Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Magic item (Dungeons & Dragons)


 * 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. Eluchil404 (talk) 00:08, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Magic item (Dungeons &amp; Dragons)

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Crufty, should be merged to Dungeons & Dragons or deleted outright. Wikipedia is not a game guide. Prodego talk  06:14, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Game-related deletion discussions.   —Gavin Collins (talk) 09:35, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Clearly this is an unimportant fictional artifact as it could be interechanged with just about any prop. --Gavin Collins (talk) 09:35, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment This isn't about an artifact; it is about an entire category of items in the game. -Drilnoth (talk) 13:35, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Indeed, this is more of a concept that goes back to the very roots of the game. I've seen Gary Gygax mentioning in interviews of how in the days before the game even saw print, players were looking to recover magical treasure from fallen enemies. This concept is neither a singular artifact nor a prop: "Magic item" is to Excalibur as "Basketball player" is to Michael Jordan. BOZ (talk) 15:33, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment This article is not about a prop, under any definition of that term. To assert such, let alone to think it refers to a single object, shows a profound failure to understand the subject of the article. Edward321 (talk) 23:04, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment If it is not a prop per se, then are you saying that is not used in the game? Are you saying it is a category applicable to only the Dungeons and Dragons game, a type of fictional category that is not actually used by a player of Dungeons and Dragons, but used to describe the fictional artifacts that are? What chances are there of ever establishing notability for fictional category that has no real-world application? --Gavin Collins (talk) 20:15, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete - there's a real lack of reliable secondary sources in order to demonstrate how much of the content is notable. I first considered a redirect, but haven't found a suitable redirect target myself. Ideally, I'd suggest a redirect to something like a Gameplay/Mechanics D&D article, or a wider Items RPG/gaming article.  Gazi moff  09:51, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep: This is the result of a many-article merge of less-notable articles. The article certainly needs work, although it will never be improved if it is deleted. Were sources searched for before the nomination? WP:N states that "If appropriate sources cannot be found..." before explaining merging/deletion. Also, my interpretation of WP:GAMEGUIDE is that things such as attack bonuses and hit points should not be included, and righftully so. Now, some of the content in the article is gameguidy. However, enough of it isn't that we'd still have a decent article even if it was removed. -Drilnoth (talk) 13:34, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep: As per Drilnoth. The article needs improvement, but deletion doesn't seem to be an appropriate step at this point at all.Shemeska (talk) 13:54, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep I created this article in part, as a place to merge less notable articles into as Drilnoth states, but primarily to increase coverage on this important aspect of the D&D game. One of the main goals for players of the game is to have their characters accumulate treasure by defeating their enemies, and magical treasure is often paramount. Undoubtedly, this concept is likely to be featured in any secondary sources which discuss the game in depth. The D&D project has been a mess for a long time regarding sourcing, but I think we are finally coming around, and have just started to gather up information on reliable secondary sources that we may all make use of. I am confident that a search through those sources, or other ones not yet listed, will yield positive results for the concept of magic items in the Dungeons & Dragons game. If merge winds up being the preferred result, much of this content was moved from Magic of Dungeons & Dragons (which now focuses largely on magic spells rather than items) in the first place, so we could always move it back there. BOZ (talk) 15:33, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Also, "crufty" is not a reason to delete, it is a reason for cleanup. And I would like to mention that the nominator did not alert me to this deletion discussion on my talk page. BOZ (talk) 15:36, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep - The article needs to be cleaned up, but there is nothing here that can't be saved with some edits. There are refs and I can find more.  "Crufty" is not a reason to delete. This is not a game guide either.  So with both reasons failing there is no reason to delete this article. Web Warlock (talk) 16:00, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge to Dungeons & Dragons game mechanics — I disagree with the above. Nearly the entire article is game guide material; however, it is still salvageable, so outright deletion may not be the best route here. Trim all that down and merge it into the game mechanics article. IMO it complements well with the material there. MuZemike  ( talk ) 18:26, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment: I think that if the article was merged, Game Mechanics wouldn't be the right place. Additionally, WP:GAMEGUIDE says that "a Wikipedia article should not read like a how-to style manual of instructions, advice (legal, medical or otherwise) or suggestions, or contain how-tos." Although the article does contain some things which should probably be removed because they fail this, I think that the vast majority of the article just needs a bit of a rewrite. -Drilnoth (talk) 19:07, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment - Magic items in D&D are both a setting element and a game mechanics element. I feel that it would be unprofessional to neglect the game mechanics aspects, and both unprofessional and silly to actively avoid using examples in the coverage of the game mechanics aspects when using examples would be clearer and more concise than the alternatives. If it does get merged, I feel that it would be more appropriate to divide the content between Magic of Dungeons & Dragons and Dungeons & Dragons game mechanics rather than merging everything into one of the two articles. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 19:34, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep or light merge per above. Hooper (talk) 19:09, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep - For the reasons outlined above by myself and others. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 19:34, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep/merge The topic seems fairly generic and could be expanded to included RPGs in general or magic items of all sorts. Deletion is not appropriate as the article is already in better shape than the main article on Magic items. Colonel Warden (talk) 22:51, 24 December 2008
 * Keep and expand. This article suffers from a bad case of recentism--You'd think, from reading it, that 3, 3.5, and 4 were the influential editions of D&D. Jclemens (talk) 06:51, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete: no sources independent of the subject (only sources are published by the game's current/former publishers), so no evidence of notability. HrafnTalkStalk 17:28, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment: Although the article does not currently have independent sources, I don't think that that means the topic is not notable... a topic is not notable once people have tried and failed to find independent sources. I think that the use of primary sources or unreliable sources is separate from notability, but correct me if I'm wrong. -Drilnoth (talk) 14:52, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Other than evidence of "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject", and similar objective criteria (which can only rely on coverage to hand, not speculation of what coverage might be out there), there's little but personal opinions (excluded as WP:ATA) & subjective views (WP:LOCALFAME) -- neither of which is a good basis for collective decision making. HrafnTalkStalk 15:12, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
 * WP:N states that quote "If appropriate sources cannot be found, consider merging the article's content into a broader article providing context. Otherwise, if deleting:..." My take on that is that an article's current sources should not be used on their own in discussions about notability, but other sources not yet added to the article should be considered before deleting/merging. I agree completely that the article needs better sources, but I believe that that is a question of WP:V and WP:RS, not WP:N.
 * Additionally, Wikipedia's deletion policy says that reasons for deletion include: "Articles which cannot possibly be attributed to reliable sources," "Articles for which all attempts to find reliable sources to verify them have failed" and "Articles whose subject fails to meet the relevant notability guideline (WP:N, WP:BIO, WP:MUSIC, WP:CORP and so forth)" At this point, I do not believe that all attempts have been made to find reliable sources or that sources cannot possibly be found, nor do I believe that the subject is not notable... a subject fails to meet a notability guideline if sources to meet the guidelines have not been found after they are searched for, regardless of what is actually in the article at the time. -Drilnoth (talk) 19:04, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Airy assertions that 'there are sources out there somewhere ' are easy to make and impossible to disprove -- so are simply so much hot air. WP:NOTE requires that sources are reliable, independent and provide significant coverage -- issues that can only be evaluated for specific sources. Therefore specific sources are needed -- not airy assertions and WP:GOOGLEHITS. "To hand" does not necessarily mean 'already in the article', but it does mean that it can be specifically identified, so that it can be evaluated (and put into the article if it merits it). HrafnTalkStalk 03:39, 27 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Merge I completely agree with Colonel Warden -- the literary concept of a magic item is certainly notable, and it's a huge part of not only fantasy gaming, but the entire fantasy genre. However, I don't think an in-depth explanation of the categories of 4th edition magic item equipment slots is necessary to explain that concept.  I appreciate that this is a consolidation, but it should be trimmed further, keeping the notable concepts and items, then merged to magic item. ColorOfSuffering (talk) 20:23, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep References #1, #2, #5, and #6 are all reliable verifiable sources. I still say it needs a healthy trimming, but it does seem to meet the notability requirements in its current state. ColorOfSuffering (talk) 21:48, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep Article clearly needs improving, but it's a legitmate spinout article to keep the main D&D article from growing too big. Edward321 (talk) 23:04, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep per Col Warden.--Robbstrd (talk) 00:50, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep and cleanup. I added two secondary refs. to demonstrate notability.&mdash;RJH (talk) 19:16, 28 December 2008 (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.