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.
Nominated for deletion, article is either WP:OR essay on the nature of "Space warfare" as demonstrated in works of fiction, or heading to becoming a list of all depictions of space warfare in fiction. Pete.Hurd07:44, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah I know, I just goofed making the initial page with the one-liner template, and wanted to add more desccription of rationale. Pete.Hurd15:29, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep This is one of my favourite articles and I found it immensely interesting when I first found it some months ago. I know my personal feelings don't affect WP:NOTE, but also I think every statement in the article could be sourced to specific statements in the books/films in question, satisfying WP:CITE. It's not OR, it's a collation of other people's research - which is what an encyclopedia article is for. Walton monarchist89 13:43, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: WP:ILIKEIT, sorry no. We need to follow policies and guidelines, such things are original research and non-notable by default. Terence Ong 13:45, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's not OR, it's a collation of other people's research — If that is in fact the case, you should be able to point to the research that is being collated, and thereby alleviate the concerns of other editors that this is original research. Please cite sources. Uncle G15:22, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment There's no doubt that the fiction is published & referenceable, it's my contention that this amounts to OR by synthesis. From WP:OR "Editors often make the mistake of thinking that if A is published by a reliable source, and B is published by a reliable source, then A and B can be joined together in an article in order to advance position C." Pete.Hurd15:34, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Reply to Pete.Hurd - What "position C" are you talking about? The article doesn't make sweeping assertions. It simply collates verifiable pieces of information about space warfare in sci-fi series, books and movies. Walton monarchist89 20:46, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and I concur with Terence Ong. A decent, sourced article on Space warfare in fiction could probably be written, but there is nothing salvagable from the article as it stands to even establish a stub. Unless this article gets a complete and total rewrite before the end of this AfD I think this should be deleted without prejudice against an actual sourced article being created at this namespace.--Isotope2318:23, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That's not quite what is needed here. As someone else has pointed out above, the sources need have to explicitly discuss the topic of space warfare in fiction, and more importantly the article has to be more or less be about what those sources have to say. The sources cannot be sprinkled in there to support what the Wikipedia article author has to say. That's the essential problem with OR in this article. To repeat the relevant excerpt from from WP:OR "Editors often make the mistake of thinking that if A is published by a reliable source, and B is published by a reliable source, then A and B can be joined together in an article in order to advance position C." Do you see what is meant here by Original Research here? An encyclopedic article has to document some notable bit of knowledge, and that knowledge has to exist prior to the article being written, otherwise it's just a collection of facts, and that's not what an encyclopedia is for. Pete.Hurd04:48, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - But what specific "position C" are you talking about? See my comment earlier. Walton monarchist89 18:20, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete The topic of the article is fine, but unfortunately the article as written is entirely original research. It is not collating research by other published sources on warfare in space - rather it is the author giving his own analysis of how things might work using a few examples from fiction. What you need is to write an article using published sources that directly talk about space warfare. Dugwiki21:57, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Stubify or merge back to Space warfare but there's no doubt in my mind that this is a perfectly valid topic for an encyclopedia. The current article however is pretty bad but keeping a stub might entice someone else to expand it properly. Of course, this is a perfect target for hit-and-run editors that add one sentence of trivia and leave but I don't think that outright deletion serves Wikipedia. Pascal.Tesson19:18, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Not a good merge - Space warfare is mainly about real or projected space warfare with current levels of technology, while Space warfare in fiction is about space warfare appearing in science fiction novels, i.e. that has little or no basis in current technical fact. Stubifying might be a better idea, but I still think a lot of the text is salvageable. Walton monarchist89 13:16, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Your use of the term "fancruft" in this context is highly insulting - see the following from WP:FAN: (Fancruft)...implies that the content is unimportant and the contributor's judgement of notability is lacking. Thus, use of this term may be regarded as pejorative, and when used in discussion about another editor's contributions, it can sometimes be regarded as uncivil and an assumption of bad faith. This article is not comparable to an article on an obscure one-scene character from a Star Wars novel. It is a remarkably succinct and helpful summary of the concept of space warfare in sci-fi (and no, before anyone asks, I didn't write any of it - see the article history). Walton monarchist89 20:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. WP:FAN also states "Some users consider this a pejorative term and see it as insulting to well-meaning contributors. They might likewise consider use of the term in forums such as articles for deletion inappropriate, but it is nevertheless in common use there". I am not one of these users. It was a description of my opinion, not an insult, and afer re-reading the article, and its examples of Freespace using nebulae, and Stargate up a sun, I have not changed it.--Mnemeson14:35, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep or Merge I must admit, I am a regular contributor to this article (thanks for telling me about this RFA Pete.Hurd). That being said, much of the OR in this article is my own doing, as I have yet to referance it. The information should be kept, and at the very least merged back into Space Warfare. S h a r k f a c e 2 1 7 01:40, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I read the nomination before the article and was expecting a massive essay, which I didn't find. To say that it's an invitation for a listing of every example of space conflict is a bit of a stretch. I can't get behind the OR accusation either. There is no synthesis, no ideas have been created through the merging of existing ones. This is a valid topic for anarticle, Keep. Mallanox04:30, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep It's the stub for a subject that ought to be in Wikipedia, and may inspire improvement. If it turns instead into a substantial amount of fancruft you can delete it when it becomes worthy of attention. Andyvphil01:46, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Merge and redirect. This could have been a very interesting article, but the current version is, quite frankly, very disappointing. BlankVerse15:24, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete unless more references are included... Addhoc 18:0s9, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Keep If something is poorly written and/or contains original research, but could be made into a good article, then it would be better to improve it. Speaking about notability, we should focus on whether the title can promise a good article about something notable enough, not how it is written at a given time. --V. Szabolcs20:40, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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.