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, content has been copied to Otherkin talk for use in merge. Tawker 07:25, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Draconity[edit]

Draconity (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Fails the everything test. This vanity article is a WP:NOT soapbox violation of a small group of people believeing they are dragons. Fails WP:N as it doesn't prove any notability whatsoever. The entire article is WP:OR and it also fails to meet any of the standards of WP:RS. It its current state claiming the possiblity the article is a hoax is not outside of reason. NeoFreak 01:32, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Speedy delete. Otherkin WP:BOLLOCKS. Pete Fenelon 02:31, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete WP:BULLSHIT. ReverendG 03:43, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• I don't think we should take such draconian measures, the word does garner over 10,000 ghits, there does seem to be enough people involved in this to make it notable (and others may be involved and not know it, take the dragon test to find out if you are). The article, on the other hand, needs work and better references. Keep Tubezone 04:58, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. Appreciate the draconity test! It would appear that I am, in fact, not dragon deep down inside or any other place for that matter (good to know). Yes, there are some people running around on the internet claiming that they dragons to varying degrees of manifestation but a solely internet based, argubaly delusional, group of people that find they have some metaphyscial relation to a mythical creature after a Mountain Dew and D&D overload does not automatically provide for notability. Just for the sake of argument, even if they did that doesn't remedy the unsolvable issues of soapbox-ish-ness, vanity, neologism, sub-culture forking or original research and reliable sources, esp the last as it will never exist for this "community". This material is best left where it belongs, on personal webpages devoted to the art of "being a dragon". NeoFreak 05:11, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I pretty much agree with everything you're saying. I think you could come up with plenty of other examples of weird subculture stuff (and other things) where the same problems would apply, too. However, those are content problems, notability isn't affected by how difficult a subject is to source references or write objectively about, notability is about whether the subject affects or affected enough people substantially enough to be notable. In this case it's an open question and drumming up reliable statistics on the number of people involved is difficult, but when I pop a weird word like this in Google and out pops 10,000 hits, it occurs to me that something notable might be going on. Tubezone 07:59, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Keeping in mind you only raised the issue notability and that is the only issue that I'm responding too. Consider the fact that the word "Draconity" can refer to the simple "being of a dragon" which this article is not about and therefore any Ghit count is going to be horribly misrepresentative of what you are trying to establish. Again, for the sake of debate, even if this article were to prove some kind of notability (which it has not as it must in order to justify its existence) there is still a host of other rules it fails namely WP:NPOV, WP:RS per WP:V and more than a few aspects of WP:NOT. I really don't feel there is any sort of exceptional point in this article's nature that could warrant it being kept. NeoFreak 08:11, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment You bring up a valid point about the ghit count possibly being bloated by other articles regarding dragons that have nothing to do with the topic of the article. Frankly, I'm not sure how one would determine how widespread this phenomenon is. I don't disagree with you about the problems with the current state of the article, or the difficulty of solving those problems. Tubezone 08:23, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete WP:NEO and WP:RS.

I want to grant this article every benefit of the doubt I can. I recognize that there are people who identify as dragons, and as far as I am concerned, there's nothing wrong with that. Many consider this as a subset of Furry Fandom or Otherkin, and logically a well rounded encyclopedia that covers those topics should cover Draconity as well. The problem with the article is that there is not nearly enough written about this particular subset, apart from personally published pages, USENET and message boards. (Compare the references and external links on Furry Fandom and Otherkin to Draconity, and you'll see what I mean.) Therefore it cannot be included into Wikipedia at this time. You can always come back and recreate it when there is more written on it by independent sources.

(Oh, and to those of you quoting WP:BOLLOCKS, that's only intended as an essay, it's not policy. Please try to use a valid reason if you want to object to this article.) --RoninBK_ETC 08:25, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To paraphrase Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, I want to make it perfectly clear that I am not a dragon, and I have never contributed to this article. The Wikipedian people need to know that their King, Lord Protector and Dictator Of All Reality, is not a dragon. Also, I was only bringing up the point of notability, which I believe you are addressing properly in the context of similar topics. I will leave the podium now and you may address further questions to the Secretary of Otherkin. Where the $%#$#& is he? Tubezone 09:49, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. If we must, redirect to Otherkin or something, for which this seems to be only a subspecies. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 10:50, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete at present this article is original research (no sources outside the community itself, no reliable sources at all). They can come back when they have their own article in Vanity Fair and we can actually verify the assertions made. Demiurge 10:52, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - yeah, what the hell, delete, this is nonsensical OR neologistic rubbish. Moreschi 14:13, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong Delete We have a policy of verifiability to prevent this sort of thing. This article has been in existence for almost two years [1]. "Come on guys, give them a chance, they'll produce reliable sources .. probably" does not cut it. A word concocted by followers of some on-line fetishist subculture is just another example of things made up in school one day. Not to mention WP:NEO, WP:DICDEF, WP:OR, WP:RS, WP:NOTE, WP:CRUFT and WP:BOLLOCKS. There is no encyclopaedia article to be had here, period. -- IslaySolomon | talk 16:17, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong Delete - I was the person who put the various clean-up tags on the article last week, and since then the article has been untouched. If it's been around 2 years, I honestly can't see it being improved to the point of inclusion. DarkSaber2k 16:56, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per everyone. --Wizardman 17:18, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete, per everyone too.__Seadog ^♪ 18:23, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per above. 0L1 Talk Contribs 19:05 25/11/2006 (UTC)
• Delete on almost any count you can think of. A small group of people playing with reality does not make an encyclopedia article.--Anthony.bradbury 21:24, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, WP:NOT for something made up in a gaming session one day either! Seraphimblade 10:48, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, and clean up. While the article itself makes a few assertions that seem rather unplausible, I think that it could be cleaaned to the point that finding sources would not be completely out of the question. While it is a rather controversial issue and a very obscure subject, I'm willing to bet there's some mention of it somewhere. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ben Stamper (talk • contribs)
  • In that case I'd have to say: Show us some proof. The article has been up 2 years and those 4 sources were the best they can come up with. Find multiple independent non-trivial media mentions of this and maybe then theres room for negotiation. The Kinslayer 09:08, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge to otherkin. I've been trying to think of ways of improving the article and haven't managed to do so. It is admittedly obscure, but it certainly brings up a number of hits as an internet subculture and there's a fair number of people in it. However, it is definitely closely related to otherkin, and may not be notable enough to merit a seperate article. I think the only real solution is to merge to otherkin and give it a subsection in that article, which has been recently gutted due to complaints about the lack of reliable sources. If someone can come up with numerous sources for this which are more independent, I'd be more likely to vote for keep. Titanium Dragon 14:24, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question What verifiable, reliably sourced, non-original research material would you recommend merging? NeoFreak 14:27, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment - When I looked for google hits, all I could find were multiple message boards relating to the subject, and message boards are not sources for establishing notability. (ior sources for anything else to do with an article for that matter.) The Kinslayer 14:40, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment - The problem is notability and lack of sources, which is why I think it should be merged with the otherkin article with very little of its text - though they make up an important subset of the community, they aren't notable in and of themselves, but their existence is mentioned (but not gone into in any detail) by several publications cited by the otherkin article (that is to say, dragons are mentioned along with others, but only briefly). So. really, I guess its really not much of a merging at all so much as "mention them in otherkin briefly". Titanium Dragon 11:44, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Reply - It's a fair point, but it would probably be better to mention this on the otherkin talk page instead of here, especially seeing as how the emerging consensus seems to be that there is very little, if anything, in this article that is worth salvaging and moving across to the other article. Also, a good point made earlier in this debate was to have Draconity redirect to otherkin as well. The Kinslayer 11:49, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge to Otherkin, with caveats from discussion in previous thread. I.e., I agree with Titanium Dragon. I feel having a WP article on draconity has been valuable, I've contributed to it when I could, and I've been meaning to add better sources for a while. But many good points have been made on this page. I'd love to argue the article needs cleanup, not removal, but I just don't see enough verifiable sources right now for WP:NOTE. The best solution is to fold this back into Otherkin, which does at least pass that threshold, and then bring Draconity back if it ever starts getting attention on its own merits. Baxil 00:25, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Darn. I thought this would be an obvious decision, but a bit of research changes my mind. The article as it stands is too much like original research, so I'm going with Delete for the moment. However, if the article returns with better references I'll be inclined to vote the other way: the phenomenon is real and though I've not met anyone who believes he's a dragon I have met some Otherkin, and believe that some of them are sincere. ( They may be wrong or loopy, but that doesn't stop them being sincere, and having a state of mind that should be covered here. ) WMMartin 18:09, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • The core problem is that the neologism Draconity is not, as far as I can find, a recognized term for a demographic by any creditable academic or journalistic sources as this article asserts. It's soapboxing original research. NeoFreak 18:25, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge to Therianthropy, Otherkin is genuinely a neologism has been completely gutted. The idea that there is some incredibly important difference between believing you're a dragon and believing you're a wolf seems very weak to me. (I'm a dragon, I'm allowed to say that.) A paragraph or two in Therianthropy with a redirect on the word Otherkin is all the subject genuinely needs. Perhaps a note pointing to the existence of online communities specifically for dragons and vampires (do other species have specific communities?) is worth making. NickArgall 02:07, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

keep there are 5 to 10 websites with more than 1500 members and there are other articals with less than 75 people in the subculture !!! user:michak

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.