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 redirect to Elric of Melniboné. ATD. (non-admin closure) – AssumeGoodWraith (talk | contribs) 13:02, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Melniboné[edit]

Melniboné (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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Pure undiluted and unreferenced Wikipedia:Fancruft (but not PROD legible since it was XfD in 2010, but that XfD was a technical error - no valid rationale was provided, so this mess languished for a decade...). So here it goes: the coverage (references, external links, etc.) does not seem sufficient to justify this article passing Wikipedia:General notability guideline requirement nor the more detailed Wikipedia:Notability (fiction) supplementary essay. WP:BEFORE did not reveal any significant coverage on Gnews, Gbooks or Gscholar. I suggest this is redirected to Elric of Melniboné, a possibly notable character (see also recent Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stormbringer and the ongoing Talk:Elric_of_Melniboné#Should_this_be_rewritten_into_an_article_about_the_"Eric_series"?). I don't think there is anything salvageable here by merge (no references). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 13:23, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 13:23, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science fiction and fantasy-related deletion discussions. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 13:23, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect with very limited Merge. The current article is a wild piece of fancruft, but it would be reasonable to include a short description of Melniboné in the Elric of Melniboné article on the grounds that it is an important part of the plot (we're allowed short plot summaries!), and the world of Elric has prompted role-playing games set in that world. I did find one academic article in JSTOR that referred to Melniboné in the same sentence as Le Guin's Earthsea and Tolkein's fictional universe. It's a passing reference not worth including, but it suggests that the world itself has some value. Since there's apparently nothing much written about the world separate from the novel and the character Elric, it's definitely best handled there. Elemimele (talk) 14:48, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oh, good grief, if you're going to refer to Elric as a possibly notable character, how do you expect to be taken seriously? More to the point, this is a discussion better handled as an RFC rather than a series of AFDs of different fictional elements of an unquestionably notable fictional franchise. Merging Melniboné to a "world of Elric" sort of article, which could also include Pan Tang, the Young Kingdoms, and whatever other city or nation articles exist, would be reasonable, and perhaps should be done sensibly with the characters and books as well. Jclemens (talk) 18:45, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  I haven't seen an RfC in this context, although it is a thought worth considering, given that a day has passed and nobody has commented on the talk page. AfDs are, however, a valid forum for discussions of the fate of articles, particularly when the majority if not all of the content present in them is WP:TNTable, as seems to be the case here. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:43, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• I wouldn't merge any of it, to be honest. Elric of Melniboné already has a plot section, which in fact is better done away with than expanded. Why? Because there's an awful lot of high grade literary criticism sourcing available to do a thorough character analysis addressing all of the plot points, that no Wikipedia editor has seen fit to use at all; e.g. Higgins 2021, pp. 142–147, Laycock 2015, pp. 57–58 and Scroggins 2015 (too many pages to list) just for starters, which have far more than we have, by an English professor, a professor of religious studies, and the editor of the L.A. Review of Books. The plot summary, in contrast and as usual, is only verifiable from the primary text, and totally unnecessary considering what is available for use and as yet unused.

  There's pretty much nothing about the island. I went looking for sources to see whether I could add source support to or at least rewrite this, and found nothing that was about the place rather than about the central character. Then I noticed right at the foot of the article that this isn't even from the novels, but is from a role-playing game. But the only sources for this in that, when I went looking, are in-universe and fiction rather than factual. In any case, the game has its own article at Stormbringer (role-playing game).

  However, this is a legitimate redirect to take readers to the character article.

  • Higgins, David M. (2021). "Victims of entropy". Reverse Colonization: Science Fiction, Imperial Fantasy, and Alt-victimhood. The new American canon: the Iowa series in contemporary literature and culture. University of Iowa Press. ISBN 9781609387846.
  • Laycock, Joseph (2015). "Dungeon's & Dragons as religious phenomenon". Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic Over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520284913.
  • Scroggins, Mark (2015). Michael Moorcock: Fiction, Fantasy and the World's Pain. Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Vol. 52. McFarland. ISBN 9781476663074.
• Speaking as an administrator with access to the administrator deletion tool, I wouldn't need that tool to fix this. Uncle G (talk) 19:31, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Bravo. Drmies (talk) 21:15, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Noble administrators hide arcane wisdom in gnomic utterance and mystic words. Would anyone mind expressing their opinion in a way that lesser mortals can understand? And on a more prosaic point: plot summaries are quite useful for casually-curious readers who haven't got the actual book handy, and don't have access to the deeper literary criticism sources. Elemimele (talk) 23:09, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hmm I wouldn't call my Uncle's comments "gnomic", which typically means "pithy"--"prolix" would be unfair but closer to the truth. Nor do I think his lexicon is mystic--it's more a mixture of syntax and non-colloquial word choice. Drmies (talk) 02:05, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Sorry! I was being unnecessarily grumpy. But Uncle G, I couldn't work out whether you wanted to do away with the whole of this article, or the whole of the plot-summary in Elric of Melniboné, or, from the comment about not needing a delete tool, keep both? And Drmies, I assumed your 'Bravo' was intended to support the outcome favoured by Uncle G, in which case it would be helpful to know what outcome was intended. I was just confused! Elemimele (talk) 09:11, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes, my "bravo" was directed at my uncle's capabilities. He can make anything notable. Anything--except for collon, of course. Drmies (talk) 14:07, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • Easy and obvious: Don't use the administrator delete tool. Pick up the ordinary editing tool that even editors without accounts have. Zap this entirely. Zap the unsourced plot summary made up by Wikipedia editors directly. Replace with proper verifiable character analysis, including many plot points that the professors go into in detail. No, this isn't my itch to scratch, and I'm not responsible for writing every bloody article in the encyclopaedia. That's SimonP's job. ☺ I've given the sources, down to the page numbers. Someone interested in collaborative editing can take the baton and run with it. And it's surely the itch to scratch of the person who thinks that the content should be edited out. With the editing tool. Xe signed the nomination. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 10:26, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

        @Uncle G So just to be clear, your preferred solution is a redirect via WP:SOFTDELETE, and fixing of the target article (Elric of Melniboné)? Which is the outcome I believe I suggested in my nomination :P Any reason you don't include the bolded word "redirect" in your vote, as it the AfD custom, and to make things easier on the closer? PS. Thanks for finding the sources, I would encourage you to copypaste them to the talk page discussion at Elric's page which I started and which I linked from here, so that your efforts are not lost in the AfDs archives but are at lest preserved on the talk page for those who will try to fix this particular bloody article :P _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:47, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

        • • Thank you both, Uncle G and Drmies for the clarification. I'm afraid this article isn't my itch to scratch either, because cash is short and I don't fancy paying for access to these books just to sort out this article. I should probably have kept my nose out, and stuck to articles where I have the resources to be more constructive. Elemimele (talk) 17:25, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete I agree that fancruft applies Hekerui (talk) 22:47, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Some fictional locations are significant enough in literary history to be notable enough for Wikipedia articles and to clearly not be WP:Fancruft (an essay which comes to no conclusions in any case and certainly doesn't mandate deletion). This is one of them. It's not an especially good article, but it is a notable topic. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:49, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  @Necrothesp Can you show us sources that support your view? Which independent article/book/etc. discusses the notability (significance, etc.) of this fictional land? (Not to be confused with the book series) _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 14:15, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete or Redirect As much as a I like Moorcock and the Eternal Champion and who doesn't, there is no sources on the article. It has been here since 2005 and reduced by 11k odd but no sources. Redirect as an alternative. I'm suprised that nobody has found references in the meantine. scope_creep^Talk 02:58, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect to Elric of Melniboné as an ATD. As it sits it's been unsourced since its inception in 2005. I'd like to thank the nominator, for reminding me of Moorcock, it's been years since I've read him, and since I'm about to finish up Paul O. Williams' Pelbar Cycle, This will give me another dozen or so books to re-read. Unless sourcing can be found to show a scholarly discussion about this fictional location, a redirect will do. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 18:01, 28 February 2022 (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.