Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of fictional weapons

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 delete. - Mailer Diablo 13:01, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of fictional weapons

Per the similar AFDs here and here, here's an even more unlimited, less useful list. No limits mean that this can never be usefully complete or particularly useful for navigation. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 06:26, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per nominator. JIP | Talk 08:02, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Btw, the whole Dune arsenal is missing. Duplicate to the much better Category:Fictional weapons. Pavel Vozenilek 11:35, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per Pavel. --Masamage 16:48, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per A Man in Black and Pavel. This is better off as a category. If kept everything that doesn't have a standalone article should be megadeathrayed (aka removed) as unverified original research.--Isotope23 18:31, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per all above; also, where's the hamster cannon? Seriously, though, this list is effectively infinite. Zetawoof^(ζ) 22:01, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
  • If that were true, then the same would be true of list of weapons, since the latter is a superset of the former. In fact, however, it is false. The list of weapons that exist in fiction but that do not exist in reality is finite. Uncle G 00:50, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per all of that -Markeer 23:08, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
• The sole stated objection to this article, that it has "no limits", has no actual foundation. The limit was clear to me, for one, from the article's title alone; and upon reading the article I found that the entries in the list corresponded with the limit that I expected. This is a list of weapons that exist in works of fiction but that do not exist in reality. (Compare this with the explicit statement at Category:Fictional weapons, which says pretty much exactly that.) That is a set that is clearly limited. There is not an infinite number of fictional weapons, for starters because there is not an infinite number of works of fiction.

  Furthermore, this list is not comparable to the other two lists mentioned in the nomination. The other two lists were lists of real firearms, in films and videogames. In contrast to those two lists, this list excludes real weapons. It isn't a list of the weapons that appear in works of fiction. Unlike the other two lists, this list will not potentially have several thousand historical novels listed against "sword". It is the list of weapons that appear in works of fiction excluding all of the real ones, which narrows the scope of the list significantly from what, per the nomination, it appears some editors erroneously think the scope of the list to be. The crossbows, guns, swords, and so forth in historical fiction are all are excluded from this list because they are real weapons.

  The only real reason for considering deleting this article, which hasn't even been mentioned in this discussion, is whether the categories (note the plural) do the job a lot better. They currently don't. The categories don't include duodecaplylatomate, the DeLameters, and the Sunbeam from the Lensman series, for example, and cannot include them because we (rightly) don't have individual articles on them. There are plenty other fictional weapons that similarly don't warrant whole articles to themselves. There is a clear place for this list to supplement the categories, and the list is neither too broadly construed to be maintainable nor too narrowly construed to be useful. Keep. Uncle G 00:50, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

  • Although the number of weapons in fiction is technically finite (as the number of books that have been written is finite), it's effectively infinite, as there are a very large number of novels (and movies and comic books...) which invent weapons, particularly in science fiction. Can we expect to be thorough in this coverage? No - there are entirely too many books to realistically expect that we've covered everything that's been envisioned. Does this list serve a specific purpose in grouping these things together? No - these weapons bear no relation to each other, besides that they're all fictional. The only reason for its existence that I've seen mentioned is for listing fictional weapons which are too minor to get articles of their own, and I don't really see how this is particularly useful. Zetawoof^(ζ) 01:07, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Zeta hit it on the nose. The problem is not that it's literally infinite, but that it's so hopelessly unlimited so as to never be usefully complete. This will always be "List of a random selection of fictional weapons." - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 20:35, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Novels of Jan Matzal Troska employ many psysically impossible weapons like a heat ray capable to boil an ocean. What good would be the list containing heat ray (novel A), heat ray (series B, has feature x), heat ray (novel C, can blow up a planet), ... Pavel Vozenilek 09:01, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. This is much better covered by a category. Fictional weapons we do have articles on vs. those we don't is a good way to determine what gets on the list and what doesn't. After all, just about every sci-fi book creates new weapons. Mangojuice^talk 19:21, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Much better we stick with Category:Fictional weapons --ArmadilloFromHell 07:03, 1 October 2006 (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.