Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Exploding animal (5th nomination)

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 no consensus. Opinions remain divided about whether the article about this silly topic should be deleted because it has insufficient coverage in reliable sources and is an indiscriminate collection of information, or whether the opposite is the case. Because valid arguments can and in part have been been made for either case, there's no clear policy-mandated outcome and the article is kept by default. Sandstein 10:21, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Exploding animal

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I understand that this article has been nominated for deletion several times before. That it has continued to survive these nominations I find surprising. The topic "exploding animal" is not a topic for an encyclopedia-- yes, as the article says, some whales have exploded when people have put explosives inside them, and one time there was a snake in Florida that no one saw explode but that had no head when it was found, and there were some German toads whose livers became delicacies for local crows and they exploded in defense. But these things are not interconnected, and simply creating a list of such events might as well go on to include "exploding things" and we can add rockets, cans of paint, my uncle's temper, and the sewer systems of 19th century London. The fact remains, these things are not related other than that they happen to explode... Which is not a basis for an encyclopedia article. In fact, people also explode— when they have bombs put inside of them, or when they are hit with grenades. But this does not make them a topic for a Wikipedia article, and a list of valid "citations" proving that animals do, in fact, explode, does not justify the existence of a Wikipedia article on that topic when the fact is that lots of things explode that do not warrant articles, even if citations can be found to prove that such explosions do happen. The topic, "Exploding animals" is not itself a notable topic, and this is why I propose that the article be deleted— even though some animals have exploded somewhere for some reason.

I would like to add to this that the justifications given for keeping the article in the past have often been flip and irrelevant. I ask the closing admin to consider this fact in evaluating whether or not to delete the article this time, given whatever "Keep" votes appear below, and to remember that the question is not how many votes to delete or to keep but what the reasonings are behind those votes— things like "Keep because exploding animals are cool!" is not a meaningful vote. KDS4444^Talk 19:48, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete This is a clear and obvious delete - reliable secondary sources don't discuss the topic of exploding animals. There might be incidental cases of a toad here or a different animal here that are mentioned in reliable sources, but the topic as a whole simply isn't, making the article completely arbitrary, as the nominator notes above. Nwlaw63 (talk) 20:44, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organisms-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000^(talk) 08:55, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Significant coverage by reliable sources abounds. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 03:26, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What did I just say? Did you read what I wrote above? KDS4444^Talk 22:34, 10 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Mark Arsten (talk) 02:26, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Not an encyclopedic topic. Dolphins used in warfare is a topic. This or that species which explodes should be covered in the article on that species. Pigs killed by the military not notable. Pretending that all of these things are somehow related is silly. Carrite (talk) 05:31, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The topic is, in fact, notable, being covered in detail in sources such as Greek fire, poison arrows, and scorpion bombs: biological and chemical warfare in the ancient world, Kaboom!: Explosions of All Kinds, the Encyclopedia of Urban Legends and Exploding Pigs and other Bizarre Animal Stories. The topic therefore passes WP:LISTN while the objections to this material just seem to be personal opinion which ignores the Keep established at the last discussion. Warden (talk) 11:05, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Easily meets the GNG with over 15 citations. The only objection seems to be that this is "exploding things that aren't connected". Except that they are connected - they are all animals. As far as I know, this is fine. It isn't even an original way to organize explosions, as seen by the titles of some of the books mentioned by Warden. Lets face it, animals exploding is unusual, and stories of such things are collected into books. This is nicely reflected by the FOUR previous nominations, all of them clear keeps. The Steve 13:45, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Warden. Coverage by multiple reliable sources, passes WP:GNG and WP:LISTN easily. Nomination is mere WP:IDONTLIKEIT, as is the argument by Carrite.--cyclopia ^speak! 16:44, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Um, no. Nomination is "This topic is unsuitable for an encyclopedia", not "I don't like it". Nothing was said about its likability: it was called "silly." Please do not misconstrue this as a dislike of the subject (to which I am utterly indifferent). KDS4444^Talk 22:30, 10 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Um, yes. WP:IDONTLIKEIT doesn't mean you don't like the topic, it means you don't like the article being here, and that this is all your argument. Merely saying "is unsuitable" or that is "silly" is exactly what WP:IDONTLIKEIT (or WP:UNENCYC, take your pick) are about. --cyclopia ^speak! 11:11, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Um, no. I have said that I do not think it warrants existence as an article, and I have explained why on policy grounds— that is procedural, not emotional. It is unsuitable for an article because it does not meet Wikipedia's guidelines for inclusion. It isn't that it is unencyclopedic per se (that would be a judgement call), it's that fails to meet the guidelines for inclusion (because it isn't really a topic, and because a collection of disparate citations, even a large collection, does not make it into one). It is on those grounds that I propose it be deleted. That it seems silly to me is, I grant you, not fair— my objection to its inclusion, though, is not on that ground. KDS4444^Talk 08:30, 14 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Many of the comments here reflect fundamental ignorance of Wikipedia notability policies. It's not enough to find a bunch of different sourced examples of exploding animals - the whole overarching topic of exploding animals as something significant must be specifically covered by reliable sources, which it isn't. Otherwise, I could make a million articles by simply putting a couple of arbitrary things together. I can find a thousand sourced examples of churches with red roofs, but an article wouldn't be notable because the topic as a whole is not notable. There's a reason there aren't articles called Animals Hit by Lightning, Animals with Broken Legs and Animals Run Over By Motorcycles. There are plenty of sourced examples of those events, but the events are incidental, not connected.Nwlaw63 (talk) 22:07, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Vaguely related anecdotes and quirky trivia. I don't see how a dynamited whale corpse is related to an ant that sprays poison. This is almost the very definition of an indiscriminate collection of information. I agree with Nwlaw63: no reliable sources have connected these disparate bits of trivia, and it's synth to do so ourselves. WP:LISTN does not seem satisfied. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 22:19, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. It's an odd topic, but I think the concept of "exploding animals" could be considered notable, and it seems like a logical way to organize coverage of apparently notable instances of animals exploding. Everyking (talk) 03:28, 7 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep for no other reason than that it has gone thru this four previous times with two being speedy keep. There should be a limit on the number of times an article can be put thru this. I suggest four as the limit after which any future AfD is automatically closed as speedy keep (unless there has been a major MOS/policy change since the prior AfD). VMS Mosaic (talk) 06:44, 7 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep There have been plenty of notable animal explosions. Those animal explosions wouldn't suit well enough with each of them having a Wikipedia article of their own (excluding the infamous Exploding whale incident in Oregon), so being in an article of all types of notable animal explosions is appropriate enough. I say keep. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ug5151 (talk • contribs) 18:29, 8 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
History Note that, in past discussions such as this and that, there was a consensus to merge content about the various types of exploding animal into this article. It is therefore no surprise that the page now covers such a variety of cases. If we now wanted to reverse these mergers and unbundle the article, then this would be done by splitting rather than deletion. Warden (talk) 21:08, 8 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I believe this has enough citations and examples of a odd, but notable topic. Sleepinabanana (talk) 02:04, 9 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. As Nwlaw63 points out, the whole overarching topic of exploding animals as something significant must be specifically covered by reliable sources, which it isn't. This is a trivial collection of vaguely-related occurrences, not a specific topic. — Scott • talk 16:49, 9 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sigh. Per Warden, consensus over the past ten years has been to keep this article, at least if only as a place to redirect or merge all the other expoloding animal articles. In any case, what is notable or encyclopedic is defined by WP:GNG and what the community decides is notable. Currently it has 15 good sources, and thus the rebuttable presumption is to keep it. The nom has not rebutted the presumption by merely waving words around. Nominating this yet again is untenable, in the face of past keeps and plenty of available seocndary sources. Bearian (talk) 22:29, 9 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. Rcsprinter (whisper) @ 23:26, 9 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment There used to be a Wikipedia article titled "Animal aggression"— it was merged (the article was turned into a redirect and none of the content was preserved) into the article on "Aggression" because of a community consensus that "Animal aggression" was not a distinct or meaningful thing aside from aggression (though animals are aggressive and the article was drowning in citations to prove it). The same thing here. Paintings are nice, cars often rust, and some animals actually seem not to explode— this does not justify articles titled "Nice paintings", "Rusty cars", or "Animals never known to have exploded". And lastly,

Just because we can doesn't mean we should.

KDS4444^Talk 22:22, 10 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just because we can delete doesn't mean we should. Just because we can nominate something for deletion doesn't mean we should. At this point, I propose that any one who renominates this for deletion in the not distant future be subject to sanctions for disruptive editing. Five nominations is at least two or three too many already. VMS Mosaic (talk) 04:19, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I agree, this article shouldn't be deleted if it's survived 4 nominations for deletion. Sleepinabanana (talk) 03:03, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that it has been nominated so many times is a testament to its highly dubious status as a valid article for an encyclopedia, not a here-we-go-again round of some sort of inquisition. If you want to bring on charges of disruptive editing, then bring it on. Nothing I have done here is in violation of any existing Wikipedia policy; I stand firmly behind my deletion nomination. And I still think this article should be deleted, and I am not at all afraid to say it. Congrats on trying to make it personal. KDS4444^Talk 08:17, 14 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Perhaps what this article needs is a slightly more "scientific" title. Perhaps Exploding animal (phenomenon) or somesuch. As it stands now, the title of the article sounds more sensational (or perhaps even a good name for a band) than encyclopedic, which I suspect triggers nom for deletion almost as a reflex. Dwpaul ^Talk 02:12, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds reasonable. VMS Mosaic (talk) 03:53, 13 December 2013 (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.