Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/MacGyver the Lizard

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

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MacGyver the Lizard

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MacGyver the Lizard (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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I came across this as an

• If by some chance we do have some of his fans coming in here, please understand that this isn't personal and it's not me trying to be a buzzkill, it's just that notability is extremely difficult to establish on Wikipedia, especially for animals and for social media related topics, let alone a topic that is a mixture of the two. Also, please read over
  (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:17, 6 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• • • I don’t want to make too big a deal about this, but the assertion that a subject of multiple catagories increases the difficulty of obtaining notebility is plainly false. You can not say about Barrack Obama: “It is difficult for a president to be notable. It is difficult for an African American to be notable. Therefor, it is more difficult for an African American president to be notable.” If all African Americans are notable, then Obama is notable. If all presidents are notable, then Obama is notable. In the worst case, the threshold of notability is the lowest threshold of any of the applicable catagories. In the best case, being the subject of multiple catagories INCREASES notability, such as in the case of Obama being an African American president. Lizzymartin (talk) 01:11, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Draftify and wait for some additional coverage to surface. Arthistorian1977 (talk) 10:10, 6 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Animal-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 20:51, 6 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organisms-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 20:52, 6 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Internet-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 20:52, 6 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Florida-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 20:52, 6 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• weak keep Our notability standards for YouTube celebrities seem pretty low. I see no reason why we should be stricter to lizards than to rappers and dreadful pranksters. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:53, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• keep I believe this article passes the
  WP:ENT (3. Has made unique, prolific or innovative contributions to a field of entertainment) argument is also possible, as he is the only reptile (unique) with any significant fan following as a result of creating videos (very unique) that show reptiles as cute, friendly, animals. He is well known throughout the reptile community for changing public opinion on reptiles. (Note: I am the article author. I believe I am being completely objective, but take my arguments as you will) Lizzymartin (talk) 22:18, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• keep It should be clear that this article should be exempt from deletion due to
  WP:ENT since I am somewhat unfamiliar with the fanbase, but it is not correct to set the Star Trek fandom as a minimum or even as something that MacGyver the Lizard's should be near - the Star Trek fandom is unusually large and developed as far as "significant cult followings" go. I think that it is important to weigh each of these aspects not individually, but together. The news outlet coverage of the channel, compounded with its ever-increasing popularity and fanbase, certainly qualify it as a valid Wikipedia article. 2600:8801:D304:F100:3623:87FF:FE58:1510 (talk) 22:55, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• keep Clearly passes
  WP:GNG New baba (talk) 20:37, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• keep This obviously meets Wikipedia notability standards. Saadsalman37 (talk) 17:27, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep nominating it under
  Youtube. MacGyver the Lizard has become a public figure. The animal is covered by notable news media i.e The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, China Times. It must be kept from deletion. Umais Bin Sajjad (talk) 09:29, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• AfD is not the same as speedy deletion. The issue here is that the coverage in reliable sources for the lizard has been fairly recent - the coverage prior to this has been in places that Wikipedia would consider to be unreliable. Now when it comes to a cult following, the expectation is that the following will have received a sizable amount of coverage, enough to where it could possibly merit an article on its own. This has not been met with this, as there's very little coverage for MacGyver overall and his fanbase is actually quite small. I would also argue against criteria three of entertainer, as the coverage also does not establish how he has made a unique contribution to the field of animal performers. Being the first or one of the few to do something (ie, lizards on social media) is not always something that will give notability - what you need here is to show where the coverage for MacGyver is heavy and in-depth enough to show that he's notable, which again has not been established. I'll post a rundown of the sourcing in just a moment.
  (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:21, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Below is my rundown of the sourcing.

In the end what we have here is a lot of coverage that happened during the same point in time, predominantly in April and June 2016. The latest source was one article in July. Some of the sources are pretty questionable as far as their overall reliability goes on Wikipedia and at least one of them, the Daily Mail, is consistently challenged as a source on Wikipedia - to the point where it's really not the type of source you want to use to determine notability. The lizard's fan following on social media is pretty slim - per one article it has 13,000 followers on Instagram and 34,000 subscribers on YouTube, which is not really all that much when you compare this to YouTubers with millions of followers. The lack of a large fan following doesn't mean that something can't pass notability guidelines, however I should also say that this number is not so sizable that this would be considered the type of following that would give notability. That sort of thing is mostly saved for things like the Star Trek and Star Wars fandoms, where there are conventions surrounding them or at the very least, multiple books and articles written about or heavily mention the fandom.

While it'd be nice if it were otherwise, there just doesn't seem to be a heavy enough amount of coverage to justify an article. This could be considered

WP:RECENTISM, because despite the lizard being around for a few years it really only gained media attention this year, over a period of about 3-4 months. I have to compare it to other social media phenomenom that received far more coverage yet were still considered to be ultimately non-notable, such as the Ikea Monkey or Kai the hitchhiker, the latter of which received coverage over a longer period of time (he received additional coverage over murder allegations, but received media coverage initially over a viral video) but was still considered to be non-notable. There have been a lot of topics that have been brought to AfD after having received a spate of coverage in the media over a short period of time, sometimes even a fairly heavy amount, only for them to be deleted because the coverage was over a pretty short period of time and all tended to focus on the same thing: that the topic exists and that it's considered to be a novelty to the article writer. I just don't see where the coverage here is heavy enough to warrant inclusion here. Now it's possible that the coverage could become heavy enough in the future, which is why I mentioned it being userfied until more coverage comes available - which I honestly don't see happening any time soon unless it starts getting attention along the lines of Grumpy Cat

- and even GC's notability took a while to come about.

Sometimes, very rarely, a social media or pop culture phenomenon can become notable despite having only a few months (or weeks) of coverage, however these cases are pretty rare because the coverage has to assert something incredibly rare and notable - which is not asserted here. Being one of the few lizards on social media (it's likely not the first) isn't considered to be something direly notable as far as Wikipedia is concerned. That type of distinction is usually reserved for things like winning an extremely prestigious award (think in the terms of Grammys or Nobel Prizes) or doing something so distinctive that it's mentioned in various academic texts, like

(｡◕‿◕｡) 10:52, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

• Also, the reason I keep bringing up Star Trek is that this is the type of fandom needed to assert notability. Nowadays it isn't all that difficult to gain followers on social media. It's not as easy as breathing, but it's not so difficult that it's some impossible task that would be seen as something few can do. To put this in perspective, Wikipedia frequently deletes entries on people who have hundreds of thousands of followers or subscribers on their various social media outlets because this type of popularity is not seen as a sign of notability. This is because few media outlets really write about these or writes about them in a way that would establish that the fan following is notable. It's actually considered to be relatively run of the mill for a social media personality (or animal) to receive a small fan following, which is why it's so difficult to establish notability for social media related topics. There are hundreds upon thousands of topics with similar or larger amount of followers, so the only true way to establish notability for these topics is to show coverage over a long period of time. A handful of articles written around the same point in time just isn't enough to establish notability here. To add on to this, I have to point out
  (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:03, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• In the end I'm not going to lose sleep if this gets kept, rather my overly long post above is more of my attempt to explain the rationale behind my deletion. I'd probably argue for deletion even if the topic in question was a human social media personality, given the limited amount of coverage here and I've seen people with more coverage get deleted via AfD. The existence of other articles with less coverage isn't really a rationale for retention in this case. Again, I'm not trying to be harsh, just that I've seen articles deleted for more coverage (the first AfD for
  (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:17, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• • I have reached out to Lumina Media LLC, parent company of Petcha, for information about their editorial process and have recieved this reply: “To answer your question, we exercise editorial control and have strict editorial guidelines for all our online publications, including Petcha. Petcha has an executive editor, two senior editors, a staff writer and a videographer on staff.” They are now in the process of updating their about page to reflect their editorial guidelines. I have also reached out to 30M about the editorial process on FuzzFix.com, and and awaiting a response. Regardless of that outcome though, I believe the other sources clearly establish the coverage required by Wikipedia’s notability guidelines. I have also reached out to MacGyver’s owners via Instagram to see if they are aware of any more coverage that I was unable to find, and it appears as though AJ+ has been working on a peice about MacGyver for a few weeks now, which will likely come out next week. The Charlotte Sun also has a peice about MacGyver, which has been backlogged by coverage of the recent accidental police shooting, but which should be coming out any day now also. Lizzymartin (talk) 00:29, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• The problem though is whether or not their editorial guidelines pass muster with Wikipedia - and unfortunately it's very, very difficult to meet these guidelines. I've tried to make cases for a well known book website, only to be told that they're not ultimately usable as a reliable source except in rare circumstances, and this is for a website that was semi-repeatedly mentioned in academic sources and has their staff and editorial process laid out. It's going to be even more difficult to establish the reliability of a website that doesn't have this available, especially since Petcha does accept random user offerings. On that note I also need to say that if the website were to be considered reliable, it'd likely only be for things that are clearly marked as staff pieces - which is not the case here as far as I can tell. I'll post a note at RS/N about the sources here and see what they say there.
  (｡◕‿◕｡) 03:23, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• Also, as far as the Charlotte Sun goes that might still be considered too recent - in order to really show that there's coverage over a longer period of time there would need to be coverage in RS from either 2015 or in the next year, 2017. A spate of coverage during the summer and late spring is still pretty recent. It's just that tough to assert notability for social media personalities or people known for videos or other similar media. Heck, I had
  (｡◕‿◕｡) 03:31, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• I do not believe the result of unrelated AfD debates really has any bearing here, especially considering most of the referenced subjects were clearly related to news events, which as per multiple mentions above, this is not. To be honest, it sounds like most of these arguments are based off an interpretation of precident rather than of policy as defined by
  WP:GNG. Lizzymartin (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:49, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• The thing is, they kind of do. The problem here is that it's incredibly difficult to assert notability for topics that are related to social media or social media-esque topics like videos or the like. There have been many, many articles that have failed notability guidelines in the past despite having larger fan followings and more coverage over the same amount of time. I'm not sure that an exception should be made for an article about an animal with a social media following that's actually on the smaller end of the scale that has received a fairly small amount of coverage over a small point in time. My point is this: if people or topics with larger fan followings and better sourcing can't pass notability guidelines then I'm not sure that MacGyver could or should either. There might be an argument over social media personalities and coverage over a short period of time (ie, that guidelines should be made more loose to take them into consideration), however at the same time this isn't really the best case to set that precedent because the sourcing is so weak overall and there have already been so many cases with stronger arguments for notability that have failed GNG.
  (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:02, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• I'm going to try to keep from making this any longer unless new material is added since I believe that we've both said our part and at this point it's just sort of us repeating the same things over and over. I don't think that the current sourcing is enough, given that there have been so many cases in the past with stronger assertions of notability that have been deleted.
  (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:03, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• The Last Word. Lizzymartin (talk) 04:50, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, begrudgingly. This falls under the peculiar-to-Wikipedia phenomenon of Internet celebrity being backed heavily by editors because, well, a lot of Wikipedia editors live on the internet. I ran into this when I nominated a stupid cat for deletion and was immediately baffled by the flood of "keep" votes. Anyway, if a bunch of cats are considered notable enough for articles, there's no way you can logically argue that this lizard isn't; he has at least as much coverage as half of those. Rockypedia (talk) 11:29, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the

talk) 20:13, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

• Delete per
  flyer 09:33, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• I did not canvas your talk page. As per Wikipedia guidelines on attempting to get more input on AfD discussions that are getting no attention, I selected another discussion from the "list of Websites-related deletion discussions", "/r/thedonald", and used the appropriate "Please See" syntax to leave an auto-generated unbiased message on 6 users talk pages who had contributed to that discussion, 3 of whom voted keep, 3 of whom voted deleted. I went out of my way to be as unbiased as humanly possible. Please see my Special:Contributions/Lizzymartin page for evidence of it, and see appropriate methods listed in WP:Canvassing. I do not appreciate you coming in here and accusing me of canvasing as I clearly followed the guidelines in trying to get more input on this discussion. Shame on you. Lizzymartin (talk) 18:27, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Related to your actual vote, how does
  WP:NOTNEWS apply at all to this non-news event? Lizzymartin (talk) 18:44, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• In an attempt to reach consensus and not have this re-listed indefinitly, I have left the following neutral "Please See" message on the following six users' talk pages because they have previously contributed to internet related discussions:
  User:SSTflyer User:IanSan5653. I randomly selected 3 users with delete and 3 users with keep recomendations from Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/R/The_Donald . Lizzymartin (talk) 21:37, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• ==Discussion at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/MacGyver_the_Lizard ==

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/MacGyver_the_Lizard . Lizzymartin (talk) 21:37, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Due to lack of response thus far, and per the same criteria, I have also noticed User:SwisterTwister and User:Kabahaly — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lizzymartin (talk • contribs) 01:56, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• No
  WP:CANVAS. You shouldn't be going out of your way to notify the same number of editors on each side. The pool of users that you send a link to should have proportionate views to the group of editors you got them from. Omni Flames (talk) 10:37, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• That debate was nearly evenly split and the pool was also reflective of this Lizzymartin (talk) 18:26, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete (Draft only if needed) instead as there's still not enough here, apart fron expected news, to suggest there's anything else for an actual substance, and it not being for "Social" coverage. SwisterTwister talk 02:21, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Weakish Keep – Meets GNG, but a bit borderline regarding
  WP:NOTNEWS. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 05:49, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• Upon consideration, I have struck part of my !vote above. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 16:48, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Thank you very much for your input. I completely concur with your first two assesments: Meets GNG; would be nice if there was a longer time frame of coverage, but it’s enough for a keep. I am however, really baffled by the assessment of borderline on
  WP:NOTNEWS
  covers following points:

• Original reporting: This clearly does not apply
• News reports: This seems to be about events. I can see it apply to an article titled “MacGyver’s first video” or “MacGyver suprpassed some threshold of followers”, or “MacGyver eats crab”, but I don’t see how it applies to the subject himself.
• Who's who: People related to a notable event are not nessessarily notable themselves - does not seem to apply here since since it’s not about an event. The only possible connection I can see here is if someone were thinking that maybe MacGyver’s first viral video was a notable event, but he himself is not. I don’t think this is the case though, as that video recieves only trivial mentions in some of the sources, and on the whole is less notable than MacGyver himself.
• A diary: Even when someone is notable, every detail of their life should not be included on their page - definitly does not apply to an AfD discussion, but rather applies to what content should be kept on the article of a subject deemed notable.

• As
  WP:NOTNEWS. Lizzymartin (talk) 08:18, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• Comment First, I’m not really an expert on
  WP:NOTNEWS. I wrote an essay on it back in 2013 when I only had a few hundred edits, and have kept the essay up since I still pretty much agree with its contents. Onto the actual topic at hand, Macgyver has apparently been an internet sensation since 2012, but every source I’ve found had been within the last six months or so (I couldn’t even find local coverage on newsbank from 2015 or earlier). Furthermore, most of them are what I call “introductory” sources (those giving an overview of a subject with no development with time and which tend to duplicate every other source), and from a lot of less than optimal sources to boot (the more reliable sources are clustered around June 1, 2016). I don’t think that there is a clear-cut outcome to this AfD, since there is nonetheless coverage from reliable sources over a somewhat broader range than is typical of notnews. However, given the facts I’ve laid out I believe that merging this article with List of viral videos would be the best course of action. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 20:29, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• A merge wouldn't be a bad outcome here. I'm not against this coming back, I just think the coverage here is just far too recent to show notability, especially given that the sourcing is so incredibly light. If it was far heavier I wouldn't have necessarily nominated it, but it's just that this is far too light for my comfort. If it survives AfD as its own article, then groovy - we can potentially use this as precedent to establish notability for social media personalities with far less coverage than was previously needed. It's just that I'm concerned that the coverage here won't necessarily hold up if we try to do that in the future and it'd end up with this article not only getting deleted (barring other future coverage) and it'd be twice as difficult to get that AfD overturned in the future. If this ends with a userfy or merge then that's far easier to overcome than a delete - which I think is certainly possible given how weak the coverage is in relation to articles on similar or identical topics that have had better coverage and still got deleted.
  (｡◕‿◕｡) 00:25, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• There are a few reasons why I don’t think a merge onto List_of_viral_videos is appropriate. To begin with, only two of the sources even mention any specific viral video (the first viral video of his back in 2012). That video only has about 400k views on youtube - its only real significance is that it is what first got him noticed. He has other youtube videos with significantly more views now. Even more than that though, he has multiple facebook videos with millions of views each, such as this one (https://www.facebook.com/MacGyverLizard/videos/vb.211549348980941/826654834137053/?type=3&theater) with over 3 million views. There are a few of his videos that have been reposted as a whole or remixed and reposted on other user’s Instagrams and gotten millions of additional views each. Snoop Dogg, for example, posted a remix of that 3M+ view video on his Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/p/BI_iGneBE7k/?taken-by=snoopdogg&hl=en) which got nearly a million views. At present, I doubt that most people who know about MacGyver have ever seen that first video mentioned in the two articles. I don’t think that reducing this article to merge based on two trivial mentions of one old, relatively unsuccessful video (compared to his others), does it justice.Lizzymartin (talk) 01:11, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• If https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Animals_on_the_Internet was an article, like Cats and the Internet, I would understand the suggestion of a merge onto that article. I would still disagree, as I’ve stated above that I think the coverage warrants it’s own article, but I would at least understand the argument. I really think that merger with List_of_viral_videos is completely inappropriate though. I can’t find an article that merging with would be a better outcome than keeping as a stand alone article. Lizzymartin (talk) 02:01, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• And just for the record, lots of the articles listed in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Animals_on_the_Internet are less notable and with less coverage. Lizzymartin (talk) 03:45, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps List of Internet phenomena would be a better merge location then. I've been looking through MacGyver's YouTube page, and I agree that there really isn't a single major video to write about. Also, the fact that there are articles much less notable than this one is not grounds for keeping, although it is justification for nominating those less notable articles for deletion. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 06:21, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• In addition, I believe the article is long enough to qualify for a stand-alone article and not a good choice for merging. Lizzymartin (talk) 08:07, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak keep Scrapes by on GNG. Artw (talk) 17:55, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Ignore this. I thought I was being helpful but apparently not. Apologies. Lizzymartin (talk) 02:46, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• consensus is not done by !voting at afds, but by strength of argument. I don't think the requirement for being an admin even requires demonstration of the ability to do arithmetic. And as advice, I , like most admins, would regard an attempt to sum up in this manner as an attempt to add an additional illegitimate argument, and as implying we wouldn't have the intelligence to figure things out for ourselves. Ideally, we'd just ignore it, but in practice it has been known to give an unfortunate impression. DGG ( talk ) 01:07, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment on sources

• MacGyver has been the subject (“significant coverage”) of every source referenced.
• Multiple of the referenced sources are undeniably independent reliable secondary sources: Daily Telegraph, China Times, Buzzfeed, RARE, TheDodo.
• VICE - even if some people think it should not be used as a source for anything but pop culture, this is pop culture.
• Some of the less know sources, FuzzFix and Petcha, do in fact also have editorial control and review, even though its hard to find out from their websites.
• Even if some of the additional sources, such as the Daily Mail, are questionable, they do not make any claims that are not also supported in multiple of the other reliable sources.

If you examine the reasons for wikipedia’s policy on sourcing,

WP:WHYN, you should conclude that these sources are sufficient to write an objective, balanced, neutral, non-gossip, non-hoax, non-promotional article of sufficient length based off on secondary sources and no original research. Lizzymartin (talk) 03:30, 27 August 2016 (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.