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 these shouldn't each have their own articles. I'm going to redirect each one as seems appropriate to me, and anyone who wants to work on merges can do so, but I don't see any particular consensus here other than that we shouldn't have articles on these topics. Mango juice^talk 15:05, 9 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thomas Tomy Wind Ups[edit]

Catalog listing of various toy models. Several reasons for deleting: Fails the primary criterion for product notability: A company, corporation, organization, group, product, or service is notable if it has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works, the source of which is both independent of the company... or of the product's manufacturer or vendor, and reliable. The only reliable references are either on websites selling these toys, or those related to the manufacturers. Also, Wikipedia is not a directory.

I am also nominating the following related catalogue listings for the same reasons:

Croxley 00:03, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The companies that made these toys are certainly notable - Tomy, Hornby Railways, Bachmann Industries, Lego, Duplo etc etc. However, how notable the actual products are is debatable. There's probably quite a bit of Merging that can go on here. Indeed, Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends ERTL Models is already under discussion for merging with Bachmann Thomas and Friends for example. EliminatorJR ^Talk 00:32, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Merge all into a big super-article. They seem in a gray area as to being notable enough to exist as separate articles, but together I'm pretty sure they meet notability requirements. Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 01:19, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Merge what info is notable enough to include in the main article into Thomas_the_Tank_Engine_and_Friends itself. Delete the rest. —Carolfrog 04:36, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The only thing I can see resulting from merging all nine individual lists together is one huge, long list of hundreds of non-notable models. Merging the notable stuff into Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends might be an option, if it was a brief general description of each company's line, rather than listing every single product. Croxley 06:36, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep These toys are entirely separate. They are all fairly major toys in their own right. The catalog listings are perhaps not all that helpful, but the toys themselves are entirely distinct. Would all benefit from pictures to illustrate the toys in question. Nssdfdsfds 09:47, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Can I just point out that if this was minor anime, or other somewhat notable geek subject, then this debate would not even be had. Just because they are toys for the under 10s, doesn't mean they are less notable than more geeky subjects.Nssdfdsfds 10:06, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Merging could produce a table which shows what companies produced a certain character. I guess this could be extremly usefull for collectors, yet I do not know wether WP would be the right place for such a fan orientated information. Is there something like "WP is not a collection of information only usefull and of interest to fans of a specific subject"? I hope not because then we would have to delete lists of trees, building styles or rulers of a given country just to name a few. (I for myself am not much interested in sports so there would be a lot of list cluttered articles that I wouldn't even notice missing). I guess the phrase a product ... is notable if it has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works... is difficult as most grownups would think collecting toys or showing interest in toy history or design is ... well ... trivial. Think of some other sets of questions.
- Who should read and use the WP? Everybody? Children included?
- What subjects would be of interest to a young person? What subjects would draw a child into the WP maybe encouraging it to follow links to related "grownup" information?
- If a young person decides to participate, in what subjects is it naturally an expert?

I was dissapointed when I first found the articles on Thomas the tank merchandising but the reason I came accross them was because I was searching for information on the subject and was hoping the WP would be more helpfull than my local library. Following the basic guidline of what WP wants to be though I guess it will never be more usefull as it is sort of said that "if it has never been printed it doesn't belong into th WP" I wonder if there should be some "easy entry" subjects with lowered rules because these subjects tend to draw people into entering information and maybe thus some of them may become writers on more "non trivial" subjects. Articles on sports, toys, tv-shows and my home town would be my suggestion for such areas of somewhat lowered rules. Although I dont think the list of products of certain manufactures that important I would very much want the basic information to be kept in some sort or other. --T.woelk 10:08, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merge - There seems to be enough articles here, ok, not from the same manufacturers certainly, but there is enough info to turn this into one large article by merging relevant information and discarding flotsam off the leftovers. After all, its all essentially the same type of toy and same character. Thor Malmjursson 11:09, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

All the same type of toy???? It's not at all, it would be helpful if you are going to make merge suggestions to at least have some knowledge of the toys in question. The Thomas and Friends Wooden Railway is a *wooden* railway set. It is designed to be pushed along. The Lego Duplo Thomas & Friends is a plastic push-along lego railway set using lego bricks and its own track. Thomas Tomica is a plastic battery-powered train system based on the company's larger range of railway & road products. Hornby Thomas And Friends and Bachmann Thomas and Friends are both HO/OO-gauge mains-powered classic metal model railway sets. Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends ERTL Models represent die-cast metal railway figures. Nssdfdsfds 11:52, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I do have some knowledge of the toys in question. Remember please that my first language is not english, and when I say all the same type of toy, I mean - They are all train sets, and they all refer to or include Thomas the Tank Engine. Please don't pick me apart, since I am trying to be helpful and I word things how I think they should be put. Thank you. Thor Malmjursson 12:20, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just yesterday when I had a look at the Thomas stuff shelves at my local TRU, wondering wether all these in some respects very different toys should go into one very very large article, I spotted a HO gauge version by Märklin I hadn't heard of before (on Märklin homepage). I think the Thomas merchandising phenomena is extremely important. The impact this has had on the toy train industrie is probably huge (anybody any numbers). In fact most of the wooden toy trains manufactors started or expanded after Learning Curve had revived the interest in wooden toy trains. I guess the model train producers and Train museums are also aware of the interest this character is building for their products and sites among the young ones. I can't really remember any other merchandised character that has so many parallel products in the same category. How many ways are there to build a track and run a thomas engine on it? I don't think there are as many different play figures so simillar in play technic for say Spiderman or Jack Sparrow. OK, some suggestions. I could imagine all lists could be put into one super list article. This one might look awfull, but it might be to the benefit of all the original articles. The Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends merchandise should include all merchandising products! Each with some information on what exactly the product is (a bag, a bed sheet, a toy train with this or that sort of tracks, a model train in gauge soandso). I guess without the lists a lot of the articles would become stubs that can be integrated into the "Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends merchandise" article. The list will probably have to be protected from frequent deletion requests. It could be made more tabular, maybe the lists united to groups each with an own table like: Toy trains, Model trains, whatever. It would be great to have more info on the phenomena as such and the impact it is having on the toy industrie. This could lift the article from its appearance as something that rather fits to a fan site than an encyclopedia.

Ok after having a look at the ERTL Models list (we have two of them?) I don't really know how to organise the information in such a list better. Yet the list should be taken (not necessarly deleted) from the merchandise article and the article should rather give more info on every product line each than point to a category page. --T.woelk 11:01, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

COMMENT – could I please ask everyone to involve the members of WikiProject Thomas before merging or deleting anything in this list??? The 'Thomas' pages in WP are certainly an entry point for the younger editors, as anyone in the project involved in vandal-patrolling could tell you at length! But we welcome constructive inoput, as it has the potential for developing the next generation of WP editors.

The article Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends merchandise was created in Jan 2007 to act as a top-level article and cover the subject properly from an encyclopedic viewpoint. It is still very much 'under development' (like an awful lot of other pages on WP!). Agreed, the current coverage is heavily list-based, and there are few sources so-far found to support the lists, but then I, for one, have not really looked. WP:THOMAS members have been discussing the problem, but the most active project members are mainly familiar with The Railway Series books, or the Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends TV Series, and not the specific ranges of merchandise, per se.

It may be that the best course of action is to copy the pages to Train Spotting World, which is a Wiki created from WP but designed to be less strict in terms of article coverage. If they would be happy to have the younger Thomas fans there, that Wiki would be ideally suited to house the long lists. In the meantime, it would be helpful if the pages can remain in existence, since that will simplify the cut-and-paste process in the future!

As for the 'multiple published sources', I'm sure that there's an awful lot of articles in WP that fail to meet this criteria.

(BTW, I also largely support the comments made by T.woelk and Nssdfdsfds.)

EdJogg 13:33, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Train Spotting World will be delighted to provide a safe haven for Thomas The Tank Engine whether the pages are deleted from Wikipedia or not. I say this as its co-founder. Perhaps interested parties would contact me there (not on my talk page here, please, but there) providing a list of pages (by name) which should be ported. When we port pages we provide correct acknowledgement according to the Wikipedia processes, which includes a formal link back to the original pages.

It is rather important, if you wish this to take place, to give me the list before any deletion takes place, since we run a special extraction bot for live pages only, not deleted pages.

I do feel it to be a great shame that this AfD is running at all. I feel very much that a Keep is in order here for these significant, notable, verifiable items. Fiddle Faddle 20:17, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

COMMENT Can I just add that I don't necessarily object to merging some of these pages, but it should be done with a little more care, as there's not been much attention to what the individual toys actually are. As the AFD stands, I don't see what can be done if it passes. Nssdfdsfds 21:04, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

COMMENT I'm inclined to agree with the thoughts of EdJogg, and I'd also like to add that if these articles are deleted out right, chances are they'd be created again. If there is somewhere for them to be used by younger editors, all well and good. I agree entirely that they are not suitable really for inclusion in Wikipedia per se, but a overview article would be useful as per WP:THOMAS. Mdcollins1984 23:25, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merge Lego Duplo Thomas & Friends to Duplo. -AMK152^{(Talk • Contributions • Send message)} 04:29, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merge or Delete, as appropriate. I have 'been bold' and merged the (minimal) encyclopaedic content for almost all of the articles to Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends merchandise already. (As per original WP:THOMAS proposals.)

The one exception is Hornby Thomas And Friends which is already large enough to stand on its own (as a sub-article of 'merchandise') and has the potential for some very useful coverage. It needs a lot of work, but attempting a merge will swamp 'TtTE&F merchandise'. This page should therefore have a Keep rating.

Now that the original page content has been 'saved' at Train Spotting World, and the encyclopaedic content merged, these pages may be either deleted or converted to redirects, as appropriate (except 'Hornby...'). The problem of unverifiable long lists will then go away.

EdJogg 01:40, 9 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment – the 'Hornby...' page does not yet cover the range of ('Thomas') buildings that the company have (recently) introduced. These buildings are specifically marketed "for the adult collector", a marketing move which must be something of a 'first' for a children's TV show spin-off! (Just mentioning this to strengthen the argument for keeping that page separate...)

EdJogg 02:10, 9 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

COMMENT-KEEP Hornby article as sub-page of completed merged merchandise page as per EdJogg. Merge/Redirect all the rest. MDCollins (talk) 11:21, 9 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.