Wikipedia:Pokémon test

This page is currently inactive and is retained for historical reference.
Its purpose is to provide historical context for notability standards of the time and their development, which have changed and been refined since 2007. As a result, this historical reference should not be used as an argument in deletion or merge discussions. The historical "If we can have an article about every minor Pokémon, we can have an article about X" argument has since been widely recognized as "What about article x?"—a type of argument to avoid.

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The Pokémon test is an argument that was made at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, before specific fictional Pokémon species were merged into lists of Pokémon. It asserted that an article on a subject should be kept because it was at least as notable as an average Pokémon.

Until mid-2007, Wikipedia had standalone articles for each of the 493 Pokémon species which then existed. A discussion that year found consensus that not all Pokémon are notable, and most were eventually redirected to list articles such as List of generation I Pokémon. Since 2007, the franchise continued and more Pokémon were released, with well over a thousand as of generation IX, and more importantly, sources providing WP:SIGCOV have emerged through the years for provide notability for many Pokémon species-based articles.

History

The Pokémon test is believed to have stemmed from the attempt to curtail the number of individual Pokémon articles by listing them for deletion citing WP:FICT. However, although consensus formed in the Wikipedia:Poképrosal agreed that WP:FICT did actually apply to Pokémon stubs, the formation of WikiProject Pokémon (under various names), and the pledge that all stubs were to be expanded, saw the issue die down somewhat. More recently, the WikiProject has worked on a merge of Pokémon species articles, rendering the test moot. Since then, the Pokémon test is sometimes cited in the inverse: articles on minor fictional characters are now routinely merged into one article, citing the Pokémon merger and WP:POKEMON as the most prominent and influential precedent.

Examples of typical use

if we can have articles for every minor character in Star Wars, Star Trek, and each of those pesky Pokemon, we can have an article about Professor Hopper.
More keep-worthy than any individual Pokemon.
...if we'll keep made up pokemon characters, write 600 words on a character mention only in passing in a harry potter novel, I see no reason this cant be kept.
Keep. I hate to resort to the Pokémon test, but... if freaking Golbat has its own article, freaking 593 deserves its own article. Not a ton of stuff is more notable than a number, right?
Merge. The individual stops on the 510 Spadina and the 512 St. Clair streetcar routes should be merged with their respective lines. If the Pokémon test can be applied to non-human characters in the respective animé, then it can also be applied to transit stops as well. Using that test, the only pure LRT stop/station in Toronto that would merit an article is Queens Quay station, as well as individual stops on Line 3 Scarborough.

(Emphasis added.)

Karen Importance Test

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A related, and even more outdated, test was the Karen Importance Test (KIT), involving the citing of the specific Pokémon character Karen’s article, for the following reasons:

She seemed to be among the least significant of all the Pokémon characters with their own articles.
Her article had technically survived at least one AFD (however, it was speedily closed because the article was already slated to be merged, so it was not kept on its merits).
The article was a stub at the time the test was conceived (The earliest surviving copy of the independent article can be found here).

This was no longer a valid argument (if it ever was) by the time the Pokémon Test arose, because Karen's article had been merged with other related characters.

Criticism

There were three main criticisms of the Pokémon test that often arose in response to its use:

The first and most common was that, at the time, the Pokémon themselves weren't notable enough to have their own articles and that the inclusion of so many Pokémon articles was a mistake (see Wikipedia:Inclusion is not an indicator of notability).
Notability of Pokémon species may not be equivalent to the notability of other subjects; the argument implies that a parallel bar should be set for every type of article.
Finally, an argument that an article is at least as notable as an arbitrary Pokémon is still a subjective argument on the notability of that article, rather than reliance on the primary notability criterion (multiple, independent, reliable sources). Who can be certain that Rhydon really isn't more notable than Uncle Steve's Garage Band, after all?

External links

"Pick and choose and Pikachu: 20 years after Pokémon launched, its impact on Wikipedia remains", 2016 Wikimedia Foundation blog post discussing the history of Pokémon on Wikipedia, including the Pokémon test.