Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of The Shield characters

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. postdlf (talk) 13:29, 21 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

List of The Shield characters

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The article as a whole is cruft; it's an indiscriminate collection of information whose sole purpose is to detail fictional characters in the context of their universe. While this sort of context is great on a Wikia site, it's got absolutely no relevance to the real world.

The one arguably notable character (Vic Mackey) has his own article which can be shaped up accordingly. The rest of the article's content cannot, in my opinion, be used in a way that satisfies the GNG.

As a reminder, please remember that just because other lists like this exist does not impact this one. m.o.p 04:25, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note Currently there is a RFC at Talk:The Shield#Consensus on this page's related articles where the consensus is strongly favouring the merge of all the other characters (apart from Mackey) into this article. AIRcorn (talk) 05:01, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Reluctant Keep I see these types of articles as similar to the ... in popular fiction and international reactions to ...articles. There are probably more like this but these are the two types that spring immediately to mind. On the whole they are generally not encyclopaedic (some obvious exceptions exist), but are a compromise between having this information presented in the article and deleting it entirely. My personal preference would be to not have this information included, especially the international reaction forks, but the general consensus at various merge, deletion and other discussions that I have come across has been the compromise outlined above. If a meta discussion on these articles is started I would !vote for delete, but until such a time I think the de-facto consensus should be respected. That is not to say that the article could not do with some serious trimming. The list of supporting characters and below should be reduced to at most a single sentence description, with the likely merge of the main characters making up most of the text. AIRcorn (talk) 06:57, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep for now. I can see exactly what the nominator is trying to do and I don't disagree with the premise at all. This list could stand to be greatly reduced to enable the "main" characters to be included in summary form. At present some very minor characters have long in-universe summaries when a few lines would absolutely suffice. I said, in this discussion that I thought the character Vic Mackey was probably the only character that deserved a standalone article and I stand by that. Can I suggest we see how that RFC goes and then revisit this down the track? It's probably going to be a matter of what the list looks like later rather than what it is now, if that makes sense. Stalwart111 07:15, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 13:57, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Television-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 13:57, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 13:57, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 13:57, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep While the content could be reduced, it is reasonable to keep this as a spin-out, along with the separate episode list. Most characters with independent articles could be merged here, but that can't happen if this is deleted. Many articles on lists of characters have survived AfD in the past, showing there's a consensus for them. The Shield may not have got the in-depth book-length coverage of a show like The Wire or The Sopranos but it still has a large amount of media coverage in newspapers and websites, so much of this information could be sourced (and the rest deleted). --Colapeninsula (talk) 14:38, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Note This isn't a matter of whether or not the content can be verified. Even if it's 100% true to the show and sourced to third parties, there's still absolutely no sign of real-world notability. I'm not concerned with whether or not the information is accurate, but whether or not it has any bearing to the real world. Also, The Shield's popularity does not mean we require an article that details each character that appeared in the show when only one of them has more than a passing mention in terms of notability. m.o.p 00:24, 16 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keep A character list - trimmed to avoid cruft w/in the lines of WP:NOT#PLOT - for a long-running, notable TV series is reasonable to keep even if there's no immediate secondary sources for the list, assuming that SIZE issues prevent such a list from being part of the main show's article. There's definite clean up issues here, but that's not a reason to delete. --MASEM (t) 15:27, 17 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Masem: I don't mean to sound argumentative, I'm just genuinely curious because nobody's really answered my question - how is this article in any way encyclopedic? I keep hearing things like "it looks nice" or "they haven't been deleted before, so let's not delete them now". Even a trimmed-down version of the article is still, without sourcing, just a collection of in-universe information. Notability is not inherited, so why should we have a list of characters when none of them are relevant outside of their fictional universe? Again, if I come off as argumentative, it is not my intention. I'm just looking for insight on how this article isn't going directly against our criteria for inclusion. m.o.p 01:37, 21 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Part of the encyclopedic coverage for a work of fiction is a summary of the major/recurring characters that appear. For a single work or short-lived show, this will likely be self-contained within the article about the work. But for long running series, where there is a lot of details about the show already, this list if included in the main article would make the main article too large per SIZE. As such, a list of characters is an acceptable split of material from the show even if the split is not fully notable (mind you, attempts should be made to source and show notability or third-party/secondary source whereever possible). All other aspects about writing about fiction (WP:WAF) should be followed still, and such a page is not a place to dump highly detailed plot elements. --MASEM (t) 02:05, 21 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a policy link for the recurring character bit?

As for your latter point - if all we include is the character's name and actor (which is really all you can add without delving into plot details), we're essentially mirroring IMDB. This seems pointless to me. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't believe we need that level of coverage for fictional material, and that, if it goes against criteria for inclusion, it should be removed. m.o.p 03:31, 21 April 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.