Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Moties

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 Keep and article should be merged by interested editors per discussion with attribution to this article for GFDL compliance. JERRY ^talk _contribs 04:35, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Moties

Article simply regurgitates plot from text; it makes no assertion of real-world significance beyond "Hey, these things were in the book." Subject has no notability of its own, and there's no technical reason to fork out this article. --EEMIV (talk) 05:56, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to The Mote in God's Eye, as they're not notable in the real world. Lankiveil (talk) 12:10, 2 January 2008 (UTC).[reply]

Merge with one of the source books' Wiki pages. The information here is compiled from many snippets scattered over two books and gives an accurate summary of a fictional species. It needs sub-editing rather than deleting. How many fictional species are notable in the real world? - they can certainly be used to illustrate potential real-world threats. Denham062 (talk) 15:31, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Merge into The Mote in God's Eye, trimming heavily and rewriting to explain the context. I've read (and even written) some external sources which use the Moties as an analogy to describe current-day human social or political behavior, but most are blog postings or passing mentions in a sentence or two of a larger piece. Unless references are located, I don't think the topic has enough for a standalone article under the WP:FICT guidelines, but it's well-known enough for a redirect and a section in the parent article. Since the first book is much more well-known than the second, the redirect should point there. Barno (talk) 18:47, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science fiction-related deletion discussions. —User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:43, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as fails WP:V, WP:NOT#PLOT and there are no reliable secondary sources to demonstrate notability. --Gavin Collins (talk) 09:11, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Sure there are, they just aren't cited in the article. For example: [www.123exp-fantasy.com/t/01804208798/], the Fantasy Dictionary and Research Guide; [www.sffaudio.com/SSReviews.html], Simon and Schuster Audio Reviews. Barno (talk) 15:08, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - the 123exp-fantasy bit is just a dictionary-esque definition -- not enough to sustain an article. The sffaudio is just a plot summary/review of the second book that might be worth citing/mentioning in that text's article but, again, is not sufficient to sustain an article. --EEMIV (talk) 19:49, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't fail WP:V at all from what I can see (and if people are going to start worrying about NOT#PLOT, there's a lot of other work to do!). There are two popular books on them. The moties are also discussed in Magill's Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature and The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction as well, which even a cursory Google Books query reveals. Personally I'm in favor of keeping it—I don't see any obvious policy violations, it doesn't seem to be doing any harm, and it doesn't seem any more "crufty" than the hundreds of other articles on Wikipedia—but as a self-chosen anon (even a well-reasoning and long-editing one) I'm aware my opinion doesn't count for squat. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 19:43, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Question/comment -- Are the "two popular books on them" The Mote In God's Eye and The Gripping Hand? The texts themselves are notable, and the moties as an aspect of those books warrants inclusion in those books' articles, but moties themselves do not inherit the notability of the literature in which they are part. Does Magill's or The New Encyclopedia offer anything more than an encapsulation of the books' plot/the moties' literal role? Is there material that discuss in depth -- i.e. offers sufficient material that a motie article can be more than just a stub -- how this race was conceived? their symbolic role? critics' reaction to these *characters*? --EEMIV (talk) 19:53, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Right, that's the verifiability. It's not hard to verify what is written about the moties as a fictional species. That's all I meant by it. Anyway, here's a thought: if this was named "List of Motie castes from The Mote in God's Eye", would it warrant deleting? It's apparently quite common to have "List of X" for further details about creatures or characters that would otherwise make main articles too long. As for inheriting the notability of the parent product—it seems that this happens all the time. Star Wars is notable, Chewbacca is notable, but is Attichitcuk notable? How about Lumpawarrump? By definition, is anyone on the List of minor Star Wars characters notable? Is it worth spending much time worrying over? Anyway, the article is clearly a detailed elaboration which could be merged back into an original article, but I don't see why it couldn't just be labeled as such a little more clearly. I don't see any strong reason to delete the content, personally. And hey—could we write an article about critics' reactions, authorial intent? Maybe. But nobody has on here yet. And deleting it sure won't get that. I always interpreted the WP:V policy and etc. as being about what is potentially verifiable, writable, etc., in the long-view, "what Wikipedia could be" sort of way, not in the more narrow, "what does the article currently contain" sort of way. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 20:04, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I should have added that it fails WP:WAF as well; the heavy in universe perspective means that there is little real-world content, context, analysis or critism of the subject matter. When an article fails WP:NOT#PLOT and WP:WAF as badly as this one does, it is time to transwiki elsewhere: this is not an encyclopedic article.--Gavin Collins (talk) 04:39, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Merge into The Mote in God's Eye, as Barno has proposed, with trimming -- the article is half description and half plot details, and removing the plot details should shorten it enough for a reasonable merge. (Example -- the section on the Watchmakers not only describes them (ok) but goes into detail about the MacArthur destruction subplot (not ok, IMNSHO).) -- ArglebargleIV (talk) 23:36, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Merge as per Denham, Barno. Edward321 (talk) 02:02, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep As pointed out, this is one of the most iconic species of recent speculative fiction, and I have seen a number of articles with characters/races from a single or very few books. Kuralyov (talk) 18:06, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Question - Where is the cited evidence of their iconic nature? Also, WP:OTHERSTUFF isn't a compelling reason to keep; it's a reason to delete or merge those other articles. --EEMIV (talk) 18:21, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. The main alien species from a double-Hugo-nominated science fiction novel noted by no less than Heinlein as one of "the best"? No question of notability there.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Noclevername (talk • contribs)

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.