Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Ranma ½ minor 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 delete. Better articles would usually result in fewer deletions, but even if this was a substantially improved art... list, notability still needs to be established. What encyclopedic worth does this wholly unreferenced article sport? That's the question that should be asked. seicer | talk | contribs 12:52, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

List of Ranma ½ minor characters

List of (incredibly) minor characters, who appear almost entirely in single episodes and have little or no impact on the ongoing development of plot or other characters. Fails WP:N Dandy Sephy (talk) 19:05, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Anime and manga-related deletion discussions.

Delete on-episode/one-chapter characters are of little consequence to plot and already covered adequately in their mentions in the the summaries of the episodes. Also extremely redundant, with List of minor Ranma ½ characters (manga) and List of minor Ranma ½ characters (anime) as well. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 19:24, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I'm not going to defend these anymore, but just to be accurate, the 3 lists are totally mutually exclusive, so they are not redundant. The reason they were split in 3 was they were getting too large as 1 list. Derekloffin (talk) 21:56, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Smerge: I'd say "delete" if it weren't for Picolet Chardin III, who IMO might deserve a spot in a List of Ranma ½ characters into which most of the stand-alone character articles of the series should be merged into as well. -- Goodraise (talk) 19:38, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

May I suggest any potential candidates for a proper list of notable characters be copied to user space? Unless you think you can create List of Ranma ½ characters itself? I don't think I'm up to the task myself Dandy Sephy (talk) 19:43, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I can't copy the edit history. Mind the GFDL. If any of the content is kept, this list can't be deleted, but has to become a redirect. -- Goodraise (talk) 19:46, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and edit Some of this is indeed unnecessary content altogether-. eg "Panda scribble" -some of it seems to be appropriate, possible compacted little. This is really an inappropriate AfD--the problems should be solved by editing the original list and removing the part that belongs on only a fan wiki. there is a point in such a wiki describing every background element in as much details as is discernible, but that is not what Wikipedia should be doing. Better articles would mean fewer deletions. Deletion is the last resort if there is no way to improve by editing. DGG (talk) 20:20, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Minor characters are collectively important to the story, and no different from other articles such South Park. Btw: I should probably mention that several of the characters such as Maomolin, Mint & Lime, Picolet and similar, are more relevant, but didn't have enough material for their own separate pages. Dave (talk) 13:57, 11 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The only reason the "original" list was too long was because of the extremely excessive amounts of plot summary for this minor characters in ALL of the lists. And no, minor characters are not collectively important and per many other AfDs and mergers, they are particularly not notable enough in anime/manga series to have their own lists, much less three. Any that may have any minor relevance should be mentioned in the single List of Ranma ½ characters that no one has bothered making (despite apparently having time to make three lists for unimportant minor characters). South Park is not an ideal model for any thing, nor is it an anime/manga series. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 17:07, 11 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed about the excessive plot summaries. None of us have had the energy to trim it down from when we entered, but the (immensely successful) Ranma stories are formulaic in the respect of being highly dependent on specific goofy items, objectives, and characters for every arc, so I disagree about them not being collectively important as such, but that a severe trimming of length sufficient to host all of them in one page would be preferable.

To explain the list(/compression?) point (which I personally don't remember anyone making before, but then I tend to be stray-minded), I don't think any of us present actually created the list as such, rather than it being gradually assembled by various contributors over the years, and hobbyism usually works in the manner of initial energy, but quickly wanes into disinterested frustration when it turns into a chore that you won't get paid for, and one does not know if the effort is futile/will get attacked or/and deleted anyway. The 3 old default 'maintainers' currently have barely enough interest to reverse the occasional vandalism, or insert minor corrections/modifications when the whim strikes, alternately have left it altogether. I am also not sure if I could format it according to the required standards/what exactly those are/if it would be wasted work that would be immediately deleted. However if anyone who enjoys (or has familiarity with) the series, and preferably has a knack for such things, would be willing to help out to improve the standard, and this would be sufficient to retain the page/complete list in some form as you suggest (while the lengthier versions are moved to Wikia by someone familiar with the community) this would be highly appreciated.

As for South Park, I thought that the praxises were identical for all major animated features regardless which country of origin, but may have been mistaken? I also did not intend to state that I agree with the creators' overall politics or bad taste.

Btw: As mentioned by someone else, certain characters such as Picolet Chardin, Maomolin, Lime & Mint, Pink & Link, or Kiima, Koruma & Masara may be important enough to the story to warrant separate pages. Dave (talk) 09:52, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I can certainly understand how the articles reached the state they are in, pretty much all the ranma articles suffer from the same things - bloated, badly written and lacking any attempt to meet wikipedia standards. Considering the size of the franchise, age of the pages and amount of text this is hardly a surprise. Plus I'm sure much of the information was either origianally copied from fansites, or just given minor tweaks before eventually being changed enough to not be copyvio. Certainly the randomly selected paragrahs I picked for copyvio tests were often incrediably close to other sites being returned by google. Unsurprisingly Furinkan.com can be used to show this to a degree, which itself manages to be both a fansite and a RS at the same time. However I really can't agree with the opinion that even more characters are candidates for seperate articles, there are too many seperate character articles for Ranma as it is and at some point they need to be considered for merging (not right now though). The main problem I see with the character articles (aside from quality issues and the number of them) is that peoples opinion of the "importance" of them is questionable. Most (I can appreciate a few may be excluded) of these "minor" characters for example aren't even minor, they are quite insignificant. An actual minor character in this franchise would be a recurring character who isn't always at the forefront of the story - a perfect example is Tofu Ono Or Jusenkyo Guide. Those are perfect examples of non controversial merges to a proper character list. Any of those characters you list should be in the main character list (whenever it is created), not in separate pages or another separate list. If they offer no importance in any form, they don't belong in any list and probably half of the character articles are perfectly mergeable too. Dandy Sephy (talk) 15:53, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking personally, I did have some energy/interest long ago, and then made a severe effort to improve the quality of some articles, but don't have a knack for being concise and misunderstood some of the Wikipedia conventions at the time. I.e. I saw to it that the articles received any references whatsoever, but mostly 1st-level, and largely didn't have the energy to rewrite the entire articles into a cohesive whole rather than small columns or spell-checks at a time. However, I didn't consciously copy any of these personally written segments from any other site. There is also the problem that, while the series is arguably one of the most worldwide popular manga of all time, and as such certainly noteable in itself, as you say, the franchise is quite old, and as such not much is currently written about it in easily accessible/referred to website articles and similar. My local area/country of origin just had it released a few years back, which (along with the quirky, flawed, and unusual characters) explains my 'johnny-come-lately' interest, but there is hardly any of it left. If anyone who enjoys the series, can take an objective distance, and is good at compressing articles to standard would currently have the time and energy to drag up the quality, and migrate the rest to Wikia (which realistically must be done sooner or later) to not waste the information for more hardcore fans, this would be very appreciated. Dave (talk) 21:03, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Not every character in a series deserves an entry in a character list. Especially incidental or one-shot characters who have no role in the overall plot line—not that Ranma 1/2 has much of a plot line to begin with. If the primary characters aren't worthy for a list article, then the minor characters especially shouldn't have their own list article(s) either. --Farix (Talk) 17:31, 11 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. deja three? If it wasn't notable in list one or two...ThuranX (talk) 07:32, 12 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I was involved with setting up this list as well as the other minor character lists, but my interests and priorities both Wiki wise and in real life have since changed. Migrate the information over to the Ranma Wikia before deleting. --BrokenSphere^{Msg me} 00:25, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as per WP:LC items 1-4, 8, and 10. Stifle (talk) 09:57, 15 January 2009 (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.