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 redirect to List of Legion of Super-Heroes members. The consensus of most participants is that the subject lacks enough independent, reliable sources providing significant coverage of this particular character. Being a member of a notable fictional team does not automatically imply notability for a particular character. The argument that AfD is not the right venue to discuss deletion of a specific article is unusual and not supported by any established consensus, so I cannot give it any weight for this closure. If someone wants to open up a broader discussion and/or revive the dormant proposal at Wikipedia:Notability (fictional characters), they are welcome to do that. In the meantime I'm closing this AfD based on our existing norms, and redirection of an article about a fictional character to a list of related characters is a very normal result for AfDs on this type of subject. RL0919 ( talk) 17:07, 16 September 2019 (UTC) reply

Dragonmage

Dragonmage (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)

(Find sources:  Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Taking to AFD because PROD does not apply due to having been sent to an AFD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dragonmage. FoxyGrampa75 ( talk) 01:08, 2 September 2019 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. FoxyGrampa75 ( talk) 01:08, 2 September 2019 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Comics and animation-related deletion discussions. FoxyGrampa75 ( talk) 01:08, 2 September 2019 (UTC) reply

Keep - Passes WP:GNG and (though not dispositive) meets the guidelines set forth in Wikipedia:Comic book notability guidelines and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Comics. The nominator doesn't really describe why this article should be deleted. Michepman ( talk) 02:24, 2 September 2019 (UTC) reply

• Delete - The article in no way whatsoever passes GNG. It's fully in-universe material cited by primary sources. That's about as far away from GNG as you can get. TTN ( talk) 03:09, 2 September 2019 (UTC) reply
• Keep As the nomination does not provide a reason to delete and so there's no case to answer. Andrew D. ( talk) 07:59, 2 September 2019 (UTC) reply
• Keep per both MIchepman and Andrew. Ford MF ( talk) 14:18, 2 September 2019 (UTC) reply
• Delete Redirect @ FoxyGrampa75: doesn't actually have a stated reason for deletion. Arguing just for myself, I don't see any out of universe sourcing provided, and I couldn't find any. GNG not met. The " Wikipedia:Comic book notability guidelines" cited by @ Michepman: isn't a guideline, it's an essay. It's far too "generous" and isn't a case of a de facto guideline. No single redirect target jumped out, but I'm open to thoughts Nosebagbear ( talk) 14:34, 2 September 2019 (UTC) reply

There seems to be consensus below on the redirect target, so I'm happy to go with that

• Keep. This is really bad mojo, and stop. First of all, there are plenty of good refs, they are just not in the article yet. That is specifically not a reason to delete an article, and trout slap for original the original PRODder ( User:TTN), who is going thru this project and trying to get rid of a mass of comic book articles. User:TTN apparently does not care for comic books and may not enjoy reading them, but so what. User:TTN is supposed to make at least a feeble attempt to source an article before throwing it under the bus. We can't make her do that, but doesn't mean we have to pay any attention to her either.

I could put the refs in, but right now I will be busy trying to put the brakes on User:TTN's rampage. Refs include Comic Vine, Cosmic Teams, SyFy Wire. Also probably at the official DC site, but that requires subscription. Also almost certainly some printed comic encylopedias, but I don't have those. Also some other sites that we can't use (not technically reliable), but are nonetheless accurate and comprehensive. There is plenty there to meet the GNG, and so the article easily posses the 7 Virtues of an article, which articles with the 7 Virtues should not be deleted.

I would suggest to the closer that editors above who have claimed that the article doesn't meet the GNG be largely discouted. (Arguments against the refs are reasonable tho. Pretty sure they are acceptable tho.)

I mean, good grief, the man is member of the Legion of Super-Heroes. What more do you want. If this article is deleted, that'll change a bluelink to a redlink at List of Legion of Super-Heroes members. How is that helpful to what we are trying to do here. It's not.

Anyway, now that we have the refs, I suppose we can close this one out. Herostratus ( talk) 02:16, 3 September 2019 (UTC) reply

Comic vine looks as if it is a Wiki and would thus not be reliable. Cosmic Teams seems to mainly be a single person operation. It's impossible to determine if there's sufficient editorial control to make it a reliable source (couldn't find a decent about page). SyFy obviously is reliable but only has 18 words - it doesn't meet Sig Cov. The "Legion of Super-heroes" is not an automatically notable grouping. As such, stating that GNG is not met remains a legitimate !vote justification. Nosebagbear ( talk) 10:21, 3 September 2019 (UTC) reply

It seems multiple people in the comic project community have a complete misunderstanding on notability and citations. Simply having mentions in publications and sites considered reliable sources does not mean the topic is notable. Non-trivial coverage within the source is required for the sources to be relevant to the topic. Ignoring that not all of those are even reliable sources, not one mentions the character outside of the plot of the comics. Your personal inclusionist diatribe is completely irrelevant to guidelines and policy. TTN ( talk) 12:03, 3 September 2019 (UTC) reply

Alright, now we are getting somewhere, as regards sources. As I said, User:Nosebagbear, an article needs good sources to meet the WP:GNG. One of the purposes of these discussion is, indeed, to vet the references (and often some are added to the article as a result).

You are correct about the Comic Vine ref I gave. Comic Vine itself is usually a good source (I think), and they have an article here, but that particular part of it is a wiki, I see. Wikis are out. Sorry for not noticing that. On the other hand, here is a Comic Vine entry which is under their editorial control. It's not super long, but it has a fair amount of info. Who created the character, and so forth.

When you are talking about a one-man operation, you are relying heavily on the expertise and reputation of the operator. So it depends. We not only use the one-man operation Toonopedia, but actually even have a template ({{ Toonopedia}}) to ease using it as ref, and searching on Toonopedia in the Wikipedia gives 1,603 results. This is because Don Markstein has been shown to pay scrupulous attention to his facts (I assume), and thus is quite reliable.

So who is Michael Kooiman (the proprietor of Cosmic Teams)? Well, he wrote a book, The Quality Companion: Celebrating the Forgotten Publisher of Plastic Man. It is a history of Quality Publisher, is 256 pages, and was published by a bluelinked house, TwoMorrows Publishing. And there's a reasonable amount of material on the subject there. So that's something. He's a professional artist I'm not suggesting we could use this blog as a reference, but along with his own blog it does show he is pretty expert about this stuff. Major Spoilers seems to be multi-person. They have an extensive entry on Dragonmage.

SyFyWire is an arm of SyFy, which is a famous TV network. It is part of NBCUniversal. So I mean it's not Brenda down at the Pick N Pay saying this. Jesse Murray wrote the bit. He's a writer for them, he writes about comic books mainly. Can't find anything about him either. My assumption is that if is getting a lot of things wrong, SyFy would fire him. However, the piece is very short -- little infobox, picture, and one sentence. For all that, we don't throw out sources like that, if reliable -- the are part of building the overall picture of the entity.

The Grand Comics Database is considered pretty reliable I think. They have an extensive Wikipedia article. But they their entry is very minimal. Comics Book Database (different from Grand Comics Database) -- similar. Both of these just mention what books he was in, which is data but minimal data.

But here we have a very extensive exposition on the subject. It is on a blog. It's not a one-person blog, as clearly several people contribute to it. Like the others, they presumably don't have a paid profession fact-checking department.

But I mean let's get realistic here, and move beyond the kabuki. These people are fanatics about this stuff. They are clearly experts. They have huge collections. If they get something wrong other people in the field will correct them -- loudly. and their colleagues will notice if they get one tiny thing wrong. You know how Comic Book Guy is. It's like that. It all amounts to an effective fact-checking operation, de facto. And analysis shows that these sites have matching data, but are not copying each other. Sure it's possible that one guy could be doing a deep troll by lying about this stuff (but he would be called out on other sites, and his data would not match other sites), or could get his details wrong because he doesn't care (but then why does he have a large and labor-intensive comic book site). It's also possible that everyone but you is robots. But how far down that rabbit hole do you want to go. You can tell these people do care, and they are careful. Come on. We know this info is accurate. If the reader wants to disregard it, that is the readers prerogative, as it is for all our references. But these are very good references.

The Official DC site does have an entry Dragonmage. It's very short tho, really just a mention. But very reliable. On the other hand, the (unofficial, I think) printed DC encyclopedias -- DC Comics Encyclopedia, Definitive Guide to the Characters of the DC Universe, DC Comics Ultimate Character Guide, DC Comics Absolutely Everything You Need To Know -- being limited by the cost of paper and so on, don't.

In the world of comics, you are not going be able to cite The Lancet or Science or Foreign Affairs or even The New Yorker very often. But I'll say this: if we're going to delete articles that have only this level of information from reliable sources, or have the potential to have the level of reliable sources we have here, we are going to have to delete more than half a million of our six million articles. If you want to do that, say so and lay it out to be discussed on that basis.

Finally, as to "The Legion of Super-heroes is not an automatically notable grouping" That's... that's not even wrong. If you think this, or have this level of understanding of this field, why are you even on this page??? Eight people want to look at this article, every day. Why do you want to give these people nothing -- essentially, tell them to fuck off and go try google. How does this help make the internet not suck for those people? If you don't want to read this article, excuse me for being rude, but so what? Herostratus ( talk) 05:17, 8 September 2019 (UTC) reply

You really need to read WP:N, WP:WAF, and WP:NOTPLOT. It's okay to hold the mindset of an inclusionist, but you need to be realistic about existing rules. You need real world information backed by reliable sources. Those sources need to cover the topic in enough capacity to prove relevant to the topic itself. Even if that blog was a reliable source, it says nothing about the character in a real world capacity. TTN ( talk) 16:43, 8 September 2019 (UTC) reply

I'm dubious about some of your reliability arguments, though there are aspects of expert opinions that mitigate that, but for this comment I'm going to waive that bit - TTN is correct that the bigger issue is that these texts just summations and plot givers - they aren't providing actual notability. As MOS:FICT notes, it's rare for an article just on a character to manage notability - unless a character is so big writers start considering their effect on shows or even popular culture, secondary analysis just wouldn't occur. Nosebagbear ( talk) 17:40, 8 September 2019 (UTC

• Delete Per TTN, the original nom, and I agree that comic book editors have a serious misunderstanding of the notability criteria. You can have as many WP:PRIMARY sources as you want, but without WP:SECONDARY sources, the article cannot be notable. The DC and Marvel Wikias are where this content should be located.

Accusing him of "hating comic books" cannot be further from the truth, this is volunteering to clean up Wikipedia. High-quality articles about comic books are better than a mass of cruft that non fans will just ignore. _{ZXCVBNM ( TALK)} 13:04, 3 September 2019 (UTC) reply

OK, but now I've laid out a number of reliable non-primary sources. I don't know if by "comic book editors" you mean people like me. I've written two or three comic book articles of my 400, edited a couple-few more. I'm not a comic book editor, I'm a Wikipedian, and I'm here because I'm frankly appalled at what is going on here. Other subjects are not treated like this. Every baseball player has an article, even if he had 1 at bat and we don't even know his first name. Cricket players, same. Every species has an article, or can. Every train station has an article, or can. And so forth. I can't think of a reason to pick on comic books, beyond rank snobbery. Herostratus ( talk) 05:17, 8 September 2019 (UTC) reply

@ Herostratus: - Regarding your thoughts on notability - I think the sports SNGs are way too generous, but that wouldn't warrant reducing the notability elsewhere - it would, in effect, be a rules variant of WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Nosebagbear ( talk) 17:24, 8 September 2019 (UTC) reply

@ Nosebagbear:Right, I hear you. The baseball SNG is very generous (not that familiar with the others), but I don't think it is too generous. It's a matter of opinion, can't be proven either way. In matters of opinion, we should generally bend toward providing information rather than not providing information, I think. Herostratus ( talk) 06:32, 9 September 2019 (UTC) reply

• Redirect to List of Legion of Super-Heroes members, which contains all the relevant real-world info on the character. Argento Surfer ( talk) 16:24, 3 September 2019 (UTC) reply
• Redirect to List of Legion of Super-Heroes members, per Argento Surfer. The character does not have the reliable, third party sources needed to establish real world notability. The sources brought up in this AFD are either non-reliable, or extremely brief. However, as the character is already present on the master list of Legion characters, redirecting it to that list is a viable alternative to deletion. Rorshacma ( talk) 17:44, 3 September 2019 (UTC) reply
• Redirect to List of Legion of Super-Heroes members. I had originally intended to vote keep, but after reading the above remarks I now have changed my mind and I now concur that this article should be redirected to the Legion of Superheroes list. I believe that a brief description of the character on that page would be sufficient for completion and inclusivity and would remove the need to retain this article as well as the issue of primary sourcing vs. secondary sourcing once this article is deleted. Thank you to Argento Surfer, Rorshacma, ZXCVBNM and others above for taking the time to clarify the rationale for deletion and for presenting an alternative approach. Michepman ( talk) 23:38, 3 September 2019 (UTC) reply
• Redirect to List of Legion of Super-Heroes members per the above. Aoba47 ( talk) 17:35, 7 September 2019 (UTC) reply
• Comment to the closer. I think it's been demonstrated above that this article meets the WP:GNG. Because of this, a deletion would be unusual, and I'm not sure what basis this would be for doing that. (A lof the "votes" above were made before the new refs were found.) Granted, the refs in the article now are very poor. But that is not a reason for deleting an article and never has been. Herostratus ( talk) 05:24, 8 September 2019 (UTC) reply

You might be able to claim a relist is in order if you add additional sources, but I don't think you can unilaterally claim GNG has been met and agreed given that there hasn't been a Keep !vote since 5 days ago - it's not a case of there being a run of recent Keep !votes. Nosebagbear ( talk) 17:24, 8 September 2019 (UTC) reply

Right. I'm going to relist, since the article is undergoing a significant restructuring right now, so it is kind of a moving target. Let's see if there's a change after the new version is published, which I'll try to do today, at least in part. Herostratus ( talk) 06:32, 9 September 2019 (UTC) reply

• Delete - WP:FICTION says that fictional characters must meet WP:GNG - this character does not have significant coverage in multiple reliable secondary sources - two of the reference links in the article are to the Wikipedia article Legion of Super-Heroes which is circular sourcing and Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a reliable source - no evidence of notability - Epinoia ( talk) 03:59, 9 September 2019 (UTC) reply

Thanks for the heads up. I'm okay to wait for additional, non-in-universe citations for notability prior to proceeding. Michepman ( talk) 03:47, 10 September 2019 (UTC) reply

• OK. I rewrote it.

Look, it was a poor article. It only had refs to the actual comics, which is no proof of notability. But the character is notable -- the character is a member of the Legion of Superheroes, which fact was stated in the article. The Legion has been in continuous publication since 1958. Half a century of continuous publication by DC Comics is automatic proof of notability. There is also a a template {{ Legion of Super-Heroes}}, which is also in the article, and which is another sign of notability (and you'd see that deleting this article would leave a redlink in that template).

So the problem was with the lack of refs, not the characters notability. Notability can't be manufactured, but refs can be found. Since he was a Legion character, you can assume that some refs are very likely to be available. Not necessarily acceptable refs, but some refs. Whether the refs I put in are acceptable... I don't know. I think so, and I wrote why above.

Now... I get that Joe Editor, coming across the article, might not know any of this, might not know the Legion of Super Heroes from Adam's off ox. Understood.

But Joe Editor did not come across the article. Joe Editor went on a crusade to delete a bunch of articles about comics. If Joe Editor doesn't know (or, worse, care) who the Legion of Super Heroes is, maybe Joe Editor should not be doing this. But Joe Editor seem unrepentant so far.

I can't rescue all these articles; I rescued this one, the others are maybe lost. The Joe Editors will always be with us, I guess. But I'd like to see a little more diligence from the rest of the crowd, before piling on to vote to delete articles on subject which they don't know much about. Sure your closer is your backstop, but closers are busy -- they do count heads. And closers don't like the headache of having to defend keeping an article when the vote was 7-3 or whatever to delete. When I come across an AfD'd article that I don't know anything about it, and don't care to learn, I generally don't comment and move on. That is an option... Herostratus ( talk) 07:30, 11 September 2019 (UTC) reply

• You've added nothing important. You need developmental information, critical response, and cultural impact. It doesn't need to be paragraph upon paragraph, but it needs to be something. You are putting too much importance on the sources themselves while ignoring the need for non-trivial coverage. I get the inclusionist mindset, but you're ignoring the framework. TTN ( talk) 11:01, 11 September 2019 (UTC) reply

• Automatic Notability? - question to Keep !voters, why do you keep saying that being a member of the Legion of Superheroes is automatic notability? Members weren't present for all that 50 years, and the presence of a template doesn't mean anything (creation of a redlink being an issue would be circular justification). Something's only automatic if policy includes it. Otherwise it has to be reasoned Nosebagbear ( talk) 08:38, 11 September 2019 (UTC) reply

UTC)

• Comment - I kind of resent the implication that those of us who voted delete are just some random careless Joe Editor on a crusader to delete articles without understanding them. I am familiar with the Legion of Superheores and I did make the effort to try and validate that this character is notable. The mere fact that this character was a member of that team does not automatically make it notable per WP:GNG.

• The new sources (that aren’t citations to specific comic books) provided are not very good and do not establish notability. For example, there’s an interview with Geoff Johns at IGN that is about comic book storylines at a high level but doesn’t discuss Dragonmage at all. The few sources that do mention him directly are mostly listicles and summaries of comic books, and a large number of those are from non notable blogs. I respect the effort made to find sources, but it’s not enough to merely prove that the character exists or was an incidental minor member of a superhero team (especially one like the Legion that has had a large number of members who are mostly background scenery). Michepman ( talk) 12:12, 11 September 2019 (UTC) reply

So, we have similar articles for Catspaw (comics) and Computo (Danielle Foccart), who are almost identical to this character. You'd be very hard-pressed to find a reason why those articles should not also be destroyed if this one is. Then you have Shvaughn Erin and Gates (comics) and articles like that. You'd be hard-pressed to explain why these shouldn't also go, if this one does. Gates (comics). Tellus (comics). And so on. You can go thru {{ Legion of Super-Heroes}} and take out say a quarter of the entries and delete those articles. Half if you like.

So one problem with this is that then you are getting into endless arguments about which Legionnaire is and which is out, which is really just a matter of opinion. Bright-line tests are much easier on Wikipedia resources, which is why we have them. Wikipedia:WikiProject Baseball has WP:NBASEBALL: you appear in a major leauge game, you're in; otherwise, not, absent special circumstances. For good or ill, they do not have to keep fighting these battles and are able to work on building the encyclopedia. I believe that arguments that devolve to "Well, it does meet the WP:GNG, or maybe not, but even it does it is still not notable, or maybe it is but it's still just cruft" and so on are going to be long slogs, like this one.

Which brings up the bigger problem. Wrong venue, here. Picking over these articles one by one -- deleting Dragonmage, keeping Blok (comics) because that article happens to survive it's AfD, or there is none -- is not the way to go here. It leaves {{ Legion of Super-Heroes}} as a sloppy mess, and is overly random. We need an RfC. "Which entries in {{ Legion of Super-Heroes}} should go?" Maybe a bunch should go. Maybe a bunch should be trimmed down and put into one long "minor characters" article. Maybe a compromise like "You appear in fifteen issues you're in, otherwise not, as a baseline rubric" could be hammered out. It is purely a matter of personal opinion, and ultimately it is (mostly) a democracy here. Let's head over to Template talk:Legion of Super-Heroes (or a different venue if you prefer) and set up an RfC, instead.

So clarifying that this is a venue problem has been a slog, but ultimately a useful exercise, and thanks to all. Motion to close on grounds of wrong venue, then. Does this make sense to people? If so, see you over at Template talk:Legion of Super-Heroes. Herostratus ( talk) 17:02, 11 September 2019 (UTC) reply

For every notable comic character, there are literally, and I mean literally, hundreds of non-notable characters. The problem is that you have the entirely incorrect mindset, and you're too focused on OTHERSTUFF. TTN ( talk) 17:34, 11 September 2019 (UTC) reply

Correct. This is why we have the WP:GNG. Whether I have an " incorrect mindset" or not is not the question. Whether the entity meets the GNG is. There are hundreds of non-notable characters. I'm looking at one right now: United Planets Vice-chairperson Jeryl. She appears in several panels in the August 1993 Legionniaires and has a speaking part -- several sentences -- and apparently has appeared elsewhere. Should she have an article? No, she shouldn't. She shouldn't because she doesn't meet the GNG: there are not multiple notable reliable sources providing sufficient information to make a useful article of reasonable length. However, that doesn't apply to Dragonmage. He does meet the GNG, it says here. That is why he does have a useful article of reasonable length. The GNG states that entities that meet its strictures are "presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article." Presumed, not proven; but the burden is on the person arguing for the deletion of an article that meets the GNG why a special exception should be made in this case. I'm listening. Herostratus ( talk) 19:38, 12 September 2019 (UTC) reply

It does not meet the GNG in any sense of the guideline. You have provided sources, some reliable and some not, but not a one of them gives significant coverage to the character. You are blatantly ignoring that for your own convenience. TTN ( talk) 19:53, 12 September 2019 (UTC) reply

Can you describe how Dragonmage meets the GNG? You keep stating that it meets the GNG, but you havent described how yet (unless I'm missing something). The guideline states that "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list." You didn't provide significant coverage in a reliable source independent of the subject as far as I can tell. Most of the sources provided are 1.) comic books, 2.) not reliable sources per WP:RS, or 3.) only mention Dragonmage in passing. Now, maybe I am wrong and I am missing something -- if so, could you please explain why this article meets the GNG? If you can, then I am happy to support retaining this article. If not, then I don't think that I can support keeping it. Michepman ( talk) 03:03, 13 September 2019 (UTC) reply

Yes, certainly. So, couple things -- you are correct, anything in the comics books themselves has zero use in establishing notability (doesn't mean we can't ref the comics in the article -- a little bit, and judiciously -- just not for establishing notability). So, I'm going to basically copy my answer partly from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Uni-Mind. It's fine, but this why I think a general overall discussion would be better than this piecemeal approach, which is labor-intensive.

Anyway. So, the baseline standard is the General notability guideline (GNG). If an article meets the GNG it is "presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article". Not proven, but presumed, so the burden would tend to fall on the person wanting to hide or destroy the information.

The GNG is actually maddeningly vague, but it says that the coverage has to be:

1. In sources (plural). I've always taken that to mean "two or more", and I think most people do. It doesn't require 7 sources or 12, and it doesn't say anything about "more than two", so: two. At least.
2. In reliable sources. There's more detail at the GNG. (The GNG doesn't care if the sources are very nobable or extremely obscure, just that they are reliable; but IMO source notabiity matters somewhat.)
3. Finally, these multiple reliable (and notable) sources must provide significant coverage. Here's where the GNG leaves us mostly on our own. It only says that a entire book about the subject is significant coverage, and a passing mention in part of a single sentence is not significant coverage. Anything between is up for debate I guess, but a good de facto standard might be something like "sufficient material to create a decent useful article of reasonable size, up to reasonable Wikipedia standards for an article", meaning certainly more than a stub.

OK, let's look at reliable. How reliable are these sources? How confident may we be that their material is accurate? Well, for the bulk of the material of the second half of the article (Fictional character biography), we are mostly relying on three sources: Michael Kooiman, Matthew Peterson, and one "Siskoid".

So who is Michael Kooiman (the proprietor of Cosmic Teams)? Well, he wrote a book -- it is a history of Quality Publisher Inc., is 256 pages, and was published by TwoMorrows Publishing, which is run by John Morrow, who is apparently extremely expert in this field, and Jim Amash worked on the book also. Kooiman is not a professor of popular culture or even a full-time writer (he's a commercial artist), but he seems generally expert. I'm not suggesting we could use this blog in our article, but along with his own blog it does show he is pretty expert about this stuff. Here's what he has to say: This simple effort set the first standard for the site: Accuracy is Priority #1. Attribution to the source material was of utmost importance, so that any reader could verify or follow a data trail. Indeed his article does cite the source comic books (altho I haven't checked them; this source material is hard to get ahold of).

I would rate this source good. Other editors are free to disagree.

Next up is Matthew Peterson at Major Spoilers.

Peterson has less of a profile than Kooiman. He hasn't worked with John Morrow and Jim Amash or published a book. I won't say that he a Comic Book Guy type, but you can if you want to. He says he has an "an almost fanatical devotion to pop culture" and, with a list 327 pages long (!) of his articles for Major Spoilers I'm inclinded to aggree. However, it's about a wide range of subject, not just comic books.

Unlike Cosmic Teams, this is not a one-man show. However, it looks to be a small amateur operation; here's their FAQ page, and judge for yourself. Whether they'd stop using Peterson's work if he's sloppy, I don't know. Probably, if it's bad enough.

Peterson's got no motive to get any of this wrong on purpose, and analysis of his article gives me confidence that he's working from the source material, cares about this stuff, and knows this stuff well enough to be able to expound on it.

I would rate this source acceptable. Other editors are free to disagree.

Finally, we have one "Siskoid" at the Legion of Super Bloggers. Like Publius or Silence Dogood, Siskoid chooses to use a pen name, which is not that uncommon on the internet nowadays -- I'm doing it myself right now. However, it's not a good look. I could not uncover his real identity. However, he has several blogs and websites going. Again: I get that Comic Book Guy vibe.

Legion of Super Bloggers is not a one-man operation, but it is very small, and presumably amateur. I'm sure they have no formal fact-checking. I don't know who is in charge.

Same as Peterson, Siskoid's got no motive to get any of this wrong on purpose, and analysis of his article gives me confidence that he's working from the source material, cares about this stuff, and knows this stuff well enough to be able to expound on it.

I would rate this source marginally acceptable. I don't have a clear sense of what the site's editorial structure is or who Siskoid is, and I don't like crediting anon authors, altho TBH that's really just prejudice on my part. Marginal, but acceptable; other editors are free to disagree. At any rate we don't need Siskoid as we have two other good sources already.

BTW we not only use Don Markstein's Toonopedia as a source but even have a template, {{ Toonopedia}}, to aid citing him. That's also a one-man operation. Markenstein's an expert, and has been proven reliable, so he get's a template. These guys seem to be in this ballpark. They are are fanatics about this stuff, and they have a de facto fact checking support system that basically amounts to, if they get something wrong, they're going to get "Hey dipshit, you got Hal Jordan's stepmom's name wrong in your last article. It's Suzan with a Z, not an S; issue #287 had it wrong and it's not canon. You should know that. Nice play, Shakespeare" from their peers. These guys live for getting this stuff right. Not only that, but these sources tend to support each other. I didn't find any instances where two of the sources say conflicting things (altho I may have missed some), and that'd be hard to explain of they weren't pretty much correct.

And of course we have other reliable sources, but they have minimal material to contribute to the second section. But not nothing.

OK? That's my take on reliability. Let's move on to the in-depth coverage rubrik. What we want to is enough coverage to make a typical article, not just a stub, with appropriate levels of information and so forth that we might find in other Wikipedia articles.

Wikipedia:Stub says "There is no set size at which an article stops being a stub... Editors may decide that an article with more than ten sentences is too big to be a stub, or that the threshold for another article may be 250 words. Others follow the Did you know? standard of 1,500 characters in the main text. AutoWikiBrowser is frequently set to automatically remove stub tags from any article with more than 500 words." Wikipedia:Article size says "If an article has remained at less then 1024 bytes for over a couple of months, consider combining it with a related page" if it can't be expanded.

Right now the article is about 530 words, 20 sentences, 2,729 characters (just the text, not the infobox or section headers or anything else). Wikipedia:Size comparisons says that the Wikipedia's average article size is 640 words. So Dragonmage is 17% shorter than the average Wikipedia article, which is not a deal-killer I don't think. It is a typical short article, like millions of our short articles. That pretty much demonstrates that it has a or less typical amount of "significant coverage" in its sources as other typical short articles; that's a bit of a simplification, but close enough I'd say. Herostratus ( talk) 03:34, 14 September 2019 (UTC) reply

• Delete or redirect the current sourcing after Herostratus's best efforts is to blogs and comic strips and DC websites, none of which are both reliable and independent. This could potentially be a redirect, though I can't find where in the long, overwrought arguments above redirection is located. Rockphed ( talk) 14:14, 16 September 2019 (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.