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. Stronger, multiple sources were introduced during AfD, although it still appears to be a magnet for vandalism. David Fuchs (talk) 00:45, 14 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Melon heads[edit]

Melon heads (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Hoax article? Links and one reference all seem highly questionable. Cool story, though. Pgagnon999 (talk) 23:39, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you are going to delete the melonhead article you may as well delete bigfoot, lochness monster, chupacabra, aliens. Just because it is not a world renowned myth doesn't make it less important or relevant. Most Ohioans are very familiar with this story and it would be shame to railroad it off of wiki. It is not a hoax entry, it is a vital part of Northeast Ohio's mythical heritage. Feel free to email your questions. per Mmoorhead1207@aol.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.166.38.220 (talk) 07:15, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's a local urban legend. I think it's fake, but it is somewhat important. Here's a few links on it.

http://deadohio.com/MelonHeads.htm

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:oZhsre-pE14J:www.forgottenoh.com/Counties/Lake/melonheads.html+site:www.forgottenoh.com+melon+heads&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

http://www.geocities.com/son_of_pauly/melonheads/melonhead.html

http://www.weirdus.com/stories/OH04.asp

http://creepycleveland.blogspot.com/search/label/melonheads

VinTheMetalhed (talk) 00:00, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • I think they're enough to establish the existence of the urban legend. And we can have articles about urban legends, as long as they're clearly presented as such. Zagalejo^^^ 00:09, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Weak Delete. I agree with Zagalejo, in principle. However, the article still has to meet WP:NOTE and WP:RS criteria. A cursory bit of research on the book they provide is inconclusive as to the reliability of it as a source. And if this is a widespread legend, it must be reported in more than the local alternative rag. I'm positive that Ohio has a large-ish newspaper in that general area, as do Connecticut and Michigan. In the case of Connecticut, there certainly should be a bit of newsprint about it, since the story apparently dates back almost 150 years (or is it 50? The article is unclear)... And, honestly, if it's really as well-known as is claimed, I'm surprised Snopes hasn't heard of it... With more reliable sources, I'll gladly consider changing from Delete, as I tend to have a bit of an inclusionist bent... -- Lewellyn talk 00:27, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have a problem citing a referenceable urban legend, no matter how oddball. However, unreliable internet sources about an alleged urban legend do not constitute an actual urban legend; they constitute an internet hoax that suggests an urban legend. There may be a root truth to the internet stuff, but the references aren't strong enough to back it up. Quite a bit of the information in the article isn't even backed up by the links and single reference. Another point: might be worthwhile to give the article history some scrutiny. --Pgagnon999 (talk) 00:32, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Well, no, this isn't an internet hoax pretending to be an urban legend. For one thing, the Melon Heads are briefly mentioned in this 2000 article from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. (I can access the whole article on Newsbank. It's just a sentence – "She will share the legend of the 'melonheads' that haunt Wisner Rd in Kirtland." – but it proves that it's an actual piece of Ohio folklore.) Zagalejo^^^ 00:41, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmm. ..but the article you mention is about a woman gives "Ghost walks," not about the actual urban legend. Did she acquire her information from the web as a way to bolster her program, or is she retelling an actual urban legend (did the chicken come before the egg?) Once again, reliability is a problem. ..--Pgagnon999 (talk) 00:47, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly? I don't know. I'll keep looking around, though. Zagalejo^^^ 00:48, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • (edit conflict) Not to be difficult, but are you able to find anything else substantial? A sentence in a newspaper article which appears to be lacking in verification of the legends they're discussing isn't really much "proof" of anything, other than someone apparently is paid to tell the story. It also seems to contradict the Wikipedia article slightly... Still looking for a reliable source, myself... -- Lewellyn talk 00:52, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The only other things I've found so far are reviews of the Weird US books, which list the Melonhead stories as one of the highlights. I'm still digging around, though. Zagalejo^^^ 00:56, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

--Janeyvon (talk) 05:00, 31 December 2007 (UTC)I live within 10 minutes of Kirtland, Ohio and we, as teenagers, did go melonhead hunting in the late 70's. I know teenagers still continue to this day, so it is an urban legend. But, the information I found on Wikipedia about Dr. Crow is new to me . . . we never had this much detail![reply]

Yes, it's highly educational and encyclopedic--Pgagnon999 (talk) 05:33, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I chopped out a lot of the BS, and included some newspaper refs. Zagalejo^^^ 06:49, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good job :) I'll upgrade to Weak Keep based on your edits. However, the article should probably be locked down or closely monitored: it's a real kaka magnet.--Pgagnon999 (talk) 13:38, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: An existing urban legend verifiable to several distinct sources. The primary grounds for inclusion on Wikipedia are verifiability and notability. The available sources confirm both of these. The truth of the urban legend is irrelevant (most urban legends are largely, if not totally, false), what is important is that they are a part of popular culture. If you were to delete an urban legend just because it's about something made up then you might as well delete all urban legends as well as most classical myths. - perfectblue (talk) 09:32, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Contention isn't with the existence or hokey source of the urban legend, it's with the reliability of the sources that report the urban legend. I.e., is it an urban legened, or is it something invented by internet bloggers and a single publisher? Is it really an urban legend, and to what extent? For instance, using your example above, I could invent a bogus Greek myth, paste it on the net or publish it, and someone else could edit it into the Wiki article on Greek mythology, but that wouldn't make it a real Greek myth. So far, all but one of the Michigan references are sketchy at best, and all of the Ohio Melon heads references are equally sketchy. I'd like the legend to have a place here; its a fun story, but we are an encyclopedia. . .and we need good sources to maintain credibility as one. --Pgagnon999 (talk) 18:02, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This actually works both ways. Fakelore is just as valid on Wikipedia as [Folklore]]. If this is a hoax, a fake urban myth, then it appears to hav been widely distributed enough to be notable in itself and therefore sufficiently notable to be included. In this case, the only point of contention would be the entries framing. You'd need to WP:V it is as a web hoax. A local paper saying that it's fake would be sufficient to rate at least a reference that people thought that it was fake in the entry, and if it provided evidence to back it then I'd have no problem with the entry saying that it was a fake myth. My point however remains that if its a genuine myth then it's notable because of its coverage, and if its a fake myth it's still notable for the same reasons.
At the end of the day, and in the very best of situations, this would still be an urban myth and nothing more. It doesn't need peer review reliability. Only a couple of sources that are sufficiently reliable enough to report on the contents of the myths, and pretty much any well urban legend book could so that. - perfectblue (talk) 20:01, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Follow-up - I was asked by an editor to review the sources a bit more, because all three of the books found are by the same publisher. So I read the Holland Sentinel newspaper article in full, and it did seem like most of the info was from the book series; but there were also a few names of people relating stories that weren't from the book; it's hard to tell though. I searched a bit more and found another article, in the Cleveland Free Times, a weekly paper: [5]. That article doesn't mention the book, but the history is similar enough it seems like it could be from the book; on the other hand the paper also mentioned some other people who said they'd heard the stories. One of the papers asked the Lakewood Town Manager and the other paper spoke with the Kirtland Fire Chief who said he'd heard the stories when he was a teenager. If those are valid interviews -if those same interviewees are not named in the books, then that makes those newspaper stories independent and reliable for keeping the article. If it turns out that the books name the same individuals making the reports as the in the newspaper articles, then that might show that the sources are not independent. As far as I can tell so far, they seem independent, so I'll leave my "keep" comment. I'm open to changing that though, if more info is provided showing the sources are not independent. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 00:17, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The Lakewood Town Manager and the Kirtland Fire Chief are not named in Weird US or Weird Michigan. I'm not 100% sure about Weird Ohio, since I can't get a preview of the Melon Heads section with Google Books (but if I'm near a Barnes and Noble, I can probably check, because they always carry these titles). Zagalejo^^^ 06:17, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Got a copy of Weird Ohio. The bad news: The four pages covering the subject look to lift text directly from the websites cited at the top of this article (what a surprise to see my own words, since I contributed to Forgotten Ohio). The good news: One of the sources, not listed above, is entitled "Solving the Melon Head Mystery", and is available here, in two pages. The author (Ryan Orvis) said on the second page that he "went to the library", and and since the cite appears to be recent, any research that he did probably would be the same that I would do on Monday, when the reference librarian today stated that the employee who would know the most about it would be in. I think that we have enough substance now! Anyone with more editing experience than I have want to go to it?  :-) Mapsax (talk) 00:16, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for all the great research & debate that went into this discussion. After a recent negative experience with Wikipedia, all of this makes me feel right at home & hopeful about this medium :) As for the Melon heads, I no longer object to the article itself; my only beef (notability & reliability of sources) is with the Ohio melonheads section. That said, I rest my case: let community concensus move the article forward.--Pgagnon999 (talk) 06:46, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Phoenix-wiki 23:16, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • DGG, you do realize that what you say would effectively mean the end of most sports and music related entries and almost all TV related entries. Let me give you a case study: Football (US football, not soccer or rugby football). This sport is basically a US only game with no real international importance. It is followed by fewer that 50% of America's 300+ million population who in turn make up a fraction of the worlds 6+ billion population. The vast majority of international TV stations don't cover it, the vast majority of the world's population don't watch it. 9/10 people in the world proably couldn't even tell you which month the Superbowl was in, let alone who won it. Football barely even makes the headlines outside of the sports pages and it hasn't changed the world any. Therefore under your notability criteria all football entries including players, etc, would be removed from Wikipedia. Things can be notable and specialist at the same time. - perfectblue (talk) 12:13, 12 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why would you even consider deleting this article? The legend is found in many books in including "Weird Michigan" and there's even several local newspaper articles (at least in Michigan) about the story. Since Wikipedia is one of the biggest resources for information online, why not keep the stories on here for others to see? It just doesn't make sense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.40.250.194 (talk) 23:45, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On the Hoax issue, it is actually irrelevant whether or not this started out as folklore or fakelore so long as any claims about its status are addressed using verifiable sources. Both folklore and fakelore are equally acceptable on Wikipedia so long as notability is demonstrated, which it has been via the array of different sources available.
On notability. Notability is relative, not absolute. If notability were absolute then practically nothing would be notable. There are 6+ billion people on this planet and asking for something to be notable to more than a handful of them (absolute notability) is frankly asking rather a lot. Micheal Jackson and the Beatles would squeeze through, and so would the War on Terror, but practically no American politician below the level of president would. In fact, using absolute notability, most Americans states would not be notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia. Melon heads are notable on the grounds that they have good coverage in the media and in urban myth circles. The myth has propagated and survived without a factual event behind it and it has spawned a pop culture belief of its own that exists independently of other urban myths (notability is its own, rather than one which is inherited from another myth). Take this myth and put it in its native environment, and it is notable. Therefore it is notable overall.
On the reliability issue of sources, I seriously have to ask why people are raising the red flag here? This is a myth being treated as a myth, there are no extraordinary claims being made so no extraordinary proof is required. A source simply needs to be reliable enough to report on the contents of the myth, not to verify the myth as being true to science or history. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof but absurd claims require only proof that an absurd claim was made because they are only verifying that the claim was made, not that the claim is true.
Maybe if this was being put forward as science it would need a better source, but a myth being treated as a myth require only sources that are WP:RS as far as myths are concerned. - perfectblue (talk) 12:13, 12 January 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.
More