Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Total Drama characters (2nd nomination)

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. Having review previous nom and this nom, plus "improvements" since, it's clear that this list is failing the requirements to remain as a separate article the panda ₯’ 23:18, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

List of Total Drama characters

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Same reason as last time: "This article is 100% composed of in-universe trivia, ridiculously over-burdened with overly-detailed character bios, and outright fails to establish any out-of-universe notability. The sources are generally not reliable, or say nothing about the characters, just the show."

Closer of last AFD in September 2013 noted, "no prejudice against future relisting if the article hasn't been improved in a reasonable time." After said AFD, the article has only continued to bloat and bloat with more unnecessary, in-universe original research, and poor writing, with no reliable third party sources forthcoming. Despite several people in the last AFD agreeing that a cleanup was in order, no one took on the job — likely because the article is so freaking long that cleaning it up would be a Herculean task. Also, the amount of edits is so staggeringly high that, even if it were somehow trimmed down, it would just as likely bloat back up to its current size in weeks. You fans of the show have your own wiki; why spam our own?

There is honestly no way in the world that this monstrosity will ever be properly cleaned up, so clearly the only solution is some WP:TNT. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 05:53, 7 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Television-related deletion discussions. tutterMouse (talk) 06:05, 7 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. tutterMouse (talk) 06:11, 7 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Transwiki and nuke: There's little real recourse for this, it's too ossified for anyone outside the fandom to attempt chopping down but I reckon the information could be better handled in a dedicated location and a far smaller overview to be listed here, even a huge array of WP:RS couldn't justify this sort of exhaustive in-universe coverage and it's clear there's very few out there. tutterMouse (talk) 06:23, 7 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@TutterMouse: Transwiki is not a good idea, since Wikia already has a dedicated article for EVERY character in the series, so that is why Wikipedia only has one article for ALL the characters. Performing a transwiki move will do nothing but delete this article and cause all the information to be moved back to the season articles like in here before the characters article was first created. Giggett (talk) 15:57, 7 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

TenPoundHammer, might I ask, usually for this style of article (character pages), to what degree of information is required (or should I say allowed)? And I don't really think any "list of characters" page on wikipedia has sources for the individual characters of the show, mainly because there's so few of them that exist. Provide me with a three examples of pages that do have sources for an individual character's bio and I'll take back what I said. Snowy66 (talk) 07:26, 7 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Snowy66: List of human Sesame Street characters is a good example of a character list, and one of the few that's "featured list" status. Go to WP:FL and look for any other with "X characters" in the name. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 08:15, 7 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@TenPoundHammer: Hmm, while some of them do give character bios, most of those are information on the actors not the characters. And in fairness Seasame Street has been around back when we only had dial up internet, so their information is all over the web. It's a lot harder with something like Total Drama. But yes, I see the kind of thing your after. General overview of the character and little to no mentionings of specific episodes right? Can you give us a little more time while I discuss this with the article's primary moderator? Snowy66 (talk) 08:31, 7 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm torn on this one. On the one hand, it provides a place for the character information to live, which keeps the articles on the series itself and the individual seasons trimmed down. On the other hand, this article is bloated with details—and, as Snowy66 pointed out, not all of the details can be verified to reliable sources. It's a constant struggle with this subject to make sure information is verifiable: a lot of the information on the latest season traces back to social media (posts by creators and voice actors) and a leaked script.

In that light, I think this AfD needs to be looked at as an attempt to get consensus on whether this level of information belongs on Wikipedia. If the result is keep, it stays. If the result is keep and merge, it stays somewhere else (and that's going to take serious paring down). If the result is delete, then the community has said this information has no place on Wikipedia, either in this article or in any other TD article, and it should be removed from those articles if it pops up (and citing this AfD as rationale, if necessary).

To that end, I'm not quite ready to opine on the fate of the material. I want to consider the relevant policies a little more as well as the overall effect on the project, and I want to hear arguments from other editors on how either keeping or deleting this article is in keeping with Wikipedia policies. —C.Fred (talk) 14:20, 7 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delete with TNT. I do believe that this article should be deleted so we can start all over and make the article again with just minor summaries with more info on the actors that way the article can look more like List of Ben 10 characters or List of 6teen characters. For now on, I am not going to edit this article anymore until a decision has been made to whether delete or keep. Giggett (talk) 15:49, 7 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keep but get rid of the unnecessary templates and tables. it's a fictional cartoon reality game show and the way it's put together is more complicated than it needs to be. Boaxy (talk) 19:17, 7 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Boaxy: I tried getting rid of the tables once but people just keep adding them back. Even if we remove all the templates, we are still left off with massive character summaries that show nothing but unneeded trivia. It's better to just TNT the whole thing and write the summaries from scratch. Giggett (talk) 19:22, 7 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Merge (and trim down) into each series' respective character sections. While most of the descriptions can be salvaged, this is needlessly meticulous. It doesn't make any attempt to sort characters by series, so it's beyond useless to redirect readers to within character sections. If the list is to be recreated, basic descriptions should be preserved in the main articles so that if it has to be nuked again, at least it won't leave a gap for readers. Whisternefet (t · c) 23:29, 7 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Comics and animation-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:44, 8 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:44, 8 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Better to TNT it and start from scratch - and while we're at it, semi-protect it indefinitely against IP editors adding fan speculation and the other useless stuff (particularly the elimination charts, which can already be found at each of the individual shows), which has become more of a problem the more popular the show has become. Basic works best. Creativity-II (talk) 13:45, 8 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Just wondering that in case we delete the whole article and start all over, then what kind of summaries should be rewritten into the new article? Will they be like the current summaries but much shorter, or will they take a whole different approach and talk more about their personalities rather than their outcomes? Giggett (talk) 15:47, 8 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Giggett: See WP:WAF. I don't follow the show, so I don't know exactly what would be relevant, but as long as it's written out-of-universe. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 22:46, 8 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect, salt/protect the page, and allow for someone willing to rewrite this in a manner that is more appropriate for a list of non-notable characters from the show. Such a list is reasonable, but probably can be 1/10th the size this takes to cut down to core character traits and little else. The approach I suggest is to prevent a new version from simply being dropping into place but to have some admin double check it to make sure it is right. This keeps the edit history but removes the issue of simply far too much nonsense even for list of characters announcement. --MASEM (t) 14:34, 16 May 2014 (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.