Wikipedia:WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons/Forgotten Realms/Closure

The Forgotten Realms WikiProject has been inactive for quite a while, and its seems about time to close it. But whether the project is active or not, the question remains what to do with its associated content. Most of its articles are flagged for cleanup, and are probably candidates for deletion. This is a proposal how to consistently handle the situation.

History
The Forgotten Realms project was initiated in July 2005 by User:David Latapie, in a good-faith effort to create a detailed coverage of the fictional universe of Forgotten Realms. In the following, about 60 articles related to the game were created, mostly about fictional places.

However, it turned out that this type of in-universe coverage, or plot summary, is actually outside the scope of the encyclopedia. Wikipedia is rather supposed to cover the real-world aspects of the game, as described by uninvolved parties. Due to that, several articles of the project were deleted per Wikipedia's deletion policy.

In the following, editors from the Forgotten Realms project moved to other Wiki hosts which would accept in-universe coverage of fictional worlds, in particular to the Forgotten Realms Wikia. Messages were added to the project's articles on Wikipedia, pointing editors to Wikia; however these messages were later removed by others as being advertisements.

Current situation
The Forgotten Realms project has been largely inactive since at least August 2007. Its articles appear to be unmaintained.

There are currently 61 articles assigned to the project. Most of them (55 articles) are marked with cleanup tags of the various kinds, typically including the notability warning (48 articles). In fact, it seems that almost all articles contain only plot summary, and do not give any reliable sources that would go beyond plot summary; and it is not expected that such sources about individual fictional places do exist. Therefore, the articles would likely be candidates for deletion, as failing the WP:NOT policy and the WP:N guideline.

The as-is situation does not seem to fit well for any of the parties involved - neither those who wish to contribute fictional content, which is now done on Wikia, nor those which want to maintain a higher encyclopedic standard. A consistent solution is being sought for.

Solution
The following is a proposed solution how to deal consistently with the current situation, without biting any involved editor. It aims at reducing the Forgotten Realms coverage to out-of-universe content, as appropriate on Wikipedia. On the other hand, readers and editors looking for in-universe content should be instructed about the situation on Wikipedia, and pointed to alternative outlets.

The following steps should be taken, in the order given.

Transwiki
Any Forgotten Realms information on Wikipedia is copied to Wikia, if that has not already been done. (This can be done at any time. However it is assumed at the moment that no content remains to be copied. If you are interested in anything being copied, please leave a note on the talk page.)

- Nobody wanted anything transwikied. --B. Wolterding (talk) 14:34, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Removal of content
All Forgotten Realms in-universe articles (fictional places etc.) are then removed from Wikipedia. This may actually apply to almost all articles of the WikiProject, except for the main Forgotten Realms article. This is done using the WP:PROD process, or through redirecting to articles of larger scope as appropriate. (Note: The decision for deleting content is not taken here, but rather in the deletion process. Deletion might be contested there, in which case a larger discussion at WP:AFD would be sought. However it is hoped that editors objecting to the deletion will rather comment to this proposal.)

✅ - mostly by redirection. See ../Cleanup listing for details. --B. Wolterding (talk) 14:45, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Notice to editors
A prominent note to editors is left on Talk:Forgotten Realms, with content as follows.

✅ - note added. --B. Wolterding (talk) 15:55, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Links to Wikia
Every remaining Forgotten Realms article on Wikipedia (probably very few) receives an external link to Forgotten Realms Wikia, in the External links section, in order to direct readers to more detailed coverage. The link format is shown in the box below.

Forgotten Realms Wikia has information related to (this topic)

✅ Box created, see Template:Forgotten Realms Wikia, and added to Forgotten Realms and [Faerûn]]. --B. Wolterding (talk) 14:35, 25 July 2008 (UTC)