Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cosmic Energy

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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, who seem to have a clear consensus (ie. a combination of number and strength of argument, combined at appropriate weighting). I found the arguments in response to the WP:OR, WP:V and WP:RS arguments to be insufficient in closing this as no consensus. Daniel 08:25, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cosmic Energy

Cosmic Energy (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Delete, unsalvageable OR and nonsense that I was just a hair away from speedy deleting. This appears to be an attempt to describe fictional representations of "energy" as the basis of superpowers. It is confused from start to finish ("cosmic energy is a fictional type of matter"??), and consists of little more than nonsensical statements ("Several examples of real world Cosmic Energy are: Lighting, Neuclear Energy, Lasers, Fire, and Radiation") and unfounded generalizations. The very premise of this is furthermore flawed, as there is no common use of the term "cosmic energy" from one work of fiction to another, let alone a universal underpinning of the fictional "physics." We already have a list of superpowers that can list and compare. Postdlf 17:30, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

  • This article should NOT be deleted becuase their is NO article for Cosmic Energy/Energy Fields and Forces in fiction. There is an article for every character you can imagine, many of whom harness energy, but there is no article for such. Maybe a title change to ENERGY (fiction) is all that is needed. But by no mean should it be deleted. Perhaps rethought, but I thought my job as a Wikipedian was to expand Wikipedia to make it closer to completion.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Radman622 (talk • contribs)
  • Delete unsourced OR. --Fredrick day 18:03, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete unsourced, chalked full of original research, and horribly written. Need I say more? --Ghostexorcist 18:07, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete Ghostexorcist needn't say more as that'll do. To Radman622: If you feel there is something in this copy it to your sandbox and work on it there. Feel free to drop by the Comics Project to ask for feedback when it is fully referenced and we can have a look at it and see if it can be moved back. (Emperor 18:30, 25 September 2007 (UTC))
  • I did some major editing, but I don't appreciate your personal attacks on how "horribly written" my article was. If it's so bad then why don't you get off your wikibutt AND HELP EDIT IT! The point of wikipedia is not to delete every new article because it is complete, it is to do everything in your power to guide those articles to completion, and make it to where they are not "horribly written". So I'm sorry if I didn't satisfy you high and mighty critics, but anyone can be a critic. It takes a real wikipedian to deliver. Now. I would appreciate any and all help if you can stop insulting me for about ten seconds, look over the article and put your edits in. I'm only an ameture wiki people, give me a break and help me out! Thank you, and I hope I won't have to say it again. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Radman622 (talk • contribs) 20:30, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Why so defensive? My comment about your article was NOT a personal attack (see, I can use uppercase letters too). I have been on wikipedia for quite a while, so I can easily tell a good article from a bad one. I personally don't want to help with the article since I have my own to work on. And please sign your name properly with "~~~~" each time you leave a reply. --Ghostexorcist 06:32, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
the main problem with your article is that cosmic energy has been used in such an inconsistent and vague manner across fictional universes that it would be impossible to create an useful article around such a term. For every usage example you provide, someone is going to provide another that says "no it works this way". Original research is the only way you could complete the article - and we don't do original research. sorry. --Fredrick day 20:40, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Never show me the odds. I'm going to create this fricking article, or have my fingers fall off trying. I don't care if it doesn't get made into an article. At least I fufilled my duty as a wikipedian "make wikipedia as complete and accurate as possible." Thank you for your input, thank you for being polite, and I will take that into consdieration when writing the future edits of this article (maybe an edit war will even start). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Radman622 (talk • contribs) 20:45, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I applaud you for your enthusiam, but it looks like the article is going to be deleted any way. However, I hope you can rewrite it in your sandbox and actually provide comic book or scholarly book citations to support your claims before activating the page again. --Ghostexorcist 06:32, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
If you really believed that this article could be saved, then you'd be advocating that it be turned into a stub for later fleshing out into an article without OR. By advocating to delete, you are saying that this article will never amount to anything. -- Lilwik 07:24, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Just because it's a "stub" doesn't mean it can be OR either, so I'm confused as to what you think would comprise this hypothetical stub. Postdlf 15:58, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Surely you are aware of what a stub usually is! A stub is just a simple description of what the article is to be about, to later be expanded into a real article with real content and sources and everything. The purpose of a stub is to show other articles that they can link to here where there probably will one day be an article, and to encourage editors to help create an article. This article is already a stub, but it's a stub with editing problems that needs to have a bunch of OR cut out and a stub tag added. As always, the solution to OR and bad writing is editing, not AFD. -- Lilwik 17:57, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I didn't ask what stubs look like generally, I asked what a valid stub on this topic (whatever it might be) would consist of, seeing as the posting is 100% OR. What would this "simple description" state and upon what reliable source(s) would it be based? Postdlf 19:03, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I must admit that I don't actually know what cosmic energy is, but I have heard of it often enough to be pretty sure that it is important. I'm not specifically qualified to work on this article or provide sources for it, but I do know that most of the arguments being put forward for the deletion of this article are actually editing issues. For deletion, we should be arguing about things like notability of cosmic energy. I think before this AFD was started, someone should have done bold editing and replaced the content of this article with something like, "Cosmic energy is a phenomenon related to outerspace in numerous works of fiction," then marked it with citations needed and lacking sources and being a stub, so that people who know what they are doing can make it better. You wouldn't have even needed any discussion to do that, but of course it can't be done while the article is up for AFD. -- Lilwik 21:12, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Really? That's what you're trying to save here? A single sentence that is meaninglessly vague beyond invoking the generic association of the word "cosmic" with outer space. Move along, folks. There's absolutely nothing to see here. Postdlf 21:23, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm not saying that is worthy of an article all by itself. I'm suggesting that we make this a stub so it can be brought to the attention of people who look for stubs to flesh out, and to the attention of all the projects who might be interested in it, where people might know more about it than we do, like the Paranormal project and Science Fiction project and the Comics project. I'm saying that if we give it a reasonable chance, it might grow into a good article. It's hasn't been given enough time and it hasn't been categorized properly; there has been no chance for people who might know about this stuff to work on it. -- Lilwik 21:39, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete as unsourced and original research, as indicated above. To the creator: you have several days to improve the article to the point where it can meet our guidelines, but you must ensure that it meets verifiability standards and uses reliable sources to back it up. If it hasn't been written about by others, it's probably not going to fly here, though. Tony Fox (arf!) 20:53, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
  • delete LOL trippy!:) To the articles creator- if it does get deleted don't dispair- my first article was too.Merkinsmum 21:21, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete. Keep. I agree that the current article is no good, but that just means that it needs heavy work done, very heavy work. It should probably be stripped down to the barest essentials and made into a stub. Then we should watch to make sure that no OR is added into it. However, it is such a commonly reference subject that I think it is certain that we should have an article on it. It just needs to be a better article than this. It could be part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Paranormal maybe, as well as Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics. A badly written article is grounds for editing, not grounds for deletion. -- Lilwik 22:39, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
    • It's far more than just poor writing—it doesn't contain a single statement that isn't incorrect or an unverifiable generality. I'm not sure I even know what the subject is supposed to be, as it starts off as if "cosmic energy" is some kind of discrete concept or force (it "resembles rays of colored light"?? according to what?) but then goes on to equivocate any use of the word "energy" in sci-fi/fantasy (and reality) as if it all referred to something similar. It then seems to be some attempt at a fictional unified field theory, using "cosmic energy" as underlying any kind of "energy," yet this clearly isn't something that is an express or even implied premise in every work that has any semblance of the fictional phenomenon listed. It shows no grounding in any particular fictional canon and does not even accurately represent what could be considered common fictional themes. Plus it shows absolutely no understanding of energy in reality, which is kind of necessary if you're going to distinguish what is fictional about its treatment in fiction. The author was clearly making it up as he went along and at best confusedly remembering a few stories he may have read—how else do you explain nonsensical assertions such as the "forms of Cosmic Energy in the real world," or that "electrical energy" is "most commonly used by mechanical characters"? As I said above, the only germ of this that has any validity is in cataloging different superpowers in fiction and their purported physical sources, for which we already have list of superpowers. Postdlf 02:46, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
      • I'm not suggesting that we keep the writing. I'm just suggesting that we keep the article as a stub so that it can be replaced with all new and better writing someday, and scrap most of the current content. Deleting the article is saying that we never want an article about cosmic energy. It's not only saying that this article is worthless, but also that this article cannot ever be improved to meet Wikipedia standards. -- Lilwik 04:45, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
  • comment- Lilwik, see the articles Energy Energy (spirituality) as you can see these articles cover all the subject matter of this article, the mention of mages etc may be referring to Magic or Magick, though more likely is from online gaming. So you can see we have an article for everything he mentions except the use of an energy in fiction, which is yet to be defined narrowly enough to write an article about, and for the article to decide on its own definition would be original research anyway.Merkinsmum 23:33, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
    • Energy in fiction seems to be a fairly big oversight, actually. It is referenced very frequently in fiction to the point where it is more notable than most individual works of fiction that we have articles on. There may be some difficulties in writing a good article on that subject, but that doesn't mean that we should take away people's chance to try. -- Lilwik 04:45, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete - Psychic energy is cosmic energy? Mystical energy? Electrical energy? Who's defining cosmic? Who defines what types of energy are cosmic? Oh, right, a reliable source... Which is notably lacking. Yes, this is Original research of the obvious kind. - jc37 06:34, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I think Radman622 does not know about the Power Cosmic article. --Ghostexorcist 06:48, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Another article that might be important in this discussion is Cosmic ray, which one might consider a kind of cosmic energy. -- Lilwik 07:33, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Why, because they both use the word "cosmic"? Postdlf 15:58, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree that alot of speculation is neccesary to tie together every fiction ever written, and I understand that many of you will be flabberghasted by the concept of such an article, but the fact that the article contains OR does not mean delete it! I simply means that I need you high and might wikipedians who can so easily sit back and criticize to HELP ME IMPROVE IT! DO SOMETHING OTHER THAN PLAY HOLIER THAN THOU FOR A CHANGE! ARE YOU AFRAID OF WORK? This article has left a sour taste of Wikipedia in my mouth. I try to do my job as a wikipeian which is to expand wikipedia (the ultimate goal of wikipedia is completeness) and what thanks do I get? Personal insults and snide comments! Well let me tell you something. You can do whatever you want to my article, I don't care anymore. I'm not going to even try to save it with critics like you hovering over it, but personal insult I will not stand for. So I'm not even checking in again until a month from now. You people can either sit here and go on and on about my poor writing skills, my lack of knowledge on the subject and my original research, or you can try to make it work like REAL wikipedians. But trust me, I'm not placing any bets on you people. Radman 17:43, 26 September 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Radman622 (talk • contribs)

I agree with most of those, but I really don't think WP:NFT applies. There may not be any sources given, but the editors of this article did not make up the concept of cosmic energy themselves. It is a real concept that could have a real encyclopedia article one day. -- Lilwik 18:32, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Lilwik, I hadn't seen this before but take a look at the Power Cosmic article User:Ghostexorcist pointed out. This is a duplicate article. Radman622 no-one is picking on you, but the entire concept is in that article already, so another one isn't needed- you can do your excellent work there.Merkinsmum 21:59, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm fairly certain that the concept of cosmic energy doesn't begin or end with the Silver Surfer. I haven't been able to get any specific examples, but I'm almost sure that the concept of cosmic energy has a long and colorful history through science fiction. I'd like to see an article that talks about the various ways that it has been used as an idea in fiction and how that relates to real science. The thing I like most about Wikipedia is the amazing way that no matter what I want to look up, I can almost always find it here. Wikipedia is better than Google, and so it should be, but Google gets 294,000 results on "cosmic energy", and this article is all that Wikipedia has to offer. Wikipedia deserves more than it has now, not less. -- Lilwik 00:16, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
But as "cosmic" is a word generically used to evoke the wonders and mysteries of outer space, there isn't any reason to think that its pairing with the word "energy" has any consistent meaning across works of fiction beyond a fanciful term raising an obvious connotation of, well, "energy from outer space!!! Woooooooo!!!" (ahem) If it is instead a consistent and substantive concept in fiction (e.g., psionics), then one shouldn't have any problem finding reliable sources that establish that, and meaningfully define the concept through an intertextual synthesis. Until that happens, garbage like this certainly isn't going to be left up just to add "more." And if a reliable source synthesizing "cosmic energy" in fiction has never been published, that objective can't be inaugurated here. Postdlf 00:50, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
lol at the theme music Postdlf. I did think the Power Cosmic article could be expanded to include other types of fictional 'stuff'. I've never heard of Silverthingy.:) But Postdlf is right, it would be WP:OR to state that there is a similar force to that posited in many other fictional works, if no-one reliable has said it before (even if it were true.)Merkinsmum 02:41, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree, but who are we to say that it hasn't been done? No one is suggesting leaving this garbage up. All I am suggesting is letting it be a stub for a few months to see if anyone has something useful to edit in about it. I can't claim that I know of any secondary sources that unify the concept of cosmic energy across works of fiction, but they could exist. At the very least this article could become a survey of how cosmic energy appears in various works of fiction, couldn't it? -- Lilwik 04:52, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
We're (at least I'm) not saying "There shouldn't be an article on this subject" we're saying "The current article is unsalvageable, remove it and if someone can write a better version, they can recreate the article". Having a stub would not achieve anything useful. By all means move to userspace and continue to work on it there, but it doesn't belong in article space until such time as reliable sources can be used to verify that the contents of the article are not original research. -- M2Ys4U (talk) 11:20, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
If we remove the article without leaving a stub in its place, then we are exactly saying that there shouldn't be an article on this subject. If there should be an article on this subject then there should be a stub for people to link to and later fill in with a better article than what we have here. Deleting this now would make it much easier for any future article on this subject to be deleted, as well. -- Lilwik 18:57, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
em no it wouldn't - a well sourced article making use of multiple realiable sources and avoiding OR is hard to delete. You are making an argument to the future. Policy is clear - this article should be deleted and that is no barrier to recreation in the future. --Fredrick day 19:11, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
That sort of article is hard to delete, but almost no article ever starts out that way. An article needs to go through a growing process, starting out as a low quality article and slowly improving over time. Obviously the article we have is no starting point, but people will always be able to cite this AfD in deleting any starting-quality article that ever comes up on this subject. And having no stub is hardly an invitation to build an article. -- Lilwik 19:38, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
And policy does not say that this article should be deleted. It is not clear on that at all. OR and lack of sources is an editing issue. There is no policy that clearly shows this article should be deleted rather than improved. -- Lilwik 19:40, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
and what is left if we remove the unsourced or original research material? anyone the question is moot, this article WILL be deleted - it's pretty much WP:SNOW. --Fredrick day 19:44, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
A stub is left. This isn't WP:SNOW. Someone has to defend articles from being deleted for WP:OR or bad writing, because WP:OR and bad writing aren't grounds for deletion of any article. If you want grounds for deletion, look to WP:N or WP:NFT or similar things that indicate articles that shouldn't exist rather than should be corrected and improved. If we really must delete this article, then turn it into a stub, put it into the correct categories, and then wait a few months to prove that this subject has nowhere it can go. That would be grounds for deletion. -- Lilwik 20:16, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
Lilwik, I think you're generally confused as to policy and the pragmatic consequences of policy. WP:OR means that, where OR is identified as such, it is removed. It isn't tolerated as a gap-filler, and an OR stub is no more permissible than an OR full-length article. Even a stub has to be verifiable and based on reliable sources. Here there simply is no non-OR basis for even identifying and substantiating the article's topic, let alone defining it; you said yourself you don't even really know what it's supposed to be about. Nothing has been submitted out of which a valid stub can be constructed, not even a single valid sentence. And I also disagree that a redlink for a particular article title is somehow more discouraging to development, and less preferable, than completely inaccurate and made-up garbage posted under that title. Further, an article deleted through AFD on the basis of OR does not preclude the posting of an article on the same topic or under the same title that is not OR; the scope of an AFD is always limited to the rationale(s) for deletion. Postdlf 19:59, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
Not every statement needs sources. We are allowed to state the obvious and things which we cannot reasonably expect to ever be disputed. We can make a perfectly good little stub for this article even if none of us know anything substantial about the subject matter. A red link very much encourages an article to be developed, but it also encourages the link to be removed from articles, until soon the problem is solved by forgetting about cosmic energy rather than expanding Wikipedia. -- Lilwik 20:16, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
We are allowed to state the obvious and things which we cannot reasonably expect to ever be disputed. so if it's so obvious - what's cosmic energy? Feel free to add two sourced statements to the article that explains it. --Fredrick day 20:31, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
I guess I didn't make myself clear. We are allowed to make statements like that without sources. We don't source every statement on Wikipedia, only the ones that might be disputed. Just look at what WP:V actually says about the requirement to have statements be verifiable: All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged should be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation. That's not all statements, just some of them. It's only deletionists who try to twist WP:V into meaning that absolutely everything must have a source. Personally, I'm not really in a position to help with this article, but the principle is still the same. -- Lilwik 21:02, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
We don't source every statement on Wikipedia, only the ones that might be disputed. Yes and the main part of this HAS been disputed - well actually reading the article, I'd actually dispute every sentence of it. I'm baffled why you are defending this article so much when you have already said you don't have any clue about the content. We are going around in circles here - it is clear from the discussion here that this article WILL be deleted. I have nothing further to say on the matter unless someone improves the article by adding sources. --Fredrick day 21:16, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
If you don't like this discussion, then it would be better if you stopped misinterpreting the statements of others and thereby giving them motivation to correct the misinterpretation. I also have lost interest in this, because the article just isn't that important, but I'm baffled by how you could be unintentionally twisting my words around like that. I never said that there was anything worth keeping in this article. I've said the opposite several times. If you look at the context of the words you quoted from me, you will surely see that I was talking about writing a stub that would contain minimal sources in response to your challenge to me to create a stub that had sources for its every statement. -- Lilwik 00:13, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
Ok, I took ALL of the useful information in that article, and made it a stub. You can find it in my userspace here: User:M2Ys4U/Cosmic_Energy. -- M2Ys4U (talk) 14:37, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
That's the most awesome stub I've ever seen. Thank you for that.  : ) Postdlf 14:48, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
Alright, I guess you've convinced me. I wouldn't want to make the stub myself and it seems that no one else here could do it well either. If we can't write a good stub then we have no choice but to delete. If cosmic energy is important enough, I hope that someone will create a new article one day. -- Lilwik 19:26, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
LOL User:M2Ys4U, that is, like, the best stub evar!:)Merkinsmum 20:06, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete vaguely named, weakly defined, poorly written article. Cleanup would serve no constructive purpose for pointless article. Doczilla 04:38, 27 September 2007 (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.