Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Farmer Maggot

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. General consensus to keep. (non-admin closure) f e minist 04:46, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Farmer Maggot[edit]

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Very surprised this exists as an independent article and has since 2005. Incredibly minor character from an important novel with slightly less minor appearance in a much less famous work by the same author. I don't doubt that, given the amount of scholarship on Tolkien's work, a lot of critical work has covered this character, but it seems incredibly arbitrary that Farmer Maggot gets a standalone article while Durin's Bane is consigned to a list within an article on its species -- maybe create Hobbit#Individual hobbits? While my experience with Wikipedia's coverage of Game of Thrones characters made finding this article a breath of fresh air (how rare it is that English Wikipedia includes an article on an obscure literary character who specifically wasn't played up in a popular screen adaptation and thus wasn't covered extensively in celebrity gossip mags and the like), I seriously think this article might be pushing it. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:57, 4 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's a tough call but I would argue for keeping the standalone article. There are several scholarly works that have analysed this character and like Durin's Bane, Maggot has been the subject of professional Tolkien art. In the end it is the combination of reliable sources that makes one article worth of keeping while another one may get redirected. On that note, Durin's Bane used to be a standalone article too but apparently it was redirected to the main Balrog page because it didn't contain any sources at all and consisted more or less of in-universe content.

Anyhow, should there be consensus to not have a full article on Farmer Maggot, the page should not be deleted but merged into List of Hobbits. De728631 (talk) 16:05, 4 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I do not favor deleting articles that are more than stubs and that are well sourced. Pages are not a scarce resource to compete for. If some other equally worthy subject does not have its own page, then to me, that justifies writing another page rather than deleting or consolidating what already exists. I don't support keeping arbitrary trivia within articles, and, sure, the whole article in this case might be argued to be trivia. However, given the subject's mention in scholarly works and its portrayal in popular culture, I don't think that argument is likely to succeed. This is not to say that the article is particularly good as written. It's not, but it's also not merely dreck. Strebe (talk) 16:40, 4 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. Rcsprinter₁₂₃ (consult) 17:18, 4 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. Rcsprinter₁₂₃ (babble) 17:28, 4 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, Maggot is covered in an astonishing number of books, and in some detail in several of them, surely raising him well above the GNG's threshold. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:29, 4 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Chiswick Chap: I am sympathetic to the "merge" case made above, and am not that bothered about this either way, but you must understand that GNG is a minimum threshold. The most important part of WP:GNG, which seems to be missed virtually every time the guideline is invoked in AFD discussions, is A more in-depth discussion might conclude that the topic actually should not have a stand-alone article—perhaps because it violates what Wikipedia is not, particularly the rule that Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. I didn't invoke GNG as a deletion rationale (in fact I specifically said that I don't doubt that, given the amount of scholarship on Tolkien's work, a lot of critical work has covered this character, but it seems incredibly arbitrary that [this fictional character should get a standalone article]. Sorry to nitpick, but this is one of my pet peeves. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:02, 5 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Nonsense. Notability is judged by passing the GNG and more specialised policies in some cases. There's nothing indiscriminate about an article on a well-known and much-loved character discussed in 1,330 books. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:40, 5 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You are absolutely right to say that [n]otability is judged by passing the GNG and more specialised policies in some cases, but notability isn't the only thing determining what topics have standalone articles on Wikipedia. I would love to see some of the 1,330 books discussing the character in-depth. At present the article cites Chance's monograph as saying something that would probably be more at home in our article on Frodo Baggins (that's the context in which she writes it), Dickerson's article (which I admit I haven't read) as saying something about hobbit society (on which we already have a separate article), two illustrations of the character by famous artists who have probably collectively painted hundreds of named characters in Tolkien's legendarium and which are unreliable sources for just about anything we could say about the character other than that they were painted by Artist X on Date Y, and a couple of fictional books by Tolkien himself. I'm assuming your 1,330 estimate comes from GBooks, but as usual GBooks seems to be playing mind-games with me because I'm only seeing about 60 hits. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:45, 5 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Your Google-fu is weak! Anyhow, I just added some more analysis on the published Maggot and his early development. De728631 (talk) 15:57, 5 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Merge into List of hobbits. If there were a List of minor Lord of the Rings characters article, that would work too. There's certainly academic discussion that mentions Maggot, but almost everything I can find discusses him in the context of his effect on Frodo. The most detailed seems to be Atherton's discussion, which talks about prior versions of the character. It's marginal, but I think everything that needs to be said would fit into a list article. I also don't think it particularly helps the reader to have characters such as Ghân-buri-Ghân and Farmer Maggot separated into tiny articles; a single article is much useful to someone exploring the background of the book. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:50, 12 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Kurykh (talk) 19:46, 12 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Keep GNG is met easily: check the 'books' part of the find sources link and ignore everything by Tolkien himself, and there's still plenty of commentary on the admittedly minor LotR character. Jclemens (talk) 21:41, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per above comments. Aoba47 (talk) 14:50, 18 April 2017 (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.