Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Blast-Ended Skrewt
Blast-Ended Skrewt was proposed for deletion. This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was KEEP.
Non-notable Harry Potter fan-cruft. Should be merged in somewhere or deleted. --BM 21:54, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Keep for completeness, or merge if there's a lot of other merge votes. Xezbeth 21:55, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)
- Keep for completeness. No other article will be placed at this title - it does not clutter. It is factually accurate and varifiable. --Oldak Quill 23:34, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Keep. Notability not in deletion policy. Well-written and informative. -- Robert Pendray 23:40, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)
- Delete. Notability is the essence of being encyclopedic, which is in the deletion policy. Non-notabity is the main reason articles are deleted through the VfD process. --BM 23:54, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Do we have an article on Creatures from Harry Potter or somesuch? Merge to that sort of article, otherwise delete. hfool 00:10, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Merge to appropriate parent article; Ecology of Harry Potter perhaps. -- Antaeus Feldspar 00:27, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- The number of plants/animals in Harry Potter would easily exceed 32kb - even if only substub descriptions were included. Redirects would be coming from article names such as this - it'd be far wiser just to use the article space. --Oldak Quill 10:38, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Why would anyone look for an article on a plant/animal in Harry Potter if they have never read the book and consequently do not know the names of them? They are not, after all, in the common parlance. And if they have read the book, they already know as much as the article can tell them. Is there any other context for "Blast-Ended Skrewts"? Is there actually any good reason for listing more than 32kb of animals/plants that don't have any other context? Dr Zen 10:56, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- The number of plants/animals in Harry Potter would easily exceed 32kb - even if only substub descriptions were included. Redirects would be coming from article names such as this - it'd be far wiser just to use the article space. --Oldak Quill 10:38, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Keep. Why not? Guanaco 01:21, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Merge to some suitable general title; such as those already suggested. Rje 01:31, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Merge to fictional animals and redirect. I remember them well, and they hurt Draco, etc. Yes, yes, very fun. However, they're not being referred to by anything outside of their fiction, so readers won't hit the term and need an explanation. Geogre 05:49, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Merge and redirect. What's a good place to put it? --Carnildo 09:11, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- So tempting!Dr Zen 09:28, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Delete. I will change my vote if anyone can explain how it could be expanded. The article already says all that can be said about a very minor element of a popular but not otherwise particularly significant work.Keep. Thanks to James and David for clarifying the deletion policy.Dr Zen 09:32, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)- It could be expanded to mention the phases of their development, their propensity to cannibalism, and their origin as a hybrid created by Hagrid. Also I don't see why completeness is a good reason to delete things. Kappa 15:55, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Keep. While not being encyclopediac is grounds for deletion, the page Wikipedia:Deletion policy uses to define that term (Wikipedia:What wikipedia is not) makes no mention of fancruft and therefore, being fancruft is not reason for deletion. Dan100 10:02, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)
- Keep or merge since its useful to potter fans. No particular need to merge if the harry potter editors don't want to. The Skrewt is a recurring element of the book it comes from, so its not as minor as some other things like bubotubers. BTW I think the article should mention that Hagrid created these himselves as a hybrid of some other thingies, IIRC. Kappa 13:52, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Delete, f-ncr-ft. If you want an article about everything in Harry Potter, start a Harry Potter wiki. —tregoweth 16:24, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)
- Why not make a Chemistry Wiki and delete all the Lithium molecule articles on Wikipedia? Lithium is no more relevant to many than Harry Potter. We have the space, the articles are factually accurate and varifiable. No other article will be placed at this name - it does absolutely no harm. Wikipedia serves to cover all subjects in whatever depth people are willing to write to. --Oldak Quill 17:05, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Because chemistry is part of the real world and the Blast-Ended Skrewt is only part of the fictional Harry Potter world. To be honest, if you want to convince people that you have no sense of proportion and are therefore not bringing any to this debate, then please keep on with that line of argument about "a major element of the periodic table with significant medical and material uses is of comparable significance to a creature that only exists in one author's writings", it makes that point quite well. -- Antaeus Feldspar 21:07, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- That's no valid argument. If it's fiction or not is irrelevant. Should we remove all of our mythology entries just because they are fiction, or characters like Tintin. It's mostly the notability that is relevant. Streets and busroutes generally shouldn't be included how real they may be. The example about removing Lithium (if serious) is absurd. I currently have no oppinion about if this should be kept or not. - Jeltz talk 22:57, 2004 Dec 26 (UTC)
- Skrewts are not Tintin (there's a statement you don't write every day). I believe Antaeus wished to make the point that they are *only* part of the fictional world and do not project at all from the book they appear in. This makes the article nothing more than textual analysis. The article says what the book says. If this is okay, then everything of this nature should be included. There could be an article called shooting up (Naked Lunch), which would not be about heroin use in Naked Lunch, but would enumerate the shootings up. Enumeration is not encyclopaedic. Do you want Becky Sharp's dress in the first chapter of Vanity Fair?Dr Zen 01:25, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- If that's the point he wanted to make I missunderstod him, because that is the point I wanted to make too. :) Jeltz talk 10:33, 2004 Dec 27 (UTC)
- Dr. Zen explained what I was trying to say, yes. The comparison of lithium with the Blast-Ended Skrewt is indeed silly, but if I left the impression that I considered it silly merely because lithium is real-world and the BES is fictional, that doesn't reflect the actual issues on which I base that judgement. I don't use the word fancruft anymore for a number of reasons, preferring GOOPTI instead, standing for Granularity Out Of Proportion To Influence. Lithium is not only one of the major building blocks of our world as an element of the periodic table, it has had a tremendous impact on human affairs from spending several decades as the only known effective treatment for certain mental illnesses. Now, I'm not saying that fictional constructs never influence the real world; that was apparently misread from my remarks. But how much influence has the BES had on the real world? Has it had the influence of a Tintin, let alone of a mythological figure? Hardly. -- Antaeus Feldspar 16:56, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Blast-Ended Skrewts have had little or no influence on the world but that is a moot point. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a place were you go to get accurate information on different subjects. Is it totally inconceivable that one might actually want to know how a blast-ended skrewt look like? Maybe you are talking about them with someone, and you think, "Hmm, what did those guys look like?" (kinda silly i know :P but you get my point). THAT is wikipedia is for, and personally, i think your deletion arguments are totally unconvincing. Gkhan 02:20, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)
- Skrewts are not Tintin (there's a statement you don't write every day). I believe Antaeus wished to make the point that they are *only* part of the fictional world and do not project at all from the book they appear in. This makes the article nothing more than textual analysis. The article says what the book says. If this is okay, then everything of this nature should be included. There could be an article called shooting up (Naked Lunch), which would not be about heroin use in Naked Lunch, but would enumerate the shootings up. Enumeration is not encyclopaedic. Do you want Becky Sharp's dress in the first chapter of Vanity Fair?Dr Zen 01:25, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- That's no valid argument. If it's fiction or not is irrelevant. Should we remove all of our mythology entries just because they are fiction, or characters like Tintin. It's mostly the notability that is relevant. Streets and busroutes generally shouldn't be included how real they may be. The example about removing Lithium (if serious) is absurd. I currently have no oppinion about if this should be kept or not. - Jeltz talk 22:57, 2004 Dec 26 (UTC)
- Because chemistry is part of the real world and the Blast-Ended Skrewt is only part of the fictional Harry Potter world. To be honest, if you want to convince people that you have no sense of proportion and are therefore not bringing any to this debate, then please keep on with that line of argument about "a major element of the periodic table with significant medical and material uses is of comparable significance to a creature that only exists in one author's writings", it makes that point quite well. -- Antaeus Feldspar 21:07, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Why not make a Chemistry Wiki and delete all the Lithium molecule articles on Wikipedia? Lithium is no more relevant to many than Harry Potter. We have the space, the articles are factually accurate and varifiable. No other article will be placed at this name - it does absolutely no harm. Wikipedia serves to cover all subjects in whatever depth people are willing to write to. --Oldak Quill 17:05, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- *yawn*. Please read the deletion policy. Unwarranted listing; keep, obviously. James F. (talk) 17:44, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Merge into Creatures from Harry Potter even if such an article does not yet exist, to dissuade editors from making separate articles for each. --fvw* 18:36, 2004 Dec 26 (UTC)
- Keep, "fancruft" is not a valid reason for deleting an article. Bryan 19:55, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- The reason was "non-notable", or is that not a reason for deletion, either? --BM 01:40, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- No, it actually isn't a reason. Come up with a reason from Wikipedia:Deletion policy. You know, that thing you're supposed to read before nominating anything - David Gerard 23:13, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- No potential to become encyclopedic. --BM 18:05, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- No, sorry, that's a mis-reading of the policy. "No potential" means something for which an encyclopædia article cannot be written - i.e., insufficient verifiable information. Read Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#What Wikipedia articles are not, please, like you're meant to, and cite from there. Oh, and before you suggest item 7, that's about NPOV manner. James F. (talk) 03:26, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Please convince me that you are not interpreting the Wikipedia deletion policy to suit your own point of view. I do not see why your interpretation of what the concept "no potential" or item 7 means should carry any more weight than that of any other contributor. If you want to change, add to or clarify that part of the policy then fine, let us do so by consensus, but please do not go around stating what is actually meant by X is ....
- James, David (and others): please try to accept that some people's interpretation of what are meant by certain deletion policies differ from yours and while they may not (always) be right, your views and interpretations are not canonical either. Let us have open debate about whether articles should be included and not stifle Wikipedia by "beating people about the head" if they use an interpretation of a reason that you do not agree with! Elf-friend 09:26, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Sorry if I appear overly short, sometimes; a significant number of people, most of them rather new to the project, have of late started to push us into a rather more significantly "deletionist" than the one that Wikipedia was founded with, and it is most... frustrating, especially when, time and again, each newly-deletionist user uses the arguments that we argued with the last lot. However, this is not the place to be having arguments as to how you think we should change the policy to something different to how we wrote it, many moons ago. James F. (talk) 03:37, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- I guess you didn't write it well enough "many moons ago", then. In my opinion, this article has "no potential to be encyclopedic" because the subject is too trival for an encyclopedia, not notable enough, which is what I said in the first place. My guess is that you couldn't get consensus "many moons ago" on what it means for a subject to be "encyclopedic"; so it was deliberately left vague, with some enumeration in Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not of areas of agreement. The failure to produce clear criteria as to what Wikipedia is means that each case has to be argued now on its own merits, each time. We can agree, at least, that this is exasperating. As for whether the newbies are decidedly more deletionist than the oldbies, I cannot comment, being a newbie. --BM 22:50, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- No, sorry, that's a mis-reading of the policy. "No potential" means something for which an encyclopædia article cannot be written - i.e., insufficient verifiable information. Read Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#What Wikipedia articles are not, please, like you're meant to, and cite from there. Oh, and before you suggest item 7, that's about NPOV manner. James F. (talk) 03:26, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- No potential to become encyclopedic. --BM 18:05, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- No, it actually isn't a reason. Come up with a reason from Wikipedia:Deletion policy. You know, that thing you're supposed to read before nominating anything - David Gerard 23:13, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- The reason was "non-notable", or is that not a reason for deletion, either? --BM 01:40, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Merge As with fvw comment above, needs to be a part of an article which covers the flora and fauna of Harry Potter as a pre-emptive measure. We don't want dozens/hundreds of critter articles (ala grey elves?) - Amgine 01:12, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Merge: DCEdwards1966 02:10, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)
- Merge: Good info, but skrewts aren't a major part of Harry Potter. I don't want to see hundreds of pages dealing with every creature, person, spell or whatever from the books.Carrp 16:58, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Keep I can totally image a situation were you think Hmm, how did those crab-thingies in HP look like?. And merging would only add clutter, i think a separate page is warranted.
- Delete, or merge at most. (Co-incidentally watching "Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban" as I type this ...). Elf-friend 11:24, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion or on the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.