Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Spy Fox 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 merge as there is no consensus for outright deletion. The concern that the article is lacking independent sourcing is in the majority and has a great deal of merit, so much so that I will remove this as a separate article. However, it is common practice to provide a list of the main characters in works of fiction, and pure descriptive statements of facts about them can be covered by primary sources, in this case the game itself.

As an editorial decision, I think that the long list of secondary characters is excessive and will limit the merging to the main characters. The full content will still be available in the page history in case somebody wants to alter that. Sjakkalle (Check!) 21:02, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

List of Spy Fox characters[edit]

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Unsourced fancruft. No out of universe notability. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 04:16, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000^(talk) 14:02, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000^(talk) 14:02, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Video games-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000^(talk) 14:02, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000^(talk) 14:03, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep or Merge - Acceptable as a list in the main article Spy Fox and would not make the main article overly long if merged. Per WP:CSC and also WP:FICT. VMS Mosaic (talk) 02:32, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep We have lots of list of fictional character. Why delete this when they are rarely deleted? I dont really like it, but sadly that's not an option. Merging to Spy Fox is also acceptable. Beerest 2 talk 18:11, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

WP:OSE. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 23:10, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldnt say OSE here. Rather its WP:OUTCOMES (even though its not explicitly mentioned there). I remember there was a Total Drama list that was the epitome of bad fancruft and it got kept. Looking through the fictional element AFD archive shows that lists like these regularly are keeped. So I think consensus is to let them stay. Beerest 2 talk 00:46, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Both WP:OSE and WP:OUTCOMES are essays, but WP:OUTCOMES appears to be stronger here per WP:CONSENSUS. VMS Mosaic (talk) 05:41, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My skim of the fictional element AFD archive shows that lists like these are also often deleted or merged, and that there does not appear to be any historical consensus on how they should be treated strong enough to weight this discussion one way or the other.Dialectric (talk) 13:47, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Unreferenced. Do not merge as the material is simply a WP:COATRACK for fan cruft about the characters. WP:DOAL warns against this sort of list. Just because there are other lists doesn't mean this one should exists. It might be best if the other lists are identified to the nominator for further review. Walter Görlitz (talk) 15:15, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

After reading WP:COATRACK, I see nothing in it that applies here. This is a typical list permitted by WP:CSC. See List of minor characters in Dilbert which is explicitly permitted by WP:CSC, but which by your standard is a WP:COATRACK for WP:FANCRUFT and should also be deleted. So, if you want similar lists nominated, then the List of minor characters in Dilbert (actually List of Dilbert characters where it was merged a while back) should be the first one nominated. WP:AOAL favors lists of this type, particulary within articles. VMS Mosaic (talk) 02:32, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Unreferenced, no indication of notability of any of the individual list entries, and notability is not inherited. No indication this "has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources," per the notability criteria Stand-alone lists. I agree with the above assessment that this is listcrufty, and though currently outside the scope of this afd, List of gadgets in the Spy Fox series and List of locations in the Spy Fox series have all of the same issues.Dialectric (talk) 10:55, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

WP:CSC clearly states that ALL members of a list may be NON-notable. The list only needs to be part of a notable subject (either as an in article list or a separate list article). Per WP:CSC, the only two possible options are Keep or Merge unless the 'main' article is shown to be non-notable. VMS Mosaic (talk) 11:24, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:LISTN - as I wrote, no evidence that this content has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources, so no evidence of notability. Minor Dilbert characters likely have been discussed as a group in RS. Are you really arguing that all content in any notable work can be arbitrarily included in unreferenced list articles under the guideline you reference? Does it seem reasonable that every notable novel or film also have a separate 'list of locations in' article?Dialectric (talk) 13:27, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I do realize that a video game is not a book or video, but it is still a work of fiction, so I believe WP:FICTIONPLOT applies here. It allows fictional elements in a fictional work to be sourced from the primary work. Per WP:PSTS, no secondary source is needed unless there is "interpretation". We are not here to decide what is reasonable for all articles. We are here to decide what is reasonable for this article. We are not making policy but instead simply applying it. VMS Mosaic (talk) 05:11, 21 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - This list of characters meets the criterion of having "been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources". PC Magazine says that Spy Fox in "Dry Cereal" has "funny characters" here. The Software Encycopedia contains the sentence "All of the world's dairy cows are missing & the characters in [Spy Fox in "Dry Cereal"] are called to help" here. Microtimes says that Spy Fox 3: "Operation Ozone" has "a wide cast of humorous characters" here. This article is not sourced yet, but it could and should be. Neelix (talk) 17:54, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So a couple vague phrases like "the characters are funny" are enough to keep a whole list of them? That's really stretching it. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 02:13, 21 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A review of Spy Fox in "Dry Cereal" on IGN says that "its characters... have withstood the test of time" here, an Adventure Gamers review says that the "humourous animation" of the characters "makes the game world feel visually alive" [1], and the Los Angeles Times says that the game "involves a cast of zany characters" here. Plenty more citations could be provided for individual characters, but I think six sources should be sufficient to demonstrate that the list "been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources". Neelix (talk) 18:59, 21 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

These are all incidental mentions, of a sentence or two at most, which would not be sufficient to establish notability for another software article, and it is unclear why lists of non-notable items should be held to a lesser standard.Dialectric (talk) 16:19, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It is rare that a group of characters is discussed as a group for more than a sentence or two in a given secondary source; most discussion tends to be of individual characters. In addition to the six sources listed above, here are some more: an Allgame review here, a SuperKids Software review here, a Metacritic review here. Neelix (talk) 19:53, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Someone linked CSC above but there is quite literally no sourcing available for these characters and as such there is nothing to merge. Most of the characters in the list are minor and don't even show in searches of WP:VG/RS. The major characters are worth mentioning in the prose of their respective articles if and only if they have sourcing. This article doesn't need to be redirected or merged, but deleted for want of significant coverage from reliable, independent sources. (?) Let me know if you dig up offline sources that would change my mind. czar ♔ 15:41, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There are reviews in IGN, Metacritic, Allgame, and PC Magazine, all of which appear on WP:VG/RS. Neelix (talk) 19:56, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Even if there were no secondary sources, both WP:PRIMARY and WP:FICTIONPLOT allow this type of "fictional universe" info to only have a primary source (i.e., the game including its guide/instruction book and such) as long as there is no "interpretation". WP:VG/RS#Video games also allow the game to be used as a source. VMS Mosaic (talk) 09:23, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Mark Arsten (talk) 01:22, 24 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete for lack of reliable secondary sources on which this article could be based, per WP:GNG and WP:V. General statements such as "the series has funny characters" are obviously not a sufficient basis for content of this level of detail, but could at most be used to reference a similarly general statement in the main article about the series. Sandstein 12:26, 1 January 2014 (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.