Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Locations in His Dark Materials series


 * 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. If interested in transwiki (assuming compatible licensing) or merging, please contact me and I will userify the content accordingly. &mdash; Scientizzle 17:51, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Locations in His Dark Materials series

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Fancruft. An unsourced article about some nonexistent locations. This page is of no use to anybody other than a fan of His Dark Materials. --S.dedalus (talk) 06:02, 26 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete per nomination. --S.dedalus (talk) 06:03, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete: Fancruft. - Rjd0060 (talk) 06:15, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Nobody but a fan would actually find use for this article. Maser  ( Talk! ) 07:32, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
 * delete article content is all "in universe", there is no encyclopedic content, no literary analysis of the locations which might be of any interest to anyone other than a rabid fan of the books. This is not an encyclopedia article, it's just a very tangential collection of meaningless details from some novels without context or meaning. I don't even know what use a fan would put it to,.. Pete.Hurd (talk) 07:39, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom -- ¿Amar៛ Talk to me / My edits 14:20, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete useless listcruft. RMHED (talk) 20:33, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. --Paularblaster (talk) 20:42, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep: Strongly disagree with deletion. The only deletion criterion this could fall under is 'not suitable for an encyclopedia'. Clearly this is a matter of opinion. I would suggest that the popularity of His Dark Materials and the book's critical standing is great enough to make exposition of locations, characters etc from the book's universe notable within the context of Wikipedia (e.g. see list characters in Final Fantasy cited as an exemplar in the Manual of Style). The comment that it is unsourced is not relevant given that this information is about the locations within a book and the book is self-evidently the source. Wikipedia acts, by its own admission, as an almanac as well as an encyclopedia and consequently the inclusion of a list is appropriate. However, this article clearly does need to be rewritten to provide some real-world context. Given that some of these locations are real-world or have real-world cognates, this is eminently possible. To that end I have added an in-universe template. Inbetweener (talk) 20:07, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
 * First things first. The book itself may be notable, but fictional locations like “Torre degli Angeli” surely are not. Secondly, Wikipedia policy and precedence requires reliable external sources in most cases. From WP:Plot: "Summary descriptions of plot, characters, and settings are appropriate when paired with such real-world information, but not when they are the sole content of an article." And from WP:IS, “It has been noticed, however, that some articles are sourcing their sole content from the topic itself, which creates a level of bias within an article. Where this primary source is the only source available on the topic, this bias is impossible to correct.” It seems clear that this article does not follow these criteria in any way. --S.dedalus (talk) 07:21, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
 * The notability of the book implies the notability of the locations. For examples see Characters of Final Fantasy VIII and Padmé Amidala, both of which are articles written entirely about fictional characters in entirely fictional universes. They have both, however, been given real-world context and context within the wider realms of cinema / gaming / fiction by high-quality writing. Hence both of these articles have previously been Wikipedia featured articles. There is no substantive difference in the notability of the subjects of these articles and the article under discussion. The difference lies in the quality of the article itself. A poorly written article is not a criterion for deletion, it is a criterion for improvement of the article. Hence the appropriateness of an in universe template but NOT of deletion. I entirely agree with your points from the WP:IS and WP:Plot but they are further evidence of the need to improve the article, not to delete it.Inbetweener (talk) 12:45, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
 * On the contrary, I don’t think the notability of a book itself has any bearing whatsoever on the notability of locations in the novel. Perhaps locations in Star Wars or Harry Potter are notable enough because of the plethora exterior sources. However if I were to write an article about the planet Xathru from Timothy Zahn novel The Icarus Hunt it would be deleted as fancruft overnight. I don’t see why “The Clouded Mountain” is any more usfull to non fans of the book than would be Xathru, and I believe wiki-precedent supports this interpretation. --S.dedalus 00:08, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I can see no possible empirical basis for the a priori assertion that Star Wars and Harry Potter possess a plethora of external sources which are unavailable for His Dark Materials. In the context of the 'controversy' regarding the religious themes of the trilogy, it has generated many newspaper column inches and a great deal of academic and lay discussion. The amount of literary criticism available on His Dark Materials is, in any case, certainly greater than that on the characters found in the computer game Final Fantasy VIII. The locations described, be they the University of Oxford as a bastion of rationalism, the allegorical "Clouded Mountain", or other real-life locations such as Svalbard and Novaya Zemlya are all part of that literary discussion. I can make no comment on Zahn other than to say that the sales of his novel, and the controversy generated by it, are probably significantly less. In any case, the fact that none of the authors of the present wikipedia article have availed themselves of the available literature on the subject does not imply that the article should be deleted. On that basis the vast majority of articles on molecular and cellular biology topics in Wikipedia should also be removed because, although there is usually a vast academic literature on any individual protein or gene, it is very rare for these to have been referenced on cited in the majority of these articles. Inbetweener 11:30, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Here’s a compromise. How about if we transwiki this article to Srafopedia (the Dark Materials wiki)? If you think the article can be adequately sourced here, by all means go ahead. My primary concern is that this is non notable fancruft and there for should not be on Wikipedia. A quick Google search appears to support this position, because, although there are 5,000 some hits for “Cittàgazze”  nearly all appear to be passing mentions on fan sits or Wikipedia mirrors. --S.dedalus 20:30, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep or merge. This useful reference for anyone reading or researching Philip Pullman -- let alone for fans or proto-fans -- builds the web and has the potential to become more like the articles on  Tolkien's Middle-earth. The interrelationships between Pullman's world and others -- suggested and documented by links rather than citations -- call for subtle treatment: preferably in this article, but alternatively within a more bloated His Dark Materials article. -- Pedant17 (talk) 02:04, 30 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I fail to see how a list of fictional locations from His Dark Materials would help anybody research Philip Pullman. That seems to like a huge non sequitur to me. Such an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence. I also don’t see why an alleged similarity between Dark Materials and Middle-earth justifies original research and lack of proven notability in the article. WP:BTW can in no way solely justify the inclusion of an article. --S.dedalus (talk) 07:31, 30 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Suggesting (among other things) that a list of locations may help research an author constitutes nothing out of the ordinary. We research authors by examining their texts, and the names in those texts, in particular, often provide patterning and resonances. -- The similarities between His Dark Materials and the tales of Tolkien's Middle-earth seem equally apparent. Both, as works of fiction, set up and elaborate fictional settings. Readers become attracted to such settings, just as readers become involved in plot and in character, and transfer some of their in-depth interest to Wikipedia. See also List of Foundation universe planets. Some of the settings may eventually aspire to their own articles, but Torre degli Angeli has not yet reached this phase, unlike Jordan College, Oxford. -- One could make a good case for building the web providing the sole justification of including an article -- in the case of re-directs, for example -- but in this case "building the web" makes no claim to providing the sole reason for this article, but well illustrates the need for distinguishing the fictional from the actual (Svalbard) and the geographical from the biographical (Scoresby Sund vs Lee Scoresby). -- Pedant17 11:01, 2 December 2007 (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.