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 merge‎ to List of Soulcalibur characters#Li Long. Consensus is that sourcing is insufficient to support a standalone article. Star Mississippi 13:50, 20 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Li Long (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log | edits since nomination)

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I'm sorry, but this is worse than Astaroth. I know it is GA, but that is irrelevant. All the sources are primary or trivial. QuicoleJR ( talk) 22:10, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Fictional elements, Video games, and Japan. QuicoleJR ( talk) 22:10, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply
• Merge to List of Soulcalibur characters#Li Long. Another 2009 Good Article with very little in the way of scrutiny at the time. It fails WP:GNG in the modern day with only trivial mentions of the character. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ ( ᴛ) 22:27, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply
• Keep It's smaller but it does have published sources examining the impact of the character in terms of representation. Also an aside voicing my frustration with the nominator going about things this way.-- Kung Fu Man ( talk) 22:33, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  What frustration? Notability discussions are done at AfD, that is what AfD is for. QuicoleJR ( talk) 22:58, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  Between the multiple AfDs in one day, in particular the nomination, withdrawal and re-nomination of one, and the tone of the nomination itself yes I feel it's suitable for the record to voice frustration.-- Kung Fu Man ( talk) 23:00, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  I share your concern. I haven't dug around enough to give an !vote yet, but these nominations are lazy and insufficient for articles of these size/detail/sourcing. And rather than rectify it, the nominator is doubling down and doing more of them. Sergecross73 msg me 23:20, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  I'm in complete agreement with Kung Fu Man and Sergecross73. Just because you find an article you don't think is notable, doesn't mean you need to nominate it to AFD right away. There's no deadline here. It was bad enough already when the AFDs were flooded with Mortal Kombat characters. MoonJet ( talk) 04:43, 13 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  I looked through the reflist. The appearance of Namco Bandai as the source for more than half of the references was certainly concerning. QuicoleJR ( talk) 23:22, 12 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  Then you've demonstrated you don't understand notability. Jclemens ( talk) 02:41, 13 April 2023 (UTC) reply

• Keep refs 5, 20, 28, and 35 appear RS. Jclemens ( talk) 02:41, 13 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Source analysis

Source	Reliable?	Significant coverage?	Counts towards GNG?
Ref 5	Yes	No (Mostly plot summary and game guide to his attacks. Has a couple sentences about his effectiveness as a character.)	No (no SIGCOV)
Ref 20 (Soul Edge Official Guide)	Yes	Maybe	No (Official guide; not secondary)
Ref 28	Yes	No (single namedrop)	No (no SIGCOV)
Ref 35	Yes	Maybe (Most is a visual description - the paragraph merely states he is a Chinese stereotype)	Maybe (Leaning no since the reference discusses the Asian characters in the game as a whole.)

As can be seen, when the sources are checked in more depth, most if not all don't show evidence towards proving notability. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ ( ᴛ) 04:03, 13 April 2023 (UTC) reply

• Merge per analysis of sources above. I cannot access ref 35 except snippet view and in the text it is sadly used for a single sentnece only, but it certainly looks like academic analysis and it should be properly merged (not just redirected and forgotten about). -- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:14, 13 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  @ Piotrus: Try searching "Li Long" and "Transnational" in Google Books and it may give a full page view. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ ( ᴛ) 04:18, 13 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  There’s a search feature as well in the link provided above. The character’s full name yielded four results, including page numbers. sixtynine ^{• whaddya want? •} 03:53, 16 April 2023 (UTC) reply

• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of China-related deletion discussions. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:14, 13 April 2023 (UTC) reply
• Keep: Per Kung Fu Man and Jclemens. Ref 5, which has a full page on him, has several important details. Then we have ref 35 discussing him in-depth as well. MoonJet ( talk) 04:58, 13 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  I'd struggle to call Ref 35 indepth. It has a paragraph only, with maybe a sentence of actual commentary. The sole "commentary" is that he represents an ethnic stereotype. This is a relatively common thing with fighting game characters and in fact the book gives several examples of the same thing, in the same chapter. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ ( ᴛ) 06:16, 13 April 2023 (UTC) reply

• Keep. Sources seem fine, reception isn't shitty. - Cukie Gherkin ( talk) 09:09, 14 April 2023 (UTC) reply
• Weak Merge It seems the article looks fine, though I think it should be worked on and get the same treatment as Necrid. The article barely passes, I think. Update:Author has chimed in, hence, changing my vote. GlatorNator ( ᴛ) 01:04, 16 April 2023 (UTC) reply
• Merge While this ongoing spate of fighting game nominations is indeed starting to get out of hand, after thinking this over I'm leaning toward the sentiment that the overall sourcing is weak in the article. Maximum is the only source that goes into any serious depth about the character and the Google Books citation is notable, but that's it. GameDaily and the Retronauts podcast are permanent dead links. VideoGames is literally a quick mention, as is 1UP.com; is a comment tacked on at the end about Long kicking Maxi's ass really viable reception? Attempts to find any other kind of sourcing have come up empty. That being said, if the article is kept, it won't be the end of the world but it definitely needs its GA status reassessed. sixtynine ^{• whaddya want? •} 07:26, 16 April 2023 (UTC) reply
• Merge After careful thought, and the fact two of the sources are now permanently dead I'm changing my stance to merging, though still protesting the idea of using AfD to force this. Standards have changed and what's said in the article can fit inside a character list just fine. I think most here wouldn't be opposed to trying to revive it later if enough reception resurfaces at a later date.-- Kung Fu Man ( talk) 23:17, 16 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  I mean, does coverage being cited dead links really invalidate it to the point of merging? In fact, it's advised not to remove dead links. It's also possible that dead links can be brought back. In fact, there's tons of sources innaccessible to most people, but this has never had any bearing on notability. Also, Li Long seems to be discussed in this document, though I can't access the whole thing. I wonder if anyone else has access? MoonJet ( talk) 02:00, 17 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  The issue is that someone, for example, could claim that Li Long became the President of the United States and claim a dead link as evidence, knowing there’s no way to verify it. sixtynine ^{• whaddya want? •} 03:27, 17 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  I've cited what I could from that paper Moon, it goes into details on quite a bit of the cast and gives adequate thoughts. The thing is it's also just a standalone among the others, and I actively struggled to find any more. If he appears in a later game we might get more reception we can use, but for the time being I'm fine with a merge simply because I know if that happens it can be brought back. Right now it's just obviously crickets.-- Kung Fu Man ( talk) 05:26, 17 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  It can be brought back, sure, but the problem is, some editors feel that once an article is merged per an AFD result, that's it. I know you yourself have talked about this issue. This is one reason I tend to be against AFD for merge discussions. MoonJet ( talk) 03:07, 18 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  Yeah, quite honestly I feel a task force would be much better for these. Like I can get it if an article gets hard resistance and there's absolutely nothing, but now we're in a situation where even I'm saying "let's merge this" and we're stuck with this whole fiasco.-- Kung Fu Man ( talk) 03:33, 18 April 2023 (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.