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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 keep‎ Any discussion of a possible future Merge or Redirect can occur on the article talk page and I see no support for Deletion. Liz Read! Talk! 05:14, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Busytown[edit]

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Busytown (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Contested PROD. Pure plot summary and a mess - article's lead is "about fictional town", then starts talking about a fictional universe, proceeding to list major characters from the associated franchise. References - just some YouTube links. Prod challenged by User:A. B. who wrote: "This article is an overview of a series of books, games and TV shows that are in Richard Scarry's Busy Town (a.k.a. Busytown, a.k.a. Busy World, a.k.a. Busyworld) universe. You can find lots of articles about Richard Scarry that talk about this world as well as articles about individual books, games and shows. I did not find any that were just about "Busy Town". I am removing the deletion note anyway since an umbrella article for all these things. Note that there is also a template associated with this article, Template:Busytown. If this article is to be deleted, it should be discussed at AfD." So - here we go. I'll note that the series/franchise might be notable, but what we have here violates WP:GNG/WP:ALLPLOT/etc. and needs a WP:TNT. An article about series/franchise should be written from scratch based on sources. Arguably, one could do so using the second paragraph here - but where are the sources? We could also merge that paragraph into an article about the author, but again, I don't like merging unreferenced content. For now, best WP:ATD Ic an think of would be to redirect this to the author (Richard Scarry) Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:17, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep. The subject itself meets WP:GNG with notable aspects that might not be comfortably merged into author's bio or any of the existing articles at {{Busytown}}. There's useful prose to build off of in this article, though I think we can expand the scope to be more of a broad summary of the media focused around the topic (including "Busy People", "Busy World", etc). This "universe" is a massive cultural touchstone in children's media in the US. Such an article is probably the best way to cover this topic. I don't see a tentpole article dedicated to it right now.
    Coverage of this article's subject ranges from education, to analogies, to criticism to reviews of multi-media including a 1994 CD-ROM. Here's a refdump to get us going (not exhaustive): [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] —siroχo 04:49, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Just look at ref 1 - this is gibberish. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:27, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    It's using it as an analogy. This is just a quick non-exhaustive search to show how broad coverage is of this subject. —siroχo 03:34, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    While I am not disagreeing that the series may be motable (may, not is - no obviously good sources have been pointed out, we are at the WP:THEREMAYBESOURCES stage), as I said, the article right now is so poor it merits WP:TNTing. Redirecting it with soft deletion is being "nice". Of course, if anyone wants to rewrite it now, go for it - as you know, I am happy to withdraw nominations if fixes happen. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:09, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge to Richard Scarry or at least redirect. Plenty of coverage of Scarry and his bibliography of books in Busytown, but as a fictional location, there's no real coverage of the various characters at the level of this detail. Scarry's article could probably include a Busytown section to briefly describe the fictional world he wrote/illustrated but that's about it. --Masem (t) 05:13, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge to an author or series page. The article's subject matter as a fictional setting isn't supported by significant coverage in secondary sources. The above proposed reference list is a mix of trivial mentions and examples of primary source uses or reviews of works that feature the setting. I think the article would be warranted if there is a reliable source of independent overview or analysis of the Busytown world in Scarry's literature outside of primary sources. At present, there isn't, but hopefully more can be found. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 22:19, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as @Siroxo says the article subject is notable and the article has some good text. It's a different topic to Scarry himself as he did a variety of work of which the Busytown books are only a subset.
I have added a small analysis and criticism section which includes several high quality citations. Each gives direct focus to the book with the possible exception of the Journal of Pragmatics article which just uses it as an example. Two (the Carnegie Magazine and Poetics) articles should easily count as SIGCOV.
I agree this article needs more references although the obvious source would be the books themselves (not for notability, but as a reference). It seems to me many articles about books contain a "plot" section which is uncited for obvious reasons. Oblivy (talk) 08:31, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I respect and admire your approach to improve an article at risk of deletion. I disagree that the approach of collating academic minutiae can construct notability in itself, but it is a helpful thing to do. The Carnegie magazine primarily refers to an exhibit of the same name at the Carnegie Science Center. The Poetics journal is an obscure philosophical flourish on the depiction of animal labor in one Scarry book. The Occupational Medicine article mostly just describes the visual presentation of the cover of one book. The Pragmatics article does not mention Busytown. This would all be fine, but the article itself still lacks a foundation of having secondary sources reliably describe what Busytown is in Scarry's work. In terms of analysis and commentary, I'm still not sure why this couldn't be better covered in an article about the series/media (which doesn't seem to be called Busytown) or of the author's work in the primary article. Hope I'm not coming on too strong over the notability of the setting of a children's book! But just my thoughts. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 09:43, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for looking at the sources. We can disagree (and I do) but I appreciate your thoughtful remarks.
The poetics journal strikes me as a way of talking about how a ubiquitous children's book can influence how kids view labor roles. More importantly, it's entirely devoted to Busytown (and not the author) as a subject. And Carnegie museum article talks a lot about to article subject (the interview with the librarian) and why they decided to devote an entire museum exhibition to it. WP:GNG asks for significant coverage of the article subject in independent reliable sources, and these two are just that. For sure other cites are less in-depth.
The question of what Busytown represents as part of Scarry's work probably belongs in his article, but this topic is deserving of an article. Oblivy (talk) 23:29, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No worries! I sometimes overthink this stuff and am mindful it can come off as being a bit much. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 23:54, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the start on improving it. I will try to get to it as well (or at the very least try to provide a more helpful source analysis beyond my above refdump). —siroχo 04:56, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not bad. If we were to remove the fancrufty list of characters, this would start looking as a proper encyclopedic article. I suggest you do this and ping everyone who voted oppose so that they can reconsider their views, and I'll do this myself when I have time to read this more closely. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:11, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I have made another set of revisions including adding general cites and citations for some of the major characters, as well as some new text. IMHO the demand to remove part of the article is not appropriate at this forum per WP:NOTCLEANUP. That part of the article has considerable merit even if it needs editing. As it stands the article has adequate sourcing for notability which should be enough. Oblivy (talk) 09:22, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Relisting to assess work done by Oblivy to improve this article. I look over dozens of AFDs daily but I never thought I'd be reading an assessment over one of the U.S.'s most important children's authors. No, I don't have a COI, he's just one of the few authors I remember from my own childhood. Never thought I'd run into him or his work at AFD.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 03:50, 14 November 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.
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