Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/A Proportional Response

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 Redirect - ultimately, the "Fails WP:N" argument is unanswered here, and it is a powerful argument. Find sources, then restore the article. Until then, it should be left as a redirect for licensing. Wily D 09:11, 24 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A Proportional Response

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Television-related deletion discussions. Cliff Smith 18:46, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unreferenced article fails WP:PLOT, contains a significant amount of WP:OR and does not assert notability of the subject. For this reason the article content was merged into The West Wing (season 1) and the article was redirected. It was restored on 8 July but no attempt has been made to improve the article to comply with any of our guidelines. The article now duplicates content from The West Wing (season 1) and there is simply no reason to keep this article.

Some background: I went through all of The West Wing episode articles and there are about 130 that fail WP:PLOT or have serious issues that stop these articles from meeting our guidelines, including WP:N. All episodes are listed at User:AussieLegend/The West Wing for anyone who is interested. Nobody seems interested in improving any of them at all, let alone to the point where they would comply with our guidelines. There may have been a reason for the episode articles to exist in the past, as there was too much content to add to List of The West Wing episodes, but that isn't the case now. When I first started cleaning up these articles in January, only two of the seven season articles existed in addition to the main episode list. I created the season 1-5 articles and reworked the pre-existing season 6 & 7 articles, so there is plenty of space to include the plot information that exists in the episode articles, and which is generally the only encyclopaedic content in the articles. There's no reason why any of the 130 non-complying articles should continue to exist. There are some episodes that are notable and these should remain but the rest should all be deleted. AussieLegend (talk) 15:28, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The nomination states that content from this article was merged into another. We must therefore keep the edit history of this article to satisfy our licensing - see WP:MAD for more details. The issue of which page this content should best appear on is a matter of ordinary editing, not deletion, and so our editing policy applies. Warden (talk) 18:47, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- We keep the edit history by redirecting the article, not by keeping the article in its current, non-compliant form. --AussieLegend (talk) 19:24, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect per AussieLegend. - Presidentman talk · contribs Random Picture of the Day (Talkback) 21:27, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Every episode has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject and therefore it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article.... Let's not delete just because of WP:NOEFFORT. Mcewan (talk) 01:09, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep unless there is consensus to merge all West Wing episode articles (or for the default to be merge, with the exception being Emmys and so on). WP doesn't necessarily need to cover individual episodes in this amount of detail, but given that we do, we're doing a disservice to the reader by leaving them wondering what happened between the previous and subsequent episodes. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:28, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- We're not leaving the reader wondering what happened between the previous and subsequent episodes at all. The plot information is in the season articles so there's no loss of information and readers can actually read the summaries of all episodes in the season in the 7 season articles, instead of having to trawl through 157 episode articles, 130 of which are not up to any reasonable standard. But remember, articles aren't just for listing plot information. They're supposed to provided sourced, real-world commentary as well, and this article doesn't do that. This is an encyclopaedia, not a fan wiki. --AussieLegend (talk) 17:41, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy Keep There have been other AfD's in place for other West Wing episodes for over a week. If they don't pass, this shouldn't pass. It's completely premature and absolutely inappropriate to be starting dozens of other AfDs until the original ones are finished. Nfitz (talk) 20:45, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- Having read Wikipedia:Speedy keep I don't see how a speedy keep vote is applicable here. "Dozens" of AfDs is an exaggeration. There are a total of 11 at the moment. Articles have been nominated on a case by case basis as they have different, although similar, problems. Really, WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS would seem to apply. --AussieLegend (talk) 22:41, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  - Sorry, I had assume that there was at least another 30-40 West Wing articles that you were going to bring to AfD. Perhaps you need to explain what's so special about these 11 episodes that doesn't apply to the other 143 that you won't be bringing to AfD. Nfitz (talk) 22:57, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    - Have you actually read the nomination or the thread that you've been posting to on my talk page where all is explained? The simple response is that these articles have all been merged to the season articles. The other 143 haven't. I'm not going to nominate articles before there has been a chance to merge the content. --AussieLegend (talk) 23:57, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect, which also silences the keep because you can't delete merged content votes. So, this article fails WP:NOT#PLOT, has WP:SYNTH/WP:COATRACK issues and doesn't establish WP:Notability. Plus per WP:AVOIDSPLIT, this means there is absolutely no basis for a stand-alone episode article. – sgeureka ^t•c 13:54, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - For good or for evil, it has become a precedent on Wikipedia to allow articles for individual episodes of a television series. This is probably something that has more business being handled through RfC rather than a skirmish over every single episode. But seriously, if nobody questions why we have an article for every single asinine episode of The Simpsons, then it's not a huge stretch to keep this. Trusilver 06:24, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- Have you read WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS? "The nature of Wikipedia means that you cannot make a convincing argument based solely on what other articles do or do not exist". --AussieLegend (talk) 10:03, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

WP:Other stuff exists is not a blanket ban on arguing for consistency (it says ...the encyclopedia should be consistent in the content that it provides or excludes.). And rightly or wrongly, most TV series of roughly comparable notoriety seem to have an article per episode. Mcewan (talk) 13:37, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that's a cute meme. However, many such RfAs concerning deletion of individual television episodes have occurred in the past and overwhelmingly resulted in keeps. Past precedent weighs into future discussion. Trusilver 15:39, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you mean "RfCs", they're not binding, and just because somebody else has chosen to ignore policies and guidelines in the past, doesn't mean we should do that here. We're not (supposed to be) lemmings. --AussieLegend (talk) 21:51, 19 July 2012 (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.