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 and discuss cleanup in talk page Secret ^account 02:59, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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

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Apparently survived VFD back in 2005. This is some bizarre hybrid of disambiguation page and list of "giant rats" in fiction. However, the entire "fiction" section is unsourced OR — few, if any of the works, actually seem to use "giant rat" despite having one. Also, all of the "examples" would not qualify under a dab page, as they are partial title matches at best, or completely unrelated (for instance, I've found no proof that capybara are called "giant rats" in any context). Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 01:48, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organisms-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:25, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Popular culture-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:25, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:25, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the Article Rescue Squadron's list of content for rescue consideration. Northamerica1000^(talk) 04:09, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep, at least in part and subject to possible rename or split. As I noted in deprodding this earlier, Giant rat of Sumatra currently redirects to this article and there's substantial material here about that widely used, referenced, and parodied Holmesian literary motif. As noted in a 2007 New York Times column, there are

at least six “Giant Rat of Sumatra” novels (one of them featuring the Hardy Boys), references in countless other stories including “Watership Down,” a “Doctor Who” episode, and an extended radio-drama parody sketch by the Firesign Theatre troupe, issued on an album in 1974. Non-Sumatran giant rats are even more common in pop culture, from H.G. Wells to the latest fantasy video games, to the point that their very ubiquity merited parody in the Rodents of Unusual Size of William Goldman’s “Princess Bride.”[1]

GNews and GBooks searches reveal show many potential sources to improve this material. Accordingly the section about the Giant rat of Sumatra should not be deleted, although it may be better to move it to its own page. For the moment, I reserve comment about the rest of the material. --Arxiloxos (talk) 04:32, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep The Sumatran rat references are enough to sustain an article... and the rest of this is not particularly coatrackish. Essentially I agree with Arxiloxos' assessment that this is improvable material, and meets GNG as-is, regardless of how clearly improvable it is. Jclemens (talk) 05:43, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename to Fictional giant rats. That's a notable topic. Real species can be mentioned and/or listed in "See also". To call a real animal a "giant rat" is actually kind of silly. A "rat" is most commonly a medium-size rodent that's not a squirrel. Small rodents are "mice" and large ones are called by more specific names "beaver" or whatever. No living rodent is really giant, like an elephant for instance.Borock (talk) 07:23, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Giant rat" is definitely a term that is legitimately applied to real animals: the largest members of the Muroidea clade, which includes most animals normally called "mice" and "rats". Examples are Guy Musser's classic papers "Malaysian Murids and the Giant Rat of Sumatra" (referring to Sundamys) and "The Giant Rat of Flores and its Relatives East of Borneo and Bali" (referring to Papagomys). Judging from Google Scholar, the term is used most often for Cricetomys, the African giant or hamster rat. Giantism in rodents is an interesting topic that might deserve an article. Ucucha (talk) 14:11, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is not giantism. This is just some species of rat-like rodents that are naturally larger than other rat-like rodents. Borock (talk) 16:51, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Which is a phenomenon known as gi(g)antism, commonly in the phrase "insular giantism". Ucucha (talk) 15:16, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I stand corrected. However most of the proposed "giant" rats are less than 1 kg, unless you count the muskrat which gets up to 2 kg (and is not insular.) Borock (talk) 03:45, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete or merge to List of fictional rodents. "Giant rats" is no more an encyclopedic topic than "tiny fruits" or "blue fish". Sure you could put together a bunch of random information on the subject, but it wouldn't be an encyclopedia article. Kaldari (talk) 08:20, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete: We don't have an article devoted to Big dogs. We don't need an article on big rats. List just lists articles that happen to have "Giant rat" in the title rather than some notable overarching criteria; it has both real and fictional rats and it's devoted to a specific biological classification pbp 17:24, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per nom and Kaldari. This is fundamentally not an encyclopedic topic; I would say transwiki to TV Tropes if that were a thing. --BDD (talk) 22:21, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep and maybe turn this article into a disambiguation page. I started this page eight years ago, when notability in Wikipedia didn't even exist yet, and was quite different in its original conception. It was mostly about the reality of large rats in the East Indies, mentioned giant rats as frequently recurring fictional perils, then went on to discuss the apocryphal Sherlock Holmes adventure of the Giant Rat of Sumatra, and the several referenced attempts to realize the tale by writers of Sherlockiana. There's probably the germ of several articles there, but the page fell off my radar and was drowned in fictional me-toos. There was worthwhile information in the original, and some remains in there now, but I suspect it needs to be split. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 04:00, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep There are numerous types of giant rat in both fact and fiction and so a dab-style page is quite sensible. As an example of encyclopaedic coverage, see The Encyclopedia of Animals. The name given to that species in that source is the smooth-tailed giant rat but that's currently a red link and the corresponding article is just a stub. This demonstrates the need for a navigational page to help readers find these poorly-documented animals. Specific aspects such as the Holmes story have great notability and so our editing policy is to develop this material rather than to delete it. See also WP:DEL, "It can be disruptive to repeatedly nominate a page in the hopes of getting a different outcome." Warden (talk) 12:08, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"editing policy is to develop this material rather than to delete it". WP:PRESERVE is an editing policy not a notability guideline nor argument for keep. LibStar (talk) 02:57, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It is perfectly acceptable to re-nom something every eight years. See WP:Consensus can change. pbp 15:10, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If its only previous deletion attempt was a VfD, that hardly counts anyway. Deletion was very chaotic back then, much more dependent on straight polling with WP:AADD-type arguments all about. --BDD (talk) 16:09, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep If someone searches for a giant rat, they should get a list of all the articles we have for various creatures with the words "giant" and "rat" in their name, or which are otherwise considered to be giant rats. Dream Focus 02:18, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

can you actually supply specific coverage rather than saying WP:MUSTBESOURCES. LibStar (talk)

Woolly Giant Rat, Fossorial Giant Rat, Giant pouched rat, Mountain Giant Sunda Rat, Giant cloud rats, White-eared giant rats, East Timor giant rat, and Tenerife Giant Rat all have "giant" and "rat" in their name. They are all blue linked to their articles which prove they exist. Do we actually need to supply sources to specific coverage that says these are giant rats? If you don't believe anything on the list is in fact sometimes called a giant rat, then discuss it on the talk page, or tag it with a citations needed tag. You don't delete an article simply because you don't like some of the entries. Dream Focus 04:47, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just because they have a word or two in common in their titles doesn't justify having this article. I believe I've mentioned this to you before, but if you missed it, here it is again: Notable components doesn't make a list notable, nor does it cause a list to pass WP:NOT. The inverse is true: there can be notable lists of things that don't have Wikipedia articles of their own pbp 05:46, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just because you say something, doesn't mean its true. If people search for "giant rat" they come here, to a page listing anything they could be searching for. And these aren't just random words that they just happen to have in their title. These are obviously creatures referred to as giant rats, thus the reason they have "giant rat" in their name. Dream Focus 10:27, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, they pretty much are random words that they just happen to have in their title. Just because they're called "giant rats" doesn't mean that they have anything in common! We've got real rats and fictional rats on the same list; and I seriously doubt that there's a biological order, class, or family that's devoted to "Giant rats", rather then having giant rats spread out across different classes and families, some of which also have normal-sized rats in them. That makes the list a violation of WP:NOT, and therefore something that should be deleted. You're essentially advancing an argument that's a combination of WP:NOTINHERITED and WP:GOOGLEHITS. Both of these are arguments to avoid. As such, your argument should be ignored pbp 14:44, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Are you just guessing random guidelines and essays to advance your point? Not Inherited deals with people aren't notable because they are related to someone who is, they have to have done something on their own. Nothing to do with this in any possible way. And I wasn't stating something was notable because of how many hits it got on Google, I was pointing out if you heard or read about a giant rat, the article would be useful to help show you a list of all of the species called that. This would be a fine disambig page, to help people who search for one thing, find what they look for. It also works fine as a list article. Dream Focus 18:25, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The same principle of non-inherited applies here. Just because a type of giant rat is notable doesn't mean a list of giant rats is pbp 19:14, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• How about an article on the fictional "Giant Rat of Sumatra" and a disambig page "Giant rat" pointing to it and to each real species called "giant rat"? "Fictional rats" can have their own list. I don't think there is a real topic "Giant rat", partly because the word "giant" is not defined well. The two words "giant" and "rat" do sound well together, and produce a scary image to most of us Westerners. I expect in places where people regularly hunt and eat rats of all sizes, like say Sumatra (just read it's 87% Muslim so maybe not), the effect of the phrase would not be the same. Borock (talk) 06:49, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Move this to "List of fictional giant rats", trimming the real rats from it; create Giant rat as a disambig page to keep the list of real "giant rat" species as links and cutting the fictional ones to have a link to "list of fictional giant rats". --MASEM (t) 20:06, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. - 1) Per Ucucha. 2) If we deleted every article that was a stub or lacked proper sourcing we could cut Wikipedia in half. Keep and improve. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 22:28, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• A completely vague and empty argument. WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Also, it really irks me when people say "keep and improve" but offer no suggestions on how to improve. I support splitting off the Giant Sumatran to its own article, but the rest is a random catch-all and a WP:PTM. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 23:45, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Sounds like badgering of an oppose to me. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 00:48, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• It's not badgering, it's common sense. Why say "keep and improve" if you don't want to elaborate on how to improve it, or even better, improve it yourself? Just saying "Oh, all it needs is a little work" isn't helping anything if no work is being done, nor any direction given on what work should be done. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 05:20, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Are you suggesting that in order to properly enter a keep !vote an editor must first commit their editing time to improving the article? If so, to what level exactly, stub, C, B, A, GA, or FA? GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 05:38, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Not necessarily improve it yourself, but at least offer suggestions on how to improve it. Just saying "keep but improve" means nothing if you don't at least elaborate on the "improve" part. That said, there is WP:SOFIXIT. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 09:27, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep For the reasons discussed above. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kabirat (talk • contribs) 14:21, 8 March 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.