Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of real people appearing in fictional context (0th nomination)

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was

I posted this (which, by the way, is my own creation) on the Wikipedia:Peer review page a day or two back for augmentation. While it was there, User:Jallen pointed out to me that it probably would never be finished, due to the staggering number of potential entries. And there is a good chance Jallen is right. So I'm putting it to a vote: if you think it might be worth saving, vote 'keep', if you think Jallen is right and it's just too big an undertaking, vote for 'delete'.

This also goes for List of mythical and religious beings appearing in fictional context.

-Litefantastic 00:42, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Keep. FWIW, there's a great load of potential nominees at List of villains. Smerdis of Tlön 20:45, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Keep.--Samuel J. Howard 21:56, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)
Keep- useful & interesting, even when incomplete. -FZ 22:08, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Keep. Wiki-weird, wiki-wonderful, wiki-why-not? Let me see, Stuart Kaminsky has a whole series of novels about a fictional detective named Toby Peters, set in Hollywood during the 1940s, in which he does nothing but meet real people... and someone wrote a series of detective stories in which IIRC Jack London is the detective... [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 15:53, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC) P. S. And, of course, Herman Wouk's The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, and the Upton Sinclair novels about "Lanny Budd..." [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 15:53, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Keep both. FWIW, I'd rather have these lists than have every article on a notable person or mythological entity contain a laundry list of appearances by that person or entity in modern fiction. -Sean Curtin 00:27, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)
Delete both: Silly lists that aren't going to reach the horizons they grasp at. No, I'm not just feeling mean: these are bar bet lists. Geogre 00:32, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Delete both. Any fictional appearance of a real person that's significant can be noted in the article on the real person and/or the article on the work of fiction, the way that Marshall McLuhan's appearance is discussed in the article on Annie Hall. JamesMLane 04:44, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Keep but I think there should be an article on the topic, then a list. Effects and reasons for making real people appear is a great topic on its own. The reason that it will never be completed is not a good idea for a delete, same goes for a quite number of lists that would expand over a time. Revth 05:43, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Needs a tweak here and there but certainly a keeper. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 15:08, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Keep - It makes sense to me. -- Crevaner 16:12, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Keep. We have a wide variety of lists for fictitious occurrences. The topic seems a bit more expansive than the others, but it is no less deserving of an entry. Spatch 17:36, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Delete, especially the second one, which creeps to being redundant. - KeithTyler 18:39, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)
Delete. Another nonencyclopedic, never-completable list. --Improv 19:51, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Keep. Excellent and informative list that presents information in a way that categories currently cannot. As Revth notes, needs an article to go with it. - RedWordSmith 22:34, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- If it comes in favor of 'keep', I'll look into writing one. -Litefantastic 23:59, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Comment: What people seem to be missing is that the majority of straightforward historical novels fall here also, most of Alexandre Dumas, much of Walter Scott, Red Bage of Courage, novels set in ancient Rome and so forth, as half or more of stories set in a past before the author's bith contain a mixure of fictionalized historical figures and figures who are pure fiction. What I have not be able to see is any way to logically cut off that kind of literature from what this list seems to have been mostly intended for by the examples given. Some of Shakespeare's "historical" plays contain fictional characters: Poins, Bardoph, Madame Quickly, Fluellen and so forth. I don't think that was the purpose of the list. But I can't come up with a way of delimiting such works and persons in them from from something like Neil Gaiman's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Unless someone can produce the missing logic, I will probably come back and vote Delete. Even if the reach of the list can be pared down, I have grave doubts about it. And I don't think that Wikipedia has many lists of little use is reason for adding another. That kind of illogic stumps me. Though this list, at least, is not just a list of names like so many others. Jallan 00:08, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Delete both. Inherently unmaintainable. Rossami 05:51, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)
My vote is, actually, for keep. I just listed this page on the VfD because I wasn't sure my opinio counted enough. This may actually be teh first time someone posted a page on VfD and voted for its being kept.... -Litefantastic 01:42, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Keep. For once I put on my inclusionist hat. It's fun reading, and even more fun to think of additions. Antandrus 03:12, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
This will potentially include every single appearance by a person in a movie playing "Himself" (or "Herself"). - KeithTyler 19:06, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)
Potentially, yes, but I think the parameters could reasonably be set for "a fictional context" so that this could not happen. It's an interesting concept. Keep. Lacrimosus 20:58, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Keep, it's a sound and legitimate idea for a wikipedia page. And it's done in an impressive way. -- Old Right 22:53, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Delete. People with an article in Wikipedia are supposed to be famous, and almost all famous people will appear in some fictional contexts if they have not yet appeared. So this list will be almost identical to the list of people by name. wshun 15:12, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Delete. No-one who votes to keep seems interested in producing a logical limitation on this list that would make it manageable. However I disagree with wshun above, in that as set up, this list contains both a person's name and the fictional work(s) in which the person appears. But theoretically endless lists don't seem to me to be encyclopedia. Jallan 15:18, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- Suggestions: Does not include any person playing him or herself in a work, nor any works that are supposed to be a fictional event, re-enacted. That would cut out Shakespeare's plays, I think, and also the large number of people appearing in cameos. What do you think? -Litefantastic 00:00, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  - I'm not sure what this means entirely. I've been trying to think of something along what I think is that line and can't get it to work. For example, in Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill the two children meet many historical personages in those perons' own times. Would those appearances of historical personages be included? How is the meeting of those children with Julius Caesar different from a fictional protagonist located in Julius' Caesar's own time meeting Julius Caesar in an straight historical novel and how is that different from Asterix meeting Julius Caesar? In all such cases major historical events may also be treated. A brute force exlusion of all straightforward historical retellings may indeed be an answer. But is Sherlock Holme's versus Jack the Ripper, something done again and again, very different from various novels about Jack the Ripper that haven't reused fictional characters? Perhaps reuse by another than the original author is a key. But if you are going to bring in comic book characters or any syndicated characters, then original author doesn't really apply. Various celebrities have often appeared in comics during their lifetimes, Adolf Hitler, Woodrow Wilson, and often after their deaths as well. Perhaps the article is the wrong way around. Instead there should be list of fictional characters who are both being reused by others and are meeting historical personages other than those in the original tales. Though a new story of the Three Muaqateers win which they happened to meet an historical character of their own time that they had not met in the original tales hardly fits either. Jallan 01:17, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  - I think you meant "meant to be a real event". I.e. include only real figures appearing in fictional contexts -- like Abraham Lincoln making a speech on the stage of San Dimas High School's auditorium, but not Bob Hope (as Himself) playing golf through a medical tent in Eastern Europe, or any character in a true story based on a real person. - KeithTyler 06:46, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)
    - I think what people are getting at is that I think that this is intended to be a list of real people who appear as fictionalized characters, and understood by the reader to be such, within a fictional context. That is, Franklin D. Roosevelt in the musical "Annie" is based on an impression of Roosevelt's public persona (possibly as refracted through Harold Gray's prism). One doesn't expect Thomas Meehan to have done any rigorous fact-checking or to have consulted biographies of Roosevelt. As a theoretical requirement for being on the list, maybe we should say the character ought to have done something in the fictional world that is artistically consistent with the real person's character and personality, but factually inconsistent with actual history. Any SF/fantasy/"what-if" scenario (e.g. Lincoln after the failure of Booth's assassination attempt) would clearly fall in this category. Ordinary novels in which fictional people briefly interact with real historical figure would not. I'm afraid I put Wouk's "The Winds of War" on the list as a fictional appearance of Hitler, and I now think I should not have, because the Hitler in Wouk's books is intended to be the historical Hitler. Oddly enough, a much better candidate would be John Nash in the movie (not the book!) of A Beautiful Mind, because the movie is not biographically accurate even to Hollywood standards; it is a brilliant piece of artistically-true fiction about a John-Nash-like mathematician. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 12:42, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)****Let's try this:
      - The only qualifying works must be declared fiction (books still say if they are novels on their covers, for instance)
      - No cameos or guest appearances

-Litefantastic 12:43, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

- - - - Well, I'm trying to go beyond that. I'm trying to say that "the reader should not believe that the 'real people' have a close factual resemblance to their historical namesakes." Wouk (to continue with that example) was very insistent on the historical accuracy of all the real people and events appearing in his novels. Therefore, by my criteria, the real people in "The WInds of War" wouldn't count, regardless of whether they make more than "cameos or guest appearances" (I can't remember offhand whether any of them do). [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 12:50, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC) P. S. I am convinced that Jallan's objection can be met, it's just a question of finding the right definition. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 12:54, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
        
        Uh... If the characters are sufficiently different than their real-world namesakes such that the reader/viewer/listener would not believe that they have a factual resemblance to the same person... it isn't really that person in the fictional context, then, is it? Frankly, the difficulty being had in defining the boundaries of this article don't lend well IMO to the notion of keeping it. - KeithTyler 16:38, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

Let's regroup.

The idea behind this article was to make it so, at the touch of a keyboard, someone could call up a list of people who really existed, and who appeared in works of fiction.

That was the original idea, as thought up by me. It has gotten rather more complicated since then.

The thing about the VfD roster is that it usually becomes apparant within the first six hours of being posted on Wiki Death Row, whether or not the article is fit to continue. This debate has outlived the predicted 5-day time period users would have needed to figure it out.

The idea behind keep is that we reform the rules. The idea behind delete is that the rules are inherently unreformable. Thoughts? -Litefantastic 01:01, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.