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 no consensus. Those who advocated for 'keep' would do well to make the improvements to the article that were discussed in this debate, to ensure this article isn't back at AfD in three months time. Daniel (talk) 14:23, 4 March 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

List of Warriors characters[edit]

List of Warriors characters (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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A section of this article was split into a new article, but was deleted at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Warriors ThunderClan characters for lacking notability and violating WP:FANCRUFT. The main article is extremely long and discussion should decide if it is deleted on the same basis, or if we allow this article to be split into numerous parts. Onetwothreeip (talk) 20:15, 22 February 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 20:48, 22 February 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 20:48, 22 February 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• Re-scope If each section is overly long, but not notable enough, perhaps we should at least re-scope in some way. 5a5ha seven (talk) 22:51, 22 February 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• I have same opinion as above. ArvindPalaskar (talk) 08:41, 23 February 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• Keep Nothing said here is reason for deletion of a whole list. If it's bad it should be improved.★Trekker (talk) 22:30, 23 February 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 05:13, 24 February 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• Some list of characters may be useful, but this is full of fancrufty plot summary and such. Not sure if WP:TNT is warranted, but it is very messy and mostly unreferenced. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:06, 24 February 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• Keep 129 books, this is a massive series with a lot of characters. No valid reason given for deletion. If you want to divide it into separate articles because of size, or discuss which characters aren't notable enough to remain on this list, do so on the talk page. Dream Focus 19:21, 24 February 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• Comment If we decide not to delete the article, this should overrule the previous AfD and the article should be split. Onetwothreeip (talk) 22:01, 24 February 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• Keep. I'm mildly biased, as a longtime Warriors fan, but the series is incredibly sprawling, and while the list definitely needs to be re-tooled, the franchise itself is large enough that there should be some separate page for a list of characters. To show that it can be done, about a week ago I managed to cut List of Kung Fu Panda characters to about 1/10 its original size. Kncny11 ^(shoot) 23:26, 24 February 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• Keep Speaking as a long-time contributor to this article (and others under the wikiproject), though less active lately, I do agree that the article could really benefit from being improved in the sense of having more references both to the books and to third-party sources. Most minor characters on this list would not have non-in-universe references, but arguably, this is the case for many similar franchise character lists: e.g. List of Star Wars characters, List of Harry Potter characters, etc. To address the suggestions above about potentially splitting this list: this has been tried a couple times in the past (see the records of deletion for List of ThunderClan cats, List of RiverClan cats, etc.). I was personally involved in one of those attempts (initiated precisely because we felt the list was getting too long), and they have not been successful in the past as it was always felt that once split apart, the lists were not considered to meet notability. You can search User:Brambleclawx/List and all the suggestions listed are basically transfers of the split lists before they were deleted. My current inclination is that a lot of the plot summary can be cut down: the number of entries may not be trimmable due to the sheer number of characters, but the overall length can be cut down by removing a lot of in-universe material to focus only on details important to the overall character/plot arcs (rather than minutiae about what happens to them in each novel in the series). That will be work-intensive but doable, but then afterwards there will also be an element of maintenance: this list is frequently contributed to by fans of the series whose (good-faith) inclination will be to document every detail they can find about each character. I am of course happy to try to do that maintenance, but I am nowhere near as active as I used to be, and the list is simply not monitored as well as some of those lists for larger franchises I mentioned above, so it may re-accumulate. But my overall opinion is still to keep, since the issue at hand is really improvement/trimming. Brambleclawx 04:08, 25 February 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• Keep. Potential to re-scope the article can be discussed elsewhere. शिव साहिल/Shiv Sahil (talk) 16:30, 27 February 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• Keep and drastically clean-up. This one is in truly rough shape but it is definitely a notable and discriminate topic. This could use a trim of minor characters, or characters who should be covered as groups instead of individuals. Archrogue (talk) 18:56, 28 February 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• Delete This is something that belongs on fandom. This is so far WP:FANCRUFT that it literally fits the exact definition. "Fancruft is a term sometimes used in Wikipedia to imply that a selection of content is of importance only to a small population of enthusiastic fans of the subject in question." It isn't well written, it's citations are poor and too few for the 470,000 bytes this article takes up. Flalf^Talk 04:27, 1 March 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• Comment Pinging users involved in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Warriors ThunderClan characters as I think its important to have the input of users involved said discussion. @Johnpacklambert:@Drmies:@Spicy:
• Keep There are several areas that need to be trimmed (the excessively in-universe parts, and the long descriptions about minor characters), but a list of characters in a creative work is a perfectly valid stand-alone list topic. — Goszei (talk) 17:24, 1 March 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • In response to the point on WP:TNT, the recent 90% reduction at List of Kung Fu Panda characters demonstrates that excessively in-universe lists like these can be successfully rescoped and trimmed down in situ. — Goszei (talk) 01:10, 2 March 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    • That's a terrible example if you're looking for "in situ" correction; there are 5 existing references and 0 to independent sources for a list of some 40kb. That's terrible. My own efforts at List of Mass Effect characters in July 2017 with earlier cuts in January 2013 (including stuffing an auxiliary list back in!) and March 2013, followed by what I would describe as decent efforts after by Masem and Haleth to better provide appropriate weight to the real world aspects of the characters is a much better example (and Haleth has even split several characters off to their own articles since, which I see as a success!), but even then I had content to work with that had citations. This article has approximately 0. I am well aware an "in situ" fix can be done, this article would simply have nothing left after such a fix. --Izno (talk) 04:34, 2 March 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• Delete per WP:TNT. This list is exemplary of how not to write about fictional topics. It lacks independent reliable sources and fails to explain how the topic itself is notable, even with the loosey-goosey application of WP:LISTN. Blow it up and start over. --Izno (talk) 17:54, 1 March 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • @Izno: Complete destruction of hundreds of thousands of characters of work is not the way to go about this in my opinion. There is much good-quality content from this article. Plot summaries, often cited to the source itself, are unavoidable in a list of this type. At the very least, it should be moved to draftspace until it is ready, instead of deletion; it is definitely not unsalvageable. sam1370 (talk · contribs) 00:46, 2 March 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    • I subscribe to broken windows theory in regard to the cruft that accumulates in corners of our fictional articles, especially list articles that are walking WP:NOTPLOT violations (which I forgot to mention, woops!). This list is one such. Draftifying it won't save it and will just put garbage in another space to be deleted by G13 when the time comes. An article 13 years old deserves an actual choice on the matter, so we should make the decision now to remove it. If there is something to save, it will come from actual WP:RS discussing the topic(s) in some detail. This isn't it. "Destruction of hundreds of thousands of characters of work" is some misnomer; it's "destruction of hundreds of thousands of characters of work that should never have been wrought (at least not here)". --Izno (talk) 00:57, 2 March 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    • As it happens, there is a Fandom with 4000 articles on the subject. They can and will do justice to the topic from a fictional point of view that we have no hope of approaching, even if we have 440000 characters on the topic. --Izno (talk) 01:03, 2 March 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
      • @Izno: Eh, the page serves a legitimate encyclopedic purpose - to summarize each individual Warriors character - not to simply create a plot summary. Fandom is in general held to lower standards than content on Wikipedia. Allowing the content to be here raises the bar and makes it of higher quality. This article can be useful, to people who want a more in-depth look at the series than what is currently on the page. sam1370 (talk · contribs) 19:29, 2 March 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• Keep - the ultimate decision, in my opinion, of whether an article should be kept or deleted should come down to whether it is harmful for it to be left up. The list does not contain any content that would warrant this judgement, such as egregious misinformation or self-promotion; it is simply an article that, although needing improvement, can still be useful. It is true that most of the people who find this article to be useful are Warriors fans; however, I don't see any harm with letting the article stay on Wikipedia, which gives it the benefit of being held to higher standards than it would if it were removed, and restored somewhere else on Fandom wikis. sam1370 (talk · contribs) 00:46, 2 March 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• Keep: Looks like it can be kept with WP:NFICT#Lists of fictional elements. I do agree that the article is too long and the article needs to be shorten significantly. However, WP:TNT may not be the best option. The point of WP:TNT is that sometimes restarting an article takes less effort than fixing it. In this case, however, the references are all mostly non-online sources so restarting may take a lot of effort. It also seems like a lot of the content can simply be removed outright for completely being unsourced, so it may take less effort than expected to fix the article. ~ Ase1este_{charge-parity}^time 13:02, 2 March 2021 (UTC)Reply[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.