Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Skylanders characters

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. The arguments are stronger that this kind of character list for a franchise is appropriate and that all of the deletion arguments are instead cleanup issues. postdlf (talk) 01:30, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

List of Skylanders characters[edit]

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Huge cruft article, written entirely in-universe, and contains only one source, used to confirm the voice actor for one of the ~139 characters listed. The list is indiscriminate. No assertion of notability for any character. Clearly violates WP:GAMECRUFT #5. Some guy (talk) 10:37, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I had considered a merge, but it would require complete rewriting that material as well as sourcing. Dennis Brown / 2¢ / © / @ 13:29, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete The [skylanders.wikia.com Skylanders Wiki] already has this kind of stuff, so Wikipedia doesn't need it.
Delete - super WP:CRUFT. Ansh666 17:22, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of video game-related deletion discussions. (G·N·B·S·RS·Talk) • Gene93k (talk) 01:47, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:48, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Games-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:48, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:48, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep but needs cleanup - I agree there's cruft here, but at the same time, major franchises with recurring characters will often get lists of characters with fundamental details. I think that if you take out most of the fictional aspects and leave this as characters + voice actors, you have something reasonable that can't otherwise fit into the main franchise or game articles. But it absolutely does need cleanup to be considered like this. --MASEM (t) 01:52, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and cleanup per Masem, with the exception that "cruft" is a pejorative term that immediately renders any vote using it an WP:IDONTLIKEIT, and should be discounted appropriately. Excessive unsourced detail should be sourced, condensed, and improved, not denigrated. Oh, and nomination is completely wrong, the list is *very* discriminate, in that it is limited to characters from one fictional franchise. No delete !vote, except maybe the first, addresses WP:ATD in any substantial way, and no one has indicated any attempt to source any of the other characters per WP:BEFORE. Jclemens (talk) 02:28, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment: "the list is *very* discriminate, in that it is limited to characters from one fictional franchise" That is no kind of valid argument. We have a list of nearly 150 characters from a few games. They cannot all be equally notable and worthy of inclusion. This article has not even the slightest shred of encyclopedic value in its current form. The content is 100% written in-universe, and unsalvageable in its current state. It is unfeasible to find sources for such a large number of characters and much of the content is therefore inherently unsourcable. Some guy (talk) 07:40, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  - Are the games notable - yes, Skylanders has proven to be a huge hit for Activision (it's basically their Pokemon), and it's not going away anytime soon. Once you get to that, we don't care that the characters aren't notable, and the fact that the focus of the game is the ability to swap in and out characters means that the characters are probably important. Notability only affects the need for a standalone article, and I would actually be surprised that any of the characters meet that bar, but this doesn't mean we can't do basic documentation of them. As I noted, there are problems with how much of the fiction is presented here, but that can be fixed. --MASEM (t) 13:36, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    - We have complex policies of inclusion and exclusion about article content. The fact that a game is notable does not make everything in the game notable (or worthy of inclusion if you don't like the term notable), hence WP:NOTGUIDE. WP:GAMECRUFT #5 is specifically violated here. Some guy (talk) 01:37, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      - GAMECRUFT (which I had a hand in writing) does not mean all lists of characters from video games are bad. If Skylanders was only a single video game, I'd be first in line to join on the deletion side, but we're talking what appears to be 6 games, actual toys, and additional media, making it a franchise and not just a single game. Spotchecking Gnews shows there's definitely interest in these toys (and subsequently in-game characters) that better sourcing could be added to show why this is more than just indiscriminately listing out the available characters. Yes, right now, there's way too much on the fiction side, and I would almost argue that has to go in favor of just the core details ala the Pokemon lists, but there's enough evidence that suggests keeping this is a reasonable step. --MASEM (t) 15:27, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - per WP:GAMECRUFT. There's already consensus on keep that stuff off the game's articles too, so a merge wouldn't be a great choice either. Sergecross73 msg me 12:34, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep – character lists for video game franchises are pretty standard practice. Outside of that admittedly other stuff argument, for this particular franchise, the characters (and figurines) are really the heart of the experience, and discussion of when new toys are coming out is incredibly widespread, including in numerous reliable sources: the two most recent toy releases, Wave 4 ([1] [2] [3]) and Wave 5 ([4]) events have plenty of real world coverage, for example. There is also lots of coverage about the rarest toys being very valuable: [5]. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 13:05, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Almost bad enough in it's current form for WP:NUKE to apply. But topic wise, this is a reasonable spinout article. Sources like [6] seem to be on point for this type of article. Keep but clean up is really needed. Hobit (talk) 01:08, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment – I've trimmed away all the excess detail, which was more than half the total text, and I think the article is in a much more reasonable state at this point. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 13:43, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - at risk of falling into WP:OTHERSTUFF, take a look at List of Pokémon. That's what this should be, no more information than that. I'm not familiar with the Skylanders franchise, being a college student, so I don't know if there's any way to organize them like Pokémon, but that's what would be needed for me to want to keep it. Ansh666 17:36, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Also note how List of Digimon, despite having a numbering system, is organized, and the amount of detail there (none!). Ansh666 02:19, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- This is more analogous to List of Pokémon (1–51) etc as someone pointed out earlier. Personally, I'm a fan of Pokémon but I don't think that list is much more encyclopedic than this one, and I would speculate it exists solely because of the sheer volume of Pokémon fans. That article, as well as this one, clearly violates GAMEGUIDE point 5, although it is better about establishing real-world facts and relevance with at least some of the characters. Apparently over the years we've reached the point where a franchise worthy of its own article may list an infinite number of characters and creatures in ancillary articles that violate numerous policies, but we can't list all of the real weapons or items that are in some of those same franchises. I don't think a list of every single Pokémon or every single Spyro character has any more encyclopedic value than a list of every potion in World of Warcraft or every spell used in the Harry Potter franchise. I think a list of the guns in the Call of Duty franchise would be more relevant, since the majority are real weapons that already have their own articles and established notability. I'm not arguing that we should start allowing weapon lists, but rather that we don't is all the more reason not to list 150, or 650, characters from a game series. Wikipedia is supposed to focus first and foremost on real-world relevance. These gargantuan lists of the in-universe characteristics of endless characters are quite far apart from real-world relevance. But, my opinion is a drop in the bucket, which is why we have AfD discussions. Some guy (talk) 03:22, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Despite some minor character crossover, this is clearly a separate franchise from the "Spyro the Dragon" setting, so sticking this massive list of characters into the middle of the already long List of Spyro the Dragon characters page seemed ludicrous. It does require some cleanup, yes, but as previously noted, it's already better than other long lists of characters that are not being considered for deletion. Master Deusoma (talk) 21:51, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- You misunderstood my comment - I was stating that this needed to become like the other long lists of characters, not that it was better. Ansh666 22:23, 20 June 2013 (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.