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This is a perfect short article. What seems to be the problem with it? Why merge it with Sick Puppy if practically all the information in it comes from Double Whammy? What do you mean "this article does not cite its sources"??? Are the titles of two Hiaasen novels not enough? What do you expect? (As always, this is not a rhetorical question.) Finally, what else is there to "clean up"? <KF> 19:05, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have read at least three 'Skink' novels, and I would say he is extremely comfortable with weapons of various types, including firearms, but he does not "usually carry". He often has weapons stashed, and he sometimes carries, but in my memory, he usually does not.

In answer to previous poster, secondary sources are needed in support of this entire article. Even my first statement, above, I derived from reading the novels, a primary source. It is the practice of encyclopedists to use secondary, preferably published, and therefore repeatably verifiable, sources. This entire article could arguably be called wp:or. I am not proposing deletion, but then I don't tend to be a deletionist. Others may feel differently.

I intend to change the phrasing mentioned. Rags (talk) 06:35, 7 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Back in 2018 a lot of undefined short form refs were addrd, {{sfn}} in this case. Checking through them it became apparent that they simply referred to the novels the character appears in. I'm not going to create all the missing cites, and instead have restored the unreferenced tag. Secondary sources discussing the character are required. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 15:34, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Are secondary sources required for every detail, though? Because if that's the policy, thousands of articles about various fictional characters would become so devoid of material that we might as well merge / redirect them to brief bullet-point character lists in the articles on their source novel or movie or whatever. It seems to me that adding citations pointing to specific book pages in which a character is described are a reasonable means of finding and referencing information that would be of interest to Wikipedia users. And I didn't add those citations to this article, by the way. I'm sincerely asking about the policy and pointing out the extreme gutting of many articles on fictional characters that would need to be carried out if this insistence on secondary sources was rigidly enforced across the project. Zeng8r (talk) 20:17, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't the person who added the references either, but someone felt the need to do so. I'm only saying that if references are added they need to be secondary sources. Not ever details needs references, but any detail that is likely to be challenged must have one (see WP:BURDEN). As to other articles I couldn't say, but other stuff exists type of arguments aren't in general very convincing. If other articles contain fluff better suited to fanwiki then maybe they should be gutted, Wikipedia isn't meant to include all information only that which is encyclopedic. To this article in particular it doesn't appear to prove notability (see WP:GNG), so should probably be redirected. However I have no interest in doing so. If you have other general questions I suggest WP:TEAHOUSE or WP:HELPDESK. I only saw your reply by chance, and article talkpages are bad places to ask for general policy advice. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 16:50, 22 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the advice, but I've been a wikieditor for over 15 years and have a pretty good grasp of the rules at this point. I'd forgotten about this wiki-conversation until Carl Hiaasen came up in real life conversation today and I remembered to confirm the relevant policy. Per Wikipedia:BOOKPLOT, works of fiction can indeed be used as sources for info on notable characters therein as long as no leaps of original research are attempted. As such, I'm restoring the deleted info to this article. --Zeng8r (talk) 21:42, 6 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to revert you again, as none of those refs are actually defined. Short form references must have a full cite to link to somewhere else in the article. So please don't revert errors back into the article. You'll need to replace them with actual full defined references. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:33, 6 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So I mistuck you for a newer editor, no offense was meant. The questions you were asking just seemed very general, so I reached an assumption I shouldn't have. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:44, 6 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So you think that over two dozen perfectly allowable citations are not specific enough, and your solution is to completely remove them all and slap a "needs citation" banner at the top of the article? That's no solution at all, imo; to the casual reader, it now looks like this article is full of dubious info when that is not the case. How exactly do you think those references should be "actually defined"? They already include specific novels and chapters, and page numbers would not be helpful in this case as they'll differ depending on the book format. Do you mean that the bibliography should include ISBN numbers and the like? You could've easily added that yourself in less time than it took to remove the citations. So unless you can come up with a valid reason not to restore those citations and/or a reasonable proposal for converting them into "full defined references", I'm going to restore them again shortly. Zeng8r (talk) 02:15, 7 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have no feeling at all on whether there should be citations, as I said previously I only added CN tags where refs where previously. If you feel that references are not needed simply remove the CN tags. Also feel free to replace these with any other valid reference format. If you don't understand how {{sfn}} templates work, or that the they must have a full cite somewhere else in the article to be properly defined, then I suggest reading the template documentation or check Category:Harv and Sfn no-target errors that document the errors. If you restore errors back into the article they will show up in the category, and I will come and correct them again. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 12:27, 8 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]