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Fictional history of Spider-Man (
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Having discussed this matter with the closing administrator at
his talk page, I wish to nominate this deletion discussion for review, with the opinion that it should be overturned and the underlying article deleted. The reason for this is that the principal argument at the AFD was "keep, someone will clean it up/add references to reliable sources/it's definitely notable", with a number of suggestions to merge. The problem is that content on Wikipedia requires independent and reliable sources, which this article doesn't have, didn't have nearly two years ago when the first AFD nomination was made, and won't have in another two years. Looking at the citations, as of now 82 of 84 are primary sources to comic books. "Keep and cleanup" was the refrain two years ago; the article hasn't been cleaned up in that time, so the usual presumption that it's for lack of time and effort really wears thin, and we must assume that cleanup is not possible because the third-party, substantial sources required for a Wikipedia article on a subject do not exist for this subject.
My nomination is therefore grounded on the assertion that the learned closing administrator failed to give proper weight to arguments based on the article lacking reliable sources, and gave too much weight to promises and suggestions that the article should be cleaned up.
Stifle (
talk) 08:16, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
reply
- I'm going to need to take some time to carefully read this, but in the meantime, for information, one of the keep !voters
User:Andy14and16 is a sock. --
Mkativerata (
talk) 08:27, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
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- Endorse Closure as no consensus There was no consensus to delete. If you sincerely doubt any of the information listed, then put a citations needed tag on it. There are 84 citations now showing where the information is revealed in the comics, and for things like this, the primary work is the most reliable source of information there is. Every major event listed has a link to the main article about it. And please no one nominate this for a 4th time.
Dream Focus 08:39, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
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- No word in bold from me; you'll just have to read the whole thing and assess the arguments, I'm afraid.
If you source an entire article to primary sources, then what you have is one huge heap of original research. There have to be secondary sources or the article's in breach of
WP:NOR. How we parse this closure depends on whether we believe that a local consensus has the authority to
suspend a rule in the case of one particular article. And I think it depends on the rule. My position is that no local consensus could suspend one of the
five pillars, so you couldn't (for example) have a local consensus to include unsourced negative information about a living person in an article; but a local consensus could have the authority to suspend a guideline, so it could (for example) decide to allow content written by a
COI editor to stand, if felt sufficiently neutral. So far, so obvious, but as a policy,
WP:NOR is above a guideline and below a pillar. Can a policy overrule a consensus, or is it that consensus can overrule policy? This is covered in the fifth pillar, which is quite clear that consensus can overrule policy in this matter. With that established, the next question is, should it have done in this case? That's something on which individual editors might reasonably disagree, but I consider that Arbitrarily0 was within his discretion to close as "no consensus". And now that I've said all that, I feel free to say that when AfD has ignored the rules, DRV can also do so, and I think we should. I think the debate came to the wrong conclusion in this case. Despite the common meme that DRV is not AfD round 2, I feel free to say that this material is original research, that Wikipedia's coverage of fictional and pop culture topics is way beyond excessive, and I see no justification whatsoever for having a separate article on this topic. It should not persist for years just because it has a lot of sources and superficially looks like a GA; and it should not persist for years just because there are established editors who're spiderman fans. It should long ago have been merged.—
S Marshall
T/
C 10:19, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
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- Endorse. Closer was not wrong to accept promises of cleanup, per
Wikipedia:Assume good faith. We should assume that Stifle's pessimism is pessimistic. About two months should be enough time to tell, renominate it then if it is unimproved. --
SmokeyJoe (
talk) 12:25, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
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- Endorse - per Tenebrae, it is actually being worked on, as opposed to the empty promises of the past.
BOZ (
talk) 14:00, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
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- Endorse- There wasn't anything close to a consensus with that afd.
Umbralcorax (
talk) 15:15, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
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- Endorse There was no consensus to delete, though I wish there had been a clearer consensus to keep. The argument for overturning is essentially that we should delete articles that do not get improved. , but we have no deadline here. That it is actually being worked on now shows the wisdom of that policy. As for OR, the interpretation and applicability of all policy is thin the hands of the community.
DGG (
talk ) 21:29, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
reply
- (Disclaimer -- I have !voted to delete on the AfD, but have since retired my account, partly as a result of this very AfD.) One of the worst closures possibly ever, as it did not address the main policy-based concerns of those !voting to delete, namely that the article is in its entirety a glaring example of original research (especially novel synthesis) without anything being sourced to reliable secondary sources. The "keep" !votes, when not ILIKEIT, were along the lines of "somebody should fix it somehow" or "somebody should merge it to something". As to the
disingenuous claim made above that apparently "it is actually being worked on now", I see no credible evidence of that. (Yes, I have seen the so-called "revamp". It is no good.) In any case there's nothing in the current version that's worth keeping, or worth merging to anything; the current article is simply not a starting point for any kind of improvement. Thus, as should be already clear by now, my opinion is that the closer made a very bad decision, not supported by policy, and the closure should be overturned.
80.135.32.253 (
talk) 02:03, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
reply
- Endorse with extreme regret. Contrary to S Marshall above, I'd suggest
WP:NOR is essential to the first of wikipedia's five pillars: that WP "is an encyclopaedia". Encyclopaedia's don't undertake original research. Full stop. Having said that, our policy on original research doesn't require deletion of articles that contravene the policy. Contraventions can be dealt with by editing. I fully understand Stifle's frustration with the failure to deal with this problem by editing thus far. It might never be satisfactorily dealt with. But the community's consensus here - for worse, in my opinion - is split between deletion and further editing. In that case, "no consensus" is a fair close and within discretion, even if "delete" would also have been within discretion and would have been preferable. If the article isn't properly fixed up, no-one can justifiably complain when the next AfD comes around. And I'll be there to !vote delete as I wish I had been this time. --
Mkativerata (
talk) 02:28, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
reply
- Off topic a bit, there are encyclopaedias that publish original research. In fact, Marvel Universe: The Complete Encyclopedia of Marvel's Greatest Characters is an excellent example of one. As far as I can tell, the idea that encyclopaedias don't publish original research—while widely-believed by Wikipedia editors—fails in the face of the encyclopaedias that do. I believe
NOR originates from
this email by Jimbo to the en-l, and it arose because of editors writing articles that were of unknown accuracy but too technical for other editors to refute.—
S Marshall
T/
C 20:48, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
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- S Marshall is right. WP:NOR was introduced because allowing anyone to create content invited the dedicated kooks to write up their kookery. WP:NOR provided a test to rule out such stuff. As per the linked post, and much at WT:NOR, the phrase itself is a problem. We would do better to talk about
attribution instead of original research. --
SmokeyJoe (
talk) 02:21, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
reply
- The best print encyclopedias contain a bit of original research, since they can afford to hire experts to write their articles. Wikipedia, being the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, discourages original research since its permission would let anybody write anything they want without any process for overseeing how valid this research is. I see our OR policy as a necessary evil created to ensure verifiability.
Them
From
Space 00:26, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
reply
- Endorse, accurate reflection of deletion discussion. Why can't some of the attention and heat generated on this issue be focused on the semi-fictional bios of professional wrestlers, where performers and their characters are treated as interchangeable, and staged/scripted events, fictional in nature, are presented as real-world information?
Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (
talk) 02:13, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
reply
- Endorse with regret per Mkativerata. Hopefully consensus regarding our original research policy will change here in the future.
Them
From
Space 00:22, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
reply
- Endorse a wealth of information with more sourcing on the way. I certainly see no reason to just chop the whole thing, especially since there was nothing -like- a consensus to delete or merge.
87.194.171.224 (
talk) 13:11, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
reply
- Comment: The article hasn't been touched (bar vandalism) since I nominated this DRV. Where are the sources? Saying they exist is not going to cut it.
Stifle (
talk) 08:33, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
reply
- Reply to previous comment: Sources are currently being added, along with other fixes to the article in
this sandbox.
Spidey
104
contribs 17:22, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
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