon was a dark blackish grey.
Labeling this article as "fancruft" and "indefensible" presupposes the outcome of the discussion. It's worthless, therefore it should be deleted, and there's no need to discuss the evidence, policies, or arguments. It also makes unsupported and incorrect assumptions about the article. I didn't write this article because I'm obsessed with crayons. As I pointed out, I've not colored in decades. I'm not really even tempted to, although I wish I were a good enough artist to draw with crayons, or anything else for that matter. I don't collect crayons, or own any crayon memorabilia. Crayons were a part of my childhood, and knowing the difference between different colors, and seeing how the arrangement of colors and their names has changed through time, is mildly interesting to me because I like categorization and nomenclature, and having had a lot of crayons as a child, it's easier for me to relate to crayon colors than say, varieties of tropical fish bred for home aquariums.
But the main reason I created this article is because the information, although useful and documentable, was cluttering up the tables used in two related articles, and making them unattractive and potentially unreadable. After working hard to streamline the tables for maximum usefulness, the greatest obstacle remaining was the amount of information given under "notes" for nearly every line. Nearly all of it useful and verifiable, but not necessary a good idea in the place where it was kept. Splitting off that information and creating this article was the most logical solution to the problem; this article is devoted exclusively to this relatively space-intensive information, and doesn't have tables to clutter up. It was a pragmatic solution to overloaded charts, not an act of fan worship. If you think there should be more sources, find some. But don't condemn the article as "fancruft" because you don't consider the subject worth including in Wikipedia. There's a lot of stuff that's more trivial than this around, and a lot less likely for people to want to know. P Aculeius (talk) 02:41, 24 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Crayola is a brand and the colours are products so this is essentially breaches WP:NOTCATALOGUE. Ajf773 (talk) 10:16, 25 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Not what that policy is about. This isn't a discussion of product availability or pricing, and these aren't separate products, but components of a single product that's varied widely for over a hundred years, and which has been found in practically every school and household that's had children for much of that time. This article bears no resemblance whatever to a sales catalogue. P Aculeius (talk) 16:23, 25 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't need availability or pricing to be classified as a catalogue or directory. In fact the only source on this article was someones blog, so it probably also fails WP:NOR. Ajf773 (talk) 18:40, 25 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
That's what the policy you cited talks about. It has seven paragraphs about different types of directories, of which the only one that's even tangentially related to your reason is:

Sales catalogues. An article should not include product pricing or availability information unless there is an independent source and a justified reason for the mention. Encyclopedic significance may be indicated if mainstream media sources (not just product reviews) provide commentary on these details instead of just passing mention. Prices and product availability can vary widely from place to place and over time. Wikipedia is not a price comparison service to compare the prices of competing products, or the prices and availability of a single product from different vendors or retailers.

Which is clearly not applicable to this article. Furthermore, CrayonCollecting.com is clearly not a blog. Although the host's article, "The Definitive History of the Colors of Crayola" is self-published, it is a perfectly acceptable source given that it is independent, rather than affiliated with Crayola; non-commercial; provides evidence in the form of specific details, citations to literature, news, advertising and press releases by the company with relation to its own products, and fact-checking in the case of color swatches provided to readers for comparison, as well as verifiable background information on related topics where they naturally occur. It's clearly written by someone with a great depth and breadth of knowledge about the subject; an expert on the precise topic in question, and it shows throughout the article's organization and discussion. The policy against using original research applies to an editor's own unpublished work, not to information cited to someone else's published work. Since neither of the policies you've cited applies to this case, it begins to feel like you're just running different policies up the flagpole to see if anyone salutes. P Aculeius (talk) 01:49, 26 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
"Although the host's article, "The Definitive History of the Colors of Crayola" is self-published" ... self published sources are not reliable sources. Got any better sources that established this as a notable topic and isn't written like a catalogue of colours? Ajf773 (talk) 01:59, 26 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You obviously need to reread yet another policy that doesn't say what you think it does. Self-published sources can indeed be perfectly reliable sources, and as the policy states, are sometimes the best available sources for certain information. They're not rejected out of hand simply because they're self-published, which would by definition exclude nearly all websites, scholarly or otherwise. The reliability of self-published sources is judged on the basis of their content; i.e. is the material independent of the subject being covered, is it neutrally written or promoting a particular point of view, does it provide evidence of its claims or is its content unsupported, is it logically written and presented or is it a collection of ramblings, is the writer an expert on the subject or just someone with an opinion, etc. By your logic none of this matters, because you can just ignore it completely irrespective of scholarship or evidence. But that's not what Wikipedia policy is: that's what you want it to be in this case, so that you can justify deleting the article. P Aculeius (talk) 12:00, 26 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge essential information to List of Crayola crayons colors. Carrite (talk) 15:59, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The article was split from existing Crayola articles because there was too much information to be fit conveniently into already lengthy articles. Remerging the contents will simply recreate a former problem, that was best resolved by the split. P Aculeius (talk) 21:12, 1 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge selectively, per Carrite. Keeping this as a separate article is excessive detail--this is Wikia territory. DGG ( talk ) 17:56, 29 July 2018 (UTC) .[reply]
The fact that information could appear in another wiki isn't a reason to merge or delete. Everything here is relevant, verifiable, and nearly all of it (and a fair amount that was pared away) came from existing articles. P Aculeius (talk) 21:12, 1 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - Based on a single unreliable source. The topic seems to have insufficient coverage for WP:GNG. This belongs on someone's personal website. Daask (talk) 19:32, 30 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Perfectly reliable. The author of the article is an expert in the subject, and explains the contents and conclusions clearly and with supporting pictures and diagrams. P Aculeius (talk) 21:12, 1 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Clearly not unsourced, as there's a perfectly good source cited, and others could be found for a great deal of it. If you think it needs more sources, then tag it for more sources, instead of voting to delete it. Nobody's ever even suggested refimprove tags or anything similar. The "infomercial" comment is inapt. An infomercial is a solicitation to buy something by extolling its uses and virtues. Nearly all of this information is historical data about names that are no longer in use, and which have no present commercial use. No claim is made about a product's virtues or uses, and there's no solicitation to buy anything, or indication of how or where a reader would do so. P Aculeius (talk) 21:12, 1 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
If they "could" be found, why haven't they already? As to the promotional nature of the text, that is not shown through "solicitations to buy" of course. You have yet to demonstrate what encyclopaedic purpose is served by the contested list. Lists can be made practically out of everything, yet Wikipedia is first and foremost an encyclopaedia and NOT an indiscriminate listing of stuff. -The Gnome (talk) 04:21, 7 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You seem to have missed the fact that several additional sources were added five days before this last comment. Also, this argument is absurd: the article has no sources, therefore sources must not exist. You've cited four policies at me today, and made two additional arguments, but you seem to have skipped some relevant ones. For instance: this is a deletion discussion. But under Wikipedia:Deletion policy, it says: "If editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page." Or, as phrased under Wikipedia:Editing policy, "Fix problems if you can" (emphasis in original), after which comes, "Instead of removing content from an article, consider:... [d]oing a quick search for sources and adding a citation yourself". Just because an article doesn't have a lot of sources cited, or any sources at all, doesn't justify deletion. If reliable sources can be found, it shouldn't be deleted; but you're assuming that if sources haven't been cited, then they must not exist, and therefore it should be deleted. Well, the article now has a number of additional sources, so it's clearly possible to find them. Why is this argument still being made?
I also wonder whether you have actually read WP:LISTPURP, since one of the three main purposes cited under that policy is: "The list may be a valuable information source. This is particularly the case for a structured list. Examples would include lists organized chronologically, grouped by theme, or annotated lists." This is clearly a structured list, grouped by theme: the only subject covered here is a list of different names by which Crayola crayons are known, intended to help readers determine which names refers to which colors. This is useful information if someone wants to know what the "state color" for Nebraska or Oregon was (not just what it was called), what happened to "Indian Red", or the convoluted history of "Peach", which was ostensibly renamed as a nod to the civil rights movement, as the same color has been known by four different names since first being produced in 1903. Since the crayons available to people's grandparents and great-grandparents are in many cases still being produced in the same colors, but under different names, people might reasonably need to figure out what color corresponds to what other color at different time periods.
WP:NOTINDISCRIMINATE does not apply here; this is not indiscriminate information. It is not a summary-only description of a work; it is not a lyrics database; it is not a listing of unexplained statistics; it is not an exhaustive list of software updates. If this article listed every box of Crayola crayons known to have been produced (there are hundreds of them), or listed the precise contents of each of those boxes, then we might have something resembling an indiscriminate list. Instead, we only have the names of the crayons themselves, identifying which ones are the same, and when each was produced; this is a subject of interest for people other than crayon collectors, and requires no cataloguing information. But since you brought it up, while you didn't name the policy, you're still arguing WP:NOTCATALOGUE, although again, apparently without reading the policy to see why it doesn't apply. The only part of the policy that could conceivably apply here is quoted above, and it doesn't describe this article at all. The fact that the article is about something that people can (or once could) buy does not make it promotional; the policy is about sales catalogues, so the lack of solicitations to buy is perfectly relevant to this discussion.
You might also notice that "it's just unencyclopedic" is listed under "Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions". You may not think that the subject of this article deserves inclusion in Wikipedia, but plenty of others do. And we're not holding a vote here; that's not how deletion discussions work. No matter how many people weigh in on the discussion, the result has to be based on policy considerations. If the subject is notable, if there are reliable sources, etc. Which I think has been adequately demonstrated here. Some mention has been made of "merging" this into other articles, but as has previously been mentioned, this article was intentionally split off from those other articles because of its size. The "merger" section of WP:Deletion policy says, "[a]rticles that are short and unlikely to be expanded could be merged into larger articles or lists." Well, this isn't short. This is a list, or at least a list-like article created because there was too much information to include in the articles that originally contained it.
Lastly, and to save space, you suggest that I "urgently" consult WP:BLUDGEON. Why you would do that in reply to a message detailing the addition of new sources in response to a post requesting them is difficult to fathom. But it takes a special type of editor to take a discussion that's already died down, with no new developments for almost a week, and not only cite this policy at one of the participants with whom you disagree, but also several other policies that don't apply, and at the same time rehash old arguments that have already been rebutted. Was the idea to say, "I'm going to spam you with a bunch of arguments that you'll want to respond to, and then warn you that responding to them violates another policy"? I'm not sure if there's a specific policy that applies to that particular form of argument, but it's not a valid way to argue for the deletion of this or any other article. P Aculeius (talk) 14:43, 7 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
That's why this article exists as a stand-alone. Most of the contents were originally in two other articles, but there was so much information that it was unwieldy, and the tables containing it were cluttered with alternative names. So it was split off into a separate article. Remerging it would create significant page crowding. P Aculeius (talk) 21:12, 1 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Much of the information could be cited to other sources. The fact that only one source is cited isn't a reason to delete. It's a reason to add refimprove tags, or better yet, look for more sources. That hasn't even been attempted. P Aculeius (talk) 21:12, 1 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, bd2412 T 02:05, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
  • Weak merge to History of Crayola crayons - although I would not mind if this article is kept, as it is rather long and detailed and may be difficult to merge. Vorbee (talk) 08:03, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • hi P Aculeius, i agree that only one source cited is not a reason to delete (sorry, i should have worded that better), but i did do a gsearch, as i always do in afds that i suggest a course of action, and was unable to find anything else, could you please provide these additional sources here so that editors may assess them (i note that although you have made around 13 responses in this afd you have not provided any), thanks. Coolabahapple (talk) 09:08, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, the same 2-3 editors have kept me busy for more than a week, when they proposed deleting all six articles relating to Crayola crayons and related material, often based on policies that don't apply (such as the catalogue argument). But as I said, the best way to deal with a paucity of sources is to add refimprove tags, and see if more sources can be located. This morning, I found a number of news articles mentioning a number of these colors, some describing them, others listing their history, and one newspaper gave the names of all the colors in the state color collection. I've already added these, and I'm sure more sources can be found on recent changes with a little more time. Welter's research, however, is still the gold standard, and I found two reliable sources citing him as an expert in his field, which I've also cited in the article now. But there won't be much other material on changes to the color lineup prior to the 1990's, or on names used in specialty and promotional sets, for which the most that can be expected might be pictures of the crayons, or a list of names and general descriptions. Crayons are ephemera, and lifestyle stories like this didn't receive that much publicity in the past. Indeed, as one of the articles cited explains, a great many of the changes to the lineup were carried out without any publicity at all, either as unnoticed marketing decisions, or, as one source described, if I remember correctly, "pulling a fast one". Still, there are more sources out there, and now some of them are cited for the crayons they mention and describe. P Aculeius (talk) 16:58, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Suggestion : P Aculeius, please urgently consult WP:BLUDGEON. -The Gnome (talk) 04:21, 7 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment, WP:BLUDGEON - "..when a user dominates the conversation ..", this afd is about 4400 words long, P Aculeius has contributed around 3300 words; "Typically, the person replies to almost every "!vote" or comment", 11/12 "votes/comments" made while P Aculeius has replied/responded to 9 of them; hence this essay being raised. Coolabahapple (talk) 03:27, 8 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, most of this list is sourced to a personal fansite which is not a WP:RS or otherwise impossible to verify short of owning the crayons yourself. The rest is just trivia that can be mentioned in passing on other Crayola articles. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 00:33, 9 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
"Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." Welter is clearly an expert, perhaps the expert on this topic. His article on the history of Crayola colors is replete with photographs and diagrams documenting the nature of his research and demonstrating his methodology. He's cited as an expert by third-party reliable sources, such as the article cited in the article from the Huffington Post, and on pages 14 and 15 of Lorraine Bell's The Art of Crayon, Quarto Publishing (2016), as well as various other news stories from around the country concerning crayons, crayon collecting, and the history of Crayola. P Aculeius (talk) 13:40, 9 August 2018 (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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