Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Masada (Honorverse)

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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 no consensus. No prejudice against relisting after the ArbCom injunction is lifted. Never mind that part. There's still no consensus. Coredesat 03:26, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Masada (Honorverse)

Masada (Honorverse) (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

Non-notable fictional nation. Article consists almost entirely of plot summary. Delete or merge to List of planets in the Honorverse per WP:FICT. Jfire (talk) 02:14, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

  • Postpone until after Arb com the same issues are involved as with episodes.DGG (talk) 04:07, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Are they? I thought the injunction was very specifically limited to characters in television shows (plus episodes), not to everything covered by WP:FICT, and this is both not a character and from a book. —Quasirandom (talk) 07:24, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete, no real-world notability for this fictional nation in a science-fiction book series. In no way does the Episodes and Characters 2 arbcom affect this. Blast Ulna (talk) 07:29, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
  • keep major plot issue that we can't fit in the main articles on the topic. Furthermore, it is almost certainly true that there are reliable sources that may take some time to find given that this series routinely hits the New York Times best seller list. As a first bet it is discussed at at a major scifi review website which arguably constitutes a reliable source and in this NESFA review . JoshuaZ (talk) 19:57, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Those may be suitable as sources for articles on the books themselves, but not for this article. Those articles have only passing mentions of the subject, not the sort of detailed critical analysis of Masada itself that would be required to support this article per WP:PLOT and WP:FICT. This article offers no real-world context or sourced analysis; it's an obvious WP:PLOT failure. Jfire (talk) 21:54, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Delete or merge - per nom. --Orange Mike | Talk 19:54, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Keeper
  • The injunction is being consistently interpreted to deal with these works too; I think the eventual result will affect all fiction. DGG (talk) 04:20, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Let them take this article to Deletion Review then. Blast Ulna (talk) 06:41, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
we dont play games like that with arb com.DGG (talk) 23:34, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
There's an RfC on the extent of the arbcom injunction, and your opinion has been noted/criticised there. Others feel differently. Blast Ulna (talk) 23:56, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Is that an attack against DGG? A few editors have expressed opinions that differ from DGG's. I was one of them. That's all you can say about the RFC. Please don't make it sound like the RFC has received wide paticipation, because it has not (only 4-5 people), and that there was some consensus there, because there certainly was not... as far as RFC's go that one was/is a complete flop, so citing it is a very weak argument, particularly if doing do is an attempt to tear-down a highly respected and experienced wikipedian like DGG. JERRY talk contribs 17:10, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
All I was saying is the extent of the injuction is itself controverial, so much so that somebody has made a RfC. Has that ever happened before? The level of controversy on the subject of allowing unsourced articles to survive suggests to that many people don't want unsourced articles on Wikipedia. Does DGG really expect that the arbcom committee will destroy the First Pillar because one editor wasn't abiding by the Fourth Pillar? Blast Ulna (talk) 21:21, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Please excuse me breaking in, but I've just commented there. In fact, nobody had told me about the RfC--and in the multiplicity of discussions I must have missed it. I dont expect arbcom will give us detailed rules about article notability or content, just conduct, though I hope they will give some guidance about the formation and reliance on policy. As for the first pillar, I strongly support the encyclopedic nature of WP, and personally delete about a dozen articles a day that do not meet it. The meaning of "encyclopedic" is subject to interpretation. Interpretation by consensus. DGG (talk) 18:32, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment The injunction, itself, is very limited in it's scope, and it does not apply to this article or AfD. Having said that, and having done significant research into the basis for the injunction, however, I also agree that the result of the ARBCOM case will undoubtedly apply to all fiction-related articles.

The arguments for deletion associated with the fictional television series and characters articles were that the series and characters had no "real world context" for notability. Meaning that if we blank from our mind that the fictional work exists, does the character appear in non-fiction literature or media? And if it does, we better ignore it if it is in any way promoting the fictional work. And then we have to take all description of the plot of the work away, as plot summary cruft. Then we have an article with sufficiently little content to justify its' deletion.

You see, the basis of the complaints against the handling of these fictional works, was that the arguments were systemically and recursivey applied in a manner that had been determined to be effective in practice, to ensure the eventual deletion of any article to which the techniques were applied. It was a self-feeding deletion machine. This kind of systemic deletion approach could be fine-tuned and used to delete almost anything: Find a reason to invalidate some of its content. Restrict what can be added, make it such that anything added is formatted in such a way that later it can be targeted for deletion, and then once it has been stripped down to a sub-stub, go in for the kill.

So is this article about an episode or character in a television series? No. Is it being fed to the currently idle deletion machine? Maybe. This article does contain some commentary about the evolution of the fictional universe from one book to another. A purely in-universe pespective would be unable to do that, because it could not acknowledge that it was in fact a fictional universe. So in that context, the content, although written to describe plot elements, is actually encyclopedic. Just as an article about the works of Samuel Clemens would undoubtedly have to tell something about the life and times of Mr. Tom Sawyer. No encyclopedic treatment of that subject could feasibly leave that out. So when we eventually do have some clear guidance about the handling of fiction in wikipedia, we will undoubtedly have some broad guidance, not just TV stuff. JERRY talk contribs 00:04, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

  • Third party sources have discussed the character Tom Saywer in great detail. Journal articles, books and PhD dissertations describe the impact of the character on real life people. All the guidance that is needed is that what is said be backed up by reliable sources. Blast Ulna (talk) 00:09, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
True, that. And the same applies here. SciFipedia, Sheldon Brown's website, and the author's own notes could be a start. But don't expect the same volume of coverage in a 10-year old work as compared to the just slightly older Tom Sawyer series. JERRY talk contribs 00:31, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Those are not reliable. You know, there are editors, like me, who have tried very hard to abide by the rules. I have argued to keep each and every article for which I found reliable sources, and argued to delete articles for which no reliable sources can be found. If the result of this arbcom is to allow unsourced articles to survive, it will be a slap in the face for editors like me. Those who envision a change of many of the basic principles underlying the success of Wikipedia to allow their favorite characters to have their own unsourced fan pages will eventually drive out all reasonable editors along with extremists like TTN. Blast Ulna (talk) 00:45, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Or, you could choose not to take it personally, and accept that maybe the world does not rotate the way you have tried so hard to make it rotate. A less entrenched personal lose-lose battle would be beneficial to the community. To you a policy that allows these articles to remain is a slap in the face. To the wikiproject who created the Bionicle articles (which I personally deleted by the way -- almost all of them), deleting their 3 years worth of work was at least a slap in the face. To have guidelines to help all concerned know what we will have and not have should not be viewed as a slap in the face, it should be viewed as a breath of fresh air. JERRY talk contribs 01:14, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm not taking it personally. The material can be transwikied. Blast Ulna (talk) 06:03, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep per WP:SERIES, WP:SUMMARY, etc. It's already been stated that this is only a separate article because it was too large for the main article. It doesn't need to satisfy WP:N on its own. Large topics may require multiple articles for practical reasons. Let's try to avoid making people skittish about rightfully splitting off large sections of articles for fear that they'll get deleted. Equazcion •✗/C • 01:13, 24 Feb 2008 (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.