[clug] Wikipedia and Deletionism

[David Adams]

Wikipedia is a strange beast; notability therein even more-so.

An easy example.. Poke'mon. Back in the day, each individual Poke'mon 
had their own wiki page- these pages were filled with a vast, staggering 
amount of information, including species information, every single 
appearance in every form of media ever, fan speculation, breeding 
strategies... the works. It was often remarked that there was more 
information regarding Poke'mon on Wikipedia than there was information 
on the Second World War; I am very much inclined to agree.

The articles were eventually merged into 'grouped' articles 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pok%C3%A9mon_%281%E2%80%9320%29), 
with an index being held at 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pok%C3%A9mon . It is interesting to 
note that both the index article and the article on the first 20 
Poke'mon on the list are, each, longer than the article on Adolph Hitler 
(especially if one removes the sources text). There are 493 Poke'mon on 
the list, with each individual creature having approximately two to four 
paragraphs of information. Some (such as Pikachu) have much, much more 
than this (or articles in their own right).

There's even an summerised article on this problem; the Poke'mon Test 
(as it became to be known) located here: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pok%C3%A9mon_test.

So, essentially, notability on Wikipedia is an extremely fluid, personal 
subject. I personally think that the whole Poke'mon articles could be 
merged into one modest article, with perhaps four or five subarticles 
regarding the TV show, video games, Pikachu (the series mascot) and 
other media appearances. Hardcore Poke'fans will almost certainly object.

Just some food for thought...