Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Races of StarCraft


 * 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. There is a consensus that there is some content in this article that could be useful in some other articles, but that this topic does not merit its own coverage. Barkeep49 (talk) 19:18, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Races of StarCraft

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

This article fails WP:GNG with no WP:SIGCOV in secondary sources of the StarCraft races. For the most part, it uses primary sources or trivial mentions in unassociated articles. Therefore, it seems to serve no encyclopedic purpose.

I cannot rule out one or more of the races possibly being notable if good sources are found, but right now it would need a full rewrite, and a WP:BEFORE failed to find WP:SIGCOV of note. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 06:47, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Fictional elements, Science fiction and fantasy,  and Video games.  ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 06:47, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep. The OP's insistence that there is no significant coverage about the races and factions of the StarCraft universe is incorrect. A quick WP:BEFORE search by me, through Google Scholar (I haven't looked at Google Books or trawled through pop culture and game journalist websites which may discuss the topic on more casual terms) already yielded substantive writeups from at least three different sources. A substantial amount of SoundCraft: Transducing StarCraft 2 (cited by up to 9 sources) focuses on musical interpretations and technical analysis of StarCraft's gameplay and its individual playable units (through a program developed by the authors), all of which are distributed among the game series' three major factions. This kind of info could actually serve some kind of "encyclopedic purpose" for people who are interested in how the games works through some of its most visible moving parts, since the OP objects to excessive in-universe information about the series' fiction.
 * Universe of Teleological Illth: A Critique of StarCraft 2 on the other hand, provides an in-depth critical reading into the fictional world of SC2, and so the races and factions which appear in that game are discussed in aggregate through a critical lens, often on sociology terms, and not as fancruft from a fan's POV. Lastly, A citizen science colonisation model for the Koprulu Sector in StarCraft 2, micro Terran to defeat Protoss and Zerg directly and specifically deals with the "Races of StarCraft" topic in detail. According to the abstract, it presents "results from a citizen science outreach project to develop models of interstellar colonisation based on the multi-player strategy game StarCraft 2. Data were gathered from the online gaming community to provide a test set of outcomes for encounters between several fictitious alien species, each following various economic and military strategies." It concludes in summary that "the mean stellar occupancy of each civilisation averaged over the 100 realizations shows that the Terran inhabitants of the fictitious Koprulu Sector, pursuing a strategy of early pressure against their opponents, would eventually conquer their Zerg and Protoss adversaries."
 * I have demonstrated that there is no real prospect of deletion for an article about the topic, and the OP has not provided a viable alternative or merge target for this topic. On the other hand, I do not disagree with the OP's claim that the article is in need of a rewrite and seems to serve as a mass of fancruft which seem to serve no encyclopedic purpose. So the question would be, is rewriting the article using information sourced from the aforementioned sources in order to catalogue elements of each faction an adequate solution, or maybe we should consider whether it should be retitled to reflect a different focus: perhaps Universe of StarCraft, where primary information about the factions/races are dealt with briefly and instead takes a backseat to the discourse from secondary sources like the ones I brought into the discussion? Haleth (talk) 16:47, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge a small amount of the information into the game's main article. We are not here to host enormous piles of fan-cruft (there are better places to host detailed descriptions of game-play), but it's reasonable to give a brief summary of the important features of a notable game. I checked the Google Scholar hits referred to above. None that I found were about the subject of races of StarCraft. Nearly all were about the use of StarCraft as a model for developing AI, and merely referred to the races, they being a major part of the game. Elemimele (talk) 17:43, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I disagree with your assessment and I question whether you've actually read the sources I raised beyond a cursory glance. A citizen science colonisation model et al was the only one of the three that discussed the game series' factions within the context of AI, and even then, it "addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content", per the definition by WP:SIGCOV. It certainly isn't written as a dissertation on AI modeling with the fictional StarCraft universe only being tangentially mentioned as you are suggesting. Consider that both StarCraft games, being some of the most-played video games in esports history, have left a deep cultural impact in the video game industry and undisputedly subject to significant coverage from both critical and esports commentators, how the races play should not necessarily be confined to a mere "brief summary" on the main page as you suggested, because there is adequate coverage from secondary sources. Universe of Teleological Illth is written from a sociology perspective and has nothing to with AI, while SoundCraft discusses the games' soundscape within the context of the fictional universe and its inhabitants, and again, nothing to do with AI development. To reiterate, WP:GNG defines significant coverage as "more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material". My point stands that there is enough coverage to write a Wikipedia article, even a short one, about the fictional universe of SC from a non-fancruft perspective, be it a Universe of StarCraft, Gameplay of StarCraft, or the current title which has a more narrow focus ala Factions of Halo. Haleth (talk) 02:19, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge information about the Zerg into Zerg rush (which is currently a redirect to Rush (video games) -- either in this article or in a newly created one), a small amount of the information into the main article of the game per Elemimele above, and delete the rest. WP:VG/RS searches came up with nothing outside of small blog posts. I found a number of stories which talked about the Zerg in terms of the Zerg rush strategy, but it isn't incredibly helpful for arguing to keep this article -- more of an argument to expand a different one. (Sources found:, , , , , , , , -- all of these are secondary sources at best with passing mentions, and almost all about Zerg Rush, the strategy).  Nomader  ( talk ) 21:10, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * To be honest, none of those references appear to merit the creation of a zerg rush article - they are all, as you said, trivial mentions. The Escapist article would be a decent source for a full-on Zerg article rewrite if more can be found, yet it is only on a single race and therefore has no effect on whether or not this one should be deleted. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 22:03, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I think it's a common enough phrase that with some actual digging in and research, you *might* find enough sources between books and other things to talk about it more extensively... but looking at the "rush" article I linked to above, I think the information on it would be fine there. It's worth flagging that I found absolutely nothing when I looked for other races as well, so I still think that any non WP:FANCRUFT-y information should be merged into the main article and then it should be deleted. Nomader  ( talk ) 08:21, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I am surprised you "found absolutely nothing", as I see a number of hits in e.g. this search for Protoss. Sure, many of them only contain short statements, but that's more than nothing. Daranios (talk) 11:38, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I should clarify, because that's absolutely fair. I found nothing more than at best, passing mentions. Even the top result of your Google scholar search is about rush gameplay strategies for the game StarCraft II and isn't about the races themselves -- it would be better incorporated into the article about the game instead. WP:VG/RS reliable source searches for Protoss only come up with articles about e-sport match strategies and passing mentions about the race, or come up with Wikia pages. I stand by my !vote and think this information would be better served in a summary style in the main series article. Nomader  ( talk ) 15:40, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Relisting comment: Opinion is divided between those advocating Keep and those who believe a Merge would be sufficient. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 07:01, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep because there are a number of secondary sources. In addition to the ones cited by and those already present in the article, Algorithmic and Architectural Gaming Design, p. 108-109 has a good half-page on the races, and Protoss-, Zerg- und Terraner-Werden (starting p. 135) is a 20-page chapter dealing with gameplay of the races in Starcraft, with about 2 pages each dedicated to the evaluation of each of the three races. There is also this Wired article, as well as many shorter but non-trivial statements about the races in academic sources. So I think these together not only fullfill WP:GNG and WP:SIGCOV, but if all this information were to be included in the main StarCraft article, it would make for akwardly large chunks within the Backstory and Reception (and Gameplay?) sections. Daranios (talk) 16:10, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The Wired article, at least, is fannish to the extreme and unencyclopedic for Wikipedia's purposes. A "scientific study" about what race would win is clearly ridiculous given that this is a fictional universe; what happens is decided by the writers, not physical laws. I would throw it out wholesale. The first book seems like it's still trivial coverage, merely a dull description fit for a fan wiki with no critical response. That leaves the German book, but sadly I wouldn't be able to say whether it was good enough as I cannot read that language. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 22:10, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * That's not really how we determine notability. Whether we think that it's patently absurd to do a study like this, a study was made, which is worthy of note. Like, if Joe Biden went on a tangent about which races in Starcraft were the strongest, the fact that it was a bizarre thing to go into would not make it notable that it was acknowledged as more than a passing reference. The Wired article tells us that the people behind the Edinburgh study deemed the races of StarCraft to be sufficiently significant enough to warrant analysis. For that, I reckon I am going to say Keep the article. - Whadup, it&#39;s ya girl, Dusa (talk) 01:35, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Correction: they deemed StarCraft significant enough. The researchers obviously did not research Starcraft because they thought the Zerg were cool-looking or narratively intriguing, but because the game gave them an opportunity to run a test. The game's races were an afterthought and it would quite literally not matter if all 3 factions were human. That's how it's clear it's irrelevant and at most should get a mention on the page of the game itself. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 06:08, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * "ridiculous"? You mean, like an academic paper using dragons to teach biology? The aim of the scientific study was to illustrate scientific methodology with the help of a pop-culture item. I think that is completely valid, not at all ridiculous. It also means StarCraft's races were not the main topic of that publication, but that is explicitly not needed for contributing towards notability. More importantly, we don't determine ourselves which topics we find ridiculous or not, we use secondary sources for that. If Wired writes an article, then their editorial board has deemed the topic important enough to write about it. That's our critereon. And if you look through that article, you will find "races of StarCraft" and the individual races talked about much more then the game StarCraft overall. Daranios (talk) 15:00, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * There is no rule requiring people to use sources because someone's editorial board deemed it important. Common sense is required, otherwise we'd be using every little Kotaku article that gets published there. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 15:58, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * "requiring to use sources"? No, indeed not. But if they exist and are not disqualified e.g. on grounds of WP:Reliable sources, then this becomes an opinion/editorial judgment, but one can no longer claim that the topic fails WP:GNG. Daranios (talk) 20:23, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I am unsure where you got that impression. A Pokemon with 3 clickbait sources from otherwise reliable locations would not pass GNG. After all, an article with no sources would look rather strange. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 20:34, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * As I said, if there are grounds to discount a source, that's another matter. But according to WP:Reliable sources/Perennial sources, Wired magazine is ok as a source. And the fullfillment of WP:GNG is dependant on "coverage in reliable sources", no matter if one personally likes the content within the coverage or not. Daranios (talk) 20:41, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment. An interesting topic. There is some excessive detail here, perhaps, and some stretching of sourcing (WP:SYNTH?); at the same time, Starcraft is one of the most important video games in history; this can be conciveably notable. I need to review the sources and arguments more. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 07:23, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep as meeting GNG per sources found and discussed here. Jclemens (talk) 08:16, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Merge there isn't much scholarly discussion on the subject, and that's the issue. Most stuff will be fancruft and sources we can't use; what's left (as discussed above) can be merged. Oaktree b (talk) 01:22, 22 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Merge to Zerg per others. A similar thing happened with Articles for deletion/List of Star Control races (2nd nomination) and Ur-Quan. One race has pretty clear and significant coverage, but the other races have been mentioned mostly in passing, with the Terrans having the least significant coverage. If we are following the sources, we'd focus on one race and let the others be covered incidentally in the plot summary of the game. Shooterwalker (talk) 01:26, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
 * As Zerg redirects here, you mean "rename and trim"? Daranios (talk) 11:51, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm working to form a consensus, and I want my comment to be taken in the same spirit of other merge suggestions. I am open minded on the target, and your suggestion would be acceptable. Shooterwalker (talk) 12:32, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Exactly, Terrans are just glorified humans and don't have any particular uniqueness about their lore, so it makes sense there would be an order of magnitude less coverage. They don't need to be lumped in in a vain attempt to make them more notable. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 22:04, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
 * So we agree that there's some coverage of Terrans (and the other races). If Zerg have "an order of magnitude" more, you support Zerg as a stand-alone article?
 * Anyway, while I assume there is more coverage of the Zerg than the others, I think "an order of magnitude" is not correct. Looking at e.g. the three sources I've cited, Algorithmic and Architectural Gaming Design has most on the Zerg but also something on Terrans, Protoss-, Zerg- und Terraner-Werden has about the same on all three player races, and the Wired article has more on the Terrans than the others. Likewise, GameSpot has an article series on each of the three (already in the article). Daranios (talk) 14:58, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
 * "They don't need to be lumped in in a vain attempt to make them more notable." is the opposite of what Wikipedia's deletion policy says what we should do with the existing coverage on Terrans: "Pages about non-notable fictional elements are generally merged into list articles or articles covering the work of fiction in which they appear." Daranios (talk) 11:51, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I have since found that Aliens in Popular Culture p. 245-247 may have WP:SIGCOV about the Protoss and Zerg, though I can't access part of it. There are a couple interviews about the Zerg's development process that, while a primary source, can flesh out the article. I'm still not 100% convinced Zerg is notable but it's seeming far more likely than Terran, and while the policy says "non-notable fictional elements are generally merged into list articles", that already exists at Characters of StarCraft, so this article would not be needed at all either way. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 17:39, 24 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Merge the design and cultural impact sections and get rid of the other parts which are fancrufty content. OceanHok (talk) 04:13, 26 February 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.