Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Glossary of fan fiction terms

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 keep. Cleanup still encouraged, of course. Sandstein (talk) 14:18, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Glossary of fan fiction terms

Glossary of fan fiction terms (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Glorified dictionary. Uncited and ORish for the past seventeen months. Will ^(talk) 19:56, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

• Speedy Delete per WP:OR and is also cruft. Doc Strange 22:50, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
• Strong delete per WP:SYNTH, not a speedy candidate but just an unsalvageable list. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(Broken clamshells•Otter chirps)} 22:54, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

  Keep, but Recommend trimming, renaming and new, stricter guidelines for article in question. Here's the background you guys may be missing, as well as why I think it should be kept, but how it could be improved to bring it in line with WP policies and guidelines and make it useful again - or, failing that, a nice compromise:

I was part of the group that originally split this. I was not, however, the one who created the idea of the section, which already existed in another article. It was originally part of the main article for Fan fiction, and was split at the same time as the Legal Issues section, because both were taking up too much room in then-massive (and still really big) original article, and there was no other way to prevent them from taking up too much space in it without splitting. However, it is not entirely useless when taken for what it originally was before its not-wholly-perfect name change (more on that in a moment) - that is, as a subarticle of fan fiction that complements the original by filling in the gaps. Fan fiction is one of those things that happens to have attracted a community of massive size, which naturally almost immediately began gaining its own set of jargon that is in some cases (such as Mary Sue, which already has its own currently B Class article) is really strange to newcomers. Many of these terms, such as Mary Sue, Canon (fiction), and Slash fiction, embody notable concepts that have been the subject of serious academic and literary commentary and themselves already have articles on this encyclopedia, sometimes B class or better as is the case with Mary Sue. However, simply including the terms in separate articles without interconnecting them makes it much more difficult for people who are trying to get an overview of fan fiction-related terminology to actually get it, as it involves tracking down and opening countless articles, which may or may not be categorized in such a way as to make their relationship to fan fiction clear. It is my belief that there is a solution here, though.

It is NOT unsalvageable, just even difficult to salvage. If we renamed it to "list of fan fiction terms and concepts" or something very similar, and retained it merely as a convenient common list of terms which are notable enough to retain their own Wikipedia articles or which there are actual sources to support their notability, then it's perfectly salvageable, and hell, I'll even volunteer to do it, if you'll give me a couple of weeks (I have a couple of papers due this week, but after that I'm a lot freer). How does that sound? Runa27 00:10, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

• Neutral, but if kept needs to be trimmed severely to remove commonplace terms such as "disclaimer" and BDSM which have exactly the same meaning within fandom as without. --Tony Sidaway 15:32, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

• Keep per Runa27's reasons listed above. Many of these terms have their own articles with good citations from literature resources. Nom is displaying evidence of W:IDON'TLIKEIT, and acting without Good Faith, so his AfDs are suspect. Zidel333 17:03, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per Runa27. The BBC article listed in the external links can be used as a reliable source; not sure about the other link. --Fang Aili ^talk 20:05, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Otto4711 (talk) 03:42, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
• Keep as per Runa. Article already has some sourcing though it need a lot of cleanup. Edward321 (talk) 04:07, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

  Comments, responses, and update If cleaned up, the article will not violate WP:SYNTH, since SYNTH basically covers Original Research, which can be avoided simply by cutting out all uncited material or forcing cites for all uncited material, and in cases where something has its own article, doing no more than providing a brief summary of the content from said article and directing them to it (which is basically the point of these kinds of articles in the first place, and was really the original intent when we first split it).

I also don't think it violates the spirit or intent of WP:NOT#DICT, either, as per the way the policy's worded, since the proposed cleanup involves merely making it a more convenient way to find the important (i.e. notable) terms intimately related to the main subject from which this subarticle is meant to cover, not just provide a list of words. I'm pretty sure that in this case, WP:NOT#DICT does not apply, other than to tell us what we shouldn't allow the article to remain as (which is of course, still a good application!). After all, WP:IGNORE is meant to cover just such subtle occasions as this, where the line between "dictionary-like slang list" and "subarticle that allows the reader to get an overview of an aspect of its main article's subject with connections to a number of existing articles that might otherwise be difficult to find in a given context" becomes an important issue, but an equally important distinction to make. While I can certainly understand the NOT#DICT-related concerns, in this case, I'd argue this thing is closer to a character list for a long-running TV or book series than a "dictionary", in that it includes encyclopedic content that is for many useful, notable in the context of what it is meant to help cover, and conveniently organized for the reader... but would just add a bit too much visible length to the original article for the purposes of readability for those new to the subject (if you'd tried to read the older versions of fan fiction, you'd understand what I mean by "too much visible length". There's a reason we have suggested lengths for articles after which it's usually suggested that we break some sections off into subarticles, and fan fiction was a prime example). Breaking it down into subarticles on this kind of subject - about which there is massive amounts of information even when we do manage to cut out the non-notable crud - is extremely useful.

In other words, with due and earnest respect to WP:NOT#DICT, I would say this falls quite nicely under other policies that would allow for the cleaned-up version of this article, and does not even quite fit under even the second, "slang list" aspect of WP:NOT#DICT. If you don't believe me, I urge you to read WP:WIARM and consider both the purpose and function the future, cleaned up version of this article would serve in the context of its parent article: that is, to elaborate on a unique aspect of the main subject, providing a general, basic overview of said aspect which branches out into many sub-concepts which are considered independently notable, and which exist in many separate articles. In this case, the "aspect" is a combination of not just "slang terms", but also of notable subgenres, tropes and literary terms (such as Mary Sue, Canon and fanon, Slash fiction and Alternative universe, just to name a few) which have a uniquely strong fan fiction connection, or exist only in the genre of fan fiction. I'd like to point out at this point that the original section before it was moved from fan fiction also covered notable subgenres, which is indisputably notable in the context of the fan fiction article which parented this one, and which are currently absent from said parent article because - as you'll recall, I hope - this is a subarticle of fan fiction, so it is assumed that those wishing to know about that aspect of the subject can simply click that link to access an overview of them. I'd also like to point out that the Mary Sue article (to use one example) is best for explaining the concept of the Mary Sue to those readers who are actually looking for more information on the concept of the Mary Sue - not somebody who wants a simple, general overview of notable fan fiction terms and genres, for whom a one or two sentence description of the concept may well suffice. For someone wanting an overview of fan fiction terms, hunting down and wading through that many articles just to get something that they don't necessarily want every last detail on, is daunting and ridiculously inconvenient compared to simply providing a subarticle explaining the basics and providing a convenient jumping-off-point to other articles, should they want more information on any given one of the genres or such.

Again, in context I think this thing is both salvageable, and worth salvaging, and am willing to work with other editors on doing just that. I think one of the first steps is to make its status as a subarticle clearer, in addition to taking a machete to the OR and non-notable terms. I'll do that, the first chance I get. In the meantime, I've yanked a lot of the more dubious terms and misplaced terms from at least one or two sections, along with trimming to remove OR content and increase NPOV, along with tagging a lot of others for citation (ones I know are relatively notable at least, and thus entirely likely that there is a good source or three to back up their being featured in the article somewhere, but which do not apparently have their own separate articles and which DO naturally need cites if they're to stay). I encourage other editors to do the same, as well as to provide good cites for some of the article's content where they can. I'll probably have to stop editing really soon in order to finish work on a couple of papers, so I'd appreciate other editors chipping in on this. ^_^ Runa27 (talk) 19:24, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

• In trying to wade through this enormous block of text, one point that leaps out is the comparison to a fictional character list. That is not a valid comparison. Words are not fictional characters. Glossaries are not character lists. Otto4711 (talk) 13:40, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it's several blocks of text. :P I'll space it better from now on, how's that sound? In seriousness, though... with all due respect, I must point out that this is what you apparently get for responding to something you've pretty much admitted you've skimmed. I won't cry "straw man", because I don't think it was intentional on your part at all and will definitely Assume Good Faith on this, but I feel the need to correct you on this one as you've apparently misunderstood and certainly misrepresented my meaning. The salient points (caps and bold text intended only for emphasis):

1.) You have misconstrued my comparison to a character list, by a lot actually. My comparison was phrased as it being "closer to" a character list "than" a dictionary word list, and NOT as a direct comparison, the latter being what you seem to have interpreted it as. This loose comparison was primarily to point out that this article is a subarticle that was never intended to be contextually separate from its parent article, and was instead spun off in a similar manner as the Legal Issues With Fan Fiction section and for mostly the same reasons: it was generally considered useful and appropriate to have in the context of the main encyclopedia article, but too long to NOT spin into a subarticle, given the massive size of the parent. You'll find this spinning off practice is common on Wikipedia, for the very reason that it makes articles better-organized and easier to load and read, and provides slightly less strain on our servers by reducing the main article's file size.

2.) People keep referring to this as a "word list" or "dictionary" and so on, and THIS IS SLIGHTLY MISLEADING. Yes, some of the content ended up somewhat along these lines over time (for which I apologize; I haven't been on WP as much as I would have liked), and the introduction misleadingly referred to "slang and jargon" (which is my fault, for which I apologize and which is something I'm fixing as we speak), but it was originally intended ONLY to provide an overview of the NOTABLE terms associated with fan fiction, along with NOTABLE SUBGENRES, to provide a more convenient way for readers to find them... overview + jumping-off point, if you will. In fact, the sub-genres section of the original article was actually PART of this section before it was ever split, and currently consists of a link to this article. Removing this article in its entirety (as opposed to severely trimming, cleaning up, renaming, reorganizing, merging, etc.) therefore removes all current reference in the main article to ANY SUBGENRES of the genre, which is BAD, since it would end up meaning the complete removal of an important aspect of the article, akin to removing references of subgenre divisions from the pages for science fiction, fantasy, romance, mystery, and so on.

I will rather emphatically suggest that this should have been a trim-and-merge request, or a rename or cleanup, etc., as opposed to deletion nom... though I suspect it would still, even if restricted to a list of subgenres, be long enough for some to insist on splitting it, anything's better than messing up the subgenre coverage in the parent article (quick and important note: Although there are plenty of fan fiction articles regarding unique subgenres and the like, there is no "Fan fiction terminology" subcategory in the cat tree, nor is there a subcategory for subgenres of fan fiction; there is only a very general "Fan fiction" cat, which while somewhat helpful, is not necessarily the best way of going about it). Runa27 (talk) 18:44, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

• Keep and cleanup per Runa.--uɐɔlnʌɟoʞǝɹɐs 05:02, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
• Keep WP:NOT#DICT does not prohibit glossaries, as evidenced by Category:Glossaries. This is not original research and does not fail WP:NOT#DICT as long as the claims made are descriptive and not proscriptive; this is what mainly differentiates an acceptable source-based researched glossary from an original researched usage guide. DHowell (talk) 06:21, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

  If it's not OR, why has it had the tag for seventeen months? Will ^(talk) 16:17, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

• Keep and cleanup Perhaps splitting of some terms into thier own pages? I find this page very helpful and informative. --Reiko-afterglow (talk) 06:44, 9 December 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.