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. We're still a little short of time, but not by much. I don't see this debate suddenly changing course. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 11:02, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

List of real people appearing in fictional context[edit]

A list we cannot possibly hope to write well. This has got to be the longest Wikipedia list I have ever seen, and it's probably, at best, 5% complete. There is an entire genre of writing called Historical fiction which exists to portray real people in fictional contexts. Even keeping the list down to figures prominently featured in the works, this would still imply that every Historical novel written should be listed on the page at least a half-dozen or so times. And of course, the list does not stick to the limits set in the introduction, but has grown beyond all reason. There were 28 listings, for instance, of Family Guy, which I guarantee does not really feature any real person prominently, with the possible exception of Adam West (which by the way is not listed). What this article is, really, is about a hundred trivia articles rolled into one. The page has been listed on AfD previously: see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Litefantastic Files and Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/List of real people appearing in fictional context. It was kept in both cases, but the problems with the article have only gotten worse. I'd mark it with a cleanup tag, but I honestly can't think what would make this a reasonable article. Forking out sections based on what kind of real people appear doesn't seem much better. Perhaps an article featuring only older works? But that seems arbitrary, and is a heck of a lot of work to distil from this article. We could restrict to only books, or only movies, but this wouldn't cut down the list much... and we could try to restrict to only particuarly important works, but systemic bias will kill us there. I see deletion as the only way to fix the situation. Mango juice^talk 05:28, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Impossible to maintain. Just listing the works that Julius Caesar appears in is close to impossible. (If there's useful information for individual people in this list, it might be beneficial to split some of those off.) --Akhilleus (talk) 06:09, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete' couldn't we just split this off into articles for the most notable/frequent appearing ones? JuJube 06:19, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete I don't see the list ever being usefull, and it would never be even close to complete. For example, look at shows that have had frequest guest stars like The Simpsons and The Love Boat (Love Boat had one like every week). TJ Spyke 06:32, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Trivia magnet at best. --Calton | Talk 08:25, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Al-Bargit talk • 11:59, 27 February 2007 (UTC).[reply]
Delete: unmaintainable; but I like the suggestion that individual smaller lists should be split off for historical figures who are also notable for having been particularly frequently portrayed in fiction. -- The Anome 13:37, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and strongly oppose splitting up the list into smaller lists for individual people. Such "...in popular culture" articles almost invariably turn into crap magnets and many of them end up right back here and deleted. Otto4711 14:11, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Split article. I disagree with the statement made by Otto4711. I have no problem with "...in popular culture" articles; while some have been AFD's they have not always been deleted. Such a list is viable and encyclopedic. What it needs is structure. 23skidoo 14:39, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Merely saying to "split" without explaining how isn't that helpful. How? Mangojuice^talk 15:00, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - I would think that would be self-evident from looking at the article. 23skidoo 05:28, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - Okay. Now I know what you mean, anyway, but I don't think it would be good. Mango juice^talk 14:38, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. There does seem to be an animus in certain circles against separate articles about the representations of historical figure in fiction or popular culture. How, then, is this information going to be preserved? A catch-all list for those figures who don't warrant separate articles serves the indexing, cross-referencing, and browsing functions. - Smerdis of Tlön 15:22, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How is it going to be preserved? By someone putting it somewhere else perhaps. "That something is 100% true does not mean it is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia." Otto4711 16:13, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as hopelessly unmaintainable. Concur with Otto4711 in opposing the split as well. Arkyan 16:17, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Appears to probably violate WP:NOT#DIR as a "List of loosely associated topics". (WP:NOT#IINFO doesn't seem to apply here.) Dugwiki 17:39, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Impossible to contain enough information to become exhaustive, too easy to become bloated with non-notable occurences. Without being exhaustive this list can hardly be of use to someone searching for a specific instance. This concept practically needs it's own Wiki to be doable!--Xnuala 01:51, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Concur with User:Xnuala -- this needs its own Wiki, or else it's a snowball. -- Simon Cursitor 07:52, 1 March 2007 (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.