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 Keep per no calls for deletion beyond the nominator and unanimous consensus from the participating editors. A non-admin closure. And Adoil Descended (talk) 13:27, 28 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Zentradi[edit]

Zentradi (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Notability is not established. Other than a couple production details, only in-universe plot material is sourced. There don't seem to be any good sources for critical impact of the topic. TTN (talk) 21:10, 21 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. TTN (talk) 21:14, 21 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Anime and manga-related deletion discussions. --Calathan (talk) 21:22, 21 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy/strong Keep I was originally going to comment and then provisionally lean towards keep until I found some sources. However the first source I found was Anime Classics Zettai! which compares the Zentradi to the Laputans in Gulliver's Travels and s a parody/social commentary on human tendencies. It also makes further comments about a particular group of Zentradi, again making social commentary in a different way. These strike me as extremely strong indications of notability from a single source because they are compared to both a well known piece of fiction as well as the very real world study of humanity. This is before we consider that the Zentradi are a third of the drive behind the story of the first Macross series (the others being the titular vehicle and the love triangle) so there are 30+ years of reviews and other discussions on them as a core component. This subject matter strikes me very much as less a case of a debate over notability, and more a case of finding the best sources out of the many that exist. The cleanup is easy.SephyTheThird (talk) 23:07, 21 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL) (alternate spelling preferred in Robotech)
  • The grand majority of those are just simple name-drops without any context, making them worthless for this article. The fact that it's mentioned in the larger context of the series a bunch of times doesn't really scream notability. TTN (talk) 23:38, 21 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • But you didn't propose to merge it anywhere; you nominated it for deletion. I'm still in favor of keeping it as a standalone article, but you'd've had more of a leg to stand on if you'd proposed a merger. Considering that there are two very different interpretations of this race, from Super Dimensional Fortress Macross and from Robotech, that would be a poor choice as well, so I prefer to keep it as a standalone article. Jclemens (talk) 20:39, 22 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
For what it's worth I don't think there is an issue with the nomination, even though I strongly disagree with it. Ultimately there is a cause for concern with the article and bringing a discussion to AFD to propose a merge isn't very sensible. There are better ways to propose merges. Some AFD's do discuss the option of a merge, but these are almost as second options when the nom realises there is a fine line. Besides, I don't think a merger is suitable. Either the article has enough sources or it doesn't and we then decide if we expect to find them. A merge wouldn't make sense because of the nature of the information, you'd be looking more at a redirect and writing new content. Also where would you merge or redirect it to given that as you point out there are multiple adaptations of the same source material not to mention the subsequent media entries that also make use of them.SephyTheThird (talk) 21:22, 22 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I know the outcome isn't going to change at this point, but am I just not understanding how notability works? This is hardly really any different than any of the Transformers cruft I've nominated recently. I'm sure half of those could have a decent amount of sources where the source itself is reliable, but the actual content is limited to all of a name-drop. Including the above, pretty much every source listed here is utterly trivial. It seems like everybody is going with the mindset that "the topic 'should' be notable, so it should just be assumed that there's plenty of sources on it." I'm sure you could get five or ten sources mentioning the topic, but so far those mentions are all of nothing. The little note about how they thematically used the music in the above source is something, but that's much more geared towards a section for the main series article on music. TTN (talk) 20:21, 27 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
TTN, if I can put it bluntly, you thrive on kicking down sandcastles little children have built in the sand because they don't meet building codes. Sure, there's a lot of stuff that's not encyclopedic, but what you are ignoring is that all of these volunteer editors' labors that you deride as cruft, they donated their time and keystrokes to Wikipedia to create because they believed that it should be shared. Copyright violations and self-promotion are excluded, of course, but the fact is that it's highly unlikely that people who made money off of any of these fictional products, entities, races, literary elements, or what have you ever contributed to Wikipedia... None of it was for personal profit; all of it was for the love of the story. In this specific case, Zentradi/Zentraedi have appeared in Anime, novel adaptations, and role playing games seen and read and played by millions. Millions. Worldwide. Notability is meant to be a tool to remove someone's garage band, something made up in one day, stuff that were inside jokes that no one--or at most scores or hundreds of people--ever cared about. What you nominate are fictional elements experienced by tens of thousands to millions of people. You don't argue that they be merged or otherwise curated into better, more encyclopedic presentations, you condemn them to deletion and force others to spend effort to overcome the current state of the article to show the potential within. The thing is, you're usually correct--these are lame articles on moderately unimportant topics--but your approach to them is offensive to those who would like to see things streamlined, referenced, trimmed, improved, and presented better. What the Encyclopedia needs, when dealing with fictional elements, is not people kicking down lame sand-castles, but rather people taking time to improve what's already been donated. The seeds of good coverage lie within these articles, and the right thing to do isn't to delete them because they currently suck, creating holes rather than poor coverage, but rather to curate them. I'd LOVE to have the time to go through and do everything I just said, but I spend my time instead opposing you and people who see the encyclopedia the way you do, rather than a labor of love, imperfect and in need of serious effort. None of this is to say that I think you're malicious--I just think you're entirely wrong. Notability, to answer your original question, is there to express what should already be in the encyclopedia: information on things which external folks of some reputability have already decided to write about. But notability is the servant of the encyclopedia--and a good one, make no mistake--but not its master. Jclemens (talk) 06:36, 28 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I rather think you've missed the point, which given that half of your post is a rant against the system and vowing to protect articles doesn't surprise me. Talking about peoples time and edits as if they are somehow protected when the site states clearly that all contributions are subject to editing. Let's also be clear, I'll be doing a massive cleanup of the article if it is kept, so the article will be edited towards verifiable information that serves the subject, which means removing half of it at least. Holes in coverage does not mean having articles for everything, but rather than the articles we have cover the topic adequately according to an articles specific needs. Rather than attacking people who nominate pages in good faith, you should spend that time and energy actually improving articles. That's what defines contributions to the encyclopaedia, not running through and waving keep at everything.SephyTheThird (talk) 09:17, 28 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking for myself, I don't think there is anything wrong with your idea of notability. Indeed, on most similar articles I would be inclined to agree with you. I think this is a special case however. There is a vast amount of coverage on this franchise, and while ridiculous legal wrangling has limited the western releases of this series, the first series has had at least 4 releases in both forms and has received ongoing coverage for 30 years. The problem is one of logistics, going through that much coverage is going to take time and is not realistically possible during and AFD period. I appreciate the need for a massive cleanup of this article and it could ultimately serve as a redirect target for some of the individual characters, which would only helps it's case. Now I'm so confident if being able to find other sources given time that I would welcome another AFD in 6 months if the article doesn't gain further sourcing. I'm aware that Animerica has some possible sources but I can't access my full collection at this moment. As for the previous source I mentioned, while I haven't added it to the article yet, I believe it's a pretty good evidence of notability by itself.[2] Then there is Protoculture Addicts which although started as a fanzine, became an ongoing long running general magazine and while that introduces a separate debate on the suitability go it's fanzine content, it may suffice for supporting evidence with other sources.SephyTheThird (talk) 09:17, 28 June 2016 (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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