Wikipedia talk:Deletion review/Archives/2017/October

I'm not sure if deletion review would be appropriate in this case or not.
Here was the discussion I had with the administrator who deleted the page:

"I would like to discuss your deletion of the page I created (the list of mythological and fantastic creatures in contemporary fiction). I left a note to that effect, and you deleted it without, as far as I could tell, responding in any way, not even to say, eg, "I disagree, sorry" or whatever. Not fair, and not reasonable. Tamtrible (talk) 17:31, 2 October 2017 (UTC) I agree the deletion page is violation of bio or other editors civil rights on information regarding some are paid to setup the pages and unknown other country editors delete hack without further contacting the source or sources.   — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.213.105.3 (talk) 22:47, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't remember deleting anything. Your comment was archived. Ï saw no question or anything else in your note that I thought I needed to respond to. Sandstein 19:54, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Sorry to falsely accuse you. But I brought up a few relevant issues attempting to dispute the deletion of my page, which I thought at least merited a response along the lines of "I don't agree" or "Insufficient" or whatever, if nothing else, even if you did not consider them adequate grounds to reverse the deletion. Tamtrible (talk) 16:54, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

OK, if you want my opinion on something, please ask for it. Can you please restate what article this is about and why you contest its deletion? Sandstein 17:27, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

It was "Types of mythological or fantastic beings in contemporary fiction". The main objections seemed to be that it was "original research", and that it didn't have enough sources. I was attempting to accumulate sources, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion/Types_of_mythological_or_fantastic_beings_in_contemporary_fiction, I just wasn't sure what to actually do with them. And I asked here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:No_original_research#Does_this_count_as_.22original_research.22.3F if it counts as "original research" to, for example, say "This book has a vampire in it", and the person who responded said that it did not, provided, eg, the work itself called the creature a vampire. Since the "original research" on the page mostly consisted of saying "This book has vampires and werewolves and magic users in it" or whatever, I'd... at least like more of a chance to add the needed sources before the page is deleted for good. Tamtrible (talk) 07:42, 4 October 2017 (UTC) I put a lot of work into the page, and at least a few other people contributed as well. And I was trying to get more contributions. It was getting better. Tamtrible (talk) 07:49, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

OK, but this is not a reason to undo the deletion, because the sources you collected didn't convince the other people in the deletion discussion. These sources also do not address the problem that the article content was original research because you just threw a lot of sources on a talk page instead of referencing the content that was actually in the article. Sandstein 07:59, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure if anyone *saw* the sources I collected. And the original research problem may be from a faulty (or at least non-universal) interpretation of what constitutes "original research". I am not the only one of the opinion that saying that a book with a character that the people in the book call a vampire or a werewolf or a mermaid or whatever has same in it is not "original research", because it's not deep interpretation, it's just "Yep, vampire, check." And the fact that at least one person flat-out called it "fancruft", and several others made similar comments, suggests that at least some of the people were voting against it more because they, personally, didn't see it as interesting than because the article itself was poorly written or non-notable. I refer you to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fancruft#Policy_relating_to_fancruft. Tamtrible (talk) 16:51, 4 October 2017 (UTC) I also point you towards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cruftcruft#Don.27t_call_things_cruft. Tamtrible (talk) 17:00, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Your opinion is noted, but I am not interested in discussing this further. Sandstein 17:49, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

" I'm not sure that the original deletion discussion had quite reached a consensus, and I think a lot of the people voting against it voted the way they did more because the subject was not interesting to them personally than because it legitimately was inappropriate or whatever. Possibly including the administrator who closed the deletion discussion.  I admit that the page needed some work, and I was trying to recruit other interested parties to improve it when the deletion came up.

Opinion?

Also, if it is appropriate to get a deletion review, I'm not quite sure I'm parsing how to list it. Tamtrible (talk) 09:16, 7 October 2017 (UTC)


 * This article was basically a table listing whether particular fantasy works featured any of a collection of fantasy creatures. There were two problems with the article during the discussion which led to the deletion:
 * The content was original research. Deciding whether a particular fantasy work has a creature in it which qualifies as a vampire, zombie etc was up to the person who added it to the list. This isn't just a case of noting that some creature is described as a ghost or wizard, since there were plenty of entries where some creature was interpreted as being one of those things even if it was called something else.
 * Aside from this, people didn't think the list had much value. Yes, this is a subjective judgement, but that doesn't necessarily make it invalid grounds for deletion, especially if there is general agreement on that point. Furthermore there wasn't any particular basis for only considering the types of beings listed, and if the list was complete it would be absolutely enormous.
 * Note that neither of these is a notability-based concern, and neither can be addressed by pointing to scholarly sources discussing (e.g.) vampires in fiction generally. If you have sources discussing how vampires are depicted across different fictional works then that might help to address the original research issues, but people may well say that content like that should be in the article about vampires instead.  Hut 8.5  10:05, 7 October 2017 (UTC)


 * There was interpretation on some of them, but at least for the ones I added (which was most of them), the majority of the entries were "Yep, Kitty's a werewolf, Rick's a vampire, Amelia's a ghost", and so on. As in, no interpretation necessary, the characters in the stories were called, by themselves or other characters, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, dragons, or whatever else.  Or, someone (reliable) said something like "Yeah, I fought a dragon once" or whatever.  I can't look at the page to "count noses" and get an exact figure (at least for the ones I'm familiar with), but I suspect there were a lot more that were straight "Yep, that's a..." than ones that were interpretation.


 * The basis for considering which creatures to add was mostly that I listed the most common ones in the works I was familiar with, with an "other" column for anything that didn't fit. Any creature that fit, that is pretty much any creature that was not a human or a natural animal, could be added.  The "other" column would keep the list from getting too wide, since creatures that only appeared in a tiny fraction of works could go there.  And if a particular type of being showed up enough times in the "other" column, a column could be made for it.  As far as the list getting too long if it was complete, I don't anticipate that it would ever get "complete", it was certainly in no danger of doing so, but it certainly involved less potential detail than, say, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vampire_traits_in_folklore_and_fiction .  (admittedly, there are more fantasy works in general than there are works with vampires, but each book only gets one entry in this list, not 5, and most don't need an extensive entry, just a one-word answer for each column).


 * And there... did not quite seem to be consensus on whether or not the subject had value. There were several "keep" arguments, and the "keep" arguments tended to have actual content, while a lot of the "delete" arguments seemed to be mostly insult.  Tamtrible (talk) 19:15, 7 October 2017 (UTC)