Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Boone

John Boone

Delete. As another Wiki member so eloquently put it, "Unless the character somehow transcends the book or series (Paul Bunyan, George Babbitt, Don Quixote) to become a cultural icon independent of the original work it appeared in, this is nothing more than Wiki contributors indulging and memorializing their personal tastes with an article." In other words, Fancruft. Radman1 04:57, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Keep. On this basis, the entire Middle Earth canon could be safely excised, with maybe the exception of Gandalf and some of the more notable shorty hairy things with big feet. John Boone imo is an extremely important character in a major piece of science fiction, in stature not far short of Paul Atreides of Dune, and more than worthy of retention. Boone is certainly a cultural icon within the sci fi community and has certainly permeated beyond those margins. Moreover, Boone characterises a particular planetary ecological viewpoint which has considerable importance from the point of view of evaluating responsible usage of resources etc. He is moreover the subject of serious social analysis: q.v. STS and Utopian thinking, Ellsworth R. Fuhrman in Social Epistemology Volume 13, Number 1 / January 1, 1999 pp. 85 -93. This looks like an exceedingly spurious Vote for Deletion, verging on trolling or certainly time-wasting. Shall we add God or Christianity on the basis that they are spurious fancruft next???? Sjc 05:07, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Don't go over the top, it doesn't help your argument. You sound more like a troll for the over the top accusation and the ludicrous comparison to God (here's a question - how many wars have been started in the name of John Boone?). Does anyone have any cites of the use of this character separate to the books apart from in the occasional esoteric and not widely read journal? Average Earthman 08:38, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • God is just a character in a work of fiction. :) Moreover the current discussion regarding fictional characters in Village Pump is salient to this and a number of other articles currently in VfD. There is no logical reason whatsoever for this appearing in VfD. Sjc 09:06, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • So remove the entire middle earth canon. It's fancruft. As for the religions, they are notable and known to people who are not fans of their foundational works, and so religious detail is pretty distinct from fancruft. I like Radman1's metric. Delete as fancruft. Eventually we'll get around to zapping most of the Star Wars/Trek cruft too, I hope. --Improv 15:28, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Delete. Boone is not notable outside the context of the Kim Stanley Robinson novels. So merge him into Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars. Or even better, merge all four articles into one called Mars trilogy. Gdr 08:59, 2004 Oct 19 (UTC) P.S. If User:Radman1 were willing to actually do the work and merge the articles then he wouldn't need to propose a vote for deletion.
• Delete. This is a resurrection of a debate we had three months ago, and I personally merged every Red Mars separate character page into the Red Mars main page because the little tiny stubs of every single character were pointless. Including this one. So I did the work, and I'm mighty peeved to see people reviving the pages when the debate's been had, and the pages merged. Sheesh, doesn't anyone read talk pages before going ahead and editing? I'm a big fan of the character of John Boone, but even I know Fancruft when I see it. I know of no significant influence this character has had outside the text itself, either culturally, socially or intertextually with other literature. Sure, if there was a vast sub-culture of 'Booneheads' who went to 'Red Mars' conventions dressed in Mars Walkers and spent their time debating the finer points of omegendorph-popping, then you could argue for an entry under the 'cultural' category. But it ain't so. Just merge the pages back into Red Mars and lets rid the wiki space of the ramblings of fictional characters that have no influence outside the texts in which they were created. </rant>. Mercurius 10:56, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• keep, its a reasonably long article, and theres no good reason to delete it. This is not a stub, so there is no clear reason to merge it. As has been acknowledged time and again, one of the great aspects of Wikipedia is that it can contain encyclopedic articles about less notable topics than a traditional encyclopedia. Fancruft or whatever you wanna call it, I still vote keep on this article. —siroχo 11:29, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)
• Delete, fancruft; but since the English-language Wikipedia likes fancruft (none of the others seem to have this problem: probably because far fewer children outside the US have access to computers), I vote for Gdr's suggestion: merge any useful bits into a Mars trilogy. — Bill 12:37, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. Doesn't fulfill any of the criteria for deletion. And what will be achieved by deleting this article? Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopaedia and is not running out of space. You are not going to stumble into this article unless you search for "John Boone" or you follow a link from the trilogy. Wikipedia newcomers are encouraged to write articles about whatever they can.--Tomheaton 16:15, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)