Talk:Human Top (Bruce Bravelle)

Yes, the article was deleted, on the basis of not having reliable references and probably none being available, which is a good reason for deleting. (FWIW the headcount was 4-3 in favor of keeping the article. It's fine that it was deleted on strength of argument (no reliable refs), I'm just saying there wasn't a consensus to delete it, which IMO puts it into a bit of gray area.)

And this new version, while it is largely rewritten and adds some more details here and there, is not really greatly different from the deleted version. There is, at the end of the day, only so much to say about dear Mr Bruce Bravelle.

But this new version does contain more references, and placed in-line so as to ref particular passages (which the old version just had a list of refs at the end). But none of the references are very reliable, and the argument could be made that none of them are reliable at all.

So let's talk about that.

While none of the references are very reliable, most of them are not completely unreliable in the sense of being a forum post and whatnot. A few of of them are just a person's blog or a wiki, true. But one is published by Marvel Inc. and others show signs of a multi-person operation. Even the blogs... you've got to remember that these are the sort of people who will have knife fight at ComiCon over the correct pronounciation of "J'onn J'onzz" or whatever. Sure they could be wrong but it's not like they don't care whether or not they're wrong. And sure they don't have fact checkers, but if they get something wrong they're liable to get a five-page email pointing this out, probably with liberal use of ALL CAPS (I exaggerate but you get my point). This fanbase constitutes a sort of ad hoc fact-checking operation, I maintain.

My main point, though, is not that the individual sources are reliable, but there are a lot of them, and that this matters.

What makes a reliable reference? Well, suppose you have a magazine.

1. A reporter makes a statement of fact, which he's presumable is confident is true, for whatever reason -- maybe she's looked it up, maybe she thinks her source is really trustworthy, or whatever, but he's putting her professional reputation behind it to a degree.
2. Then a fact checker checks it. He looks it up online in a reputable publication or in the in-house library or goes down to the public library if he has to, or he calls the source to confirm a quote, or whatever. (Then maybe a copyeditor goes over it. Although the copyeditor is unlikely to check facts, he might flag something that looks unlikely I suppose, depending on the publication and so forth.)
3. Then an editor vets it. If there's a suspicious-looking fact he might send it back for more research I suppose (don't really know). Otherwise I guess his role is mainly to imply by his presence "I'm assuming that all these facts have been rigorously checked and if there's an error of fact in there and this comes to my attention, both of you (reporter and fact-checker) are in big trouble".

OK, that's in an ideal, highly reliable environment. It depends on the publication -- "You're fired" vs. "Try to be more careful in future" -- and how important the error is and so forth.

None of the sources used here have nearly that level of reliability I don't think. However, in some cases you have three or four not-very-reliable publications reporting the same fact, and that counts for something in my book. For instance, I'm very confident that the Human Top did indeed appear in the first issue of Red Raven Comics. I have like five or six different people reporting that, and the vibe I get is that they are mostly not just copying and mirroring each other but that they have independently concluded this, either because they have a copy of the comic or because they have it from a source they trust or for whatever reason. And this goes, to a greater or lesser extent, for a lot of the facts reported in this article.

All of these amateur fan hobbyists are not likely to all get this wrong (or lie about it). If one of them is wiki and the material is made-up vandalism, how do you explain the same material being in the other five sources? I guess the question on the table is "are six one-person operations (staffed by obsessive enthusiasts) better than one six-person operation (staffed by salaried professionals)?" I don't know the answer, but I don't think the answer is obvious.

Of course, this makes it harder for the reader to verify the facts. She can't just go to one ref and say "Oh, it's from the New York Times so I'm satisfied it's true". She has to go through the same process we did and be like "Oh, it's reported by four different obsessive fans, so I'm satisfied it's true". That's obviously far from ideal and if that's a deal-killer maybe you think the article shouldn't exist and maybe you're right.

Also, there are published physical books which talk about Mr Bravelle and which are probably sufficiently reliable. I just don't have them. Ditto the comics themselves or reprints.

As to notability, an entirely different issue, I don't know that either. But I think just as baseball has the bright line "appeared in a major league game == notable for our purposes", a reasonable bright line here might be "headliner/main character in a story published by DC or Marvel == notable for our purposes". Herostratus (talk) 19:37, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Let's not delete decent articles

@Jhenderson777: Well, the section above kind of talks about why we probably shouldn't delete this article.

Some additional points:

There are ten sources of varying reliability. We have 5.7 million articles, and I'm confident that at least one million of them are not as well sourced as this article. However, the community has basically rejected mass-deleting them: if there was a bot proposed to automate or semi-automate mass deletion of these articles, it wouldn't be accepted. So I think we want to be judicious about deleting these articles without a WP:AFD.

Instead, the usual steps for an unrefed fact which is not contentious or contended is something like this:

• Find the reference for the fact.
• If you don't have the time or inclination for that, or can't find any reference, consider tagging it with "citation needed", and give other editors maybe a couple years to find references
• If you can't be bothered to tag it, just move on.

(Facts which are contentious or contended are maybe given less leeway. (A contentious fact is any which is not entirely anodyne and/or fairly early checked. "X is a mountain in State Y" is not contentious. By all means it should be referenced, but it's not something to get super excited about, the reader can reference this from the coordinates and so forth, and it's not the sort of thing that a non-troll would lie about on purpose. "Some writers have described X as the most beautiful mountain in State Y" needs to be referenced; if it isn't, this is a problem. It would be a lot of work to find out if this is true, it's something that a resident or admirer of the mountain might exaggerate about, and there's a reasonable chance that it is not strictly true. A contended fact is just any which an editor thinks may not be true to a sufficient level of confidence.)

That is for "citation needed" tags... give it some time, at least. For "better reference needed", I'm not sure that there is time limit. If there is a reference, as far as I know the statement can stay indefinitely (if it's not contentious or contended anyway). It's a tag to let the reader know to take the ref with a grain of salt, and to let editors to know to upgrade the ref if they're inclined.

That's for individual statements of fact. For articles with no refs... there a many thousands of articles with no refs. Lack of refs is not usually, by itself, considered sufficient reason to delete, unless it's unlikely that refs can be found. It is a data point, true.

Again, that's for no refs. This article has refs. And it's not like An International Catalogue of Superheroes or A Comics Odyssey and so on are terrible references. I'm confident to a high degree that the statements they support are indeed true, and that they're reasonable sources to send the reader to. It's true that they don't have fact-checkers on staff, but neither does Toonpedia and this is considered reliable. If the reader doesn't want to believe them, fine.

Also, the people who write these sites go to Comicons. There's your fact checking right there. If these guys get a fact wrong on their site, they will possibly be corned and told this in no uncertain terms. Or emailed. Comic Book Guys really are a thing and they love to show off their superior grasp of esoteric facts. Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope is an entire film based largely around Red Raven Comics #1 (one of the Top's two appearances)... so...

And I mean for all we know all of the statements and more are supported by the book The Encyclopedia of Superheroes which is a physical book published by an imprint Infobase Publishing which is a reputable publisher, if that counts, which for our system it does. Or other books or print articles. I don't have access this or similar books, but somebody does. So let's slow down here. Initiating an AfD would be fine if you like. Herostratus (talk) 04:47, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Wasn’t this already afd’d with a delete? We are allowed to boldly merge articles but not edit war.Jhenderson ⁷⁷⁷ 15:16, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Relax, it's it's not edit warring, it is just WP:BRD -- you made a bold edit and fine (I guess; blanking a whole article and merging half of it to another article is a pretty major edit to do unilaterally, but OK), and I demurred and now we're having this discussion, and that's fine also.

An article with this title was deleted, but ten years ago, so I think by common sense (and perhaps common practice) that has expired; the article was not salted after all. More importantly, it seems that that article was substantially different (I can't read it of course); the discussion indicates that there was (at least at the start of the AfD) just one source, and now it has ten.

Also FWWIW the headcount was 4-3 to keep, and the deletion arguments were half "unsourced" (which is not a good deletion argument unless unfixable) and half "no notablity", which... yeah but de facto we have a lot of coverage of obscure comic book characters for obvious reasons, and anyway the close was "The result was delete as unsourced from reliable sources, non prejudicial closure article can be restored if reliable sources are found" which is possibly true. Anyway the closer was not an admin, which 1) you're supposed to declare that, and 2) I think non-admins are not supposed to close discussions as delete (how he got it to be deleted I don't know).

As to the sources, "reliability" is not a black-white thing, really; it depends on what is being ref'd, and other things. It's something to reasonably talk about tho. Herostratus (talk) 18:18, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

(1)I am relaxed.

(2) It’s called redirecting. If you want I could merge the whole info and sources but stuff like fictional character bios and Powers and abilities are not top importance.

(3) WP:Otherstuffexists. Just because there are more obscure comic book character articles doesn’t mean this one should not be merged. You admitted he is obscure though. Obscure characters are very rarely notable.

(4) The only real world info is a blog. That’s not a reliable source by Wikipedia guidelines. It’s not debatable. It’s the truth. Jhenderson ⁷⁷⁷ 21:24, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

I hear you. I opened a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Comics#OOpinion on Human Top (Bruce Bravelle) for more input... you're welcome to chime in of course. Granted this is Wikiproject Comics so I suppose they might be friendly to lots of comics data in the Wikipedia (not sure).

Blogs and blogs... there's a big difference between some random guy's blog and the writings of an expert in the field. It is true that these blogs don't have fact checkers or editorial oversight tho. Still... on further checking I find that Jess Nevins for instance has an article here, he's written many books, including Encyclopedia of Golden Age Superheroes. Does that matter? Yeah it does... WP:RS says "The opinions of specialists and recognized experts are more likely to be reliable". Nevins is both I would say. Jeff Christiansen is the author of many books, such as Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe which is published by Marvel itself. I put the "better source" tag mainly to be extra cautious, but since these are published experts I'll remove those. Nathan P. Mahney is obviously working carefully from source material; it'd strain credibility to assert that he's making this stuff up or is sloppy. The others I haven't checked or forgotten if I did, but some of these are commercial sites with actual staff presumably. They can also maybe be untagged. So... I think your best bet is go with the notability angle, for which you might have a point. Herostratus (talk) 11:53, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Time to restore?

User:Herostratus added sources in 2014 and moved this back to article space, but it was ultimately redirected to List of Marvel Comics characters: H#Human Top last year. User:Toughpigs recently added additional sources to the list page, so I am wondering if there are any objections to the article being restored to this version and the sources from the list page being moved here? BOZ (talk) 19:46, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Of course its time to restore. It was never time to destroy the article in the first place. I never acceded to that and I reserve the right to roll that back or delegate it to you or anyone else. I just get weary of fighting these battles. That doesn't mean that destroying the article was ever acceptable or accepted. Herostratus (talk) 01:25, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Not yet AfD is a discussion not a vote, its the quality of the arguments put forward that an admin must assess not the numbers, Blogs, wiki's and fan pages arent WP:Reliable sources, nor is two people fight over the subject at an event doesnt make the subject notable. The Marvel source is reliable but limited as it's a COI source, and not written by a third party. Looking at the content at List_of_Marvel_Comics_characters:_H#Bruce_Bravelle there still isn't sufficient reason to move the content to a stand alone article. Pamela Hawley, Carol Hines, Hulk Robot, Sahsa Hammer, Gabrielle Haller all show that there is still considerable space for more content expansion in the section before considering a stand alone article. As I said when you asked directly the character needs to have an impact beyond the Marvel universe that its notable and enduring, this applies to every fictional character whether from a comic, TV series, movie, or book. Gnangarra 02:07, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Not yet, and probably not ever. New sources are great and I applaud Toughpigs for the effort, but the new material sources plot elements and dates of publication. As I said in the discussion two years ago, those don't indicate notability. It's just proof of existence that could have been taken from the comics themselves. I'll need to see some sort of real world coverage, like commentary on the writing/artwork or the character's influence on later creations, before I'll reconsider. Argento Surfer (talk) 12:11, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Gnangarra that the references that I added to List of Marvel Comics characters: H#Human Top are not currently enough to justify re-creating the article again. However, I also want to note that Argento Surfer's "probably not ever" prediction implies that nobody will ever write more books about Golden Age superheroes that could be used as secondary sources for the article in the future. One of the sources that I've been using, Lou Mougin's Secondary Superheroes of Golden Age Comics, was just published earlier this year. Mougin's book doesn't include Timely/Marvel Comics characters, so the Human Top isn't mentioned in that book, but I would expect that more books about Golden Age comics will be published in the future. So — I agree with "not yet", disagree with "not ever". :) — Toughpigs (talk) 18:50, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

It's always possible. Argento Surfer (talk) 12:49, 18 May 2020 (UTC)