Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alpha (Magic: The Gathering)


 * 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. (without prejudice to any merging that may be required/desired). Black Kite (talk) 11:11, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Alpha (Magic: The Gathering)

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Each of these articles is about a core set for the game Magic: The Gathering. I have examined all the nominated articles, and no case do I find any evidence of notability per WP:GNG. This collection of material might be a valuable part of a fan-site, but I see no evidence that it belongs in an encyclopedia.

Most of the articles are written entirely from an in-universe perspective. Some of these articles are referenced only to the manufacturer's website; other have no footnotes at all. The only other references I have found in any of these articles are to fan sites, or to commercial websites which sell gaming products. No sources are offered for any of them which would be relevant to WP:GNG.

After deletion, it will probably be best to redirect the titles to the head article Magic: The Gathering. Some of titles are implausible search terms, but the redirects will preserve any external links.

See also related discussions:
 * AFD:Arabian Nights (Magic: The Gathering)
 * AFD:Antiquities (Magic: The Gathering)
 * AFD:Invasion (Magic: The Gathering) (group nomination of 24 articles on expansion sets)

-- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:17, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

The bottom line is that journalist can make a fine living by being deeply critical of of the product, but if a seller reports it to be bad, they won't sell any. Sure, smart sellers may not indulge in uncritical hype, and may even publish some mild criticism, but they are still a million miles away from being independent of the subject. Sponsored reporting is not impartial, and its existence is not relevant to notability -- because the topics are selected in support of a commercial interest. WP:QUESTIONABLE specifically lists promotional publications as dubious. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:52, 3 October 2013 (UTC) If you want to stand by this line of argument, how about you cite some examples of sponsored articles which you think demonstrate the notability of these topics, and we can run them past WP:RSN? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:16, 3 October 2013 (UTC) Secondly, which of the characteristics of a reliable source does this have? Where's the editorial oversight? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:34, 3 October 2013 (UTC) You haven't demonstrated a lack of COI; you have chosen to ignore a COI. I have not narrowed my argument; I have been challenging you to cite sources which meet the notability policy, and pointing out the problems in the sources you do cite. If these were "worthwhile articles", I would not have nominated them. The articles are in-universe fancruft, full of excessive detail sourced from the manufacturer, and devoid of a real-world perspective. Bad articles may nonetheless be about notable topics, and there seems to be a clear consensus that various reliable sources can be found. I am not going to reply to you again, because it is too time-consuming to try to explain basic sourcing policy. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:29, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep Each of these is definitely noteworthy, as noted on your other recent nominations for deletion. I do believe that some could be consolidated, especially Alpha, Beta and Unlimited. Don't forget the numerous high end secondary market card sites out there that make reference to each and every single expansion of Magic, and many more of other CCGs such as YuGiOh!, Pokemon, World of Warcraft, etc. Leitmotiv (talk) 15:58, 3 October 2013 (UTC)Leitmotiv (talk) 15:36, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Reply. I am not entirely sure what you mean by "secondary market card sites", but I presume that these are websites which sell add-ons for the games, or trade in the games themselves. Either way, they are not independent sources, and have no relevance to notability. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:06, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * reply - No these are not add-ons or apps. The game of Magic has a large secondary market. Meaning retailers that sell these cards after someone has sold the cards to them. Like secondary sources, secondary markets are not related to the manufacturer and are not primary sources. Leitmotiv (talk) 16:11, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Reply. So they do sell the cards after someone sells them on; that's the trading I referred to above. (Just like a used car dealer trades in vehicles). Are you really trying to claim that a seller (or reseller) of a product is an independent source about it? Seriously? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:31, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * reply yes srsly, though I may not be up to speed on why a secondary market is not noteworthy. Feel free to fill me in. They are not affiliated, and often many of these sites have articles of their own on the separate expansions. Leitmotiv (talk) 17:18, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Commercialism is a fact of life. Let's not forget that newspapers are a for-profit enterprise, as are the vast majority of news sources.  Not everything has to come from academic journal articles.  There are many genuinely commercial sites that sponsor genuine editorial / news articles that are not just endless cheerleading, because "real" news draws more interest - see again newspapers, magazines, etc. SnowFire (talk) 17:20, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * This is getting silly; the choice is not academic journal or nothing.
 * This is getting silly. Your description of these secondary market sites is way off base. They aren't promoting anything except their own business which is still unaffiliated with any primary sources. A lot of these sites sell many other products, and some sites are a conglomerate of hundreds of secondary market websites. Plenty of these sites are critical of the product they review since the market is in no danger of collapsing. TCGPlayer sells many card games other than Magic complete with articles. They will follow the consumer, not the manufacturer if there is any bias to be had. Leitmotiv (talk) 18:06, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * If you want to believe that someone selling a range of things is an independent source of info on any of them, good luck to you.
 * This article from TCGPlayer (a retailer on many CCGs) criticizes and even predicts lower sales for a particular Magic expansion, even stating he personally won't be buying extra boxes or packs. This is very neutral and unbiased reporting. I'm sorry to inform you, but the internet has killed off many trade magazines/price guides, etc. Their spiritual successors are now online at such places like TCGPlayer. Leitmotiv (talk) 21:05, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, let's look at that example. First, it's by a retailer. If he wasn't engaged in the trade, would that review have been published at all? That's central to notability.
 * You've clearly demonstrated your bias in omnibus spam-like nominations on articles that only needed improvements. Your bias against retailer articles even when unaffiliated has revealed nothing more than your need for argument leverage. You've effectively narrowed your argument against one kind of source, meanwhile disregarding the thousands (probably) of worthwhile articles that can be cited. You may not agree with a retailer's secondary source stature, but that doesn't make it any less credible and just because you presume there might be COI doesn't mean there is, and I certainly haven't seen you demonstrate COI from the source I provided. Yet I have demonstrated lack of COI, where the author was not parading the product, but the contrary. The only conflict of interest here is from an experienced wikipedian not giving the benefit of the doubt to worthwhile articles, despite all the arguments made for keeping them. I rest my case. Leitmotiv (talk) 19:56, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
 * A bias against sources which are not independent is Wikipedia policy. If you don't like policy, then go argue for changing the policy rather than berating me.


 * Keep. Perhaps more so that the expansion / block articles, I could see some merging of the base sets as a valid approach, although there is unquestionably individual coverage of each of them. To some extent, that will be an editorial decision -- and this is not the place nor time to do so. I'm going to keep most of my comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Invasion (Magic: The Gathering) -- the same nominator has omnibus-nominated the entire Magic the Gathering category, essentially, spread over 4 AFDs. My comments there apply throughout, however. There have been at least three independent, well-recognized gaming industry magazines who had this game and its subproducts as their primary focus for years or decades, and enough books on the broad topic to fill a pretty solid bookshelf. Whether these articles are currently poor or sourced only to primary sources is not a deletion rationale, and to claim that it is impossible for them to be sourced otherwise requires overlooking a very substantial amount of print. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:37, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

These articles are in exactly the same state. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:25, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep All SqueamishOrange hits it on the nose here - InQuest Gamer and Scrye extensively covered each and every set of Magic, including retrospectives for the early publications, and they were the two premier publications in the card-gaming industry in the 1990s; coverage has only increased since then as the game has become even more popular. Plenty of secondary source material here, even if that is not evident in the current revisions for some of these articles. Chubbles (talk) 16:14, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment. I have found two previous AFDs of MTG materials: 1 and 2. In the latter discussion, User:JohnCD noted that "the content of these articles is all in-universe cruft repeating primary sources, material for Wikia's Magic: The Gathering Wiki but not for Wikipedia".


 * Comment: Those two previous AFDs are very different. Duel Decks are small reprint lines without any new cards and limited sales and coverage rather than the full-fledged sets (an analogy would be the difference between the greater notability of an original music albums of notable artists vs. the lesser notability of a "greatest hits" compilation). The other AFD you point out gives information on fictional characters within the backstory, but the articles currently nominated are not fictional, but are real-world products with extensive secondary coverage. —Lowellian (reply) 18:41, 4 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Merge into a single article 3-5 articles: Revised through 10th Edition were nothing but reprints. The other expansions aren't that long.  However, there is content worth salvaging  p  b  p  17:05, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep and potential merge. There are in fact notable things to say about the core sets (sales / design philosophy / rules changes / art changes / etc.) as well as plenty of sources to do so, but I do agree that separate articles for each might be overboard.  I'd tentatively recommend a single article for Alpha / Beta / Unlimited (already underway before this proposal was even made), another article for Revised - 10th edition, and another article for Magic 2010->present.  But there's no need to mandate the eventual form these articles will take right now, it can be discussed. SnowFire (talk) 17:16, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Games-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:38, 4 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep all. Contrary to the nominator's claims, this is not "fancruft" because, rather than articles about fictional characters or fictional objects, these articles are about real-world products with massive sales (on the level of millions of units) and extensive secondary coverage in hundreds of articles in independent (from the manufacturer) magazines and websites, and are thus notable on the same basis as car models, for which Wikipedia has thousands of pages (go down the category tree starting from Category:Automobiles by country). —Lowellian (reply) 18:33, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep - Both Forbes and MTV seem to have sections of their websites that regularly cover Magic: The Gathering sets . As noted above, InQuest Gamer and Scrye provided significant coverage of Magic sets while those magazines were in print. Calathan (talk) 23:06, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep all* - Its inevitable that these will be re-created. Articles about individual sets are very much like how we have articles individual comic book series runs. The problem I see with a couple of these articles, like Magic 2014, is that there are no credible secondary sources referenced, and it has little more information than is in List of Magic: The Gathering sets, and so the yearly releases may be better suited as redirects to the list. --Netoholic @ 18:24, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Reference added from Forbes.com for Magic 2014. The Core sets will probably be consolidated. Leitmotiv (talk) 19:20, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Procedural comment. I've long wanted to merge some of these articles regardless, this AfD was just weirdly timed.  I've already merged two of them, and plan on merging a few more.  This should not overly affect the merits of the AfD (however, judging by the votes so far, I'm fairly confident my work won't be "wasted"). SnowFire (talk) 04:03, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep all as Lowellian said. I also agree with Leitmotiv: "the articles do exist out there, they just haven't been added as citations yet". Also I report that italian magazine "Oracolo", edited by Nexus Editrice, was an indipendent reliable source for over 14 years. Magic expansions received a wide coverage around the world, these articles definitely belongs to Wikipedia, if they are poorly made just improve them. I also suggest to keep each set as a separate article, I think each one deserve a certain level of detail. --Phyrexian ɸ 20:18, 9 October 2013 (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.