Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Virtues of Ultima (2nd nomination)

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 merge to Ultima (series). King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:14, 14 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Virtues of Ultima

Virtues of Ultima (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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Sourced exclusively to primary sources and other promotional sources produced by business partners. Needs third-party sources in order to WP:verify notability. Could not find any significant coverage as required by the general notability guideline. Also fails the policy that Wikipedia is not a WP:GAMEGUIDE with extensive lists of game concepts... considering the article is entitled sourced to game guides. Shooterwalker (talk) 00:50, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of video game related deletion discussions. (G·N·B·S·RS·Talk) • Gene93k (talk) 02:03, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 02:04, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - I was initially going to propose "transwiki and delete", since this is principally derived from primary sources and provides excessive in-game information. But first, I'd like to highlight some other possible sources. These I found at Google Books: Halos and avatars (Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), Quests (A K Peters, Ltd., 2008) both provide significant and, importantly, out-of-universe (WP:WAF) information about the Virtues. Videogames and education (M.E. Sharpe, 2008) and Digital Play (McGill-Queen's Press, 2003) provide additional verification. Personally I think that the topic belongs at Ultima (series), but one could argue that there is enough secondary coverage here to satisfy WP:N. Marasmusine (talk) 09:23, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• There's also the Pelit mention near the beginning of the article. Pelit is the largest gaming magazine in its country and several nearby ones. Though not what it was in the Good Old Days, it's quite respectable. It'll take some time to excavate that issue though. --Kizor 19:20, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:06, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Well! We now have sources that describe the virtue system as unprecedented, unmatched, a forebear of the morality systems that are now an "industry standard" (to quote the chapter on Ultima IV's virtues in Halos and Avatars), and as proof of the potential of the medium. It also garnered wide praise as an alternative to mindlessly violent games, and yes, there's a source for that. I'll give an unreserved keep for meeting our standards of verifiability and notability. Marasmusine, would you mind hitting me with a fish if I haven't integrated the sources into the article by the middle of the month? --Kizor 10:08, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  Acknowledged, and good luck. Remember WP:WAF! Marasmusine (talk) 07:20, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Easy as pie! I'll just go through it and add "fictional character" or "fictional place" before any and all names. :P --Kizor 22:40, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Nominator made this recent rule change up themselves. Concepts is unacceptable as a restriction. It goes to the heart of the creative process, the thing that makes any work of fiction or storytelling a unique addition to society. Concepts are what make decent works of fiction unique and memorable, and great works a testament for the ages. Mechanics are what distinguish one game from another to a degree, and should have had the notability test applied to them rather than getting a blanket ban, but this is going too far. Planning on getting rid of Concepts in Watership Down? Concepts of Democracy in Republics? Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming? The Concept of the Political? The Concept of Law? The Concept of Mind? The Concept of Irony?

The New York Times article mentioned last AfD, the Computer Gaming World article being used as a cite right now, and numerous Gamasutra articles in Google News, are quite sufficient to verify the article information and show notability. Anarchangel (talk) 10:21, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• I copied it verbatim from WP:VGSCOPE which has been around for years. It's good policy. There are no lists of video game weapons, and articles about items are confined to individual notable objects rather than detailed lists of everything in the game. It's one thing for a singular concept to be notable. It's another thing to have lists of concepts associated with locations where they are found and character classes that use them. Shooterwalker (talk) 12:45, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• It's similar, but not verbatim. VGSCOPE says:

  Lists of gameplay items, weapons, or concepts. Specific point values, achievements and trophies, time-limits, levels, character moves, character weight classes, and so on are considered inappropriate. Sometimes a concise summary is appropriate if it is essential to understanding the game or its significance in the industry.

• The addition to NOT says:

  Video game guides. An article about a computer game or video game should summarize the main actions the player does to win the game. But avoid lists of gameplay weapons, items, or concepts. Specific point values, achievements and trophies, time-limits, levels, character moves, character weight classes, and so on are also considered inappropriate. A concise summary is appropriate if it is essential to understanding the game or its significance in the industry. See WP:VGSCOPE.

• Little changes to the text have large effects on the meaning. The former bans "lists gameplay items, weapons, or concepts" and then adds that this applies specifically or in particular to various kinds of minutiae. The latter bans the minutiae in addition to the list. This expands the ban to apply the matters the original didn't: it makes listing the gameplay mechanics that distinguish an RTS title from its contemporaries, or describing an intricate combat system of an RPG in enough detail that the readers understand its significance, suspect at the least.
  
  There's also the statement that a game "should summarize the main actions the player does to win the game." This does not exist in VGSCOPE, neither do words to that effect, nor did it exist when the addition to NOT was made. It introduces demands and problems that are not present in the original: How would you be allowed to describe the variety or inventiveness of a RTS game's units? Take Red Alert 3: A huge part of its appeal is being able to shoot battle bears out of cannons to attack samurai with lightsaber katanas, but that is completely incidental to the actions the player takes to win.
  
  VGSCOPE is good policy, but I do not feel that the addition to NOT reflects it. Shooterwalker, what would you say to replacing this list item with a note on "Instruction manuals", saying "See also WP:VGSCOPE for writing about video games" or something similar? That item is mostly about video games anyway. Other opinions are also welcome, to make sure that I'm not just butthurt about this AfD. --Kizor 22:40, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks for being respectful. I do appreciate it... considering how many people disagree and turn it into an all out war. I'm okay with what happens to this article, even though my preference and your preference are different. As to WP:NOT I think it makes sense to put it there just because people commonly cite WP:GAMEGUIDE as a reason for keeping out lists of weapons and items, and not just when it's presented strictly as a "how to". But if I somehow mangled the wording that's my mistake. Was it just the injection of the word "also"? I think it almost goes without saying that some details can be important, and some details aren't. (So maybe one key game unit is cited in third-party sources as the reason why the game is so fun or innovative.) The point is that a complete list of every weapon or vehicle or unit in the game isn't appropriate for Wikipedia. (Which is my issue with this article, having listed and relisted the virtue system in multiple games in the series, with tables of where they are found and such. Again, crossing over from explaining the innovation of the system towards explaining every detail in that system. A WP:GAMEGUIDE.) Shooterwalker (talk) 00:16, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In early 2007, just before VGSCOPE was invented, there was a helpful section on that page to direct people who wanted to move game content away from Wikipedia, which discusses how to mark up WP content for inclusion on, say, Wikia. 16 January 2007

"To help remove information that might read as a game guide, please add the {{gameguide}} tag to the article in question.

When moving content:

• These gaming wikis all run MediaWiki. Thus, you can easily copy wiki text from Wikipedia. However, you should remove Wikipedia-specific code such as interwiki links, category tags (unless the category already exists at the other wiki), and template calls (unless the other wiki has a similar template). You might want to keep Wikipedia image tags and then reupload Wikipedia images to the destination wiki.
• If you are not the copyright holder (if you are moving content submitted by another Wikipedian), then the GNU Free Documentation License requires that you preserve the History by crediting Wikipedia, in a way similar to Comixpedia:Template:Credit. The best way to do this is to mention that part of the wiki page is from Wikipedia and provide a link back to the Wikipedia article. For example:

  This page uses content from the Wikipedia articles, Gameplay of Doom and List of enemies in Doom.

Note that those are urls, which now lead to the empty page with the deletion notice at the top. The actual titles of those articles were Gameplay of Doom and List of enemies in Doom

So you can see, WP:Consensus can change really is true. One would have to go further back than 2007, I think, to see where Wikipedians began to decide to move game articles off of Wikipedia and onto other wikis, though, as the helpful wiki export walkthrough shows. Anarchangel (talk) 07:24, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is that the right word? Walkthrough? It is sort of a How-To Guide. I'm sure many found it quite useful. Anarchangel (talk) 07:28, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete or Merge - the article is far too much of an extensive coverage of purely in-game info without any relevance or connection to the real world. The relatively small amount of info relating to actual commentary on the system could and should be limited to the main article; this extensive sort of coverage is more fitting in a game guide. If this does end in keep, I'd certainly encourage participation in a merge discussion on the talk page. Yaksar (let's chat) 20:12, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge and summarize at Ultima (series) using the book sources above as a guideline. I'm not opposed to a standalone article, but it would need a significant rewrite to be reconciled with WP:VGSCOPE and WP:WAF. There is enough coverage either way. Marasmusine (talk) 20:37, 5 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment from nominator my first preference is still for deletion. That's consistent with the policy on WP:GAMEGUIDEs, the video game guidelines at WP:VG/GL, and the policy that you need significant information about reception and WP:NOTJUSTPLOT. But in the spirit of building consensus, I would weakly support a merge to the Ultima (series) article. Shooterwalker (talk) 17:21, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge in summarized form (only what's sourced to third party sources) to Ultima (series). Current coverage is excessively based on primary sources, and what's based on secondary sources is too short for its own article.  Sandstein  06:31, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Well, so far I've cut out some fat and done sucky work in integrating the found third-party sources. I believe that properly covering the subject (and we have the sources to do that) will take more space than the Ultima article can give. The virtues' descriptions can be trimmed further once I get out of bed tomorrow and caffeinate, but the article will have to gain stuff about character generation (vital - it's based on ethical dilemmas, which is fabulously rare) and the way virtues are tracked and practiced. There are sources for both of those. The sources also have some interesting material on how the concepts of implicit and explicit curricula relate to Ultima IV, and that could be added. We should also keep on covering alternative virtue systems and the perversion of the virtues: their importance to the depiction of virtues in the Ultima series makes concise summaries warranted.
  So I guess I'm saying that this article should stand alone, and if this AfD ends in a merge, that decision shouldn't be taken to be final and irrevocable. The article may well be improvable enough to change that situation. --Kizor 01:25, 13 April 2011 (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.