Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Story of Myth

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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. east.718 at 00:47, December 26, 2007

[edit] Story of Myth

Story of Myth (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Where do I start? Too long. Way too long. We're talking deep in the realm of unnecessary fancruft here. Also, the start of the article says "The information below has been gleaned from the instruction manuals of Myth and Myth II, the flavor text of the individual units, and the information learned during the narration between levels and in the epilogue." That smacks of original research to me. If this article isn't deleted outright, it needs a 90% size reduction. -- Earle Martin [t/c] 00:10, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

  • Delete I think this one's hopeless in its present state. In-universe fancruft, mostly unsourced, full of original research, etc. etc. I could go on but I won't. Ten Pound Hammer • (Broken clamshells•Otter chirps) 00:17, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete if it isn't a copyvio then it's surely either WP:OR or WP:SYNTH. JJL (talk) 02:13, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete for above reasons and lack of real world notability. Epthorn (talk) 07:32, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong Delete It's either an advertisement (a really really really long one), or a copyright violation off of the game, perhaps copied from some random PDF file that CorenBot didn't catch, or just WP:OR/WP:SYNTH, as mentioned above. It is too long, I mean the length is ridiculous and just too much info in general. - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 10:08, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep I say keep. The argument that it is an advertisement is moot; the franchise has been dead for six years with little chance of revival. Yes, there is a lot of "independent" research here, but it all exists in game, as well as within the manual, as the opening introduction states. Yeah, it's a bit on the "crazy fan" side, but being a crazy fan myself, I can tell you that none of this is speculation, nor is it copied outright (as far as I can tell). Seriously, to assume it's from some random PDF is naive. In this day and age of Google, one could just copy and paste any phrase from this article and track down the alleged copyright violation. Not hard to do. -AfroRyan —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.202.185.97 (talk) 00:47, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep But with heavy modification, and perhaps incorporation into other articles. I am Forrest Cameranesi, the maintainer of the Myth section of the Bungie.org network, a fan site which is well known by and formerly frequented by both Bungie, the original creators of the Myth series, and Mumbo Jumbo, the creators of Myth III. We have on our site the complete texts of all three games in our Journal and Encyclopedia sections, a fact which is well known and unchallenged by both the original and current copyright owners. The Bungie.org network itself only exists by the grace by Bungie, who have allowed us to use their trademarked name in our domain; and the network's head admin, Claude Errera, has frequent close contact with Bungie, having negotiated such community-centered grants of legal permission as the Marathon Trilogy abandonware release. There is also precedent with Bungie's condoning and even support of similar verbatim reproduction of their work in the Marathon Story Page. So I think it's safe to say that while the use of the materials presented in this article may not be fair use, they are certainly sanctioned by the copyright holders and thus legit for use on Wikipedia. That said, the bulk of this material is uncited. How to cite from a video game? Well, if someone would care to undertake the process, the aforementioned sections of Myth.Bungie.Org, especially the Encyclopedia, contain thorough citations of where every piece of verbatim text came from, e.g. Myth TFL, Level 15, "Heart Of The Stone" or Ghol Flavor Text, Myth II, which could be used as citations here; and in the Encyclopedia each section of text fragments on a particular topic is individually linkable via anchor names, e.g. The Tain, if wikiites would like a site with the verbatim text itself to link to for support. As for the argument that this article is synthesis, I'm not sure if our site (Bungie.org) counts as a reputable source or not, but we are the largest source for materials on this topic, and I'm sure most everything in this article that isn't directly from the games but rather a synthetic conclusion drawn from game materials has undoubtedly been written about on our site, so those bits could be changed to citations to our off-wiki articles rather than original research or synthesis here on the wikipedia. (I know it may seem like I'm just fishing for links to our site, but please note that Bungie.org is both completely non-profit to the point of being entirely ad-free, funded solely out of Claude's own pocket; and also that as these games are now very old, the site is pretty much dead. So traffic doesn't mean anything to us). Furthermore, it seems to me that this article would be better served being split up into sections for the three Myth games and incorporated into the text of their articles, perhaps in a more succinct form as it is rather long, and the original texts are available online for further reference if readers are interested. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.177.2.176 (talk) 07:54, 13 December 2007 (UTC) — 70.177.2.176 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
    • Sorry, but who you are and what you have on your site, and the "precedent" you claim for "materials [that are] not... fair use" have nothing to do with what is suitable for Wikipedia. Our policy is to use sources which are independent. The guideline states "an independent source is a source which describes a topic from a disinterested perspective." As you say, bungie.org is a fan site, which immediately disqualifies it as a Wikipedia source. What you describe as "synthetic conclusion[s]" are explicitly disallowed, as has been mentioned by other commenters above. If that were not enough to justify the text's removal, you have suggested that the text is not fair use, which mandates its immediate removal under our license policy. -- Earle Martin [t/c] 11:31, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
    • I didn't mean to comment one way or another on whether or not what's actually in this article is fair use - as far as I can tell it's all paraphrase, nothing verbatim from the games, so I'd imagine there's no copyright violation there one way or another. But others here have suggested that it may be, if it was verbatim text - I was merely pointing out that the copyright holders have condoned wholesale verbatim reproduction, so even if there was verbatim text here, it shouldn't be a problem. And the sections of Bungie.org I refer to are about as independent as you can get, despite the whole site being a fan site, because those sections are *only* verbatim quotes from the games. I'm curious, would a citation to Plato's "Republic", linking to a PDF copy of it hosted on a site propounding Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy, be considered an independent source? You'd cite the Republic, but link to the PDF, which is hosted somewhere biased toward Plato. I was merely suggesting the same situation here: cite the game itself, and link to our reproductions of its text for reference. -Forrest
  • Keep Seems a pretty straightforward paraphrase of the sources mentioned in the article. It's possible to paraphrase a source without violating copyright, SYNTH, or NOR Orphic (talk) 07:58, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete It does not seem that this can ever be transformed into an acceptable article. The pro-deletion comments above match my opinions. 18.96.6.79 (talk) 04:43, 20 December 2007 (UTC)


Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, CitiCat ♫ 04:37, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete per WP:NOT#PLOT. The article does not have any real world context or what makes the plot summary notable in the real world. I would have to do some checking, but I don't think an entire article is supposed to be dedicated just to tell the summary of a series of games (especially one that had so few entries). Any useful info should be trimmed down and put back in the article on the series. TJ Spyke 12:04, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete nothing more then a massive plot summary. Ridernyc (talk) 12:19, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete, but disagreeing with most of the deletion arguments above - per WP:FICT and WP:GAMECRUFT. Excessive fictional information. I always hate to be in this position. Basically, all of the information here is a direct paraphrase of the bungie.org encyclopaedia. What this means, is that it's certainly not violating WP:SYNTH - there is no "source B" as written in that policy. Nor is it WP:OR. The information is wholly verifiable by the video game itself, which is OK, as self published things can be used in articles about themselves per WP:SELFPUB. That's why we have WP:FICT as a guideline, and WP:GAMECRUFT as a kind of convention describing how things usually go. This deletion argument itself violates WP:WTF.User:Krator (t c) 14:36, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete "video game articles should be readable and interesting to non-gamers; remember the bigger picture". (WP:GAMECRUFT) JohnCD (talk) 15:49, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete - Unless notability can be established through WP:RS, WP:WAF, WP:FICTION. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 17:37, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep per notability, readibility, and interest, but add additional sources as suggested above. Best, --Le Grand Roi des CitrouillesTally-ho! 01:49, 23 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.