Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kara-Tur


 * 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 merge to Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms. Merge to whatever article. I don't know what exactly you have all settled on, but, I'll let all of you hash it out elsewhere. Missvain (talk) 02:31, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Kara-Tur

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PRODed last year by User:TTN. It was deprodded by (now blocked) User:User:Miraclepine who suggested a merge instead but without specifying the target. I reviewed the article and I concur with TTN this is mostly not salvageable (but - read on). Standard note fro me: "The coverage (references, external links, etc.) does not seem sufficient to justify this article passing General notability guideline and the more detailed Notability (fiction) requirement. WP:BEFORE did not reveal any significant coverage on Gnews, Gbooks or Gscholar." Moving besides the usual, the best this has going for it are the few sentences from the 'publication history' section, but they are all based on passing mentions; no source seems to have any in-depth analysis of this fictional location. The best we have is a single sentence from Bambra that this setting was inspired by real-world Asian culture. Doh. This is not enough, but this paragraph from our article could be mergable somewhere, I am just not sure what would be a good target (suggestions welcome). That aside, 95% of the current article is WP:FANCRUFT/WP:ALLPLOT as usual. We should preserve the few useful sentences from this somewhere, and that's about the best we can be expected to do, given Wikipedia =/= fandom wikia, etc. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 02:34, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  02:34, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science fiction and fantasy-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  02:34, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Games-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  02:34, 28 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep or merge to Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings per WP:ATD and WP:PRESERVE. BOZ (talk) 05:41, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Oriental Adventures, which is the notable product in which the setting was introduced. It looks like most of the "real world" publication and reception information here is already present there, so I don't think there's much that needs to be merged, but the history will be intact if people have anything they'd like to carry over.  I'm just not finding any real coverage in reliable, secondary sources on the fictional location itself that would justify an independent article, though.  Rorshacma (talk) 17:36, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Support merge to Oriental Adventures as Kara-Tur was originally developed as its setting for 1E D&D. The current mention on the list article of Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings is adequate and doesn't need expansion.
 * Redirect - Same issues remain from the time of the PROD. This does not meet WP:GNG. TTN (talk) 13:34, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Oriental Adventures. The one or two useful sentences of information can be added there.  Onel 5969  TT me 20:30, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Selective Merge to Oriental Adventures, there are a couple of sentences here that could be added there. Devonian Wombat (talk) 07:21, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep because there are more sources than have been discussed so far. I have added more to WP:PRESERVE, which gives us a bit of critical commentary how Kara-Tur relates to Asia. And there is The Space Gamer magazine which has a two-and-a-half page article discussing Oriental Adventures and three adventures together, which has several paragraphs specifically dedicated to Kara-Tur, mostly with non-plot information. The sections focussing on the books also contain bits related to the fictional location. Together with the sources present in the article that should fullfill both WP:GNG and WP:ALLPLOT. I ask everyone to consider this new evidence. Daranios (talk) 11:43, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment - Those added sources have extremely minimal coverage of Kara-Tur. The "Medieval Unmoored" has less than half a sentence, in a parenthesis of a footnote, that mentions it, that simply states "its was based on Asia".  The "Collaborative Worldbuilding for Writers and Gamers" is even worse as its "coverage" of the fictional continent only includes two block quotes - one from an official D&D book, and the other from a Wikipedia article.  If those sources are the best coverage that can be brought up, then there is no way this passes the WP:GNG as a stand alone article.  Rorshacma (talk) 16:16, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Collaborative Worldbuilding... indeed mainly tells us where Kara-Tur appears again in 5th edition. That was not what I was refering to. For "Medieval Unmoored", however, rather than taking out the part of the sentence where the word appears, I have looked at the whole paragraph(s) on pages 11 and 8 that it refers to. And that tells us, beyond "its was based on Asia", that Kara-Tur, like three other D&D locations the author looked at, is a distorted, simplistic take on medieval non-Western cultures seen through the Western lens of the designers. Consequently I have added two sentences of critical reception. Heroic Worlds also briefly covers the subject. Most importantly, you have ignored the Space Gamer article, the longest treatment in secondary sources I have seen so far. Daranios (talk) 08:25, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I didn't mention the Space Gamer article because it is a good source. However, it is the only good source - would go as far as saying it is basically the only source shown that actually rises above the level of "terrible" to being actually usable.  And a single good source is not enough for an independent article.  Moreover, while the article may talk about the setting beyond its initial origin in Oriental Adventures, it still does so using that product as the foundation and framework of the discussion, which just makes me think that we should do the same - an opinion that seems to be widely accepted in this AFD so far.  Rorshacma (talk) 16:15, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Why I don't agree with the other sources being non-usable, see below. As for a redirect/merge being widely accepted, that's when counting four opinions which did not take The Space Gamer into account. Daranios (talk) 16:51, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The sources are helpful, but the analysis is very short - effectively two-three sentences in each source. The Space Gamer just goes a bit deeper into which regions of Kara-Tur have been inspired by different regions of Asia (or periods of Asia history), but even that "longest treatment" is just two paragraphs in the form of "fictional region X is inspired by China, fictional region Y is inspired by Japan, etc.". Further, it is debatable whether ~what is primarily written about is the fictional land or the RPG setting of Oriental Adventures (the latter is clearly the focus of the Space Gamer review). Wouldn't the reader be best served if those references and whatever content is/can be referenced were to be merged to the OA article? On a side note, should we add IA search to FindSources? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:35, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Given the fact that Kara-Tur the location spans the Oriental Adventures book and a number of adventure modules - that's what The Space Gamer covers - Realms adventures, novels, its own campaign setting and a number of appearances in further/newer publications, no, I don't think that combining that to Oriental Adventures is the best solution. If there is some duplication between what relates to the Oriental Adventures rules and Kara-Tur the location, what's the problem as Wikipedia is not paper? Of course I would prefer a merge to a deletion, but I think neither is warranted here. And, true, one part of the Space Gamer article is the more detailed analysis of what was inspired by what (and additionally that ideas about Japan were translated even into regions based on other cultures). But the section starting "will you like playing in the world of Kara-Tur?" is an evaluation of the setting beyond that, and clearly refers to the setting.
 * That the other sources are short leads into the usual disagreement: In my view, WP:GNG does not require sigificant coverage within any one source. It requires several sources, and it requires significant coverage overall, as the distinction the guideline makes is whether or not a non-stubby article can be created based on the sources. And again, putting the real-world inspirations, the reception I have added, the reception from Space Gamer and the publication history together with a reasonably-size description = plot-summary, fullfilling WP:WHYN should not be a problem.
 * Finding more sources is always good, but I did not get what "should we add IA search to FindSources" means, sorry. Could you explain? Daranios (talk) 11:35, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * P.S. Another reason why I think merging to Oriental Adventures is not ideal for the reader is the fact that the 3rd edition version of the book focusses on Rokugan rather than Kara-Tur, which does not help clarity in a merge. Daranios (talk) 16:51, 3 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Redirect or merge to Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms or Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings. Open minded on the target and we could try to form a consensus around that. At this point there isn't enough critical reception in reliable third party sources to write about this in the detail it has. There's a suitable merge target and maybe there's some hope of establishing the notability of this as a book and a product. Shooterwalker (talk) 23:24, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment: Merging with Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms (I didn't realize an article on this sourcebook actually exists) seems to be the most sensible option compared to Oriental Adventures. As far as I know, no further sourcebooks have been published that exclusively focuses on the Kara-Tur setting, save for some supplemental information published in Dragon magazine for 3.5E years ago. Haleth (talk) 01:12, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment- I would also be fine with the target being Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms. Rorshacma (talk) 03:30, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's a good merge choice. Readers should find information on Kara-Tur in one article, not two. There's zero benefit in having two articles on essentially the same niche concept, particularly when one fails GNG. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 05:45, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
 * With Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms being the most comprehensive single source on the topic, I am okay with merging. However, if we combine the two, we should merge Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms here, not the other way round, as Kara-Tur is both the more comprehensive subject, and the far likelier search term for anyone interested. Interestingly, the corresponding DMs Guild article shows us how the presentation of Kara-Tur is controversial nowadays, and it seems like that box is covered in Designers & Dragons, though I have no access to that. Daranios (talk) 08:23, 4 December 2020 (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.