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 delete. I was close to calling this one no consensus, but in spite of some arguments that the delete !votes were unfounded in policy, the same holds true for many of the arguments for keeping, which seem to be based on claims that it is useful or citing the WP:ITSCRUFT essay. In the end there were no answers to the concerns that this list did not pass key guidelines and policies such as WP:V and WP:LIST. As there are no major objections to userfication of the material, I will make it available upon request. Shereth 21:41, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

List of fictional Alumni of Real Universities[edit]

List of fictional Alumni of Real Universities (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Non-notable list-cruft. ukexpat (talk) 21:25, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]


I would like to see more reasoned argument for deletion than "Non-notable list-cruft". This list will compile information that users would otherwise have to dredge through multiple articles for. The fact that there is only one entry in the table now points to the article's stub status, not any lack of notability. Currently only a couple of the university pages have listings of fictional alumni. Those alumni can be rolled into this article and it can be expanded to contain information that is not currently available elsewhere on Wikipedia, providing an article with worthwhile and convenient information for the reader.

I think that this is a case of: 

Some Wikipedians feel that some topics are unsuitable by virtue of the nature of the topic. Following the policy 
spelled out in What Wikipedia is not, they feel that some topics are trivial, non-encyclopedic, or not related to 
human knowledge. If you create a list like the "list of shades of colours of apple sauce", be prepared to explain 
why you feel this list contributes to the state of human knowledge.

and I hope that I have successfully rebutted the claim that this article is not related to human knowledge. --John (talk) 21:41, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]


John (talk) 04:36, 21 June 2008 (UTC): (Edited 06:20, 21 June 2008 (UTC))[reply]

This is getting ridiculous. Every vote for deletion here is more based on personal taste than on reading the rules for adding material to Wikipedia. Even the one that sites a valid reason (original research) pointedly ignores the commenter's own observation that it is simply bringing together information that was already on Wikipedia. The only arguments I see for deletion so far amount to:

For goodness sake people, please think about what your argument really means before you cast your vote. Read Wikipedia:Lists, Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigational templates, Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance, Wikipedia:Summary style, Wikipedia:No original research, and (most importantly) Wikipedia:Deletion policy--and understand them--before deciding that your particular issue supports deletion of the article.

One critical thing to remember when voting (quoted from Wikipedia:Deletion policy#Editing): 

If the page can be improved, this should be solved through regular editing, rather than deletion.
A variety of tags can be added to articles to note the problem.

This article is already in compliance with this by virtue of having been tagged with ((stub)) and ((expand list)); therefore, arguments that it is too incomplete do not contribute to this discussion, but ignore points already addressed.


John (talk) 21:49, 21 June 2008 (UTC):[reply]

Link for block of text is here. Sorry to edit someone else's comments, but we need to be able to read the entired afd page. If you think this is out of line, revert or change it, but I feel that the block of text doesn't help. Protonk (talk) 03:09, 22 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize if I am sounding frustrated here, but I have begun to feel like you are trying to justify your initial vote by "quoting scripture for your own purposes," and without keeping an open mind that your initial opinion may have been in error. Please... PLEASE... read the entire policy or guideline that applies before jumping to the conclusion that it supports deletion of the article. --John (talk) 00:01, 22 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think categorizations befits this topic very well. Perhaps I'm not thinking about this intelligently enough but I see each alumnus having a category tag for each school and each school has a category page. That means that for fictional characters we would have to have a 'shadow' category for every school they attend. Maybe that is in line with what we would want to do, but I think we might be better off userifying this and checking some of the possible source material for some secondary coverage (not just the ones I linked, those were mostly sources for the fictional characters themselves). 12:40, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

  • Comment - Converting this to a category was exactly what I was going to suggest. Livitup (talk) 16:27, 25 June 2008 (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.
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