Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mr. Potter

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 but improve drastically. Fram (talk) 11:05, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mr. Potter[edit]

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Article contents are unsourced and are merely plot elements of It's a Wonderful Life. Tagged with {{story}} for almost 3 years and little has been done to make this appear as a standard encyclopedia entry. Sottolacqua (talk) 19:58, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, but . . . cut this back to a bare minimum and start again. I have little doubt that Mr. Potter is a notable character and an important literary archetype. There are hundreds of hits at Google News [1] and Google Scholar [2], for example, in which his name is invoked as a stand-in for greedy bankers, heartless capitalism, out-of-touch management, etc. (A few examples taken randomly from the first few pages of search results:[3][4][5]) His inclusion in AFI's 100 Years…100 Heroes and Villains, which is mentioned in the article, is reasonably good evidence for this, and enough to justify keeping a short article rather than just blanking and redirecting. However, I readily agree with Sottolacqua that the current article is almost pure plot regurgitation with a little bit of WP:OR thrown in, and contains almost nothing (beyond the aforementioned AFI reference) that elucidates the character's notability and meaning. So I would keep this, but cut it back to a few sentences. --Arxiloxos (talk) 22:27, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep... (and, like Arxiloxos I have to qualify this with a "...but cut this back"). I can't say that this article is worth more dead than alive, although it does suck. However, Lionel Barrymore's character has real world notability, and there's nothing that can't be fixed by the next visitor to the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. The article is a holdover from the old-school, I-saw-it-on-TV days of Wikipedia. I agree with the nominator that there's way too much plot summary here, and quoting Uncle Billy is over the top. Operate on the assumption that it will be kept anyway, and then please edit the hell out of it. Mandsford 02:04, 3 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Mike Cline (talk) 14:46, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. -- Jclemens-public (talk) 21:03, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Film-related deletion discussions. -- Jclemens-public (talk) 21:03, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep for the good reasons adduced by Arxiloxos. It is our editing policy to improve such articles, not delete them. Colonel Warden (talk) 13:51, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep bare bones per Arxiloxos, Sadads (talk) 00:11, 12 November 2010 (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.