Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Eat Me (interactive fiction)


 * 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__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__. Doczilla Ohhhhhh, no! 07:55, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Eat Me (interactive fiction)

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Potentially non-notable interactive fiction game on an article with fairly light reliable sourcing. This is a borderline case, so as ever I would like to be proven wrong. A search online yields two short but reliable sources out there from Rock Paper Shotgun and Vice. Almost there, but there seems to be little else. There is a review from Portage Magazine which is a fairly obscure undergraduate Wisconsin student newspaper - not particularly reliable or mainstream coverage. Otherwise the article is sourced heavily from the author's own blog, user sites and forums, and a strange over-reliance on non-copyrighted reference images. The author, as impressive as his writing seems, does not have much of a public-facing profile; I could only really find his credits on writing a DLC for Fallen London. Either way, hopefully more eyes on this can help clean up the article into a better state, although I do think its notability leans on the dubious side. Thanks in advance for your help. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 11:46, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Video games-related deletion discussions. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 11:46, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Speedy Keep: The wording "Potentially non-notable..." pretty much disqualifies this nomination. The wording suggests that is really is notable, but that the nominator wishes for more references. AfD is not cleanup, so the article needs tagging, not deleting. 🇺🇦 Fiddle Timtrent  Faddle Talk to me 🇺🇦 12:51, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Apologies - I can see that gives off the unhelpful impression that I'm using the process to fish for sources to improve the article. I've looked online and do believe the available sourcing doesn't establish what I'd consider to be the threshold of notability. I've been wrong enough times to maybe be not so certain about that threshold, prompting the soft language. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 21:24, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete While the nomination is poorly phrased ("potentially non-notable" suggests a degree of uncertainty, being "obscure" does not immediately equate to unreliability, and the article being "strange" is not grounds for deletion, but cleanup), I could not find much better sources than the Vice article and the small RPS blurb. The Portage magazine is published in a generic Wordpress blog and it's hard to vouch for it being a reliable source untainted by any form of bias whatsoever. It would be an ad hominem argument to !vote keep simply because of an error in the nomination process, and ignore any evidence of non-notability. If any further better sources can be found, I may change my opinion. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 13:21, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I would add that in the chance the article is kept, it should be moved back to its original name of Eat Me (video game) as the general consensus is that interactive fiction is not a separate category from games. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 15:55, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'll try to keep AfD nominations more focused on the aspects that make them purportedly non-notable next time. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 21:28, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep To my knowledge, interactive fiction is rarely covered in any mainstream media, and sources may therefore be difficult to find. But the Vice article is a legit review and focused entirely on Eat Me. The commentary is critical and detailed. The awards and multiple nominations at competitions for interactive fiction, as well as very high listings in the Interactive Fiction Database, make this game stand out. No source is "author's own blog", as claimed. The images are used for illustrations, not as sources. If one's main goal is to improve an article, then they can start by improving the article and then add maintenance tags pointing out the shortcomings. A nomination for deletion should not be used as a way to get "more eyes" to "help clean up the article". --Bensin (talk) 23:00, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I understand and agree the nomination should not have had a softer secondary purpose, and it was definitely a mistake to try and frame this in a conciliatory way which provided the appearance that I didn't feel it was non-notable. With respect to the statement No source is "author's own blog", the primary source for most of the article's content is the author's Infiction blog - I mean the author of the work. Other user-generated content, such as IFDB and blog posts, are generally discouraged as a source. That leaves the three secondary sources subject to the deletion discussion, which I should have restricted my discussion above to. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 23:49, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I reiterate: To my knowledge, interactive fiction is rarely covered in any mainstream media, and sources may therefore be difficult to find. But the Vice article is a legit review and focused entirely on Eat Me. The commentary is critical and detailed. The awards and multiple nominations at competitions for interactive fiction, as well as very high listings in the Interactive Fiction Database, make this game stand out. --Bensin (talk) 09:46, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I know we're at odds with what notability ought to be for a video game, and I imagine it's annoying and disappointing to have the notability of an article challenged that you put work into. I can explain my thinking a little to try and untangle my admittedly very messy framing of the nomination. I agree the Vice article is a good source of significant coverage, but notability requires significant coverage from multiple reliable sources. I would say that an argument that sources being difficult to find on niche topics begs the question as to whether quality sources for this article exist at all - from what I can see, there isn't really similar coverage in this case. IFD as a user-generated database is not notable for the same reason that IMDB is not. It is not official policy, but I think it is a sound opinion that an award nomination doesn't in itself create notability particularly as it's not a high-profile industry award and hasn't generated any commentary of its own. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 07:50, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * As for awards: I do agree that one single award nomination does not make a video game notable. But Eat Me received multiple nominations and also won in several categories. It was recognized at both the XYZZY Awards and the Interactive Fiction Competition. As for sources: I may have agreed if there were no good sources at all, but the Vice article is a legit review. No one contests that. In addition, Rock Paper Shotgun is a known source (but the coverage may be less than significant). Portage has significant coverage (but the source is less known). Given the fact that sources are admittedly scarce on this topic, then this may indicate that the sum of sources that corroborate the information in the article (there are no contradictions between sources to my knowledge) add up to meet notability. From a bigger perspective: I think most would agree that interactive fiction as an art form is notable topic. To properly cover this art form it would be expected to then also cover the top appreciated works in that art form. To my knowledge IFDB is the only source that somehow quantifies this. And IFDB lists Eat Me in both the top 100 based on user scores and in the 2023 vote for top Interactive Fiction of All Time. Finally: It is almost always a better solution to redirect an article than to delete it along with its history. That way the article history is preserved and work on the article can be picked up again by anyone should new information or sources appear. I did, as you write, put work into this and though not an appreciated outcome, a redirect is a less discouraging outcome. --Bensin (talk) 19:41, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
 * There's a lot of interesting threads to follow up on here and I'm sorry I can't react in detail right now. I think on awards, there's sadly no concrete guidance on the interrelationship between awards and notability, although I think there should be, and I'd love to think it out about it but also mindful it may not be helpful in this comment thread. One helpful question is - what would a useful redirect target be if an AfM were appropriate here? Creating an article on Chandler Groover may be a good outlet if his body of work as a whole has more coverage in total. Or a far more laborious task - as I understand you have started with other articles, is to try and compile a description and citations on a list of IFM winners as a primary article. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 09:12, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * This thread mentions some of Chandler Groover's works but i doubt none of them would be more notable than Eat Me. I find a few sources when searching for Groover, but most of them focuses on his games, not on him as a person. It would therefore make little sense to create an article on him rather than on what I believe to be his most prolific work. That is also why i redirected Chandler Groover to Eat Me (interactive fiction) and not the other way around. There is no obvious target for a redirect, but XYZZY Awards or interactive fiction would be acceptable and redirecting to any of them would be much better than deleting the article. Given the high profile Eat Me appears to enjoy, it may not be too long before more sources appears, and a redirect would make it far easier to continue building on my work than to start over or having to go through the process of requesting an undelete. A new editor may not know that option exists, and they may waste hours reading and searching for sources and writing and formatting rather then building on, or modifying, the existing work. But I would also appreciate if you, when you can, do respond to my points on "sources" and "bigger perspective" in my previous post. --Bensin (talk) 20:59, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, not stonewalling and will take a look when I can. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 22:56, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I added the RPS source as well as a mention in PC Gamer, both in which Emily Short (likely one the most known designers of IF fiction) comments on the game. Is that better? --Bensin (talk) 21:55, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Concerning preservation, there are other wikis that might accept your article like IFWiki or Libregamewiki. --Mika1h (talk) 18:46, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete Vice article is SIGCOV, RPS is not. Not enough for WP:GNG. I don't think the XYZZY and IFC awards count towards notability, the 2017 results haven't been covered in reliable sources. --Mika1h (talk) 00:35, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete The nominator/delete voters pretty much sum up my thoughts with the (very good) source analyzing and arguments. Speedy Keep vote jumped too quickly to the conclusions, as the nom demonstrated/edited. Vice stands as the only good enough source. I've tried to find anything usable in my searches, but didn't succeed in that. Fails WP:GNG. Jovanmilic97 (talk) 12:57, 13 December 2023 (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.