Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of fictional wars

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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 - due to OR concerns as to the criteria, and there being no properly defined criteria for inclusion. Aside from that, all the IP "keeps".Blnguyen (bananabucket) 04:12, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

List of fictional wars

The tiny amount of meaningful information this simple list presents is original research. (Contested PROD) ➥the Epopt 02:23, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep Again, I don't see the original research in this article. (Perhaps you could specify the parts you claim are original research??) It's a bit better than the fictional military operations one, but it could use a little reorganization. It's just not well-presented. Still, that's a clean-up issue, not a reason for deletion. FrozenPurpleCube 03:14, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as per FrozenPurpleCube. ςפקιДИτς ☺ ☻ 03:20, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as hopelessly ill-defined WP:OR (actually non-defined), and impossibly wide in potential scope (WP:NOT an indiscriminate collection of information). Does it include movies, games, novels? How heavily fictionalised does a war have to be to be included? the list includes fictionalised versions of most of the major 20th century wars. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:33, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, this list includes movies, games, novels, comics and tv shows. I agree though, there should be some criteria for belonging on this list, and it should be at the top of the page. I'll bring it up on the talk page. FrozenPurpleCube 04:01, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Compiling information doesn't equal original research. Especially since in many cases, the compilation can come right from Wikipedia. And there are people who do care about various fictional wars, otherwise they wouldn't talk about them so much. FrozenPurpleCube 03:58, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you really want though, this could be added as a source [1] for at least part of it. FrozenPurpleCube 04:06, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I was trying to think of a polite reason. How about this: it's total, absolute crap, and it's not fit to be printed on a roll of toilet paper as trivia for someone taking a dump. It's not only pointless for the African dirt farmers who can't afford textbooks for whom this encyclopedia is ostensibly being written, but it's pointless for all but the White and Nerdy set. I'm sure there are a few geeks out there who care about fictional robot wars of the 24th century after the show is over, but I don't think it's Wikipedia's job to cater to their fetishes. Mr Spunky Toffee 20:14, 1 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, but that's not a valid argument, as demonstratable by the uncivil nature of your remarks. You may well not find this interesting, but so what? Not all Wikipedia articles are going to appeal to you. Perhaps it would be helpful for you take a step back and realize that your personal attachment to the information in an article is not necessarily a good guideline for us to follow. FrozenPurpleCube 01:57, 2 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just ignore Mrs. Spanky Toffee. She's a no good delete hound for practically every article list she votes on! Too much of Wikipedia is being needlessly deleted as is. --64.12.117.5 20:52, 2 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Comprehensive version of this list would be too unwieldy - would have thousands of entries. Even with this list, it's got out of control - we've got entries like "World War III (occurred in The Simpsons)" which probably refers to a few scenes in a 6 or 7 minute story in one Halloween episode of the Simpsons. Plus, apparently they're trying to list every fictional conflict in video games which are often shallow plot backdrop ("The Kremean Wars (Donkey Kong Country)"). Next up will be comic books, anime, thousands of years of fiction, every entry from the nuke war simulation list from the War Games movie etc etc Bwithh 03:44, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like a clean-up issue there, with a mind towards specifying which fictional wars qualify for list membership. I agree, there are some things that are too sillly to belong. And now that you bring it up, I do think World War III deserves an article of its own. Oh wait, it already has one. Probably worth pruning those bits out, and adding it as a See Also link. FrozenPurpleCube 03:58, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've got not problem with World War III as an article. I have a problem with WWIII from one-third of a Simpsons episode being on this list. 15:32, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
I've got no objection to that, and I'll tell you what the solution is...remove it. FrozenPurpleCube 01:57, 2 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: all wiki-legalese aside, this topic is so broad as to be meaningless and to make the article laughable. Allon FambrizziAllon Fambrizzi
  • Delete s above; not really OR, but it is unencyclopedic listcruft. Opabinia regalis 04:27, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - I agree it is not a orginal research issue, but rather requires clean up. I also disagree that the topic is not too broad nor laughable. There are few mentions of fictional wars. Perhaps we can limit the list down to wars that have importance to the plot of stories. --Eldarone 04:52, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Limitations would have to be in terms of clearly defined criteria. "Importance to the plot of [the] stories" is not such a criterion; it invites original research. Also, I think you may underestimate the number of fictional wars, even including those that ARE objectively a major element of the story. My shelf of science fiction books probably includes a hundred alone. Serpent's Choice 05:06, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, importance to the plot is not a good criteria, but the lenght is itself not a problem. There are plenty of long lists, and this could be broken up into several smaller sections. For example "Lists of Fictonal Wars in Science Fiction" and "Lists of Wars in Fantasy" for easy, if not optimal, choices. FrozenPurpleCube 05:19, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as hopelessly broad. There have been thousands of works of fiction that depicted fictional warfare--if the work has an article in wikipedia, we can mention it there. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 05:24, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong delete. Original research, unmaintainable, and unencyclopedic. Most fictional works (especially those in the science fiction and fantasy genre) have some sort of war or conflict, thus listing all of them would be unreasonable.--TBCΦtalk? 06:04, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. In what way is it original research? I'm sorry, but I don't see it. People seem to be throwing around the term "original research" more and more these days without reading Wikipedia policy on the subject. OR is "unpublished arguments, ideas, data, or theories" according to the definition, and these entries do not fall into that category. Please stop invoking OR when you actually mean "I don't like this article". It's a perfectly valid list. -- Necrothesp 11:28, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Wikipedia is not a collection of indiscriminate information - and a list of fictional wars may be considered unencyclopedic by some. --SunStar Net 11:29, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete There seems to be a proliferation of listcruft going on, and this is part of it. BTLizard 12:33, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Pointless list, unfocused, not encyclopedic. Hobbeslover talk/contribs 16:56, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak Keep It at least goes back to the 18th century in its selective coverage of a broad topic, and I found some interesting fiction I would not otherwise have encountered. Keep and expand. Edison 18:27, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Split content into more manageable articles by medium, e.g. List of fictional wars in literature, List of fictional wars in film. The same could be done with List of fictional battles. --Vossanova o< 19:50, 31 October 2006 (UTC) On second thought, Delete. Separate lists would still be too hard to maintain , and Category:Fictional wars is enough. --Vossanova o< 14:59, 1 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, this is an indiscriminate collection of original research. Sandstein 23:47, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete -- unmaintainable even within the currently rather limited scope of the article (i.e. SF and alt-history). There is simply no way this could ever hope to be complete. Haikupoet 06:54, 1 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete provided someone checks that all the linked articles are in Category:Fictional_wars. Carcharoth 15:44, 1 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and give it some criteria to keep it from spiraling out of control. Some entries not being suitable is not a deletion criterion in my book, it's an editorial issue. -- nae'blis 16:07, 1 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • delete. This is the sort of thing best handled by categories. Unfocused 16:12, 1 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not sure we should encourage stubs on each of these wars just to make them categorizable (yes, we can technically categorize redirects, but that's not well-known). Lists are good at compiling groups of data that would not individually rise to the level of encyclopedic worth; see List of Bundestag Members for an example. -- nae'blis 17:16, 1 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    I also asked for categorization, but just to be clear, I asked only for those battles considered worthy of having an article to be categorised. Anything else should only be mentioned in the relevant article. If people might search for this fictional war, then create a redirect under that name pointing to the relevant article, and categorise the redirect in the appropriate category or, better still, create an anchored link to the relevant section of the relevant article, and put this anchored link directly on the category page (in the bit at the top), effectively creating a list at the top of the category page for "fictional wars without an article is still covered by an article". This workaround is needed because redirects can't point at article sections. For example, the list currently has "Centauri-Narn war" in the Babylon 5 section, but no article. Now, have a look at Category:Babylon 5 wars, where I've added Centauri-Narn war in the way described above. I have also added the redirect to the category to show how that could work (but it currently doesn't because redirects can't point at sections within articles). Wars without articles or sections can still be listed in the category. Carcharoth 18:02, 1 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Any work of fiction might reference dozens of fictional wars, especially a work in the science fiction and fantasy fields. If the wars referenced are important enough to be cataloged in a list rather than merely mentioned in the article about the work they appear in, they should be important enough to have a stub. Whether a stub is worth having or not is a good measure of whether they're important enough to be here in any form greater than as a footnote of the work where such war is fictionalized. Using a category for this would function as a sort of self-regulating "importance" test in place of an unmanageable article, yet offer this particular article's authors another method of proving their contributions valid in this particular marketplace. Further, the category page itself can contain some of this list without creating individual stubs for them, and they could be linked to the parent work of fiction. Unfocused 18:18, 1 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Our Wikipedia:No original research policy was designed to discriminate against originally researched ideas, not useful lists of information. Yamaguchi先生 19:39, 1 November 2006
  • Keep per above and Yamaguchi. Cbrown1023 21:55, 1 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Incredibly Strong Keep Lists are legitimate and useful parts of encyclopedia. There are lots of lists in Britannica, Compton's and others and so here is what could be the largest encyclopeia in the world, these sorts of things are essential as part of the ongoing quest to catalog human knowledge. Plus, this and the other ones on fictional battles and the like are among my favorite articles! Please keep! Too many Wikipedians seem delete-happy these days and while plenty of these list articles are incomplete and can be improved, this should not diminish from their usefulness and interest-factor. --164.107.92.120 00:01, 2 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please read Wikipedia:List, Wikipedia:What is a featured list?, and some of the examples at Wikipedia:Featured lists for what a list should aspire to. Carcharoth 00:32, 2 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, but I still find that a lot of these lists do indeed meet those standards. Cheers! --164.107.92.120 01:07, 2 November 2006 (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.
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