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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. Some potential sources were brought up, but didn't seem to be convincing enough to obtain a clear "keep" consensus. It seems to me that the best way forward would be to continue the ongoing merge/restructuring discussions rather than nominating articles for deletion before those discussions have come to a conclusion. ‑Scottywong| babble _ 18:45, 26 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

List of Dragonlance locations

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List of Dragonlance locations (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • Stats)
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There was a discussion regarding how there are reliable sources, but the only thing that was pointed out was a wiki, which cannot be considered a reliable source unless a substantial portion can be attributed to credentialed staff. I have searched around for sources on Dragonlance locations, but the only results I have found were some results on Google Books that look like they copied directly from Wikipedia, and are thus not reliable. Reliable secondary sources are a necessity in order for something to be notable, and I do not believe that such reliable sources exist. New questions? 07:54, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:24, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:25, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:25, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Games-related deletion discussions. RJH (talk) 21:28, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment – Unfortunately this is just the kind of game-based cultural material that isn't going to have a lot of independent, reliable sources available. I made a search attempt but didn't find anything of use besides a few mentions in old computer video games. Hence I can't support a keep. Regards, RJH (talk) 21:31, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Why is this at AfD? Isn't the question a merge or redirect discussion? No one is claiming Dragonlance itself is not notable.--Milowent • hasspoken 13:01, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Moving the content into another article would not curtail the requirement for reliable, independent sources. The material would simply end up getting trimmed back. Regards, RJH (talk) 01:43, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed it would, but we don't need AfD for that.--Milowent • hasspoken 02:00, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete and suggest porting to a fan wiki it their isn't any similar content there, Sadads (talk) 13:45, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as a perfectly valid spinoff of any number of Dragonlance articles on Wikipedia. As I understand it, a spinoff article shouldn't necessarily require notability independent of its parent subject (in this case, the classic series of novels). A secondary option would be to consider a merge to Krynn of any relevant material, but I don't see why that is necessary and only offer it as an alternative to deletion. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 16:23, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Of course not, per WP:AVOIDSPLIT, every "spinout" or "split" article has to comply to WP:GNG, and it's perfectly logical. There is just one type of article, whether it's "spinout" or not doesn't change that.Folken de Fanel (talk) 03:32, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I admit, this one is giving me difficulty. I am usually a pretty strict letter-of-the-law type when it comes to AfD, notability matters, etc. That said, while WP:AVOIDSPLIT pretty plainly says what you say here, that a "spinout" article like this has to comply with WP:GNG, and while I know full well that notability is not inherited, and while I know that other crap existing doesn't justify the existence of more crap, I can't shake the notion that this individual subject is so directly connected to its parent article that it's impossible to separate the notability of one from the other. Or, at least, extremely difficult. Coverage of Dragonlance in general is inevitably going to discuss, in varying degrees of detail, Dragonlance's settings -- not as a comprehensive separate topic, but as part and parcel of discussing Dragonlance. So...that's a lot of babble in futile search of both independent sourcing and policy/guideline that would make this a slam dunk, but it's how I'm thinking on this nonetheless. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 00:53, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - The Dragonlance world is the background of both a well known Dungeons and Dragons campaign setting (that has been supported in three editions of the D&D rules) and is featured in some best selling novels, as well as over 100 other novels. A lot of the locations in the novels have had a cultural impact on fans. There may be a case that some of the less-well known locations are not so notable, but there may also be a counter-case that this article should be expanded, with the best-known places getting their own articles. (And I think that the Ansalon, Krynn and Taladas articles are too important to be merged into this one. Ansalon represents the land of the original stories, while Taladas represents the land of a spin-off continent. There are several of these sub-settings for D&D and they demonstrate an era when TSR was attempting to build fantasy worlds on top of other fantasy worlds.)

The person who put this up for AfD should get in touch with WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons, and ask for them to put this article onto their to-do list. The people at WP D&D are very good people and it is better for Wikipedia if D&D articles that are suspected to be bad are brought to their attention. They are experts in D&D, know what is notable (and what should be kept on Wikipedia) and have worked very hard to repair many many very poor articles and have managed to get quite a few articles onto the front page of Wikipedia. The article needs to be cleaned up. For example, the section on 'Dargaard Keep' gives insufficient information on a location that is fairly important to the understanding of how this fantasy world works. Lord Soth is a fairly major background character (and the most well known example of what D&D calls a death knight) and Dargaard Keep was both his home as a living person and his prison as a death knight. Wikipedia would be a lesser thing without better information on Dargaard Keep. There is even a band called Dargaard, which takes its name from Dargaard Keep, showing that particular location is notable. And in my opinion, Wikipedia is failing by not having more about it (and death knights themselves have also become 'bigger than D&D'). That is why I said that this article should have one or more improvement templates attached to it, instead of a deletion template. Big Mac (talk) 02:29, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To summarize that wall of text, this article should be kept ust because you like it, and only D&D fans have the right to decide what is kept and deleted anyways...Folken de Fanel (talk) 03:32, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Your shameful attempt to mischaracterize someone else's words barely masks a strong aura of WP:IDON'TLIKEIT. Do you feel that mocking users you disagree with helps this discussion? Do you think you can make your arguments look better by comparison by trying to make someone else look foolish? BOZ (talk) 17:59, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The only shameful thing here was Big Mac saying that non-D&D people can't decide what is notable or not on D&D...as if D&D article were special and not submitted to WP:GNG like everything else. Yes, everyone is able to tell what is to be kept or not on D&D, not just D&D fans, and it was not up to Bic Mac to say "They are experts in D&D, know what is notable (and what should be kept on Wikipedia)", as if everyone else was not capable of following WP:GNG for D&D article. A statement which hides an even worse idea: if people who are using WP:GNG on D&D can't know what is notable on D&D, it means that D&D articles are following an entirely different set of policies than what the community is using (GNG), thus implying WP:OWN on D&D articles.
So now stop throwing around groundless accusations, I didn't make Big Mac look foolish, he has to take responsibilities for his own comments and what they imply, it's my right to express my disagreement with his views on D&D articles here, and I won't have you blame me and insult me for it. I don't need to make my arguments "look better" because they're already strong enough, this article fails WP:GNG, so instead of wasting your time insulting me, try to find independent sources, that would be helpful.Folken de Fanel (talk) 21:41, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
See, that's not what he said. He suggested it might have been better to seek the advice of a relevant Wikiproject first before submitting this to AfD. That's pretty good advice. He didn't say that "non-D&D people can't decide what is notable or not on D&D" -- and you will note that there I am directly quoting you, not very loosely paraphrasing as you did here. You are right, you didn't make Big Mac look foolish. You may have made someone look foolish, but it wasn't Big Mac. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 00:33, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That's exactly what he said. And instead of personally attacking me, try to find sources.Folken de Fanel (talk) 06:03, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
At no time did I actually say that only people that like Dragonlance should be allowed to edit Dragonlance articles. Your comments did misrepresent my comments. You claimed to be summerising what I said, but then twisted the meaning of my words. I think that borders on clashing with the principle WP:AGF. What I thought when this was put up for deletion before, and what I still think, is this:
If an organised WikiProject exists for a subject (and I mean any subject here - not just D&D) that establishes two things. Firstly it establishes that the subject area itself is notable enough to have attracted a number of editors that have an interest in that area. Secondly, it establishes that there are expert Wikipedians who may well know if an individual article can be fixed or not.
I don't think that anyone 'owns' any part of Wikipedia, but I believe that any article that has been added into a WikiProject is much more likely to be notable than a project that is not marked that way. I believe that the principle of 'assuming good faith' should extend to assuming that projects tag articles because they are aware that they are probably notable. I don't say definitely notable, as nobody is perfect, but I think that two quick attempts to delete this article ignore the work of the WikiProject.
Secondly, I believe that the existence of a WikiProject demonstrates that a team of people have an interest in seeing that an article is improved. Wikipedia is a collaborative project and I think that working with other people (especially people that are trying to fix articles) is the best way to improve a bad article. As I stated both here and on the previous call for this article to be deleted, WP D&D is out there, it would be best to ask them to help. Projects are not perfect, and may make mistakes, so it is right that someone might question this sort of thing, but I believe they should look for supporting evidence themselves or ask the WikiProject to look for secondary sources. Making calls for articles to be deleted, instead of first trying to fix them is not in the long term interest of Wikipedia. Wikipedia can not be an encyclopaedia of every grain of sand in the world, but creating articles takes time and if an article can be fixed instead of deleted, that salvages some of the content that previous editors have put hard work into.
This article does have problems. And the main problem is that it has been worked upon by people that have not included inline citations. We should addressing that problem. Not be stabbing the deletion button on what is a salvageable article.
I would also suggest that, as well as attempting to repair this article, it would be useful to work out when and where it went wrong, and see if it is possible to politely contact editors that have put up uncitated content to show them how they can better serve Wikipedia. WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons may well be the best people to do that. As I have said (twice now) these people have turned articles into Featured Articles. They are good people. I believe that they may be able to turn bad editors into better editors.
Bending my words to change the meaning from that to a claim that 'D&D fans own D&D articles' is just plain wrong. Big Mac (talk) 19:43, 22 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You don't seem to understand how wikipedia works. "Notability" is not determined if a topic (or article) is attached to a Wikiproject or not. A "Wikiproject" is not a way to measure notability, but merely a gathering of users around a given topic to facilitate maintenance work on related articles. Notability on Wikipedia is defined by the General Notability Guideline, which states that a topic is notable only when it has "received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". The existence of a Wikiproject is linked in no way whatsoever with the concept of notability, and being linked to/attached to a wikiproject is in no way whatsoever a proof of notability (even if "probable"). It just means that the article contains keywords that linked it to a wikiproject and is added to it for maintenance purposes. Period. Notability is not inherited, and is only dealt with using WP:GNG.
Saying that "projects tag articles because they are aware that they are probably notable" is not "assuming good faith", it is an erroneous statement that ignores Wikipedia's basic functioning (and I'm saying that with good faith, I'm only making a factual statement). Articles are tagged just because they belong to a certain topic, and it is not up to wikiprojects to assess notability on their own. Notability only means "being GNG-compliant" and not "belonging to a wikiproject".
You also don't seem to be aware of why this article was put up for deletion. It is not because it is a "bad" article (as in "badly written), nor because of a lack of "in-line citations" (which just means any citation, wether from primary or secondary sources). The problem is that someone deemed the article not notable per the GNG, because it doesn't have any "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". And that is not something that can be "fixed", either you find sources, or you don't. From then on, I see no problem in having this discussion in an AfD process.
An AfD doesn't block members from the D&D project from commenting and doesn't block any discussion, on the contrary it just allows more people to comment on the issue, and as I said somewhere else, it is a good thing to include contributors who may have a more neutral view on D&D than D&D enthusiats (some of whom being likely to let their passion, their subjectivity for the topic, come before the actual notability policies). I think you don't like an approach that you probably see as a kind of "live or die" ultimatum, but this is how WP works. With millions of articles to manage, things get out of hand so quickly, especially concerning popular culture and fiction, which involves greater subjectivity (ie tastes in books, movies...) from the contributors, and has seen a lot of policy abuses.
That's why I consider that keeping the fate of this article at the D&D project's discretion wouldn't make a difference, and would actually be worse. It sources exist, then someone will bring them forth whether on a talk page or an AfD, deletion notices at least draw attention on the subject and allow the issue to be reviewed in a neutral way. I stand my ground, given your various misconceptions on the functioning of WP (whether on the role of a Wikiproject or on the definition of "reliable source", as we can see about the D&D Lexicon) your initial comment was uniformed at best and thus unhelpfud, and I only did my normal "duty" as an editor by pointing it out.Folken de Fanel (talk) 04:01, 25 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This is not the case. When the first deletion attempt was made, I pointed out that there is an encyclopedia called Dragonlance Lexicon and gave some background information to show that this was a well run encyclopaedia of Dragonlance material that is hosted by the world's leading Dragonlance website. (At that time I also suggested WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons should be alerted to the fact that this article requires attention.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by David Shepheard (talk • contribs) 19:04, 22 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This lexicon is not a reliable source, as per WP:USERG: "Anyone can create a website or pay to have a book published, then claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason self-published media—whether books, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, blogs, personal pages on social networking sites, Internet forum postings, or tweets—are largely not acceptable. This includes any website whose content is largely user-generated, including the Internet Movie Database, Cracked.com, CBDB.com, collaboratively created websites such as wikis, and so forth, with the exception of material on such sites that is labeled as originating from credentialed members of the sites' editorial staff, rather than users."Folken de Fanel (talk) 04:01, 25 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per the arguments of Milowent, GinsengBomb, and Big Mac. The fate of this article was being discussed on the talk page and could have been decided there instead of being prematurely brought to AFD. That said, this is a perfectly valid list article. BOZ (talk) 07:17, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see why D&D articles should only be run at the discretion of D&D fans. There are a lot of people here whose opinion might differ from D&D enthusiasts, and I think its only fair to let them know of the issue with an AfD and allow them to express their views. In the end, it won't change anything if the article is discussed here or in the talk page (except that, of course, D&D fans are now more likely to be reminded of annoying things like WP:GNG that this article undisputably fails, a fact that they would have been likely to omit had this stayed a "family matter").
By the way, where are the independent sources proving that this is a "perfectly valid list article" ?Folken de Fanel (talk) 21:41, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Nobody, anywhere in this discussion, has even implied that (again, directly quoting you, which can be helpful in this sort of thing) "D&D articles should only be run at the discretion of D&D fans." Please stop putting words and concepts in other peoples' mouths. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 00:36, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The only important thing is this: where are the sources?Folken de Fanel (talk) 06:03, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep major setting for both a game and a series of novels. Plenty of RS exist such as 1, 2, and most especially 3 which appears to be an independently published set of maps for these fictional locations. The WP:GNG is met, and these sources should render several conditional/presumptive delete !votes (e.g., "Unless additional sources can be found that are reliable third-party sources..") null. Jclemens (talk) 07:08, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note I just want to point out that the third reference is not an independently published source. It is an official product in the Dragonlance line, that was published by Sovereign Press, the company who at the time had the license to publish official Dragonlance game material. So, I'm afraid that one is an entirely first party source. I am personally abstaining from voting, since while I am in favor of keeping, I have no Wikipedia policy to make a strong argument, but I just felt this should be pointed out. Rorshacma (talk) 17:12, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
And I'll just add that the first 2 sources aren't GNG-compliant. It indeed requires "significant coverage" meaning that "sources address the subject directly in detail [...] more than a trivial mention", and that's exactly what these sources are, just trivial mention, which Jclemens used just because he got a hit with the word "Krynn", but when you actually read the text, it doesn't go beyond the mere mention of the word, none of the source even elaborate beyond one sentence (and here, with "Krynn" not even being the main topic of the sentence but just one example among others). So no, GNG is absolutely not met with these sources.
Inclusionists should really take their research more seriously instead of rushing to misguidedly claim "passes GNG !" or "independent !" with the first google hit...Folken de Fanel (talk) 04:01, 25 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No it doesn't pass GNG, as proved above.Folken de Fanel (talk) 04:01, 25 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I cant agree. None of the delete arguments are at all convincing. Whereas the keep arguments are well reasoned and evidence based. Several of them haven't even been addressed by delete voters – for example, you dont seem to have answered BigMac's Death Knight argument. FeydHuxtable (talk) 09:42, 25 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No it is wrong. The keep arguments are not evidence based. Jclemens was wrong in saying his sources are independent and "significant coverage". That is factual and you know it. I have answered everything that BigMac said.Folken de Fanel (talk) 17:04, 25 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. This article consists only of plot summary, which per WP:WAF our articles should not. Treatment of fictional works must occur from a real-world perspective, and excessive in-universe content is better suited to fan media. The requirement of WP:V#Notability that article subjects (in this case, "Dragonlance" locations) must be the subject of reliable third-party coverage is not met; Jclemens's sources above may establish notability for the "Dragonlance" setting as a whole, but not for this list of fictional geography, which the sources do not address.  Sandstein  05:46, 25 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak delete or redirect/refocus to allow for content to be merged elsewhere, but don't keep as it is. I am usually very critical of location articles, as they are usually dumping grounds for plot, original research or excessive fictional detail, all of which Wikipedia is WP:NOT. Working on a location article myself at the moment with these issues (World of A Song of Ice and Fire), I've found that real-world information is essential, possibly coming from e.g. (1) availability of different official maps, (2) inspiration commentary by the authors on the individual locations, (3) a screen adaptation of this fictional world with real-world production commentary (e.g. filming locations). JClemens provided sources that may serve to write a Themes in Dragonlance or World of Dragonlace article, but which don't really require this location list. Not every location needs to be named or covered, but this location list combined with the three individual location articles may be the stepping stone for a new World article. – sgeureka t•c 09:05, 25 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete or Merge per failing WP:GNG & WP:N. Please note that I'm not implying that Dragonlance itself is not notable, rather that notability is not inherited. -- Jelly Soup (talk) 02:50, 26 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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.
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