Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fishstick (Fortnite)

Fishstick (Fortnite)

Fishstick (Fortnite) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

The character has gotten mostly trivial mentions in reliable sources and clearly fails WP:GNG and WP:INDISCRIMINATE. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 03:29, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Fictional elements and Video games. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 03:29, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

Keep. I guess as the creator of the article, I obviously think so. Characters meets WP:GNG, and does not "clearly" fail it. Fishstick has a good argument as the second-most popular original character in Fortnite, which can be seen from the amount Epic Games uses him in their promotional and collaborative material. Appearance in DC Comics + having literal Adidas shoes are pretty good examples of the latter. Worst case here would just be to re-convert it to the draft space I had it in previously (if that draft didn't exist, I'd probably advocate for a redirect to Fortnite), but a delete is a few touches too far imo. Soulbust (talk) 03:53, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

The best way to refute an AfD is giving direct links to the best possible sources on the character that demonstrate WP:SIGCOV rather than saying WP:SOURCESEXIST, WP:ITSPOPULAR and the like, which doesn't help your point that much. If I have missed really good sources then I might withdraw it or at least others would !vote keep. Right now, I am still not seeing it though. Also if something isn't notable then draftifying won't help it, per WP:OVERCOME... ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 04:25, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

WP:OVERCOME isn't a guideline but if it was, it's worth noting that it make zero mentions of draft articles and then I could just easily point to WP:NDRAFT which is likewise an essay, but it actually does make explicit commentary on how to approach notability as it pertains to the draft space. I've had Fishstick in the regular draft space since October 2024, and in my own personal user draft space before that from December 2023 to October 2024. I think putting it back in as a draft should not be an issue for anybody.

Also "The best way to refute an AfD is giving direct links to the best possible sources on the character that demonstrate....." Yes, yes, trust me, I'm aware... I know... Part of me just feels like letting the article speak for itself here. But even more so, I just want to have both it and myself breathe a bit — as you nominated this for deletion less than a day after I moved it to the mainspace and aside from this article, I've been working on a lot of non-video game-related stuff lately.

I think this might be less of a clear-cut keep than those linked examples above (the Bastion one resulted in a merge, but hey, I guess WP:OVERCOME's "in a nutshell" comment that "the problem usually cannot be solved by more editing" might just be a bit flawed); regardless, I'll just let other editors chime in and if it leans toward a delete, I would at that point think I maybe moved it out of the draft space too early and would just ask the AfD closer to simply revert it back into a draft. As far as sources that mention Fishstick beyond a trivial mention (i.e. being SIGCOV), I would say: 1, 2, and 3. I might look for other sources later, but don't really want to bunker down and focus on this particular article at this moment. Soulbust (talk) 05:03, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

Drafts are for notable article subjects that need more work. A non-notable subject is not suitable for a draft unless you are sure it will become notable soon. It's just an end run around deletion that will cause problems further down the line if resubmitted without cause.

Your argument that it was nominated so quickly after moving it to mainspace is another WP:OVERCOME insinuation. Specifically, that working on it more will save it from deletion and you did not have time. To be clear, an AfD is about general notability rather than an article's current state.

I'd characterize 2/3 of those sources as overtly trivial and the last one as sort-of-significant but clearly not serious (I mean, since when is a mascot character "killed off" for real?) ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 08:34, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

I find the draftify dispute unnecessary anyway, just do user pages like I do. No restrictions there if you wanna work on a user subpage Cukie Gherkin (talk) 10:02, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

Actually, using user pages for this purpose does also have similar restrictions. Per the Wikipedia guideline WP:SUB, #3 of disallowed usage is using userpages as a permanent location for content meant to be part of the encyclopedia. Therefore, all articles that are userfied are meant to be there only on a temporary basis rather than permanent "until it ever becomes notable, even if it takes forever" storage - just with less of a clearly defined cutoff than regular drafts.

So odds are, if an article could be userfied, it might as well be a draft. And conversely, if it shouldn't be a draft, it likely shouldn't be a userpage. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 12:03, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

"permanent" implies the intention is that the article will remain in a draft space, which is clearly, ideally, not Soulbust's goal. Further, if it was draftified or userfied, it would definitionally not belong on the encyclopedia. Cukie Gherkin (talk) 12:12, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

Hopefully whoever closes this AfD agrees with me that the whole point of a draft is just to progressively work on them. This is what it looked like when I first even conceived of this page. At that time, about a third of the sources presently on the article weren't even published yet. Soulbust (talk) 09:11, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

• Redirect Appearances in media don't count towards notability, and there is next to nothing here. Sorry Soulbust, but there's no meat on this bone. EDIT: I'm going to add to this, but a WP:BEFORE showed nothing either. There could be potential for a possible Characters of Fortnite, but the issue would be keeping it straightforward and satisfying LISTN.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 05:02, 18 June 2025 (UTC)
• Keep Contra Kung Fu Man, I have long argued here that a character appearing in a new media absolutely counts towards notability, as demonstrating real world impact. I find Soulbust's argument compelling. Jclemens (talk) 04:56, 18 June 2025 (UTC)
• Redirect I find the argument that collabs make a significant contribution to notability not compelling. It suggests that a character's notability could be bought, and if you wanted to argue that these media appearances make a significant difference, why don't we see any discussion about the significance of them? Why do we only have two sources discussing the skin's popularity? - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 05:01, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

  "It suggests that a character's notability could be bought" And? If something is bought, maybe that just makes it notable in a way you (or I) don't like. But that doesn't matter if it ends up being notable as a result anyway. Also yes, Fortnite does in fact, through its ridiculous amount of collaborations, find a way to extend is relevance and double-down on its notability. Fishstick is, from what I can see (and I'd have to really dig into this to be sure, which would be against my desire), second to Peely as Epic's choice of sticking their own characters into the promotional and collaboration material they produce for Fortnite.

  "Why do we only have two sources discussing the skin's popularity" Which skin are you talking about? I found plenty of sourcing on the character's skins but wanted to avoid using unreliable sources or creating a ref-bomb situation. Soulbust (talk) 05:10, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

  I meant the Fish stick character skin, why is there such a limited selection of evidence that the result of these media appearances is anything significant? It feels like we're assuming that these media appearances have contributed to Fish stick being notable, but the sourcing doesn't say so. Cukie Gherkin (talk) 05:18, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

  The sourcing says that he has appeared in both Marvel and DC Comics issues, and that Epic and Adidas picked him as an inspiration for one of their Fortnite x Ultraboost shoe collabs. (So bascially, the significance is implied here, as an example). I'm reading WP:SIGCOV as that coverage passes a threshold of significance for us as editors here, not that the sourcing needs to explicitly call whatever it is covering "significant" from their perspective. And honestly, from the source's perspective, whatever they're covering is [they are] overwhelmingly more likely than not to think of their subject as significant and notable which is why they're covering/writing about it in the first place. Then it's up to us to parse it as past that aforementioned threshold or not, for Wikipedia purposes. But in any case, I'm gonna head offline now and re-visit this AfD at some later point. Soulbust (talk) 05:27, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

  note struck through a portion of this that made my reply have a confusing logical/grammatical structure. Added "they are" as well, to help with that. Soulbust (talk) 09:04, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

  But we have WP:ROUTINE to cover that, there's nothing to suggest that coverage of Fishstick was anything more significant than any crossover. Notability is not inherited, and as a non-player, the article does not convey to me why Fishstick isn't more notable than a million different characters deemed non-notable for a lack of significant coverage Cukie Gherkin (talk) 05:49, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

Delete A clear GNG failure. There's quite literally no SIGCOV I can see. A character being merchandised does not confer notability, just as a character existing does not confer notability. There is no significant real world impact I can see here. Willing to redirect if there's a good target but I see none for a character this obscure and non-notable. Magneton Considerer: Pokelego999 (Talk) (Contribs) 01:12, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Oh yeah, so obscure that when you Google the character, he pops up before the food that Epic derived his name from. So "obscure". I'm not using that Google Trends chart to argue anything in regards of WP:GNG or whatever, but to call this character "obscure" is hilariously erroneous. Soulbust (talk) 01:29, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

I think that replying to everyone who !votes delete or redirect, when said with this tone, runs afoul of beratement. I don't mind discussing this, but this doesn't seem like a tone this will engender meaningful discussion. Cukie Gherkin (talk) 02:09, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

I think it's easy to misread tone over text communication. Do I think it is flatly wrong to call the character obscure? Yes. Am I berating Pokelego999? No. They called this a "clear GNG failure"; and you stated that you "find the argument that collabs make a significant contribution to notability not compelling", so you saying you "don't mind discussing this" (presumably discussing this further) is confusing to me. What more is there to discuss? Pokelego999 thinks the article "clearly" fails GNG and doesn't see a good redirect target, though as mentioned above, I think a redirect to Fortnite (or as Kung Fu Man suggested, a potential Characters of Fortnite article, if it were to be made) would be apt. So with all that in mind already, I would just wanna move it back into the draft space if the AFD closer doesn't find this to be a keep. Soulbust (talk) 08:57, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Calling something "hilariously erroneous" is essentially an argument to the person; you're implying they are incompetent as an editor and thus their opinion should be ignored. Simply "erroneous" would suffice if you are just pointing out a mistake. Although I'd have to agree with Pokelego in that very few non-Fortnite players will have ever heard of this character. Googling "fish stick" solely gives me the food, so it's likely a case of small details, I never call the food a "fishstick" as that would be incorrect spelling. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 11:01, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Misspellings during Google searches happen all the time. The character's search history is on par with the food regardless, and my point in mentioning the Google search results in the first place was just to refute the statement that the character is "obscure".

I called it hilariously erroneous because it was a flatly incorrect statement. Note that I pointed to the word "obscure", and not "notable". Calling the character not notable is fair (more correctly, it's the appropriate word if you're asserting it isn't passing WP:GNG), but to call it obscure is incorrect. Maybe you think adding "hilariously" was much, but I wasn't implying incompetence on their part and claiming that I was is an overreaction to what I said. Also I wasn't planning to go on a long back-and-forth about it, because the character isn't obscure and I have no desire to argue that. Simple as. But it's confusing to me to act like it would be wrong to argue here when the whole AfD process is essentially putting an article on trial and arguing for or against its existence... WP:AFDFORMAT literally uses "argument" multiple times in its wording.

Also, the point that "very few non-Fortnite players will have ever heard of this character" doesn't really(?) matter. There is no policy or guideline I am aware of that makes articles have to pass some sort of (not) niche threshold to pass WP:GNG. Given the introduction on your user page ("with an emphasis on creating new, high-quality articles on obscure/quirky yet notable subjects that most people would not pick up on, such as little-known indie titles, niche games, game characters, levels and items"), I also find this point an odd knock on this article. Yes the word "notable" in that intro is not lost on me, but again, the article being about a niche/obscure topic vs. a notable topic are different conversations to me. Soulbust (talk) 19:59, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

On the matter of redirects, the Fortnite article does not mention this character at all, so a redirect there would be unhelpful. Magneton Considerer: Pokelego999 (Talk) (Contribs) 19:35, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

I see no reason why the Fortnite article (or more specifically the Fortnite Battle Royale article) couldn't be expanded to include a small sub-section about its in-game elements (including its characters). Soulbust (talk) 19:43, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

I mean there's not really much to add. Fishstick has nothing really saying he's a very important part of the brand. He's just been promoted a bit. At least with something like the recently AfD'd Durrr Burger you can point to it being a major mascot or part of the branding, but Fishstick seems minor at best with the sourcing provided here. Magneton Considerer: Pokelego999 (Talk) (Contribs) 07:00, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Again, I point to the collaborations Epic has done to have him feature in content, not just multiple times, but with very high-profile collaborators. When they go into the comic space, they're collabing with both DC and Marvel to stick Fishstick in those comics. They don't do this with every character. When they go into shoes, they're collabing with Adidas. They made four shoes. Only Peely and Fishstick were picked for these shoes (the other two were based on non-character in-game elements). This isn't "minor" branding, in my opinion. Soulbust (talk) 04:31, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. Not much significant and uninherited coverage in spite of the character's prominent appearances, while I don't see a good target for redirection. Go D. Usopp (talk) 03:49, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Comment: Notability about as weak as Peely, I would selectively merge both to a Fortnite characters section. IgelRM (talk) 19:06, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

Notability can't be "about" as weak as anything else, WP:GNG is pretty much a binary. Either it passes or doesn't, and the only real variance is if an AfD gets kept (or deleted) "weakly", normally, or in a snow sense. Peely is a clear keep by the way, given that character's central role in the Epic Games vs. Apple lawsuit and even greater presence in Epic's promotional marketing of Fortnite/collaborative material. Soulbust (talk) 04:06, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

• Delete or redirect per all. I am not seeing nearly enough WP:SIGCOV. I am neutral on the redirect target, and the main Fortnite article would be a good default. Shooterwalker (talk) 03:23, 23 June 2025 (UTC)
• Delete per nomination. Merchandise does not make a character notable and that seems to be the only argument presented thus far. IzzySwag (talk) 14:54, 24 June 2025 (UTC)
• Comment, since today it will be a week since AfD was opened and this will potentially close -- if this was about raw votes, it obviously leans to delete (or perhaps redirect), but regardless I don't think it will end in keep, or even as no consensus (though would be pleasantly stunned if it did). In any case, I found more sourcing today, not the kind that I think would sway any stating to delete, though still useful for developing the article further. I do imagine the character will only continue to be present in Epic's promotional material and will continue to be written about in sourcing so I would ask the AfD closer to consider that I would be keen on this being re-draftified so I can continue working on it and so the prose as currently constructed can remain intact to either build on, restructure, or even have myself or another editor be able to do considerable overhauling of later on. This would be akin to previous experience with this sort of article being nominated (and closed as merge) and later revived. Thanks Soulbust (talk) 16:15, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

  While I have no counterpoint to the concerns about notability, I do offer support that the notion of the character being "obscure" is rather misguided/incorrect, and I don't see any issue with draftifying. You also virtually wrote the entire article, so there's no real attribution issues if you just copy/paste a copy into a new user draft if you wish to keep working on it. It's not any sort of WP:NOT violation, so you're fine. Sergecross73 msg me 18:15, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Relisting to allow for assessing the sources added by Soulbust.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Owen× ☎ 11:54, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

• Delete Just because something exists and is discussed doesn't mean it warrants a Wikipedia article. The subject doesn't receive enough coverage to warrant its own article. Angryapathy (talk) 14:46, 25 June 2025 (UTC)
• Comment The new sources don't add anything and I still feel redirect is the best option (Draftify could also work). If anything they helped ensure if it does get revived there may be more to clean out, I hate to say it...--Kung Fu Man (talk) 17:09, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

  I mean, I think I was pretty up front that I don't think the sources added post-AfD nomination were ones that would change anyone's mind here. Also didn't say I was hoping for a relisting to have them be assessed. I think they are just citing supplemental information (like the emote) and honestly wish this was reverted back into the draft space. I don't think a redirect is inherently a bad choice, but I think can be constructively worked on as a draft. Soulbust (talk) 18:24, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

• Delete--I don't see significant coverage. Drmies (talk) 17:11, 25 June 2025 (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.