Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Timeline of fictional historical events prior to the 20th century


 * 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. - Mailer Diablo 14:22, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Timeline of fictional historical events prior to the 20th century
Hardly encyclopedic, and hardly useful as well. A confusing and unneccessary mish-mash of fictional events fropm dozens of fictional works. --FuriousFreddy 20:56, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep - I like the idea, potentially very interesting. There are obvious completeness issues; does this article propose to include every work of fiction ever? But invoking the philosophy of eventualism, I can vote to keep this. I just did the "Friend test" (linking this article to a few of my friends to gauge their reaction), and they all said "wow" or "cool" or something, which tells me that this is an interesting premise for an article (and you can't argue with the Friend Test...) Jdcooper 23:17, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete in its current form. As was noted above, this is a fascinating idea and a bold concept. But it's too open-ended. Theoretically, any event from any work of fiction qualifies. Already the list is quite long and not very organized. But I'm always willing to reconsider. I suggest the authors establish criteria for inclusion (perhaps only including alternative history: things that are contrary to what actually happened), group the events so it seems less random, and get back to us. SliceNYC 23:50, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
 * See Articles for deletion/Timeline of fictional historical events, Timeline of fictional future events for suggestions on how to group the events so that they seem less random. Uncle G 15:21, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete, invoking the philosophy of immediatism. Wikipedia must be more than "Possible-probable, my black hen/She lays eggs in the relative when/She doesn't lay eggs in the positive now/Because she's unable to postulate how." This is not a sound article because fictional events occurring at about the same time in different works of fiction are not really connected. Organizing these unrelated events by date is original research, and is also intrinsically unencyclopedic; if it were encyclopedic, someone could and should have already written an article on the topic of Fictional historical events. The only practical use I can think of for such a list would be for a novelist who wanted to write a novel mixing other novels' fictional histories. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:33, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * This is a breakout of Timeline of fictional historical events, which was discussed at Articles for deletion/Timeline of fictional historical events, Timeline of fictional future events. I strongly recommend reading that discussion. Uncle G 15:21, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * My opinion remains unchanged from the prior discussion, by the way. That this has finally expanded enough to warrant a breakout article; that the breakout has been done the wrong way, by time period rather than by universe; and that this mish-mash is the result demonstrate the very point that I made back in January 2005. Uncle G 15:28, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep But with changes- While the idea of a timeline of mythical creatures is a good one, this articles references seem to be made up mostly of television shows. I see maybe 25%books or liture references and the rest seem to be either comic books or shows. also it doesnt seem to capture all of them, being a person who has researched fictional or mythical creatures, it seems to me that you may not be able to get them all on one page and perhaps it should be divide by time(ie- fictional charetcters of big bang-whatever, dinousour fictional creatures, fictional creatures pre-homosapian, and so on in that forth so you may encompass all of them. With it's current state it may be better to delete and just start all over. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.85.122.230 (talk • contribs) 2006-08-15 00:12:13
 * Delete Because something is not done well is not grounds for deletion. But in this case, the entire approach strikes me as flawed.  The content would be far better merged into individual articles pertinent to each fictional source, rather than presented as a hopelessly mixed up compendium as is done here.  That way, the inherent bias (e.g. for overwhelmingly English language fictional sources) is rendered irrelevant and a logical and usable structure could be provided.  By the same logic, [Timeline of fictional historical events]] should be parsed in the same way.  Eusebeus 16:33, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per Eusebeus. :) Dlohcierekim 18:33, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete this can never be more than a jumble of unrelated, conflicting, mostly trivial dates and events, many interwoven with real ones -- there are literally (pun intended) hundreds of fictional works placed during the US Civil War, just digging through those (like the momentous occasions of Scarlett O'Hara's birth, marriage, being sworn to, etc.) would take longer than the war lasted to read. Carlossuarez46 03:17, 16 August 2006 (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.