Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stars and planetary systems in fiction

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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 keep‎. revised article per the improvements made during this discussion. As for whether this should be subsequently moved or split, that's editorial and doesn't need a relist. Star Mississippi 01:59, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Stars and planetary systems in fiction

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Stars and planetary systems in fiction (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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This is an extreme (almost 400kb) case of fancrufty "list of appearances of foo topic in every imaginable work" (books, comics, games...). The topic may be notable (recent talk discussion suggests User:TompaDompa, who has an established record of getting similar topics to Good Article and beyond, tried to rewrite this but was thwarted - reverted - at some point and possibly gave up), Our execution is abysmally bad and begs for WP:TNT - after tiny prose lead, this is just a WP:IPC-violating list of random examples. I.e. this is another de facto list that fails WP:LISTN, a simple WP:INDISCRIMINATE listing of all instances a star or planet appeared in a work of fiction (WP:NOTTVTROPES). If we were to approach it as an article, beyond its lead, it is a major fail of WP:V and WP:OR). No prejudice to this being turned into a prose-based stub or start-class if anyone (TompaDompa?) wants to work on this, otherwise we may have to redirect it or just delete it, I am afraid. Note that this list is still growing with unrerenced ORish content (see diff from late March). Sigh. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:29, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Fictional elements, Science fiction and fantasy, Popular culture, and Lists. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:29, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep (EDIT:ADDED: or replace with TompaDompa's version linked below), this is a well-organized and full article. You may not like lists like this,ad but that is no reason to delete. Some of the listings may be O.R., but, like many pages like this, the discussed information may be found at the linked articles. It provides a great deeal of encyclopedic knowledge, is easy to read, and gives readers an adequate exploration of the topic. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:32, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Randy Kryn: We are not TV Tropes. TV Tropes content is not useless, and I like TV Tropes, but this list belongs on TV Tropes. There is precedent that these lists are unacceptable on Wikipedia. QuicoleJR (talk) 12:16, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Also, there is no reason that the "In popular culture" content can't be on the star pages, except if it is unacceptable content. QuicoleJR (talk) 12:18, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    TV tropes is an essay, it can be summarized as "I don't like it". I've seen this TV tropes argument come up a lot in these list discussions. Some of us like the 'In popular culture' lists and find them informative and encyclopedic, some don't. This one works and should be kept to entries which have linked articles. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:18, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Essays are easy to dismiss. How about policies like WP:OR? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 14:58, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Randy Kryn: NOTINDISCRIMINATE is policy, and it says we should not be indiscriminately listing everything in a broad topic, like works of fiction that take place near stars that aren't the Sun. Making such a list would also arguably violate our policy on original research, as we are grouping articles together in a way that is not based on what the sources say, and there is no real navigational purpose. QuicoleJR (talk) 19:16, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Keeping the current version of the article is a complete non-starter. It contains blatant WP:OR, improper use of primary sources, misrepresentations of sources, and outright WP:PLAGIARISM all in the very first section. That being said, it could be fixed. Here's what a starting point for that might look like: Special:PermaLink/1218679535.
    It's not like we cannot have high-quality articles on topics like this—Mars in fiction, Venus in fiction, and Sun in fiction are all WP:Featured articles—but the bulk of the nearly 400 kB here consists of a TV Tropes-style list with absolutely atrocious sourcing. The article has become a dumping ground for garbage "In popular culture" content to keep it out of the articles on the stars themselves. I would certainly be in favour of keeping the article provided that it is cleaned up properly (which in this case would mean rewriting it pretty much from scratch). As the nomination alludes to, I did just that back in 2021, which caused something of a ruckus and was reverted—the PermaLink above is a minimally tweaked version of what I came up with back then. I have since located additional sources that would be useful for writing a proper article on the topic, but have held off on doing so lest it be perceived as trying to force my preferred version through and causing another stir. TompaDompa (talk) 04:15, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd be happy to withdraw this if the version is replaced by https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1218679535 and not reverted back as I gather happened before. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 14:59, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete or rewrite The current list is definitely not something we can keep. However, TompaDompa's version of the article does seem like an acceptable article. QuicoleJR (talk) 12:37, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

*Delete as it currently is. The current article is rife with a multitude of pretty major issues as described already - poor sourcing, WP:ORIGINALRESEARCH and content that blatantly goes against WP:NOTINDISCRIMINATE. If the current content was replaced by the draft shared by TompaDompa above, then I would be happy to keep that version, but this current list should absolutely not be retained as it is. Rorshacma (talk) 03:34, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep - As the previous list has been replaced by a sourced prose article, I am striking my previous recommendation to Delete. As shown by the discussions below, there is still some discussion to be had regarding the final organization of the information here, such as should it be merged anywhere or split into more than one topic, but that can be discussed after the AFD closes if needed. As far as the current AFD is concerned, I do not believe there is any cause for a deletion at this point. Rorshacma (talk) 15:05, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per WP:SALAT. Far too broad to be useful. A sizable chunk of science fiction involves other planets and star systems. (Also, no Ringworld?) Clarityfiend (talk) 11:56, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note, then why not just go with the version by TompaDompa mentioned and linked above? If the nominator said they'd withdraw the nom if that version is used, and !voters agree, I'm not understanding the problem, which seems to have that easy solution. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:16, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - As TompaDompa said, they attempted to rewrite the article to the version they proposed back in 2021, and after lengthy pushback on the Talk page, it was reverted back to the current version of the article. As they said that they were hesitant on changing it back to their version to avoid looking like they were independently ignoring that previous discussion, I made the statement that I would remove my recommendation to Delete if their version were used instead in order to hopefully show a consensus for them to go ahead with that rewrite. I'd imagine the other commenters and nom have similar thinking. Rorshacma (talk) 15:10, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Randy Kryn Maybe ping those editors and ask? Not everybody follows discussions after commenting. I concur that deleting is strictly inferior to replacing this with something else. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 23:22, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not an editor, just a lowly user, but I just wanted to say I love this page and use it all the time to suggest colony names when I'm gaming. I'll be sad to see it go.
Will the historical versions of this page still be available once it's gone. 108.31.3.18 (talk) 02:00, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If it does get deleted, try the Wayback Machine as it has numerous backups of the page. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 04:58, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I hear you, and I hope this will be preserved in history. Even better - if someone would care enough to copy this to TVTROPES... maybe you'd like to help? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 01:45, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move (or just merge? It wasn't the original scope of the article) to Planets in science fiction to tighten the scope and make it less arbitrary. Merge the "stars" section to Star, adding an "in fiction" section. I assume it must have had one at some point, but probably got spun off to sweep the cruft under the rug. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 05:03, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per WP:HEY (assuming it is kept as the TompaDompa prose version). It really can't be kept the way it was though, per all the arguments made above. Cakelot1 ☞️ talk 18:29, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. This is a perfectly good article, or at any rate capable of being so, at least in the form I am seeing, which is possibly after some WP:HEY work has been done. Maybe it was bad before. I mean it is original work, yes, so are very many things that we have here. List of statues of Queen Victoria and many scores of thousands of articles like that. If we had to copy a list that someone else made for articles like that, it'd be plagiarism, which'd be worse, and copyvio too really.
    Everything we do, creating articles by choosing and melding material from various sources, deciding what belongs and what doesn't, is original work, for goodness' sake. WP:OR is to be invoked when there's a problem. There's no problem here, it's just incomplete. Sure the article could become really big, maybe too big (but I mean adding material to articles so that they become bigger is not a bad thing), in which case it can be split up or trimmed using some reasonable criteria. Sure, there are articles that don't belong here on account of being too detailed about a subject. But this isn't one.
    Also I dislike terms like "fancrufty", which doesn't put me in a receptive mood as it just bourgeois snobbery and indicates that you are coming the matter with prejudgement, particularly when we are talking about "science fiction in general" rather than "Star Wars" or something. I'd prefer if terms like that are avoided. Herostratus (talk) 06:39, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Herostratus: If you are curious, this is what the article looked like when it was nominated. Which obviously bears very little resemblance to the current version. TompaDompa (talk) 14:52, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Wait wait wait wut? Keep and restore. Y'all practically erased the article. Why. Why would you do that. What do you think we are trying to do here??? It was better before. Well, after the article is kept we can talk about that I suppose.
    As I said, original research is only a problem if its a problem. If you're synthesizing a new idea, or implying something in error. The idea here seems to be "Lots of science fiction stories have stars and planets in them", which is not a new idea. It's just true. If you're saying the idea is "Lots of science fiction stories have stars and planets in them, and we're cherry-picking only some of them to make some point", that's not true. The writers are not doing that. It's just that the article is not complete. So what is the problem? Don't WP:SHOUT in ALL CAPS at me about this rule and that rule. We all know there are a lot of rules here, many contradictory, and that the devil can quote scripture. Tell me in plain English why you all want to prevent the reader from getting access to this information. It's not like we're trying to decide if its worth our time to make this article. Somebody already has. It's just a question of whether or not to increase entropy by scattering this information to the wind.
    The "primary-secondary-tertiary" rubric is taken from academia. It is fine for academia (I guess) but for what we are trying to do here, not so much. It's one data point of many to consider, yes. But don't give me four legs good two legs bad. We're supposed to be using our brains here. We are talking about throwing a fair amount of some people's work into the dustbin. Tell me why, in this article, the use of primary sources degrades the reader's experience. Can you? I'm all ears. Should the article include only those entities where some obscure reviewer has randomly happened to note "This article takes place on Alph Woo" and not include those where the review randomly hasn't? Why. Why. Good grief.
    It there's stuff that's not ref'd, ref it. If you don't have the time or interest to do that (quite understandable), tag it. If there's reason to believe it's maybe not true, delete it. Keep in mind that, for good or ill, works of literature are considered reliable sources for their own contents here. We don't need refs to describe the contents or plot of a movie or book, the rubric is "To check the accuracy of this data, get a copy of the book". Otherwise 90%+ of our plot sections of books and movies would have to be deleted.
    Sorry to be harsh, but if you all are going to be trying to pull stuff like this, you are going to be called to task. It's depressing to see what we are more and more becoming. Herostratus (talk) 18:30, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    In plain English, compiling raw data about works of fiction is not Wikipedia's purpose, nor is analysing the same (it is, however, TV Tropes' and Wikia/Fandom's purpose). Compiling analysis about works of fiction made by others is, however. The latter approach has resulted in several WP:Featured articles: Mars in fiction, Venus in fiction, and Sun in fiction. TompaDompa (talk) 20:38, 16 April 2024 (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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