Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Crew of Sesame Street

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 -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 21:33, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Crew of Sesame Street

Crew of Sesame Street (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

An indiscriminate, directory-like list of crew members (without actors) that reads like it's from IMDB. Tinlinkin 09:49, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

• Although completely unsourced an unverifiable through sources other than the credit runs at the end of Sesame Street (and others) episodes, our list blows IMDB's outta da water!. Delete as unsourced and externally unverifiable. -- saberwyn 12:06, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment. I'm puzzled by the above statement. If the actual on-screen credits of the television series aren't sufficient for verification, may I ask what is? It's not as if there are "multiple third-party sources" listing the names of the people working on this show. And if there are, guess what, the names come off the on-screen credits. Or are you suggesting such articles are simply impossible to do under Wikipedia's WP:V rules and should not be attempted? No opinion on this particular article, I'm just curious. 23skidoo 14:37, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Looking back, I'm puzzled myself. What I think I mean to say is that outside of the credits lists and places where the credit lists are transcribed, I believe that nobody independant of the subject has chosen to write about the crew of SS and related shows. Therefore, the Wikipedia:Notability of the article is questionable. Also, the list can be sourced, but it cannot be verified, unless attribution indicating the individual episodes person X worked on is provided. Also, for the list to be completed, somebody would have to sit down, watch, and transcribe every single episode's credits. To me, the article as it stands does not meet any of the list purpouse guidelines, as it provides minimal information with ninimal context, no navigational assistance, and minimal framework for development of individual articles (although I do concede that a significant rewrite may address the first or third purposes). After sitting here for an hour trying to justify my above claim, I give up. I can't justify my stance beyond "Nobody that could be considered a reliable source has written about the Crew of Sesame Street, so why should we?" -- saberwyn 22:25, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
• Delete Wikipedia is not a directory. Croxley 21:30, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep pending proper references The cast and crew list for a notable film or television series is vital to an informed discussion of the work. No article about a film or television series should fail to include a cast and crew list. For some long running series the cast/crew list becomes so large that incorporating the entire text in the main article becomes unwieldy, and in such a case it is perfectly appropriate to split that information off as a linked subpage of some sort. "Not a directory" is irrelevant when it comes to listing the cast and crew of a notable work of media.

So I have no problem with a cast and crew list for a long running series being split off into its own article, provided it has proper referencing. The references are important, though, because without reference references editors can check we have no way of knowing whether this list is accurate. Therefore I'm ok with keeping a list article for the regular cast and crew of Seseme Street, but only provided we referencing for it that editorial consensus can agree is accurate. Dugwiki 23:51, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

• • I was led to this article from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Crew of Square One TV, which I also nominated and in which no objections were raised. A big problem I have with that now-deleted article and with the currently nominated article (or fork of Sesame Street as you could see it) is context. Why is the crew and the list of the crew members notable? I do not doubt that Sesame Street is notable and successful, and the most responsible people involved in its production should be mentioned somewhere—but should all people of varying responsibility be necessarily listed in Wikipedia? Is listing any film, television, or any media production crew appropriate in Wikipedia? I will not give a direct answer to that question, as others have stronger feelings than I do, but I would say I have not encountered another article that solely discusses a production crew of any film, television. or other media work. Some editors would think that such a list, although true, looks indiscriminate, and I tend to agree with that.
  • This article, as with most of the other articles in Template:Sesame Street under the "Characters" and "Production" groupings. suffer from a lack of references and sources. The only source that would support all of these articles is the TV series itself, and it would definitely be a challenge to find secondary sources in order to sastisfy the sentence in Wikipedia:Attribution that says "Wikipedia articles should rely on reliable, published secondary sources wherever possible." That said, I welcome any improvement that would make the topic notable. Tinlinkin 04:04, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Just to reply quickly, Tin, you incorrectly cited WP:NOT#IINFO as dealing with a cast/crew list. In fact, that section of policy is very specific on what it covers, and this isn't part of it. (It's a common misconception that WP:NOT#IINFO covers "trivia" or "alamanac listings", which isn't the case. See the talk page on WP:NOT for more discussion on that topic.) Rather, the section of policy that a list of people could fall under is "Wikipedia is not a directory".
    • That being said, the bottom line for films and television series is that the regular cast/crew list is crucial because it is the only way to properly cite and attribute the collaborative artists who create the work. Any serious article about an art work has to properly attribute the work's creators. Now you can debate whether or not guest stars should be included in the main article, or which crew members are minor enough participants that they don't have to be included. But for sure the regular cast and major crew on the project need to be listed, and if that list is large enough it probably ought to be split into its own subarticle to keep the main article easier to read. Dugwiki 16:55, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
      • I didn't know WP:NOT#INFO has to fall into one of the stated examples. But I digress. Maybe it doesn't fit in WP:NOT#INFO after all. I still have the problem with context, though (how should I assert there is a story or notability behind the job titles and beyond the link to the main article), however the problem's clearing up slightly with the subsequent comments. Selecting which positions are the most notable will help here. Tinlinkin 04:59, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep for reasons given above. Highly notable shows like Sesame Street have a lot more notable material associated with them, and this needs to be split off into sub-articles because of length reasons. If it's too long, shorten it. Article flaws have to be much worse than "too long" before its time to delete the entire article. Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 04:20, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, I concur, the subject matter of the list is certainly notable enough. However, requires more sourced reputable citations. Smee 13:36, 27 February 2007 (UTC).
• Comment: I haven't been very active here of late, but I've done a lot of work on Muppet Wiki, where our sole focus is on everything and anything relevant to the Muppets. And you know what? Even we, obsessed Muppet Sesame fans/historians as we are, felt these kinds of huge lists are excessive and not at all useful. Take a look at some of what's in there: production secretaries, accountants, transportation coordinator, boom operators, stagehands, and the like. I don't think a Wikipedia article on something like Citizen Kane even would/should be that exhaustive in just listing names (and it isn't), so why such a list here? The above are all necessary people to the production of the show, sure, but that doesn't make them encyclopedic; I say this as a film credits junkie myself, with lists and word docs for my own research, but an enormous credit list in and of itself, even if it can be verified, isn't especially useful in a format like Wikipedia. What *is* useful is either selective inclusion of the most crucial crew members, the original creators, or a text paragraph, sourced and with quotes if possible, about exactly how or why the specific people shaped the program, or any unique aspects to production as a whole; an article on Fantasia, for example, has a longer credits list than other films, but a) it's an animated feature, where the technical artists and crew are instrumental to a greater extent than, say, stagehands, and b) even then, it's not a full credit transcription, just the key storyboard artists and animators who shaped each segment. Part of the problem is Sesame Street has been on the air *38* years. Which is a long time, with a lot of change-overs. The current list is a mixture of anonymous contributions and actual direct transcriptions from credits, but so many names are without specifics on years, and it's also rife with misspellings of names. For myself, if it were up to me, Id's say delete as a list; merge the more notable aspects, maybe the key producers, directors, and writers, or better yet, actually write something about them. Add a paragraph summing up these key crew members, in a way that's both encyclopedic and interesting (production stage manager Chat O'Brien, for example, was also a semi-regular as fruit vendor Mr. Macintosh, and was with the show for more than 20 years). -- Aleal 21:43, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. Its a work in practice. It has a considerable history of authorship and provides material for a potential good article in the future. SmokeyJoe 12:27, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, I guess. Sesame Street is obvioulsy notable and why shouldn't we record this info. But, I gotta wonder if there would be a better way to go about this. I would rather read a short history of the production of Sesame Street rather than have only a list. Are there sources to the creator to do that? -MrFizyx 04:28, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
• Comment There's a difference between an article about the crew of Sesame Street and a list of the crew of Sesame Street. The page is currently the latter. As it is now, the page is just as good as having the title List of crew of Sesame Street, and I probably would have taken that to AfD. A link to the main article via {{main}} technically adds nothing: the notability of this topic needs to be stated clearly within this article. Now, an article about the production of the show and the awards given to the crew and anything else related (specifically per Aleal and MrFizyx) is worth reading. Whether the title of that article should be "Crew of Sesame Street" is another story. Tinlinkin 04:59, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I think the difference of opinion is stemming from you seeing it as a completely seperate article from the main article, when in fact I think it's a subarticle intended to split off an otherwise large list section from the main article to make the main article more readable. It can be acceptable to divide a main article into smaller subarticles if the information in the subarticles is important to the main article but the size of the undivided main article is unwieldy. In this case, the cast/major crew list of a television series is a fairly important piece of information. So it's a question of style whether that list should be included in the main article entirely or split off into its own subarticle.

By the way, a possible alternative method for handling extremely long cast lists is to move the entire list to Wikisource and provide a transwiki link from the main article. I could see an argument that the cast/crew list for a show could fall under the realm of Wikisource, since it's basically a data set intended to supplement an article rather than act as an encylopedic topic on its own. Dugwiki 16:03, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I think its more than that, the list seems to be hit or miss as to whether it is covering only the most recent cast or has years associated with the individuals. Also, I hate to belittle the contributions of hair stylist and stagehands, but... Just what will one find useful in this list of names? -MrFizyx 16:12, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

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.