Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Great Old Ones


 * 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. Black Kite (talk) 08:33, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

List of Great Old Ones

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Fails WP:LISTN. Of the sources in the article, Lovecraft and Long are fictional novels. The two websites look unreliable, the Book of Eibon looks primary, and the Encyclopedia Cthulhiana appears to be a supplement for a role-playing game. A WP:BEFORE search turns up a lot of unreliable coverage, although some reliable, secondary coverage is found for Great Old Ones. However, this list fails WP:LISTN - One accepted reason why a list topic is considered notable is if it has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources, per the above guidelines - I've found nothing that indicates that Great Old Ones are discussed as a group or set. Without coverage of this as a group or set, I don't see support for a stand-alone list. Hog Farm (talk) 16:07, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. Hog Farm (talk) 16:07, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science fiction and fantasy-related deletion discussions. Hog Farm (talk) 16:07, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. Hog Farm (talk) 16:07, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Hog Farm (talk) 16:07, 22 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep So what if two of the sources are fiction? There is a significant amount of data on fiction in all forms, including lists of fictional whatevers all over Wikipedia, that have passed notability. And this article has been in force for over a decade, updated regularly, and never had a problem before this.  Timmccloud (talk) 16:52, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep: I disagree with Hog Farm's assessment of sources for discussion of the Great Old Ones as a group or set. The Great Old Ones are a major part of Lovecraft's fictional universe, and are discussed in many books. For example:
 * H. P. Lovecraft's Dark Arcadia: The Satire, Symbology and Contradiction by Gavin Callaghan, McFarland & Co (2013): Chapter 3, "Secrets Behind the Locked Door" - pp 98 & following
 * "Lovecraft's Artificial Mythology" by Robert M. Price in An Epicure in the Terrible: A Centennial Anthology of Essays in Honor of H.P. Lovecraft, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (1991) - pp 249 & following
 * Discovering H.P. Lovecraft by Darrell Schweitzer, Wildside Press (2012)
 * So the list is a valid, notable topic for a page. I expect that some of the content on the current page is there because of previous deletion discussions or prods that moved the content to a list page, and I dislike the tendency to merge pages into a list and then nominate the list for deletion. That being said, there is currently a "Table of Great Old Ones" section on the Cthulhu Mythos deities article which overlaps somewhat with this List of Great Old Ones. I think it would be helpful to have a merge discussion on the talk pages, to see how to best consolidate the existing content. — Toughpigs (talk) 17:46, 22 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment The term "Old Ones" is also used in discussions of the Elder Things. In The Shadow Out of Time, Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee calls the Elder Things "winged, star-headed Old Ones who centred in the Antarctic". &#8213; Susmuffin Talk 18:26, 22 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Redirect to Cthulhu Mythos deities, where they are already covered. This is an entirely unnecessary WP:CFORK from that main article, and the information here is pretty bare bones compared to the main article.  A merge discussion is not needed since, as pointed out by the nom, none of the information currently in this article is actually based on reliable, secondary sources.  A Redirect to the main topic is all that is actually necessary.  Rorshacma (talk) 21:23, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep or merge to Cthulhu Mythos deities. As shown by the sources of Toughpigs, this is a notable topic. In addition, a search at Google Scholar for e.g. "Great Old Ones" Lovecraft gives numerous other sources. Have these been looked at and discounted as should have been done WP:BEFORE? That said, I am not opposed to a merge to Cthulhu Mythos deities if putting this together is not seen as producing to cumbersome a list. I think, however, that this should not be simply redirected, as for some entities here more information is present than at the proposed target. The fact that it is content mostly based on primary sources does not make it valueless. Daranios (talk) 10:38, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment Regardless of what you think of the sources, Keeping is inappropriate as this list is a completely redundant WP:CFORK. The majority of the entries at Cthulhu Mythos deities are the Great Old Ones. There is absolutely no reason to have a second list that just reiterates the same entries as half of the primary list. Rorshacma (talk) 14:38, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Sure, we don't want duplication, and merging the content here to Cthulhu Mythos deities is one obvious solution. Given the fact that Great Old Ones simply links to Cthulhu Mythos deities despite the subject's potential also makes splitting the content out and moving it here, or putting everything into a Great Old Ones article seem possible alternatives. None of these points towards deletion, so I wonder if this is even the right place to discuss it. Daranios (talk) 10:45, 24 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Merge to Cthulhu_Mythos_deities. I don't see why we need two listicles on the some topic, and the proposed target already has an extensive list of those functional beings. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 01:54, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete not only are there no independent reliable sources to explain this collection, but there are only two deities that have any sources at all, and they're all primary sources. This overall concept hasn't generated enough third party coverage to support a stand-alone article. I suppose there's a redirect argument to be made as this is a WP:CONTENTFORK from other, more notable characters from Lovecraft's work. Shooterwalker (talk) 18:34, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I think there is wide-spread agreement that the list as it is now has too little in-line citation references. But that's not the basis for deletion according to Wikipedia guidelines. Did you actually look for third party coverage according to WP:BEFORE? Did you read through the above where people have already found such sources? Did you look at the References section of the article? Daranios (talk) 20:31, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Keep. It's possible that some of the "lesser" deities with shaky sourcing could be trimmed, but there's well-sourced articles here too (Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep for the most obvious ones), so this is a perfectly valid list.  Additionally, disagree with nom's assertion that the Great Old Ones aren't discussed as a set; if anything, they might mostly be discussed as a set, as often the more obscure ones are discussed in relation to the others.  SnowFire (talk) 23:55, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Jack Frost (talk) 05:31, 30 June 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.