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, defaulting to keep. Shimeru 23:09, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Rowrbrazzle[edit]

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

Unsourced article. Google turned up multitudes of blogs and sites mentioning "Rowrbrazzle", but nothing that resembles a reliable source, and hence an encyclopedic article cannot be constructed. Delete, per WP:ATT and WP:N K@ngie^meep! 07:14, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete pending sources. Right now the article fails the fundemental attribution policy and seems to be a amateur comic published by an amateur vanity press (the APA). Still, it makes three claims of notability: It's vast list of contributors, it's impact on the genre and its uninterrupted 24 year run (a long run for any comic). If reliable sources can be found to support these claims then I would say it be kept on the grounds that it is a notable comic within the furry community even if not the mainstream. NeoFreak 13:08, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Definite Keep. Rowrbrazzle was a seminal APA in [ETA: what] would become a dominant genre of independently published comics in the 1980's. It's highly notable, & too historically significant [ETA: for us to be able] to keep the article from resurfacing on this site. Ventifax 07:35, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • How can we go about finding sources in order to verify this claimed notability? Remember, it's not about what's true, it's about what you can verify through attribution. NeoFreak 13:48, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • OK, what verification do you need? Does it have to be online? Do you need a scan of the actual thing? Testimonials from contributors? I don't have any actual issues of it myself, but I can dig up a reference in an old Albedo Anthropomorphics. Here are the WikiFur pages on Rowrbrazzle[1] & its predecessor Vootie[2]. Do you think that the furries are going to be less reliable about their seminal publications? It's not a catastrophe if this page is deleted; it's only pop culture stuff, & already served by a more focused wikia site. But this zine Rowrbrazzle really isn't, in pop culture history, just some obscure guy in his garage. Ventifax 22:26, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'd suggest you start by reading the policy on reliable sources. If you have any other questions after that hit me up on my talk page. NeoFreak 23:17, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Update I have added source links, & an admittedly very biased quote from one of the former editors explaining why he thinks Rowrbrazzle is culturally noteworthy. In general, I would rather improve incomplete articles than burn them off for being incomplete. Ventifax 02:44, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete with fire. The only source is an external wiki with less stringent criteria for inclusion. Keeping would be a very bad precedent. Every moron who wants to get an article in wikipedia would jjust have to get it into other wiki's and cite them. Note: I am not referring to anyone involved with this article or AfD as a moron, just a hypothetical future reference.. Jerry 22:36, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Seems to be another case of deleting a notable comic because it was most important during years before the Internet reached its current form, making online sources hard to find. Ken Arromdee 18:45, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  There is an additional issue here - an amateur press association, by definition, only distributes copies to its members. Therefore, it would rarely have had any press from being sold or reviewed, despite the fact that it was often viewed as the very definition of furry fandom material, or that at one point it reportedly had a three-year waiting list for entry. This was not some mere "comic" - the volumes ran to many hundred pages, and I don't doubt that Best in Show has some reference to it. Of course, Best in Show was written by Fred Patten, who was until recent illness the chief editor of Rowrbrazzle; one of the reasons he had the authority to edit that book. GreenReaper 23:07, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm not sure what additional issue we're talking about, that is if were talking about this article's compliance with wikipedia policy. I'll I see is a vanity press and a bunch of unreliable sources and reviews on blogs. Oh, and the Furry wiki, of course. NeoFreak 23:46, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  I was replying to Ken's comment about online sources. Nobody in the furry fandom needed to review Rowrbrazzle, because it's not something that was commonly offered for sale, therefore there is a lack of published sources. In addition, everyone involved in the furry fandom knew what it was. Vanity presses don't tend to have waiting lists, nor do they run to 90+ issues of a single publication over the course of 20+ years. GreenReaper 00:17, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: It just occurred to me: Despite being a wiki (& therefore a bit... unreliable in basic theory), WikiFur actually makes sense as a tertiary (maybe secondary) source in this case. The policy on using wikis is the same as the policy on using self-published sources, & for the same reasons. But if you look at the reasoning in Wikipedia: Reliable sources:

They may be uninformed, misled, pushing an agenda, sloppy, relying on rumor and suspicion, or even insane; or they may be intelligent, careful people sharing their knowledge with the world. Only with independent verification by other sources not holding the same POV is it possible to determine the difference.

Rowrbrazzle is evidently still a going concern, & there's a significant overlap between its membership & the subculture of WikiFur. While I think that some of what WikiFur says about the significance of 'Brazzle has to be taken with a grain of salt, the wiki process at WikiFur is going to serve to bring the accuracy of their article up, because of the presumed high interest in this subject by their readership. In this case & for highly exceptional reasons, the wiki in question is going to self-police itself enough to create a usable article (which we can edit to be more NPOV here). Ergo, we have a source right there. It's not a normal source, it's a hugely exceptional source, it's an imperfect source, but it's a workable one. Ventifax 05:57, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WP:RS clearly says no to wikis. If you don't like that fact then take it up on that policy's talk page. This is not that place to campaign for policy change, this is an AfD. NeoFreak 06:01, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I firmly believe that rules exist for reasons, & that if you find an exception where the rule can be broken while holding to the underlying principle, than it is a reasonable exception. In this case reasonable expectation of verifiability is the principle, & "no wikis" is the rule. To be clear: I am not campaigning for policy change. I consider this a rational exception in an exceptional case. But it was a weak argument, I admit. Ventifax

• Move to dismiss nom due to addition of secondary sources to page. Ventifax 06:06, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  Again, no. You can tell by actually reading the reliable sources policy that the "sources" in the article do not cut the mustard. I'd also recommend you check out the attribution policy. Let the AfD run its course already. NeoFreak 06:11, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Ugh I really want to vote keep on this, because it's a long-running comic, among the longest-running of its kind, and certainly notable within its own genre niche. As much as I'd like to, though, the lack of anything resembling reliable sources is impossible to overcome, and a policy exception cannot be made just for this single article! What I don't get is that something could run that long and have that many notable people involved, but have absolutely zero attention from either the mainstream or comics press. There's never been an article or review of it in any newspaper or magazine, anywwhere? In almost 25 years of regular publishing? Hopefully sources can be found to resolve this, but if there's nothing out there to reliably base an article on, then deletion is likely the only way to go. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 14:44, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How would "the comics press" be permitted to give it attention? Periodical comics press is, ultimately, about comics for sale; it's a failure of their editorial policy to review apa's. But to extend that exclusion to our efforts when we lack the same interests is patently bizarre. I suppose if we can dig up a published book (a memoir?) on indie comics &/or the furry scene, that could be a source. But I feel like the lines drawn between good & bad source just aren't working here, by the nature of the subculture. Ventifax 19:58, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That is kind of where I am going with my reference to Furry! (aka Best in Show). If anyone is qualified to say anything about the significance of a work to the development of furry fandom, it's probably Fred Patten. One could argue that he counts as a "well-known, professional researcher writing within his or her field of expertise." The tricky part is that he was also the editor of Rowrbrazzle at the time, which is part and parcel of why he's considered qualified to write about furry. GreenReaper 20:06, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep and slam a 'sources needed' there. --Lunus 21:51, 4 April 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.