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 United Nations Intelligence Taskforce#UNIT dating. (non-admin closure) —cyberpower ^Chat_Online 18:03, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

UNIT dating controversy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • Stats)

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Lack of significant coverage in reliable third-party sources. Most of this article is either:

• Unsourceable
• Sourceable only to primary sources.
• Sourced to the creators of Doctor Who novels and episodes (Chris Howarth, Steve Lyons, Lawrence Miles, Lance Parkin, Justin Richards) who are not independent enough to WP:verify notability.
• Sourced to trivial mentions, which are not enough to verify notability, according to the general notability guideline.

And just to pre-empt any wikilawyering around "the guideline doesn't tell us what trivial means", I should point out that the sources all say the same thing: that fans have a hard time figuring out the dates for these episodes. That's what the article reflects: a single statement that establishing dates is hard, sourced to multiple sources, none of which are independent.

Across Wikipedia, we would never source a single statement about a "controversy" to multiple participants in the controversy, and then use original research to flesh it out into a stand-alone article. And if we did, we'd delete it. Shooterwalker (talk) 14:59, 1 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep/merge This is obviously an expansion of the section United_Nations_Intelligence_Taskforce#UNIT_dating. Whether this split is too much or should be merged back into that article is a matter of ordinary editing, not deletion. Warden (talk) 16:08, 1 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• keep Would this get anywhere near AfD if it was "Batman dating controversy"? Yet again, WP has a policy ostensibly against primary sourcing and in-universe issues for fictional topics, yet this is never enforced against the output of the major US studios or comics publishers. Sheer US-centric bias. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:38, 1 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The cacophony of e.g. Star Trek and Star Wars-related AfDs suggests otherwise. Regardless, WP:OTHERSTUFF factors in. --EEMIV (talk) 10:34, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Regardless of your !vote, I do appreciate your concession that this article is against policy. I agree that policy should be applied consistently. Shooterwalker (talk) 05:03, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. — Frankie (talk) 19:30, 3 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Television-related deletion discussions. — Frankie (talk) 19:30, 3 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, summarize in UNIT article. The bulk of the article is to try to present evidence from dating of episodes, but this is a massive failure of WP:SYNTH, as to prove the point there is a dating issue. It's also far UNDUE coverage compared to how much this is actually a point in the fandom (read: nearly none). A mention can be made that the dating is inconsistent for UNIT stories on the article about UNIT but not its own article. --MASEM (t) 19:42, 3 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science fiction-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:17, 3 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge back per Warden. This isn't the place to lay out all the evidence on either side; leave that to specialized wikis. --BDD (talk) 20:44, 4 September 2012 (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.