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18 February 2009

  • User:Karmafist/son of jimbo award – While found to some extent out of process, there is no consensus to overturn the deletion considering that distribution of the award has effectively ceased since. To address the broken links, I'll undelete and then move it to Mgm's userspace leaving a redirect behind as the page was rather linked than used as template.– Tikiwont ( talk) 09:51, 1 March 2009 (UTC) reply
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the article above. Please do not modify it.

User:Karmafist/son of jimbo award ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) ( restore | cache | MfD)

This particular subpage was an award and its deletion broke several awards. I would also like to point out that there is no "award category" for ns=. Smallman12q ( talk) 21:37, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply

Proper namespace is "User". Fixed. GRBerry 21:43, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
It was still ponting to mainspace when I saw it, so I've changed it to userspace. Gavia immer ( talk) 23:15, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse deletion, suggest speedy close. If this thing needs to exist, host it elsewhere, not in the userspace of a banned user. If other awards link to it, fix them. What is the point of revisiting this? Chick Bowen 23:49, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn. Keeping this deleted because it's in the userspace of a banned user is short-sighted. There's nothing controversial about the award so deleting it under a G5 clause doesn't work. (it wasn't created while they were banned) If it is hosted elsewhere, the history needs to be restored for proper contribution anyway. If Gavia immer doesn't want to host the award in their userspace, I will. It's of historic significance to the users who have been given the award and there is no rules that say userpages of banned users should be deleted entirely if there is useful content there. - Mgm| (talk) 12:12, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • This page was deleted over 1¾ years ago. I find it hard to understand how it was only noticed now that the awards were broken. If there's something essential there, then we can undelete it and move it to an active user's userspace. Stifle ( talk) 14:02, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
If it was wrongly deleted, then time doesn't matter(Or is there a policy for a time limit regarding WP:DRV. Smallman12q ( talk) 00:11, 23 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • From what I see, it has only ever been given to one editor (who has a collection of about 20). yandman 14:08, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    Well, undelete, subst, and redelete then. Stifle ( talk) 15:40, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn. This deletion was done based on a narrow interpretation of a rule, and I think there is reason to believe it may not apply here. I don't oppose Stifle's solution necessarily, but I think that we ought to just have an MfD on these pages if anyone wants them deleted. Karmafist is not your typical blocked user: he did a lot of good things for the encyclopedia and we should not mindlessly be deleting everything in his userspace. Mango juice talk 19:01, 24 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • I'd prefer Stifle's solution, in avoidance of a precedent by which a banned user's subpages are required to go through MFD to be deleted. This is a pretty routine thing to do; yes, it's attracted attention in this case because Karmafist was a productive user before he was banned (though never a fan of Jimbo's--people do understand that the award is tongue-in-cheek, right?). But many banned users' contributions are mixed. Chick Bowen 02:06, 25 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • It's all semantics. If it must not live at Karmafist's user subpage, just move it somewhere else. I see no reason to delete it at all. Mango juice talk 03:52, 25 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
  • User:Karmafist/barn award – While found to some extent out of process, there is no consensus to overturn the deletion considering that distribution of the award has effectively ceased since. To address the broken links, I'll undelete and then move it to Mgm's userspace leaving a redirect behind as the page was rather linked than used as template. – Tikiwont ( talk) 09:53, 1 March 2009 (UTC) reply
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the article above. Please do not modify it.

User:Karmafist/barn award ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) ( restore | cache | MfD)

This particular subpage was an award and its deletion broke several awards. I don't see why it should be deleted. Smallman12q ( talk) 21:37, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply

Proper namespace is "User". Fixed. GRBerry 21:43, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
  • Idle RPG – Deletion endorsed. Please note that AfD categorization, while a useful feature, has never been policy (nor has notification, as the nominator concedes). Early closures are a problem and are discouraged, but 20 minutes is not a big deal. – Chick Bowen 00:39, 24 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the article above. Please do not modify it.


Idle RPG (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) ( restore | cache | AfD)

There seem to have been a number of irregularities in this article's AfD process. I do not feel that this article was given proper exposure at AfD (the reasons which I'll detail below) and I do not believe that the closing admin took the entire discussion into consideration when closing the AfD.

  • First, the {{ AfDM}} template applied to the article by the person nominating the article for AfD did not include the article's name so no link to the AfD discussion page was provided. I attempted to correct this when I was made aware of the problem. See [1] and [2]
  • The AfD was grossly miscategorized and ended up in the unsorted 'U' category. The nominator used Games and Sports instead of either 'G' or 'W' (the later being the proper category for this article). Because of this, the AfD for this article did not receive the attention it would have received had it otherwise been properly categorized under 'W' ( AfD debates (Web or internet)) from day one. I was not aware of this issue and another editor attempted to fix it less than 24 hours before the AfD was closed. See [3] ( category documentation)
  • The AfD nominator failed to notify the article's creator and major editors of the AfD to allow them the opportunity to engage in the AfD discussion. [4] (While this may not be mandatory, this is the normal and accepted practice, see WP:GD#Nomination.)
  • The AfD itself was closed early, which goes against both the guidelines and standard practice, see WP:DELPRO#Process and WP:GD#Closure. Even though this is an irregularity, it ordinarily might not in and of itself have been an issue if not for the fact that there was still ongoing discussion and a general lack of consensus. The person who nominated the article for AfD also seemed to have changed their mind and decided that the citations that had been added to the article shortly before the AfD nomination [5] did indeed pass WP:V and WP:RS see [6] and [7]

I've attempted to bring this to the attention of the closing admin [8] [9] but he seems to be unwilling to take a closer look at this AfD. While I do believe he attempted to close the AfD with a proper result, I feel he may have either misinterpreted the discussion or simply did a tally of "!votes" in deciding to close this AfD as Delete. While I can understand the extremely long AfD discussion getting to the point of tl;dr, I find the seemingly unwillingness to take a second look at the AfD itself somewhat disturbing.

I propose Overturn and undelete and copying of the original AfD discussion to the article's talk page to allow for further discussion and improvement of the article. If people otherwise feel this should go up for further discussion on AfD, then Relist would be my second choice.

If I didn't firmly believe this article was deleted without informed participation and true consensus I wouldn't bother bringing this up due to the fact that this process is taking up valuable time that I would rather spend working on other articles. I feel I presented a good argument as to why this article met both WP:N and WP:V (using WP:RS) within the AfD discussion itself so I don't see a need to repeat any of that information here.

-- Tothwolf ( talk) 21:20, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply

  • This was mistagged for AFD for just shy of two hours. It was closed eleven minutes early. I don't know how you'd go about informing the main editors of the article, as the history is heterogenous and IP-heavy and the article hadn't had any significant changes since its creation in Sep. 2006 (mostly just removal and replacement of external links and lists of other similar games). So the technical issues, in my estimation, are a big load of hooey.
    In fact, Tothwolf, you yourself had the most damning argument to delete in the AFD: "IRC related topics are also notoriously difficult to 'verify'..." and nobody demonstrated how we could verify the claims in this article using appropriate sources (and not personal observation of the subject or documentation made by creators of the subject). So unless you have some new sources to present or a userspace draft hat solves the WP:V/ WP:N issues, I don't see any reason to overturn this. - A Man In Bl♟ck ( conspire - past ops) 22:25, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    Sorry, but it was mislisted for much longer than two hours. [10] This most certainly will make for a less active discussion when those interested in topics pertaining to this category can't even see that something is listed on AfD.
    Going by strictly what MBisanz said, it was closed 21 minutes early, not 11. Still, too early is too early, AfDs run for at least 5 days, not 4 days 23 hours and 39 minutes. I still had an open editing window and was finishing up a reply when this AfD was closed. This was indeed a procedural error although as I said above it might not have been a big deal if not for everything else.
    It's kinda hard to discuss the various editors and contributors when the edit history isn't even visible, so I won't even try. The person nominating the article failed to give any notification and I know from looking at the edit history before this article was deleted that there were a lot more contributors than just a handful of random IPs.
    Well, I tried not to bring up stuff that was already covered in the AfD here, but since you are questioning the sources, I guess I have no choice but to cover this again...
    While it's true IRC-related topics are notoriously difficult to verify, there were sources presented that met both WP:V and WP:RS. According to the guidelines and standard practice here on Wikipedia, it has always been acceptable to use a software developer's website to verify the features and functionality present in software discussed within an article. That was also done here. (Developer sites: [11] [12] Source code: [13] [14]) Then there's WP:N, which is pretty well covered by the unbiased stats shown here [15] [16] [17] (among others, Google it for yourself).
    Also, in the future, I'd very much appreciate it if you did not take my words out of context because it is easy to misinterpret part of a discussion when that's done.
    Now, while I've done my best to remain civil during this entire process, I'm not happy with the borderline personal attacks people have thrown at me both on and off-wiki. My goal is to improve Wikipedia, I don't care for politics and alliances and I don't care whom is friends with who. It would be nice if everyone could get along with everyone else, but obviously that'll never happen. If everyone had followed policies and guidelines and used common sense then I'd have never had a reason to bring this up on DRV or spend so much time discussing this article on AfD. This whole thing has been nothing but a major time-suck but if I don't speak up then absolutely nothing will change or improve.
    As for my speaking up during the AfD, I spoke up because it seemed no one else could. This whole issue is something that could have been corrected early on if the person nominating the article on AfD had instead made their concerns visible on the article's talk page. There was absolutely no reason for this to go through an AfD just because they thought this might be a fake or non-notable subject. Heck, the edit history itself proved that this article had been on Wikipedia for 4.5 years without any past issues.
    -- Tothwolf ( talk) 01:34, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    Most AFDs aren't immediately categorized, nor is categorization required. I ignored that bullet point because I don't care, and I don't think most people care. Nor does anyone care about 10 or 20 minutes short of five days at AFD. We're not a bureaucracy or a court of law, we don't toss out clear decisions because of technical points.
    The links you're offering are the same ones you offered in the AFD. I realize you think Caissa's DeathAngel was wrong, but this still stands: "None of the four sources you give there for WP:V and WP:RS apply to either of those because they are all Primary. Reliable sources have to be third party, so the developer's site cannot count towards that." - A Man In Bl♟ck ( conspire - past ops) 03:41, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    Most AfDs are categorized long before this one was and the majority are categorized when they are posted. Personally, I don't care that you don't care. I care enough about Wikipedia and the articles on Wikipedia that I'm willing to bring this to DRV and that's what matters. If as you say you don't care, then why did you even bother to post a reply to this DRV?
    I at least cared enough during the AfD to attempt a discussion with others vs tossing up a bunch of "probably not...", WP:PS and WP:LAWYER.
    I have absolutely no issues with Caissa's DeathAngel and I'm not even sure why you brought up that name.
    -- Tothwolf ( talk) 05:34, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    For the record, Google turns up ~247,000 hits [18] -- Tothwolf ( talk) 02:03, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    None of which are reliable sources, and many of which are just the words "idle" and "rpg" in succession. This is telling. - A Man In Bl♟ck ( conspire - past ops) 03:41, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    Just for the sake of your argument, Google News doesn't prove much of anything one way or the other. It only indexes a very small subset of "news" sites and I seriously doubt you'd find very many text based games (especially older games) or even IRC software references via Google News. Tothwolf ( talk) 05:02, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    Just so we can end this particular thread right here:
    Google News: "Internet Relay Chat" - ~16 results
    Google: "Internet Relay Chat" - ~4,150,000 results
    -- Tothwolf ( talk) 06:10, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    As for the results being just the words "idle" and "rpg" in succession, I beg to differ. Notice the quotes around the search terms? Anyone reasonable who scrolls through 100s of results [19] will see that these are references to the "Idle RPG" creators, software documentation, Idle RPG channels, Idle RPG players and players' stats. Tothwolf ( talk) 05:08, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse deletion. While I !voted to keep this article, the consensus was to delete, and some minor errors in the deletion process (and I cannot imagine a less minor error than closing 11 minutes early; similar errors are referred to in the DRV instructions as a reason not to overturn), the principle of de minimis non curat lex applies here. Stifle ( talk) 14:04, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    I fully expected someone to try to take a minor point and try to turn it into the major point during this DRV. I made no attempt of my own to call this a major irregularity. The fact is, this would be a moot point if not for the other process irregularities. That said, please double check your facts. It was closed 21 minutes early, not 11. Check the AfD's edit history for yourself. [20]
    Opened 03:29,  8 February 2009 (UTC)
    Closed 03:08, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
    Because it seems you want to argue this point, lets see if we can do this right proper.
    WP:DELPRO#AFD: To process an AFD debate listed on a day page containing debates old enough to be closed:
    WP:GD#Closure: After 5 days of discussion, a volunteer will move the day's list of deletion discussions from the active page to the /Old page. Depending on the backlog, it may sit there for several more days, during which it is still acceptable to add comments to the discussion. Another volunteer (the "closing admin") will review the article, carefully read the AFD discussion, weigh all the facts, evidence and arguments presented and determine if consensus was reached on the fate of the article.
    WP:DRV#What is this page for? Purely procedural errors may be substantive and result in an overturn (such as failing to tag a page for its XfD discussion) or irrelevant (such as closing 1 minute early).
    -- Tothwolf ( talk) 19:28, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    And this is one of the irrelevant ones. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. Stifle ( talk) 21:32, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    " Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy."
    Indeed.
    I do not feel that the Idle RPG AfD was an appropriate test case / battleground / frustration-reliever for a handful of editors who were unhappy with the way the Notability (fiction) debate was going though.
    -- Tothwolf ( talk) 00:20, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    I'm not at all sure how that relates to this debate, as idlerpg is clearly not fictional. Stifle ( talk) 09:09, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    The fact that it's not a fictional topic seemed pretty clear to me, but that didn't initially seem to be the case for the person who nominated it for deletion nor a number of people who got quite involved in WP:PS during the AfD.
    It'd be pretty clear to any outsider who looked at the AfD that it mainly reflected a "get rid of all cruft!" viewpoint with some WP:IDONTKNOWIT, WP:IDONTLIKEIT, WP:NOTCLEANUP, WP:JNN, etc thrown in for good measure. Sure, a ton of WP:PS was thrown around too, but what it boils down to is the the nominator and the majority of the handful of people who actually found the AfD were unfamiliar with the topic. Because of a number of procedural mistakes, more people who would have been familiar with this topic were not even aware of the AfD.
    Now, as for the Notability (fiction) connection, it's pretty clear if you dig into page histories that a number of people who were unhappy with the way the proposed Notability (fiction) voting was going made up a good portion of the Delete "voting" in the Idle RPG AfD. That doesn't look very good at all from a WP:NPOV standpoint.
    I personally have no ties to this particular article whatsoever with the exception I added references after I saw that it had been tagged with a {{ prod}} template. Given what I've already stated above it should be pretty clear as to why I decided to step in and get involved in this mess. When I see WP:N, WP:V, etc being abused and misused in the way they were during this article's AfD in an attempt to justify removal of an article about a popular topic that has existed on Wikipedia for better than 4.5 years I'm certainly going to speak up.
    Any reasonable attempt to research the "Idle RPG" topic clearly shows just how popular and widely used the software/game are. I mean, niche and unpopular topics just aren't going to end up with over 240,000 hits on Google. [21] This number of hits is very similar to what you get when you search for Dalnet IRC [22] and that's the number of hits for an entire IRC network. Heck, surely people remember what happened with Articles for deletion/DALnet...
    For the record, I harbor no resentment for those involved in either the AfD or this DRV. While I certainly didn't like seeing the intentions of WP:N, WP:V, etc twisted and misused, in keeping with WP:AGF I have to assume that this whole thing was just due to unfamiliarity with the Idle RPG topic and frustration over the other stuff that was going on at the time (such as the Notability (fiction) debate).
    -- Tothwolf ( talk) 22:30, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse – It seems that the reasons to overturn are based on mere technicalities—none of which are significant enough—which has turned into AFD Round 2. Neither are, in my view, compelling reasons to overturn. MuZemike 16:48, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    Actually, I was rather hoping to find some WP:UCS here but it doesn't seem to have surfaced just yet. The fact is, the AfD didn't result in a proper discussion due to procedural errors. There is no doubt in my mind that this AfD got far less attention and discussion that it would have and should have received due to the fact that it was grossly miscategorized and subsequently overlooked by others.
    The failure of the person who nominated the article for AfD to notify the article's creator and major editors also didn't help make the process any more open or transparent...
    As for round 2, I'll quote myself: "If I didn't firmly believe this article was deleted without informed participation and true consensus I wouldn't bother bringing this up due to the fact that this process is taking up valuable time that I would rather spend working on other articles."
    ...and in my reply to A Man In Black: "Well, I tried not to bring up stuff that was already covered in the AfD here, but since you are questioning the sources, I guess I have no choice but to cover this again..."
    (I'd much rather be working on articles right now...)
    -- Tothwolf ( talk) 20:08, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse Consensus is clear in the AFD, the process issues raised are insignificant to meaningless. Other than that, the nominator here is not presenting new information, just rehashing the ones rejected in the AFD. GRBerry 16:56, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    Consensus was far from clear when the AfD was closed. See this discussion [23] [24] with person who nominated the article for AfD.
    The procedural errors brought to light here if nothing else made for a less open and transparent AfD process. This in and of itself is more than enough reason to revisit this issue.
    I did not bring up material that had been covered in the AfD until after A Man In Black raised questions about the article's references. I would have preferred not to revisit that material as it was already shown that the references provided established WP:N and WP:V. Anyone claiming otherwise at this point is going against the spirit and intentions of Wikipedia's notability and verifiability guidelines and policies. Neither of these were designed to exclude material that can be sourced and verified via common sense methods.
    -- Tothwolf ( talk) 20:46, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse all we have are technical arguments as to procedure, but each ultimately flawed as pointed about above. De minimis non curat lex. One that is particularly interesting is that it allegedly didn't garner the attention it ought to have due to miscategorization. The wider attention is to enable more of the community to be aware that there is a problem with the article and to find sources (for example) to show it's notability - not to get a bunch of people to !vote keep to muddy the waters. Here, we have a big advocate for keeping the article who has but his best case forward but apparently is still unable to find anything new to show notability. Case closed, then. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 21:33, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    You know, you've managed to turn this into a blatent personal attack and I don't like it at all. If all you can come up with is a rehash of others' arguments then perhaps you shouldn't be "voting" at all? Tothwolf ( talk) 22:39, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    Per response from JzG, maybe I was a little too hasty in my reply above. I apologize if this was taken as a personal attack, especially by Carlossuarez46 Tothwolf ( talk) 00:16, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
  • List of units in the Age of Mythology series – Deletion endorsed. I will restore the history, since some information has already been merged from this article to the main one, meaning that GFDL info needs to be preserved. More merging can take place using the history as a resource. However, this DRV establishes that the close of the AfD is valid, and the scale and level of detail of the original list is considered beyond the encyclopedia's scope. – Chick Bowen 04:16, 24 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the article above. Please do not modify it.


List of units in the Age of Mythology series (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) ( restore | cache | AfD)| AfD2

I do not think a rough consensus was formed in favor of deletion, especially in the light of viable alternatives such as merging or redirection, which would have at least preserved the article's history and bring into compliance with the GFDL. Hence, I request an overturn of the 2nd AFD to no consensus or, at the very least, a redirect. MuZemike 17:51, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply

  • The article was transwikied months ago to strategywiki. For that purpose, we do not need to keep a copy here; see WP:CSD#A5, and the history is there. A Nobody repeatedly made claims that material from this article had been merged elsewhere, but never provided any convincing evidence, and I can't find any evidence of it myself. For example, he claimed that it was merged to the Units section of Age of Mythology, but no edit summary for that page includes the string "merge" and is about that section. Similarly, Nifboy pointed here as evidence that a merge has taken place, but in fact there is no such evidence there for this article. So far as I can tell, there is no GFDL reason for keeping here, and having researched invalid examples in this category I wouldn't be persuaded by anything less than a diff showing an actual merge occuring in a target article. GRBerry 18:26, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • See for example [25], [26], etc. and looking throughout its history there seems to have been a deal of merges back and forth without saying as much in the edit summaries. At the time, I did not realize we had to say "merge" in the edit summaries. It was something I only learned months later. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 18:34, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • Wrong again. That material was not in this article. The history of this article at that time is available at strategy wiki, and neither of those quotes or sources came from this article. Those are not merges from this article. GRBerry 19:15, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
        • I merged that material from the article back in August per A Man In Black and then merged some of it back into the article late last night when I began undertaking a considerable revision to add new out of universe headings and sections. But even if the GFDL concern did not exist, the discusion still did not have a clear consensus to delete as it was quite divided in arguments and opinions. Even if not a vote, it was all over the place with even the deletes largely seeming okay with a merge. Zxcvbnm said, "But if necessary, Redirect." Sephiroth BCR said, "I also agree with Zxcvbnm on not seeing where a redirect helps, but I'd be fine with that result as well." There was not decisive opposition to a redirect with edit history intact. We are not here rehashing whether we think the article should be kept, but rather regarding the most accurate read of that discussion and in that discussion, there was not a decisie consensus for redlinking. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 19:18, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
          • You copied your own original contributions to this article to another article. Since you own the copyright to both edits, and you are properly attributed, there's no GFDL concern. I even mentioned this in the first AFD. - A Man In Bl♟ck ( conspire - past ops) 22:27, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
            • Are we sure that the rest of that units section in the article was not merged? Best, -- A Nobody My talk 00:18, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn as no consensus or undelete edit history and redirect. As I posted on Yandman’s talk page, when it closed as can be seen in the edit history I was in the process of revising it substantially using search results from Google News and Google Books. And in any event, clearly no consensus in this discussion to delete. Moreover, the comparison in the closing statement to similar articles being deleted is not really fair, because this article contained out of universe information on innovations, history, and reception that is absent from similar lists and this makes it more of a contrast to those lists than a comparison. But most importantly the content was previously merged to Age_of_Mythology#Units some months back and so at a minimum the edit history needs to be undeleted with a redirect created instead. A satisfactory result here would be either a re-close as “no consensus“ or undeletion of the edit history and a redirect to Age of Mythology#Units with a note on the AfD explaining that. Thank you for your time and consideration. A Nobody My talk 18:34, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn as no consensus or undelete edit history and redirect per MuZemike and A Nobody. Ikip ( talk) 19:03, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse. The AfD only looks like split consensus if one counts heads and ignores the validity of the arguments. This is precisely the sort of thing covered by WP:NOT#GUIDE and always would be. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 20:11, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • If we went with validity of arguments, we would keep, becasue the sections on Innovation, History, and Reception cited from both Google News and Google Books and added last night and thus not on the strategy wiki version could not justifiably be called "game guide". Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 20:14, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse: That seems to reflect the general consensus, if you remember that AFDs are not a vote, and Wikipedia is not a democracy. People overwhelmingly offered consensus policies and guidelines against this list, with no counter-argument about how the list met our policies/guidelines. DRVs are not a place to re-open discussions about an article, but merely to ask if the admin was reasonable. And even if I'm not crazy about the outcome, the admin was acting reasonably. However, even though I personally felt that deletion would be acceptable, I said that redirecting would be preferable. Re-creating a redirect wouldn't be terrible, but then we don't need DRV to get there. Randomran ( talk) 20:23, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • Randomran, what general consensus? People "overwhelmingly" offered consensus policies and guidelines both for and against and also in between, i.e. there was no general consensus to keep, merge, or delete and certainly not overwhelmingly one way or the other. I agree that we are not re-opening a discussion about the article, but there's just no way that discussion had an actual consensus by any objective and honest read of the discussion. The only accurate close there would be "no consensus" with maybe, maybe a "merge and redirect" as some kind of mutually acceptable middle ground. With that said, I see no reason why at this stage an undeletion and redirect would be detrimental to our project in any way. Best, -- A Nobody My talk 20:32, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse per the many policies and guidelines I cited during that discussion, which I do not feel were countered adequately with similar justifications. Wikipedia is not a democracy and mere uncited opinions without backup from policies and guidelines do not formulate a valid consensus. This site has never been a place for original research and never will be. I've shown that the majority of this article is just that, and all I got in return were arguments stating what, without examples, it is (e.g. "the content is explained in a real-world context", "Well referenced article"), stating what it isn't (e.g. "it doesn't violate Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Article guidelines", "doesn't really consitute a game guide since it doesn't list stats or how to use the units") and stating things which go against what Wikipedia is (i.e. A Nobody's numerous arguments in favour of keeping unreferenced content until it is sourced, which clearly violates WP:OR; "Wikipedia does not publish original thought"). Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 20:47, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • The many policies and guidelines were effectively countered and trumped by other policies and guidelines and by the reality of the changes made to the article last night. Wikipedia is indeed not a democracy, but the claims that it was entirely original research were not factually acurrate. The article in its final version had whole paragraphs of unoriginal research backed by reliable secondary sources. There was and is no valid reason for the article to be deleted. And there is certainly no policy based reason why not to at worst undelete the edit history and redirect. This is one instance where I am almost tempted to ignore all rules and just recreate it anyway, because that discussion was about as textbook of a no consensus as we have ever had on this site. Of all the possibly outcomes, deletion was furthest from the consensus of the community and if endorsed it would be a real shame for our project. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 20:55, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • The difference between my and your arguments as to whether the content is appropriate is that you do not cite yours with quotes and policies/guidelines. Your first sticking point in this discussion has been an assertion of "no consensus" on the grounds of there merely being no consensus, with little discussion as to whether the the points raised on either side of the field are actually applicable or not. Your second is ignore all rules, which, considering the lack of evidence for it relevance here, seems to be nothing more than use of an available trump card. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 21:24, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
        • Not true, the article should be restored per WP:PRESERVE (a policy) and is consistent with our First pillar, i.e. a specialized encyclopedia on fictional topics with relevance to people in the real world. The alleged criteria for deletion are false. It is not all original research. It is not all game guide. It is not all plot. Ergo, a case can be made for merging and redirecting, but just linking to a policy or guideline is irrelevant if not true. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 21:28, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
          • WP:PRESERVE states explicitly that original research is excluded from the policy. I've provided examples of OR and game guide material in the AfD, and you have failed to do the same or assert how my examples aren't OR, therefore making your arguments unfounded. You can claim things all you like, but without proof your claims are invalid. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 21:35, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
            • The whole top three sections priors to deletion were sources from Google News and Google Books, i.e. out of universe context from reliable secondary sources, i.e the claim that it was original research is unfounded as of the last version of the article and thus invalidates any reason for deletion. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 00:18, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
              • It's all good and well to provide a large clump of potential sources, but they are useless unless you can prove how any of them pass WP:RS. I don't remember any such examples being provided by you or seeing any particularly striking information from among the bunch, the latter for reasons I've stated before. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 01:14, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
                • You don't find content from published books that are secondary source in nature that say the game is specifically "notable" (yes, actually used the much disputed word...) because of its changes in units from earlier games? How could such a claim not be mergeable at worst? Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 01:21, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
                  • Uh... "units from earlier games"? "mergeable" claims? What's all this about? Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 01:27, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
                    • The considerable revision of new content I added just before it was deleted that pretty much no one new to the AfD commented on. Maybe it should be relisted considering the last version prior to deletion and see what someone other than you and I have to say? Because the last version just before deletion could not possibly be deleted based on the reasons in the nomination. Sadly as we are not admins, we cannot see that version. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 01:33, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
                      • It would be a better idea to actually directly quote and cite sources in future instead of providing uncited interpretations of them; for now, I have no idea whether what you tried to quote to me was actually reliable or not. I've already addressed the content you added as being simply not enough to constitute a separate article; notability isn't comprised of solely a few reliable sources from various reviews of the game. This is why the content should be userfied; it is simply not ready for an article yet. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 01:55, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
                        • Which is exactly what I did, i.e. cited sources in the actual article and improved it rather than just kept on typing up replies to try getting it deleted. And I did so with published books, i.e. not just reviews of the game. The article is indeed ready for a spinoff article by any true wikipedic standard. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:50, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
                          • Whatever you claim you did, (the article was still largely original research at the time of deletion) I have not seen these sources you cited and therefore cannot agree with your claims of there being sufficient content to justify a separate article, which there was neither before or after your insufficient improvements to the article. Either directly (by which I mean NOT just Google links) cite these sources or cease discussion, because all these claims of "I've got sufficient sources to establish notability" are currently doing nothing to resolve the whole issue. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 22:16, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
                            • No objective editor can honestly look a the last version of the article which consisted of several paragraphs of unoriginal research that justified a separate article. Despite your insufficient votes to delete, no one has provided any honest and valid reason why the article should remain deleted and not undeleted and redirected. Someone should ignore all rules and just undelete and redirect anyway, because the bottom line is it is a legitimate search term with mergeable content in the edit history. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Closing editor's comments - I would have redirected it, had it not been such an improbable search term. As for merging, Is there an editor who wants me to put the article into their userspace? If so, I'd be more than glad to do a quick Ctrl-C Ctrl-V. yandman 21:10, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • Yandman, I am not convinced that it is an improbable search term. To be entirely honest, I frequently search for articles by "List of..." and I reckon many other editors and readers do the same. I reiterate my request that if you are open minded to userfying for merge purposes to just undeleted and redirect for simplicitly and to really satisfies all parties. I cannot imagine anyone being so bent on deletion here that a redirect with undeleted edit history is a big deal. If worst comes to worse, it can always have a protected redirect after undeletion. Please for simplicity and to prevent a needless rehashing here, undelete and redirect. Thank you for your time and help. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 21:17, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • I'd be happy to userfy/projectify this page, history included, as I suggested in the AFD. I don't think yandman would object to this. - A Man In Bl♟ck ( conspire - past ops) 22:28, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • I as always will accept userfied articles; however, in this instance, I truly do not see a consensus to delete. Also, I don't know how to transwiki, but if the basis here is for transwikiying, then the version prior to deletion this morning should be transwikied as it contained additional sourced information versus the one currently at the strategy wiki. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 00:18, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse well-reasoned close. WP:NOT 1:0 WP:ILIKEIT, I'm afraid. Guy ( Help!) 21:23, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • The problem is that the calls for deletion were in effect WP:IDONT:IKEIT and it passed what Wikipedia is, which is why closing as anything other than no consensus or merge and redirect was unreasonable. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 21:25, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • Mm. ILIKEIT is a fine argument for "I like how this information is presented" when the alternative is "This is not how to present this information." We are free to make personal judgements about the presentation or form of data; it's only personal judgements of the subject itself that are problematic. - A Man In Bl♟ck ( conspire - past ops) 22:45, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse Excellent, in-process close. Eusebeus ( talk) 22:06, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • Even though it went against consensus? Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 00:18, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse- an excellent example of a closing admin determining consensus from strength of argument rather than just a quick head count. Reyk YO! 22:59, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • If we went by strength of argument, then it would have closed as keep. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 00:18, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • No, no you're quite wrong. I know you consider "I like it" to be a strong argument, but it isn't. And general consensus is that it isn't- and that's why the article was deleted and why the deletion will be endorsed. Reyk YO! 01:42, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
        • I don't consider "I like it" a strong argument. As much as you openly see these things as some kind of battleground where to " fly the Deletionist flag", I, however, believe in arguments based on something other than subjectivity and personal opinion. The strong argument here is that reliably sourced information from independent published books and reviews was used for outr of universe sections on Innovations, History, and Reception of the units, which means it was not all original research, nor all plot. In fact, a book even said that the units here are a "notable example" of a change from earlier games. Thus, the final version of the article prior to deletion met our guidelines and policies at least in a manner suitable enough for a merge and/or redirect with edit history intact. Sure, some who know me will come here to reflexively say to delete just because I say to keep, but no reasonable admin will look at the article, see the inaccurate claims as to why to delete and still take issue with it that they would not undelete and redirect. If this is indeed not a vote, then deletion will not be endorsed. If it is a vote or if subjectivity is what matters, then deletion will be endorsed, but there's no benefit in keeping the edit history deleted and redirecting even if it's a protected redirect. There is however a potential benefit of keeping a legitimate search term available and providing edit history from which reliably sourced content may be merged. As you are unable to see the last version before deletion, you can't reasonably say that the arguments against it being kept really matched how it looked as of the AM hours last night/this morning. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 01:54, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
          • Please stop misrepresenting my position. I have told you numerous times that, although I have strong opinions regarding quality and notability and will defend them, I argue based on policy and because I have the interests of the encyclopedia at heart. I am not here to pick fights or bulldoze people, and I have told you this before. Why do you continue to deliberately misrepresent me? Reyk YO! 02:15, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse. The close was well within admin discretion in interpreting the arguments, and kudos to the closer for making his reasoning clear. Deor ( talk) 03:16, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • It went with "arguments" that did not reflect the actual reality of the article. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:12, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse deletion and props to the closer for thinking this thing through carefully. AKRadecki Speaketh 04:13, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • Even though the reasons for deletion did not truly represent the actual condition of the article? Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:12, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse, within admin discretion. Echoing comments above, I appreciate the closer's detailed explanation. A couple keeps mentioned only sourcing and article quality, which turned out to be irrelevant to the final decision. Flatscan ( talk) 04:58, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    Per Ikip, I moved the GFDL subsection to the talk page. Flatscan ( talk) 04:52, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • The delete's claims were largely false or misleading. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:12, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse as absolutely correct application of admin discretion. With respect to User:A Nobody, from time to time his apparent understanding of the word "consensus" means "arguments on my side are strong, and arguments against me are weak". Stifle ( talk) 14:06, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    And if there's a GFDL issue, put a null edit in the edit history saying "parts of this article were taken from articles foo, bar, baz, and qux, written by editors quux, corge, grault, garply, waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy, and thud". Stifle ( talk) 14:07, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • In the case the "arguments" for deletion were simply not really all that true. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:12, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse – good close. — sephiroth bcr ( converse) 15:11, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • Even though it went against consensus? Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:12, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • No, because it was in line with consensus. Take your annoying badgering elsewhere. You're not helping your case. — sephiroth bcr ( converse) 18:33, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
        • There was no consensus to delete. Your dishonest comments need to be challenged. The admin said on his talk page that he counted "merge" and "redirect" as delete. Huh!? "Merge" means "merge"; "redirect" means "redirct." Neither means remove edit history and redlink. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 19:16, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
          • It's accurate enough, considering both involve deletion to varying extents. A redirect would result in the deletion of the entire article's content and a merge would result in a redirect with the merged content being largely trimmed down, which this article's would especially be due to the fact that it's largely composed of either unreliable or irrelevant sources and reams of OR. Anyway, mere words mean nothing compared to the respective arguments. Wikipedia is not a democracy. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 22:16, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
            • No, mergeing and redirect are editorial decisions closer to "keep" than "delete," because both result in the content being kept in some manner and something other than redlinking and especially when coupled with the decisively strong arguments for keeping that crushed the weak non-arguments for deleting. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
          • "Dishonest comments"? I fail to see how a subjective assessment could ever be dishonest. Fun, fun. Semantics aside, I suggest you listen to Protonk and realize that badgering everyone in the freaking discussion doesn't help you. The closing admin doesn't give a rat's ass how much you reply to other people's comments. — sephiroth bcr ( converse) 17:59, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
            • That's exactly it. The only claim for deletion is based on subjective criteria, because if we went objectively, it would unquestionably be kept. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 18:01, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn this is basically descriptive material , much of it well sourced from other publications, with some details sourced from the game and in no sense a game guide (it would be a pretty poor game guide with such undetailed material as this). . The closing admin saw the improved actual content of the page and made a deliberate decision to ignore it, and said as much. He was completely wrong to say " There's been a pretty clear consensus over the years that these articles should not be included." It's blatantly wrong on its face, since the previous afd had closed as no-consensus, and the !votes at the present one were 10 keep/6 merge or redirect/5 delete. How one can make a consensus to delete out of that for the present discussion I do not understand. Even more, in combination with the previous afd , and the erratic results for similar articles, how one can make multiyear consensus on such articles in general from that I even more do not understand. I wish we did have a consensus on these one way or another, but we clearly do not. This is a case of IDONTLIKEIT on his part, and, alas, on the part of many of those commenting above. A minority wanting to delete, supported by an admin who thinks likewise. I think a close like this should not only be overturned, but might want to refrain from further closing in this subject, as if he has a preformed opinion on the general subject regardless of the merits of the article. DGG ( talk) 18:00, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    It seems rather poor form to accuse the closing admin of acting in bad faith when the material which purportedly assured the article's notability was added after the majority of the AfD comments had already been made - while closing admins can evaluate the discussion as they see fit, it isn't usual for them to ignore the whole lot because of some recent and unnoticed changes to the article. The less said about the "there was no consensus, see the following head count" argument the better, too. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 20:29, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
If he failed to take account of improvements in the article, this was a bad close. Consensus is made by the people present at the discussion. The admin just determines what it is. Finding for a minority view is of course possible if there is explicit reason to discard some votes as not based on policy. But to discard them based on one's opinion of the underlying issue is wrong. i could just as well close such debates according to my underlying view of the issues. It would be just as wrong. DGG ( talk) 23:18, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
There's one thing he didn't fail to do, though, and that was to actually read the article, and the last-minute edits made by A Nobody were not sufficient enough to establish the article's content enough to justify being split from the main AoM article. He did nothing to address the majority of the article's content, that in the table of units, which suffered from wholly being sourced from either irrelevant historical information sites or game fansites, and little to add any content to the article other than a few more reviews, which could just as easily be integrated into the AoM article. Admins have their own judgements too, and, as far as I'm concerned, these last-minute additions did little to turn the tables and were sufficiently ignorable. If a Good Article's worth of content was there at the time of deletion I think he would have thought twice, but that was clearly not the case. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 00:08, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The bottom line is you failed to present a legitimate case for deletion, which is why my edits made the article pass all of guidelines and policies with flying colors by using sources from both Google News and Google Books. Anyone who objectively looked at the article would have seen this relevant information as potential for a good article. Best, -- A Nobody My talk 17:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
Then let's see these wonderful " flying colors". Without them, you've failed. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 18:10, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
Undelete the article and you'll see them. Best, -- A Nobody My talk 18:12, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
Uh... I'm not an admin. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 18:19, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • Chris, yes, I made the changes at sort of the last minute, but in part did so, because there was no way I could have seen it closing as delete and wanted at the end to just make good on my claims that the content was improveable and that I was going to begin doing it even though it seemed clear it was already going to be saved, i.e. I wanted to show that just because it seemed obvious it was going to be saved, I wasn't going to move on and not actually do what I could to improve it. I would have continued to improve it further had it been a "no consensus" as I see real educational value in these sorts of articles as I find these list helpful for students, i.e. players of the game can use it as navigational tool to learn about the 'real" history behind the subjects they enjoy as games and to those interested in games in general could use the article to see how units have evolved and are used across different games from the three out of universe segments at the top of the article. While the main game article may provide the general overview of the games, these lists are good go tos for those who want a bit more information on specific aspects of the game and I am confident that I was setting in motion a revision that while probably not satisfactory to everyone as some just don't like this stuff, but would objectively meet our guidelines and policies anyway. And because we both know people misinterpret things, argue emotionally, etc. an admin should look at the article and see if the criticisms really are reflective of reality. Whether a discussion seems to have consensus should take into account if that consensus is based on reality, but even so, in this case, as much as I wish it were a straight out keep, I wouldn't have closed it as keep, maybe a merged and redirect as a middle ground, but the most accurate read of that discussion based on arguments, head count, and the truthful state of the article and potential for further development would unquestionably have been "no consensus." And it doesn't matter whether or not you're inclusionist, deletionist, like me or dislike me, "no consensus" is the most accurate read of that discussion. Finally, the main request here is that the edit history be undeleted so that mergeable content can possibly be taken from it and then a redirect be created. How can that possibly be a big deal or a bad thing? We want a redirect that provides convenience for the countless editors who search for lists as I and obviously many others do. We want the edit history available so that we can improve the main article. Keeping the edit history deleted accomplishes what? Deletionists get what they want by not having the separate article anyway, so what is the big deal about undeleting edit history that can be used to improve the main game article, and redirecting something that multiple editors beyond me do think a legitimate search term? If several admins and editors beyond me said in the AFDs and DRV that people do search for the subject based on that "List of..." string, why would we not have that as a redirect? Did you catch " Breast Cancer Show Ever"? There's a point near the end of the episode where Cartman just keeps going on and on and Wendy says something about how he already "won", so what the heck? Well, here, okay so we don't have a separate article, why then would a merge and redirect be such a problem? Or how about the article was being improved, why not allow for greater improvement? IF our interests are really what's best for the encyclopedia, why be so beholden to one snapshot in time five day discussion when improvements are taking place? Why not see how far those improvements go? People think we shouldn't be the guide to everything for some debateable practical reasons. Okay, fine, but to suggest that an undeletion of edit history with maybe even a protected redirect is somehow some kind of unreasonable request in an AfD in which deletion was the MINORITY opinion is disheartening. I really would like to assume good faith and all, but I cannot think of any legitimate reason why anyone would actually oppose an undeletion of edit history from which content can be realistically merged and even a protected redirect for what several editors have said is a valid search term. I think the closing admin might have been amenable to that given further discussion and hope that regardless of this DRV he still is. And I hope others will seriously step back and think if as an admin outright said off-wiki that my participation in AfDs and DRVs "attract people who vote delete purely to try and oppose" me is really what's best for the project. Had I not commented in the AfD, how would it have closed? What about this DRV? Would the same editors have gone the same way? Would some have even commented in that AfD and this DRV? Are statements like that one by the off-wiki admin quoted above, who also wrote, "Personally, when I see such inane crap at AfD, it spurs me to close those AFDs as delete regardless" (that admin was as far as I know NOT the one who closed in this case, just to be clear), the real situation? Whoever closes this DRV, please consider not the one line "good closes" by various accounts with past disputes with me, but the actual benefit of the request to undelete the edit history and redirect, i.e. what kind of honest sense it makes/doesn't make to keep deleted mergeable content and a valid redirect location. Best, -- A Nobody My talk 21:08, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • All this text and you've shown absolutely no proof of the existence of sufficient sourcing for the article in question. That is the essence of any and all deletion discussions and notability on Wikipedia and it is never going to bend to allow your conflicting "keep things until they're sourced" ideology, which I've already shown is not how things work. The essence of the issue is that the article is question, even with your improvements, did not contain enough reliably sourced, relevant information to constitute being split from the main Age of Mythology article, and that, without a sufficient amount of such information being directly proven to exist, it is going to stay deleted. Rant on about the benefits and drawbacks of deletion, the closing admin's decision and others' judgements all you want, but if you can't present enough reliable sources to establish the subject's notability then you've got no grounds on which to argue. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 00:03, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
        • Despite all of your replies to everyone wanting to keep the article, you have shown absolutely no proof that the sources were insufficient. The three out of universe sections sourced through reliable sources establish the subject's notability by any reasonable or honest standard. You can pretend that they don't and declare that they don't but the reality is of course that to any objective and honest reader, the article already was sourced enough to meet our inclusion criteria. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:48, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
          • Yes, I have, with quoted examples and numerous references to Wikipedia's policies. You haven't. And, at the end of the last AfD, the article was still flooded with sentences lacking that essential superscripted number at their end. Sorry, but until you can directly show that there are numbers to be appended to (the majority of) those sentences, you have no basis to argue the overturning of this deletion. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 22:24, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
            • You have not presented any valid reason to delete. Quoting policies is meaningless when not accurate. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn deletion and return to No Consensus. Undoubtedly the deleting admin had a tough job of it, but the article (being improved even as it was being discussed at AfD), showed itself as an example of how to correctly handle such material for these types of games, as it was (in many keep opinions) a properly detailed and coherent list of essential information that were not minutiae, being properly formated per current guideline. What the nom called irrelevent, other readers found valuable to their understanding of the article. And that's what Wiki is about... enlightening the readership, no matter who might think an article is worthless. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 01:51, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • WP:ILIKEIT isn't a valid reason for keeping an article. The criteria for inclusion on Wikipedia is notability based on the citation of reliable source, not "detail", "coherence" or "value", and if information lacks the necessary sources, it is deleted. This article was severely lacking in such sources and provided reams of useless minutiae, examples of which I provided in the AfD, and wholly redundant, irrelevant sourced information on historical subjects which failed to provide notability for the units of Age of Mythology. Furthermore, apart from some vague Google results, barely any additional sources were provided in the AfD; while the improvements A Nobody added towards the end of the AfD did improve the article, the reliable sources the article was composed of still only consisted of around ten or so reviews of the game, which is nowhere near broad or numerous enough to sustain a separate article from Age of Mythology; it did nothing to back up the majority of the article's content, which was still a list of non-notable game guide minutiae. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 04:59, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • To the unsigned respondent: Neither is WP:IDONTLIKEIT, and no where in my comment did I say anything that could be contrued as "I Like It". I granted the closing admin must have has a tough time, said the material was supported by guideline for such lists, the article was still being improved during the AfD, and that the information contained therin was supportive of a reader's understanding. However, the AfD dicussion is on another page... not to re-argued here, specially since I doubt that any opinion of mine is of any worth to you. I support overturn of the deletion because unlike you, I am not as all-fired certain the the consensus supported a pure delete. If it's overturned, then you can speedily re-nominate the article. Thank you. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 04:35, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
        • The "I like it" I perceived in in your claims of the article being "interesting" and "coherent", neither of which are criteria for inclusion. This is entirely a place for discussion of the AfD and notability of the article, as the overturning of this deletion will display on Wikipedia a largely unsourced and therefore inappropriate article, per WP:OR. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a non-selective repertoire of information, and, per WP:NOT, the deletion of content is as constructive as addition. As far as I'm concerned, those opposed to deletion have provided insufficient citations of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines and that renders the consensus heavily weighted towards deletion. Mere opinions alone mean nothing; Wikipedia is not a democracy. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 05:16, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
          • Oh. So you see this DRV as a continuation of the AfD discussion? In see. That explains much. Thank you. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 06:31, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
            • The DRV guidelines clearly state "This page exists to correct closure errors in the deletion process and speedy deletions, both of which may also involve reviewing content in some cases." I think, considering the lack of evidence provided to this article's notability, the content is a very significant factor in this case, as that is what this DRV's nominator has failed to provide. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 14:52, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
              • Which is exactly what we have here, no one is seriously contesting the obvious notability of the article. That's unquestionable. The problem is that we had a majority opinion to keep backed by policy arguments and arguments to merge discounted as deletes. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
        • I'm not seeing where the closer said that it was supported for the guideline for such lists. In fact, the closer cited several similar lists that had been deleted. Granted, I'm a partisan here, so I admit I won't necessarily have an unbiased view. Could you point out to me where the closer said anything about this list meeting any guideline? - A Man In Bl♟ck ( conspire - past ops) 09:21, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
          • Comparing to the other lists isn't really fair (apples and oranges), because this list contained out of universe sections not found in many similar lists. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:48, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Comment – it should be noted that the closing admin counted the !votes for "merge" and "redirection" as the same as "delete", as indicated here. MuZemike 20:01, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse We could also restore the history and protect the redirect to allow selective merger of information to the main article. I voted "weak keep" on the first AfD on the basis that the article was reasonably well written and was on the margin of GAMEGUIDE/PLOT/VGSCOPE. I didn't see the second AfD and I don't want to recapitulate those arguments, but the basic consensus that this shouldn't have a standalone article was reflected in that AfD and properly judged by the closer. I will note, as a general warning, that extended filibustering and badgering have strong diminishing returns and that those who insist on turning debates on individual articles into slugfests on notability will find that the fate of the article is often worse off for their efforts. Protonk ( talk) 20:23, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse well within admin discretion and no one has brought up anything new here. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 21:23, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • What is new is that he closed it by counting merges and redirects as delete, when merges and redirects mean merge and redirect, not delete. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
That's not exactly what I said, and I think you know it. I considered "merge" closer to "delete" because you yourself stated you had already merged a lot of it into the main article. And as for "redirect", well, I think my closing comments were pretty self-explanatory. Anyway, let me be the tenth person here to repeat it: AFD is not a vote. I don't "count" anything. Interestingly enough, DRVs are very similar. Although a user may have spammed generic refutations after every comment, that does not mean his arguments magically improve. yandman 19:34, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
"Merge" should not be considered as anything other than "merge," neither closer to keep nor closer to delete. It means just that, i.e. "merge." And despite the closing comments when there is a clear redirect location and editors, admins and editors in good standing beyond me, say it is a valid search term, there's no reason not to have the redirect. Why would we want to be less convenient for our readers? I agree that AfD like here is not a vote, but a discussion in which editors interact with each and thus as far replies after "every" comment go, unless if anyone also takes issue with the nominator as well as another editor replying to practically everyone who argued to keep in the AfD and everyone who argued to overturn in this DRV, then there's not much to say against any one editor here. In a discussion people engage each other. If this is not a discussion and a vote, then it will just be a list of bold faced "votes" with no interaction. But the bottom line is we have a case where there was no clear cut consensus for deletion across two AfDs concerning an article that scores of editors have worked on for years and that gets several thousand page views a month. My initial request, which really should have just been granted and this whole DRV avoided (remember, I did not initiate the DRV...), was given those circumstances to just undelete so we could see what can be used for merging and therefore avoiding playing games and additional steps with userspace, and to just then have a redirect even if protected as some (myself and others) do indeed do searches on Wikipedia with "List of..." How that can even be an issue is beyond me. If we have editors saying there's mergeable content, then it is far more important for the project that we see what we have to improve our coverage. If we editors saying there's a valid redirect here, then it is far more important for the project that we make our navigation more convenient for our readers. Dwelling on being tied to some snapshot in time five day AfD as a definitive verdict even if it means preventing us from accessing mergeable content or providing greater convenience to our readers is not to our project's benefit. And as such that anyone would oppose undeletion and redirection is downright mind-boggling, far more so than in any recent deletion related discussion have participated in, which is why I am not just letting this one go. I don't see this as a matter of trying to win some argument, and I'm here to help contribute to the cataloging of human knowledge far more than to make friends (I like making friends, but the priority is the good of our project). We're not making some ridiculous request here, but a simple, "Hey, we can use some stuff from the edit history of something that is not a hoax or libelous, please undelete so we can improve the main article, but given the AfD, if you want to make a protected redirect, that's fine by us." Such a request should not involve even a moment's hesitatuon and that is why I am so disappointed here. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 22:09, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The article content can be merged, it's under the GFDL here. And you have my approval if you want to create a redirect. The page isn't protected. yandman 22:30, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
When I clicked that link, it doesn't have the stuff I added this month, i.e. the sections on Innovations, History, and Reception. Best, -- A Nobody My talk 22:33, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
You don't need an article history to merge that. You own those contributions, you can resubmit them wherever you like. - A Man In Bl♟ck ( conspire - past ops) 22:39, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
Yeah, I don't think this is going to be resolved unless a live version of that version of the article is on display somewhere, i.e. a user namespace or StrategyWiki. It's hard to argue about what's effectively only in our memories at the moment. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 22:41, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Ick I can't see the article and didn't !vote on it (this time). I think the discussion didn't focus much on the validity and relevance of the sources. I'd discard the !votes based on "game guide" because it's plain it wasn't *just* a game guide. Much of the rest of the discussion was a war between "ILIKEIT" and "IDONTLIKEIT". I think the underlying issue is that both sides are trying to set the policy on breakout articles. So overturn to no consensous until we get that policy figured out. The arguments on both sides were too weak to delete. And frankly, I personally am not sure that the article should be kept (I'd likely have !voted delete this time around unless the article was *much* better than last time I looked.) Hobit ( talk) 19:35, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn and relist. The closing administrator did not take into account late changes to the article that could've changed the outcome. The proper course of action would've been to extend the discussion. When closing an AFD, care should be taken that the votes tallied actually discuss (in big lines) the article that is being deleted. - Mgm| (talk) 12:35, 22 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • The problem here seems to be that there are two discussions going on. There seems to be a majority of "overturners" worrying about using the content for the main article. For those of you who wanted an overturn on the basis of needing the content for the main article (Ikip, Nobody, Mike), I've userfied the article here. I've checked the revision history, and all the content added since the strategywiki merge is from A.Nobody, so there are no GFDL problems. Secondly, for those who believed that newcomers would type "List of units in the age of mythology series", I've created a redirect. And please let's avoid cries of "why didn't you do this in the first place", as it was the first thing I proposed. Anyway, let's go and write an encyclopedia. yandman 17:51, 22 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse I see a lot of articles come to DRV where the majority side of the debate claims the decision was inappropriate when it's handed against them, but Wikipedia isn't a democracy and this is why we have trusted admins close debates instead of bots. The arguments to delete were rooted in policy and were not adequately refuted by the arguments to keep, so they were stronger in the end. Themfromspace ( talk) 01:44, 23 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • The "votes" for deletion were mostly false, whereas the arguments to keep were guideline and policy based, which is why an undeletion of edit history and redirect or "no consensus" closure would be the right call. And given the improvements to the article that adequately addressed the initial concerns, there's no valid or legitimate reason for deletion. Best, -- A Nobody My talk 01:52, 23 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • You keep saying you've cited policies and guidelines, but what are these? Merely WP:PRESERVE won't mean much, as there's still the problem of that table of units, which is wholly original research apart from the irrelevant historical information. I simply do not see, at the moment, how the rest of the information justifies a split from the main article; the only other content is composed of three rather lacking paragraphs (the former of which contains far too much quoted text) which do not really present enough information to support this article. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 03:13, 23 February 2009 (UTC) reply
        • It meets WP:N, WP:V, WP:PRESERVE, etc. The article contains relevant historical information that balances with the table. I see no justification for deletion due to the excllent out of universe paragraphs that clearly have potential for even more improvement. We should be able to get a featured list out of this one with just a little more work. Best, -- A Nobody My talk 03:16, 23 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • (edit conflicts) You say that but nobody has convinced me otherwise. I want to see point by point proof that the arguments to delete were false. On wikipedia, we do delete articles based on failing the notability guidelines, so that is not a false argument. In order to refute that you'll need to demonstrate the article meets the guidelines, not give a personal opinion that the guidelines are invalid. Also, WP:PRESERVE is an invalid argument for keeping articles. Not all information belongs here, that's why we have AfD in the first place. Themfromspace ( talk) 03:18, 23 February 2009 (UTC) reply
        • Gladly:
          • Claims in nomination:
            • Deletion claim of game guide: article in final version contained out of universe sections on innovations, history, and reception not typical of game guides.
            • Deletion claim of little sourcing only from fansite: article in final version contained multiple sources from Google News and Google Books, i.e. secondary sources per WP:RS.
            • Deletion claim of irrelevant: well, that's subjective, as it's obvious relevant to those of us who created, work on, and want to read it
          • Next user to say "delete" also supported both transwikiying and redirecting; final version of article had more to it than the version transwikied months ago, why not transwiki the latest version?
          • The next delete was a "per x" and also was okay with a redirect.
          • Next delete also okay with a merge.
          • The next delete had an WP:ITSCRUFT claim, i.e. "I don't like it" and essentially talks up the main series game article and says information can be found in the game's instructions. Well, pretty much everything we cover can be found somewhere else, but that's no reason why we wouldn't cover it as well.
          • Next delete just repeats the not entirely accurate game guide claim.
          • As does the next one.
          • The final delete yet again repeats the already challenged/refuted claim of being a game guide as well as the inaccurate claim that it is only sourced by fansites (again, I used Google News and Google Books only...) and finally claims that it is not notable, even though one source says that what makes the game "notable" (actually uses that word) is its innovation with its units. That line alone should be mergeable.
        • But if nothing else, what is the big deal here? It was not a unanimous deletion by any means, editors are willing to work further to improve its out of universe context using solely reliable secondary sources, it's not a hoax, copy vio, libelous, etc. We should be courteous enough to our readers and editors that under such conditions we allow them to continue improving the material as best as they can. Why we would want to just stop those efforts is downright baffling. All this effort trying to get this deleted has not magically produced good or featured articles. By contrast, the time I and others have spent defending it in discussion could have been used improving it further. Trying to do both simultaneously is needlessly frustrating. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 03:31, 23 February 2009 (UTC) reply
          • "consensus" doesn't mean unanimity, it means consensus. We don't work on what could exist, we work on what does exist, and all unsuitable information should be excluded until it becomes suitable. The current version of the article is userfied, there's something there to work on. When it actually contains a sufficient amount of verified content instead of verifiable content, it should be recreated. However, at the moment, the vast majority of the content is very weakly sourced and the remainder insufficient. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 04:00, 23 February 2009 (UTC) reply
            • Even if we went with what does exist, we would keep this suitable information as it meets WP:RS, WP:V, and WP:N even as is. But yeah, we do and should consider potential. Best, -- A Nobody My talk 04:04, 23 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • As this has now been recreated as a redirect to Age of Mythology, I think this DRV is moot. Stifle ( talk) 09:40, 23 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
  • Good Germans – Deletion endorsed. If someone wants to create an expanded encyclopedic version based on the extant history, all of which is available at Wiktionary, that would of course be fine by usual standards--as long as it's a significant improvement, it will not be deletable without an AfD (though one might well be undertaken). Note Ed's comment below, however, that sourcing must be improved compared to the earlier versions. If that happens the history can be undeleted. – Chick Bowen 03:18, 25 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the article above. Please do not modify it.

Good Germans (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) ( restore | cache | AfD)

Good Germans This page has been deleted. The deletion log for the page is provided below for reference.

  • On the deletion review page, there is an instruction "Deletion Review is to be used where someone is unable to resolve the issue in discussion with the administrator (or other editor) in question. This should be attempted first – courteously invite the admin to take a second look". I haven't noticed this discussion taking place. While I'm aware that some users consider this an optional step, I would appreciate if the nominator could please explain why he omitted it (or, if there was a discussion that I missed, point it out)? Stifle ( talk) 15:58, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • NOTE: User:Stifle's 15:58, 18 February 2009 (UTC) comment is fundamentally the same as the original comment by User:Mugs2109 on 5:23, 18 February 2009 (UTC), above: It also appears as if the article was deleted without any readily-accessible wikirecord of that action until now (here). Mugs2109 ( talk) 19:33, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • Just to clarify, as there seems to be some confusion. Stifle was asking why Mugs2109 did not discuss the deletion with Wehwalt before listing it here at DRV. Stifle was NOT asking why didn't Wehwalt discuss before deleting. -- Kbdank71 21:06, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • Correct. The instructions to this page say that you are supposed to ask the administrator who deleted the article whether he/she is willing to undelete it before making a listing here. Why did you not do that, Mugs2109? Stifle ( talk) 14:22, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
        • Endorse deletion by default due to the nominator's failure to respond to a reasonable query, and poor behaviour at this DRV (see unclean hands). Stifle ( talk) 09:10, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Undelete: Overturn the deletion and restore the wikiarticle since this is (was) a very useful encyclopedic wikiarticle with numerous literary citations and links that substantiate the validity of the wikiarticle's content about an important World War II history term (the term was even used as the title for a movie). Mugs2109 ( talk) 15:23, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    By nominating here, you indicated your disagreement with the deletion. Placing extra bolded comments saying "undelete" may misrepresent your position as having more support than it does. Stifle ( talk) 14:22, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Undelete: The wikiarticle shouldn't have been deleted since there was no "discussion ... attempted first". Stifle ( talk) 15:58, 18 February 2009 (UTC) Comment struck, Stifle did not request this, it was added by Mugs2109 [27] -- Kbdank71 21:06, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Keep Deleted !vote struck, was added by Mugs2109, not Davewild Comment: Although not available at Wiktionary:Good German, the article appears to have been transwikied to http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Transwiki:Good_Germans. struck the above comment which was not my (Davewild) wording and restored the original wording It does appear to have been transwikied to wikitionary - [28] - and did appear to be a pretty clear dictionary definition so unless there is something I'm missing here, it does appear to have met the relevant A5 speedy criteria. Davewild ( talk) 19:12, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • The article has not yet been transwikied to Wiktionary and, in addition to missing a lot of original information, still contains 12 wiktionary syntax errors at the transwiki location, so it is not "a pretty clear dictionary definition". Mugs2109 ( talk) 19:33, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • You should immediately revert your last edit - [29] - which completely changed Stifle's comment and altered mine and completely misrepresented Stifle's comment at the very least. This is completely against the Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines - "Do not misrepresent other people" and "do not edit others' comments" which this page is like and either yourself or a neutral editor should clean up what that edit has done. Do not alter the structure of this disucssion again please. Davewild ( talk) 19:44, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Keep deleted. Has been transwikied, CSD would appear to be proper. -- Kbdank71 20:43, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Reviewing the history that is now at wiktionary, the versions of the article through 22 Sept 2008 [30] are borderline Wikipedia content. In the next edit [31], Mugs2109 made it a dictionary definition and gave an edit summary including "used wiktionary format". The next editor looked at it and said "this belongs on wiktionary". [32] Fundamentally, this was transwiki'ed because the nominator for this discussion made it belong there instead of here. Five days after transwikiing, it was deleted here. Now Mugs2109 is upset because it has been transwiki'ed. I wouldn't object to restoring all edits prior to the Ocotber 2008 edit by Mugs2109 and sending that to AFD, but I suspect that the answer at AFD would be that even that material is better suited to wiktionary than to wikipedia. Eventually the wiktionary editors will complete the transwiki process. Since Mugs appears to already know how that project works, he could just go finish it if speed is of the essence. Since the nominator made it a dictionary definition and it has been transwiki'ed, the article meets WP:CSD#A5 and thus I endorse deletion. GRBerry 21:23, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse, what Stifle said. Request makes no real sense in context, I'm afraid. Guy ( Help!) 21:25, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Restore prior version (and send to AFD if deemed necessary). First, I would like to ask my fellow editors to please disregard the behavior of User:Mugs2109 in this DRV, as his actions have made it very difficult for the issues to be considered fairly and dispassionately -- and in addition, it was this very editor's ill-considered unilateral decision to change the article's format which kicked off the sequence of events that has ended up here.
I feel that the original version of the article does belong on Wikipedia, and should never have been converted to Wiktionary format in the first place. I certainly would have contested the conversion if I had been aware of it; however, that took place about a year after my last edit, and with a monstrous watchlist, I had ceased checking in on the article, since it had remained stable for quite a while. The content that was added by Mugs2109 should have been used to expand what was already there into a more substantial article -- which is what will happen once the article is restored to Wikipedia. His edit also had the highly deleterious effect of removing the lines quoted from the 1945 New York Times article which was presumably the among the first times the term "Good Germans" appeared in print in a mass circulation newspaper. Now there is just a link to the NYT website -- and only to a brief abstract for the article which doesn't include the key lines. Cgingold ( talk) 10:39, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • One more thought: If one editor can come along and unilaterally dispatch an article to Wiktionary, after which it is summarily deleted, there is something fundamentally wrong with the process. If this article had, instead, been taken to AFD, the creator of the article and its other major editor (myself) would rightly have been notified -- but since it was "merely" sent over to Wiktionary it slipped under the radar. What a contrast. I had no idea this sort of thing could happen -- it strikes me as a gaping loophole in the normal deletion procedures. Cgingold ( talk) 23:31, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Strong endorse. The requester is wrong on a number of levels. First, the page does exist, at wikt:Transwiki:Good Germans, showing that it has been properly transwiki'ed. Second, a review of its edit history there shows that it was tagged with {{ Move to Wiktionary}} on October 25th, and the tag remained constantly in place until December 20th, at which point the transwiki was done. During that entire time, the article was written in Wiktionary format. So there's no reasonable process complaint here, the content is not appropriate for Wikipedia, and further Mugs did not attempt discussion with the deleting admin, or this probably would have already been cleared up. If someone wants to make the case that a Good Germans article belongs on Wikipedia, I suggest they write one that belongs, and that clearly goes beyond defining a neologism. Mango juice talk 17:32, 24 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Permit reconstruction I am usually quite flexible about the overlap between a dictionary and an encyclopedia, but in this instance there was in fact when it was deleted only dictionary material, and it is all presently in Wiktionary. Therefore, it was properly transwikified. I see no reason why an admin cannot do this via speedy in obvious cases, and I consider this a not unreasonable interpretation of "obvious". However, there is very often a much better solution than transwikifying, which is to expand into a proper article. Many phrases of this sort and many common nouns could be the subject of an encyclopedic article--this almost certainly can. So I agree with Cgingold that this should have been expanded rather than converted to dictionary format. Ideally, the admin would have spotted it and restored the original version and marked it for expansion. Though admins should try to improve rather than delete articles, none of us active at CSD or prod patrol can really write or rewrite as many articles a day as that would require. This should have been rescued by someone during the Prod. If more people participated in rescuing, we could do all the ones that were rescuable. We really need two improvements in our procedures:a better way of sorting out & working on the improvable articles than random chance, and a rethink of the transwikifying process at least for Wiktionary to help catch them. What I am saying is worded differently, but is compatible with what Mangojuice said immediately before me. DGG ( talk) 18:38, 24 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse deletion without prejudice to recreation of a better article, by anyone who is confident that it would survive review here. In particular, neither the latest version nor the September version (before it was made a dictionary entry) would be suitable. (The September version was badly sourced and might well have succumbed to AfD). A genuine creative effort, based on a new search for sources, would be needed. EdJohnston ( talk) 19:10, 24 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the article above. Please do not modify it.

Kotava (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) ( restore | cache | AfD) ( AfD2)

While a constructed language, it is recognised as an ISO-639-3 language and is therefore notable enough GerardM ( talk) 09:28, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply

  • On the deletion review page, there is an instruction "Deletion Review is to be used where someone is unable to resolve the issue in discussion with the administrator (or other editor) in question. This should be attempted first – courteously invite the admin to take a second look". I haven't noticed this discussion taking place. While I'm aware that some users consider this an optional step, I would appreciate if the nominator could please explain why he omitted it (or, if there was a discussion that I missed, point it out)? Also, it's nearly four months since Kotava was deleted at AFD; could the nominator please explain why there has been such a delay in bringing this request? Stifle ( talk) 09:37, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    that's advice, not policy. Attempts to make it policy have not been successful, nor should they be, for all nonobstructive ways of appealing admin decisions are beneficial to the community. And old potential errors need to be reviewed as much has new ones. DGG ( talk) 18:54, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    It's part of the DRV instructions, as well as common courtesy. Stifle ( talk) 14:23, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • Endorse deletion by default due to the nominator's failure to reply to a reasonable query. Stifle ( talk) 09:11, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      Please don't make it personal. Judge the article and the deletion debate on their own merits. Whether GerardM performed a certain action has no bearing on the debate or any potential changed situation for the article. - Mgm| (talk) 12:26, 22 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      It's nothing personal, I do the same for any user who, to use a legal term, fails to prosecute his/her appeal. Stifle ( talk) 15:58, 22 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Notice that this DRV actually applies to the Kotava article, not the Kotava language article which was a redirect to Kotava. I've subst:ed the DRV links and corrected the links to be to the right article. If someone wants to recreate the DRV from scratch to make sure it is perfectly clear, please feel free to. Usrnme h8er ( talk · contribs) 12:59, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Closing admin See discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kotava (2nd nomination), lack of sources and lack of notability are strong arguments at AFD. MBisanz talk 13:03, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse Consensus in the AFD is clear, and fits the longstanding and widespread community consensus and our policies. Nominator here offers no new information, most importantly no new reliable sources with significant coverage of the language. Reviewing the ISO submission documents that were linked in the AFD and are linked above, it does not seem likely that such sources will come to light any time soon, but if they ever do come to light a discussion could be held at that time. GRBerry 17:06, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse deletion The argument about ISO-639-3 was well considered in the AFD and there was a pretty clear consensus for deletion. Davewild ( talk) 19:05, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • While it is nice to decide on formalities, the standard way for language articles is to call them Kotava language this was how I expected the article to be named. Consequently I did not find the move for deletion. Also I do not daily frequent the English Wikipedia and this is assumed in this procedure. Now, Kotava is a recognised language by ISO. This is only given when it is reputable. As to the reason why the delay.. It was only recently brought to my attention. For your informaton Kotava is better localised in MediaWiki then many big languages. Thanks, GerardM ( talk) 12:51, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • The argument that ISO-639-2 does certain things is invalid because new languages are no longer added to it. GerardM ( talk) 12:54, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • The arguments about the ISO-639-3 used to argue its lack of relevance are ill informed. There is a tendency to belittle languages.. this is a living constructed language. They have their Wikipedia now at Wikia and it is doing nicely. There are other categories of subculture that are not looked at in a similar way.. What is for instance the value of an article of a road in New Hamshire, a car with 10 build vehicles, a subcharacter of Pokemon ? GerardM ( talk) 13:04, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse the ISO-639-3 was fully part of the debate and is not late-arriving smoking-gun evidence to overturn what seems to be a proper deletion close. At some point, there may be more written about this language; presumably, somehow one has to apply to ISO to get recognized and ISO deliberates presumably, and perhaps all this generated some discussion in reliable 3rd party sources, but at this point it fails WP:N. You can come back here if (when) the situation changes. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 19:51, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Given that Kotava is one of the better localised languages for MediaWiki, do you not think that is in and of itself enough reason to have an article about it to explain what it is ? GerardM ( talk) 13:16, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse in its current form The article does not provide idependent sources (they're all related to the creator somehow. I totally agree that languages with an ISO are notable and I'd be happy to userfy if more sources exist and someone wants to add them, but there are not enough independent sources given to build an article with. - Mgm| (talk) 12:24, 22 February 2009 (UTC) reply
I am not administrator, I only was the creator of the Kotava article. I full refute the argument about the sources. None the quoted sources comes from Staren Fetcey its creator. The sites noticed are sites in relation to Kotava. They show that a real community of speakers exists, unlike most of the hundred constructed languages having an article in EN.WP. This simple fact is more notable than many historical quotations in catalogues. But as often it is prefered the intellectual comfort of the dusty libraries than the recognition of alive phenomena in margin of the official voices. Upsetting.
And the deletion of the article which was present, improved by several external contributors, was required by someone obviously a badly intentioned towards Kotava (at first in PT.WP). Wikimistusik ( talk) 16:44, 22 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the article above. Please do not modify it.

BrainSurge (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) ( restore | cache | AfD)

deleted as a hoax (presumably G3), but there is a reliable source [33] that appears to give out tickets in an official capacity [34]. Notified User:Ryulong [35] but he declined [36] RJaguar3 | u | t 00:15, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply

  • Restore it was deleted as a "possible hoax" which isn't a speedy deletion criterion. It would now seem that it is a genuine upcoming TV show. RMHED . 00:42, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn Does not meet any speedy criteria and is pretty clearly not a hoax as a quick google search reveals. Davewild ( talk) 08:10, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn and send to AFD as "possible hoax" is not a speedy criterion (although blatant and obvious hoax is). Stifle ( talk) 09:39, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn Ikip ( talk) 19:04, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn - "possible hoax" isn't a speedy deletion criterion. – Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone 20:04, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Administrator instructions

18 February 2009

  • User:Karmafist/son of jimbo award – While found to some extent out of process, there is no consensus to overturn the deletion considering that distribution of the award has effectively ceased since. To address the broken links, I'll undelete and then move it to Mgm's userspace leaving a redirect behind as the page was rather linked than used as template.– Tikiwont ( talk) 09:51, 1 March 2009 (UTC) reply
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the article above. Please do not modify it.

User:Karmafist/son of jimbo award ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) ( restore | cache | MfD)

This particular subpage was an award and its deletion broke several awards. I would also like to point out that there is no "award category" for ns=. Smallman12q ( talk) 21:37, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply

Proper namespace is "User". Fixed. GRBerry 21:43, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
It was still ponting to mainspace when I saw it, so I've changed it to userspace. Gavia immer ( talk) 23:15, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse deletion, suggest speedy close. If this thing needs to exist, host it elsewhere, not in the userspace of a banned user. If other awards link to it, fix them. What is the point of revisiting this? Chick Bowen 23:49, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn. Keeping this deleted because it's in the userspace of a banned user is short-sighted. There's nothing controversial about the award so deleting it under a G5 clause doesn't work. (it wasn't created while they were banned) If it is hosted elsewhere, the history needs to be restored for proper contribution anyway. If Gavia immer doesn't want to host the award in their userspace, I will. It's of historic significance to the users who have been given the award and there is no rules that say userpages of banned users should be deleted entirely if there is useful content there. - Mgm| (talk) 12:12, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • This page was deleted over 1¾ years ago. I find it hard to understand how it was only noticed now that the awards were broken. If there's something essential there, then we can undelete it and move it to an active user's userspace. Stifle ( talk) 14:02, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
If it was wrongly deleted, then time doesn't matter(Or is there a policy for a time limit regarding WP:DRV. Smallman12q ( talk) 00:11, 23 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • From what I see, it has only ever been given to one editor (who has a collection of about 20). yandman 14:08, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    Well, undelete, subst, and redelete then. Stifle ( talk) 15:40, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn. This deletion was done based on a narrow interpretation of a rule, and I think there is reason to believe it may not apply here. I don't oppose Stifle's solution necessarily, but I think that we ought to just have an MfD on these pages if anyone wants them deleted. Karmafist is not your typical blocked user: he did a lot of good things for the encyclopedia and we should not mindlessly be deleting everything in his userspace. Mango juice talk 19:01, 24 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • I'd prefer Stifle's solution, in avoidance of a precedent by which a banned user's subpages are required to go through MFD to be deleted. This is a pretty routine thing to do; yes, it's attracted attention in this case because Karmafist was a productive user before he was banned (though never a fan of Jimbo's--people do understand that the award is tongue-in-cheek, right?). But many banned users' contributions are mixed. Chick Bowen 02:06, 25 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • It's all semantics. If it must not live at Karmafist's user subpage, just move it somewhere else. I see no reason to delete it at all. Mango juice talk 03:52, 25 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
  • User:Karmafist/barn award – While found to some extent out of process, there is no consensus to overturn the deletion considering that distribution of the award has effectively ceased since. To address the broken links, I'll undelete and then move it to Mgm's userspace leaving a redirect behind as the page was rather linked than used as template. – Tikiwont ( talk) 09:53, 1 March 2009 (UTC) reply
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the article above. Please do not modify it.

User:Karmafist/barn award ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) ( restore | cache | MfD)

This particular subpage was an award and its deletion broke several awards. I don't see why it should be deleted. Smallman12q ( talk) 21:37, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply

Proper namespace is "User". Fixed. GRBerry 21:43, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
  • Idle RPG – Deletion endorsed. Please note that AfD categorization, while a useful feature, has never been policy (nor has notification, as the nominator concedes). Early closures are a problem and are discouraged, but 20 minutes is not a big deal. – Chick Bowen 00:39, 24 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the article above. Please do not modify it.


Idle RPG (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) ( restore | cache | AfD)

There seem to have been a number of irregularities in this article's AfD process. I do not feel that this article was given proper exposure at AfD (the reasons which I'll detail below) and I do not believe that the closing admin took the entire discussion into consideration when closing the AfD.

  • First, the {{ AfDM}} template applied to the article by the person nominating the article for AfD did not include the article's name so no link to the AfD discussion page was provided. I attempted to correct this when I was made aware of the problem. See [1] and [2]
  • The AfD was grossly miscategorized and ended up in the unsorted 'U' category. The nominator used Games and Sports instead of either 'G' or 'W' (the later being the proper category for this article). Because of this, the AfD for this article did not receive the attention it would have received had it otherwise been properly categorized under 'W' ( AfD debates (Web or internet)) from day one. I was not aware of this issue and another editor attempted to fix it less than 24 hours before the AfD was closed. See [3] ( category documentation)
  • The AfD nominator failed to notify the article's creator and major editors of the AfD to allow them the opportunity to engage in the AfD discussion. [4] (While this may not be mandatory, this is the normal and accepted practice, see WP:GD#Nomination.)
  • The AfD itself was closed early, which goes against both the guidelines and standard practice, see WP:DELPRO#Process and WP:GD#Closure. Even though this is an irregularity, it ordinarily might not in and of itself have been an issue if not for the fact that there was still ongoing discussion and a general lack of consensus. The person who nominated the article for AfD also seemed to have changed their mind and decided that the citations that had been added to the article shortly before the AfD nomination [5] did indeed pass WP:V and WP:RS see [6] and [7]

I've attempted to bring this to the attention of the closing admin [8] [9] but he seems to be unwilling to take a closer look at this AfD. While I do believe he attempted to close the AfD with a proper result, I feel he may have either misinterpreted the discussion or simply did a tally of "!votes" in deciding to close this AfD as Delete. While I can understand the extremely long AfD discussion getting to the point of tl;dr, I find the seemingly unwillingness to take a second look at the AfD itself somewhat disturbing.

I propose Overturn and undelete and copying of the original AfD discussion to the article's talk page to allow for further discussion and improvement of the article. If people otherwise feel this should go up for further discussion on AfD, then Relist would be my second choice.

If I didn't firmly believe this article was deleted without informed participation and true consensus I wouldn't bother bringing this up due to the fact that this process is taking up valuable time that I would rather spend working on other articles. I feel I presented a good argument as to why this article met both WP:N and WP:V (using WP:RS) within the AfD discussion itself so I don't see a need to repeat any of that information here.

-- Tothwolf ( talk) 21:20, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply

  • This was mistagged for AFD for just shy of two hours. It was closed eleven minutes early. I don't know how you'd go about informing the main editors of the article, as the history is heterogenous and IP-heavy and the article hadn't had any significant changes since its creation in Sep. 2006 (mostly just removal and replacement of external links and lists of other similar games). So the technical issues, in my estimation, are a big load of hooey.
    In fact, Tothwolf, you yourself had the most damning argument to delete in the AFD: "IRC related topics are also notoriously difficult to 'verify'..." and nobody demonstrated how we could verify the claims in this article using appropriate sources (and not personal observation of the subject or documentation made by creators of the subject). So unless you have some new sources to present or a userspace draft hat solves the WP:V/ WP:N issues, I don't see any reason to overturn this. - A Man In Bl♟ck ( conspire - past ops) 22:25, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    Sorry, but it was mislisted for much longer than two hours. [10] This most certainly will make for a less active discussion when those interested in topics pertaining to this category can't even see that something is listed on AfD.
    Going by strictly what MBisanz said, it was closed 21 minutes early, not 11. Still, too early is too early, AfDs run for at least 5 days, not 4 days 23 hours and 39 minutes. I still had an open editing window and was finishing up a reply when this AfD was closed. This was indeed a procedural error although as I said above it might not have been a big deal if not for everything else.
    It's kinda hard to discuss the various editors and contributors when the edit history isn't even visible, so I won't even try. The person nominating the article failed to give any notification and I know from looking at the edit history before this article was deleted that there were a lot more contributors than just a handful of random IPs.
    Well, I tried not to bring up stuff that was already covered in the AfD here, but since you are questioning the sources, I guess I have no choice but to cover this again...
    While it's true IRC-related topics are notoriously difficult to verify, there were sources presented that met both WP:V and WP:RS. According to the guidelines and standard practice here on Wikipedia, it has always been acceptable to use a software developer's website to verify the features and functionality present in software discussed within an article. That was also done here. (Developer sites: [11] [12] Source code: [13] [14]) Then there's WP:N, which is pretty well covered by the unbiased stats shown here [15] [16] [17] (among others, Google it for yourself).
    Also, in the future, I'd very much appreciate it if you did not take my words out of context because it is easy to misinterpret part of a discussion when that's done.
    Now, while I've done my best to remain civil during this entire process, I'm not happy with the borderline personal attacks people have thrown at me both on and off-wiki. My goal is to improve Wikipedia, I don't care for politics and alliances and I don't care whom is friends with who. It would be nice if everyone could get along with everyone else, but obviously that'll never happen. If everyone had followed policies and guidelines and used common sense then I'd have never had a reason to bring this up on DRV or spend so much time discussing this article on AfD. This whole thing has been nothing but a major time-suck but if I don't speak up then absolutely nothing will change or improve.
    As for my speaking up during the AfD, I spoke up because it seemed no one else could. This whole issue is something that could have been corrected early on if the person nominating the article on AfD had instead made their concerns visible on the article's talk page. There was absolutely no reason for this to go through an AfD just because they thought this might be a fake or non-notable subject. Heck, the edit history itself proved that this article had been on Wikipedia for 4.5 years without any past issues.
    -- Tothwolf ( talk) 01:34, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    Most AFDs aren't immediately categorized, nor is categorization required. I ignored that bullet point because I don't care, and I don't think most people care. Nor does anyone care about 10 or 20 minutes short of five days at AFD. We're not a bureaucracy or a court of law, we don't toss out clear decisions because of technical points.
    The links you're offering are the same ones you offered in the AFD. I realize you think Caissa's DeathAngel was wrong, but this still stands: "None of the four sources you give there for WP:V and WP:RS apply to either of those because they are all Primary. Reliable sources have to be third party, so the developer's site cannot count towards that." - A Man In Bl♟ck ( conspire - past ops) 03:41, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    Most AfDs are categorized long before this one was and the majority are categorized when they are posted. Personally, I don't care that you don't care. I care enough about Wikipedia and the articles on Wikipedia that I'm willing to bring this to DRV and that's what matters. If as you say you don't care, then why did you even bother to post a reply to this DRV?
    I at least cared enough during the AfD to attempt a discussion with others vs tossing up a bunch of "probably not...", WP:PS and WP:LAWYER.
    I have absolutely no issues with Caissa's DeathAngel and I'm not even sure why you brought up that name.
    -- Tothwolf ( talk) 05:34, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    For the record, Google turns up ~247,000 hits [18] -- Tothwolf ( talk) 02:03, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    None of which are reliable sources, and many of which are just the words "idle" and "rpg" in succession. This is telling. - A Man In Bl♟ck ( conspire - past ops) 03:41, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    Just for the sake of your argument, Google News doesn't prove much of anything one way or the other. It only indexes a very small subset of "news" sites and I seriously doubt you'd find very many text based games (especially older games) or even IRC software references via Google News. Tothwolf ( talk) 05:02, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    Just so we can end this particular thread right here:
    Google News: "Internet Relay Chat" - ~16 results
    Google: "Internet Relay Chat" - ~4,150,000 results
    -- Tothwolf ( talk) 06:10, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    As for the results being just the words "idle" and "rpg" in succession, I beg to differ. Notice the quotes around the search terms? Anyone reasonable who scrolls through 100s of results [19] will see that these are references to the "Idle RPG" creators, software documentation, Idle RPG channels, Idle RPG players and players' stats. Tothwolf ( talk) 05:08, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse deletion. While I !voted to keep this article, the consensus was to delete, and some minor errors in the deletion process (and I cannot imagine a less minor error than closing 11 minutes early; similar errors are referred to in the DRV instructions as a reason not to overturn), the principle of de minimis non curat lex applies here. Stifle ( talk) 14:04, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    I fully expected someone to try to take a minor point and try to turn it into the major point during this DRV. I made no attempt of my own to call this a major irregularity. The fact is, this would be a moot point if not for the other process irregularities. That said, please double check your facts. It was closed 21 minutes early, not 11. Check the AfD's edit history for yourself. [20]
    Opened 03:29,  8 February 2009 (UTC)
    Closed 03:08, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
    Because it seems you want to argue this point, lets see if we can do this right proper.
    WP:DELPRO#AFD: To process an AFD debate listed on a day page containing debates old enough to be closed:
    WP:GD#Closure: After 5 days of discussion, a volunteer will move the day's list of deletion discussions from the active page to the /Old page. Depending on the backlog, it may sit there for several more days, during which it is still acceptable to add comments to the discussion. Another volunteer (the "closing admin") will review the article, carefully read the AFD discussion, weigh all the facts, evidence and arguments presented and determine if consensus was reached on the fate of the article.
    WP:DRV#What is this page for? Purely procedural errors may be substantive and result in an overturn (such as failing to tag a page for its XfD discussion) or irrelevant (such as closing 1 minute early).
    -- Tothwolf ( talk) 19:28, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    And this is one of the irrelevant ones. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. Stifle ( talk) 21:32, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    " Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy."
    Indeed.
    I do not feel that the Idle RPG AfD was an appropriate test case / battleground / frustration-reliever for a handful of editors who were unhappy with the way the Notability (fiction) debate was going though.
    -- Tothwolf ( talk) 00:20, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    I'm not at all sure how that relates to this debate, as idlerpg is clearly not fictional. Stifle ( talk) 09:09, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    The fact that it's not a fictional topic seemed pretty clear to me, but that didn't initially seem to be the case for the person who nominated it for deletion nor a number of people who got quite involved in WP:PS during the AfD.
    It'd be pretty clear to any outsider who looked at the AfD that it mainly reflected a "get rid of all cruft!" viewpoint with some WP:IDONTKNOWIT, WP:IDONTLIKEIT, WP:NOTCLEANUP, WP:JNN, etc thrown in for good measure. Sure, a ton of WP:PS was thrown around too, but what it boils down to is the the nominator and the majority of the handful of people who actually found the AfD were unfamiliar with the topic. Because of a number of procedural mistakes, more people who would have been familiar with this topic were not even aware of the AfD.
    Now, as for the Notability (fiction) connection, it's pretty clear if you dig into page histories that a number of people who were unhappy with the way the proposed Notability (fiction) voting was going made up a good portion of the Delete "voting" in the Idle RPG AfD. That doesn't look very good at all from a WP:NPOV standpoint.
    I personally have no ties to this particular article whatsoever with the exception I added references after I saw that it had been tagged with a {{ prod}} template. Given what I've already stated above it should be pretty clear as to why I decided to step in and get involved in this mess. When I see WP:N, WP:V, etc being abused and misused in the way they were during this article's AfD in an attempt to justify removal of an article about a popular topic that has existed on Wikipedia for better than 4.5 years I'm certainly going to speak up.
    Any reasonable attempt to research the "Idle RPG" topic clearly shows just how popular and widely used the software/game are. I mean, niche and unpopular topics just aren't going to end up with over 240,000 hits on Google. [21] This number of hits is very similar to what you get when you search for Dalnet IRC [22] and that's the number of hits for an entire IRC network. Heck, surely people remember what happened with Articles for deletion/DALnet...
    For the record, I harbor no resentment for those involved in either the AfD or this DRV. While I certainly didn't like seeing the intentions of WP:N, WP:V, etc twisted and misused, in keeping with WP:AGF I have to assume that this whole thing was just due to unfamiliarity with the Idle RPG topic and frustration over the other stuff that was going on at the time (such as the Notability (fiction) debate).
    -- Tothwolf ( talk) 22:30, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse – It seems that the reasons to overturn are based on mere technicalities—none of which are significant enough—which has turned into AFD Round 2. Neither are, in my view, compelling reasons to overturn. MuZemike 16:48, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    Actually, I was rather hoping to find some WP:UCS here but it doesn't seem to have surfaced just yet. The fact is, the AfD didn't result in a proper discussion due to procedural errors. There is no doubt in my mind that this AfD got far less attention and discussion that it would have and should have received due to the fact that it was grossly miscategorized and subsequently overlooked by others.
    The failure of the person who nominated the article for AfD to notify the article's creator and major editors also didn't help make the process any more open or transparent...
    As for round 2, I'll quote myself: "If I didn't firmly believe this article was deleted without informed participation and true consensus I wouldn't bother bringing this up due to the fact that this process is taking up valuable time that I would rather spend working on other articles."
    ...and in my reply to A Man In Black: "Well, I tried not to bring up stuff that was already covered in the AfD here, but since you are questioning the sources, I guess I have no choice but to cover this again..."
    (I'd much rather be working on articles right now...)
    -- Tothwolf ( talk) 20:08, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse Consensus is clear in the AFD, the process issues raised are insignificant to meaningless. Other than that, the nominator here is not presenting new information, just rehashing the ones rejected in the AFD. GRBerry 16:56, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    Consensus was far from clear when the AfD was closed. See this discussion [23] [24] with person who nominated the article for AfD.
    The procedural errors brought to light here if nothing else made for a less open and transparent AfD process. This in and of itself is more than enough reason to revisit this issue.
    I did not bring up material that had been covered in the AfD until after A Man In Black raised questions about the article's references. I would have preferred not to revisit that material as it was already shown that the references provided established WP:N and WP:V. Anyone claiming otherwise at this point is going against the spirit and intentions of Wikipedia's notability and verifiability guidelines and policies. Neither of these were designed to exclude material that can be sourced and verified via common sense methods.
    -- Tothwolf ( talk) 20:46, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse all we have are technical arguments as to procedure, but each ultimately flawed as pointed about above. De minimis non curat lex. One that is particularly interesting is that it allegedly didn't garner the attention it ought to have due to miscategorization. The wider attention is to enable more of the community to be aware that there is a problem with the article and to find sources (for example) to show it's notability - not to get a bunch of people to !vote keep to muddy the waters. Here, we have a big advocate for keeping the article who has but his best case forward but apparently is still unable to find anything new to show notability. Case closed, then. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 21:33, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    You know, you've managed to turn this into a blatent personal attack and I don't like it at all. If all you can come up with is a rehash of others' arguments then perhaps you shouldn't be "voting" at all? Tothwolf ( talk) 22:39, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    Per response from JzG, maybe I was a little too hasty in my reply above. I apologize if this was taken as a personal attack, especially by Carlossuarez46 Tothwolf ( talk) 00:16, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
  • List of units in the Age of Mythology series – Deletion endorsed. I will restore the history, since some information has already been merged from this article to the main one, meaning that GFDL info needs to be preserved. More merging can take place using the history as a resource. However, this DRV establishes that the close of the AfD is valid, and the scale and level of detail of the original list is considered beyond the encyclopedia's scope. – Chick Bowen 04:16, 24 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the article above. Please do not modify it.


List of units in the Age of Mythology series (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) ( restore | cache | AfD)| AfD2

I do not think a rough consensus was formed in favor of deletion, especially in the light of viable alternatives such as merging or redirection, which would have at least preserved the article's history and bring into compliance with the GFDL. Hence, I request an overturn of the 2nd AFD to no consensus or, at the very least, a redirect. MuZemike 17:51, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply

  • The article was transwikied months ago to strategywiki. For that purpose, we do not need to keep a copy here; see WP:CSD#A5, and the history is there. A Nobody repeatedly made claims that material from this article had been merged elsewhere, but never provided any convincing evidence, and I can't find any evidence of it myself. For example, he claimed that it was merged to the Units section of Age of Mythology, but no edit summary for that page includes the string "merge" and is about that section. Similarly, Nifboy pointed here as evidence that a merge has taken place, but in fact there is no such evidence there for this article. So far as I can tell, there is no GFDL reason for keeping here, and having researched invalid examples in this category I wouldn't be persuaded by anything less than a diff showing an actual merge occuring in a target article. GRBerry 18:26, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • See for example [25], [26], etc. and looking throughout its history there seems to have been a deal of merges back and forth without saying as much in the edit summaries. At the time, I did not realize we had to say "merge" in the edit summaries. It was something I only learned months later. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 18:34, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • Wrong again. That material was not in this article. The history of this article at that time is available at strategy wiki, and neither of those quotes or sources came from this article. Those are not merges from this article. GRBerry 19:15, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
        • I merged that material from the article back in August per A Man In Black and then merged some of it back into the article late last night when I began undertaking a considerable revision to add new out of universe headings and sections. But even if the GFDL concern did not exist, the discusion still did not have a clear consensus to delete as it was quite divided in arguments and opinions. Even if not a vote, it was all over the place with even the deletes largely seeming okay with a merge. Zxcvbnm said, "But if necessary, Redirect." Sephiroth BCR said, "I also agree with Zxcvbnm on not seeing where a redirect helps, but I'd be fine with that result as well." There was not decisive opposition to a redirect with edit history intact. We are not here rehashing whether we think the article should be kept, but rather regarding the most accurate read of that discussion and in that discussion, there was not a decisie consensus for redlinking. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 19:18, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
          • You copied your own original contributions to this article to another article. Since you own the copyright to both edits, and you are properly attributed, there's no GFDL concern. I even mentioned this in the first AFD. - A Man In Bl♟ck ( conspire - past ops) 22:27, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
            • Are we sure that the rest of that units section in the article was not merged? Best, -- A Nobody My talk 00:18, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn as no consensus or undelete edit history and redirect. As I posted on Yandman’s talk page, when it closed as can be seen in the edit history I was in the process of revising it substantially using search results from Google News and Google Books. And in any event, clearly no consensus in this discussion to delete. Moreover, the comparison in the closing statement to similar articles being deleted is not really fair, because this article contained out of universe information on innovations, history, and reception that is absent from similar lists and this makes it more of a contrast to those lists than a comparison. But most importantly the content was previously merged to Age_of_Mythology#Units some months back and so at a minimum the edit history needs to be undeleted with a redirect created instead. A satisfactory result here would be either a re-close as “no consensus“ or undeletion of the edit history and a redirect to Age of Mythology#Units with a note on the AfD explaining that. Thank you for your time and consideration. A Nobody My talk 18:34, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn as no consensus or undelete edit history and redirect per MuZemike and A Nobody. Ikip ( talk) 19:03, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse. The AfD only looks like split consensus if one counts heads and ignores the validity of the arguments. This is precisely the sort of thing covered by WP:NOT#GUIDE and always would be. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 20:11, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • If we went with validity of arguments, we would keep, becasue the sections on Innovation, History, and Reception cited from both Google News and Google Books and added last night and thus not on the strategy wiki version could not justifiably be called "game guide". Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 20:14, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse: That seems to reflect the general consensus, if you remember that AFDs are not a vote, and Wikipedia is not a democracy. People overwhelmingly offered consensus policies and guidelines against this list, with no counter-argument about how the list met our policies/guidelines. DRVs are not a place to re-open discussions about an article, but merely to ask if the admin was reasonable. And even if I'm not crazy about the outcome, the admin was acting reasonably. However, even though I personally felt that deletion would be acceptable, I said that redirecting would be preferable. Re-creating a redirect wouldn't be terrible, but then we don't need DRV to get there. Randomran ( talk) 20:23, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • Randomran, what general consensus? People "overwhelmingly" offered consensus policies and guidelines both for and against and also in between, i.e. there was no general consensus to keep, merge, or delete and certainly not overwhelmingly one way or the other. I agree that we are not re-opening a discussion about the article, but there's just no way that discussion had an actual consensus by any objective and honest read of the discussion. The only accurate close there would be "no consensus" with maybe, maybe a "merge and redirect" as some kind of mutually acceptable middle ground. With that said, I see no reason why at this stage an undeletion and redirect would be detrimental to our project in any way. Best, -- A Nobody My talk 20:32, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse per the many policies and guidelines I cited during that discussion, which I do not feel were countered adequately with similar justifications. Wikipedia is not a democracy and mere uncited opinions without backup from policies and guidelines do not formulate a valid consensus. This site has never been a place for original research and never will be. I've shown that the majority of this article is just that, and all I got in return were arguments stating what, without examples, it is (e.g. "the content is explained in a real-world context", "Well referenced article"), stating what it isn't (e.g. "it doesn't violate Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Article guidelines", "doesn't really consitute a game guide since it doesn't list stats or how to use the units") and stating things which go against what Wikipedia is (i.e. A Nobody's numerous arguments in favour of keeping unreferenced content until it is sourced, which clearly violates WP:OR; "Wikipedia does not publish original thought"). Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 20:47, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • The many policies and guidelines were effectively countered and trumped by other policies and guidelines and by the reality of the changes made to the article last night. Wikipedia is indeed not a democracy, but the claims that it was entirely original research were not factually acurrate. The article in its final version had whole paragraphs of unoriginal research backed by reliable secondary sources. There was and is no valid reason for the article to be deleted. And there is certainly no policy based reason why not to at worst undelete the edit history and redirect. This is one instance where I am almost tempted to ignore all rules and just recreate it anyway, because that discussion was about as textbook of a no consensus as we have ever had on this site. Of all the possibly outcomes, deletion was furthest from the consensus of the community and if endorsed it would be a real shame for our project. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 20:55, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • The difference between my and your arguments as to whether the content is appropriate is that you do not cite yours with quotes and policies/guidelines. Your first sticking point in this discussion has been an assertion of "no consensus" on the grounds of there merely being no consensus, with little discussion as to whether the the points raised on either side of the field are actually applicable or not. Your second is ignore all rules, which, considering the lack of evidence for it relevance here, seems to be nothing more than use of an available trump card. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 21:24, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
        • Not true, the article should be restored per WP:PRESERVE (a policy) and is consistent with our First pillar, i.e. a specialized encyclopedia on fictional topics with relevance to people in the real world. The alleged criteria for deletion are false. It is not all original research. It is not all game guide. It is not all plot. Ergo, a case can be made for merging and redirecting, but just linking to a policy or guideline is irrelevant if not true. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 21:28, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
          • WP:PRESERVE states explicitly that original research is excluded from the policy. I've provided examples of OR and game guide material in the AfD, and you have failed to do the same or assert how my examples aren't OR, therefore making your arguments unfounded. You can claim things all you like, but without proof your claims are invalid. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 21:35, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
            • The whole top three sections priors to deletion were sources from Google News and Google Books, i.e. out of universe context from reliable secondary sources, i.e the claim that it was original research is unfounded as of the last version of the article and thus invalidates any reason for deletion. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 00:18, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
              • It's all good and well to provide a large clump of potential sources, but they are useless unless you can prove how any of them pass WP:RS. I don't remember any such examples being provided by you or seeing any particularly striking information from among the bunch, the latter for reasons I've stated before. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 01:14, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
                • You don't find content from published books that are secondary source in nature that say the game is specifically "notable" (yes, actually used the much disputed word...) because of its changes in units from earlier games? How could such a claim not be mergeable at worst? Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 01:21, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
                  • Uh... "units from earlier games"? "mergeable" claims? What's all this about? Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 01:27, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
                    • The considerable revision of new content I added just before it was deleted that pretty much no one new to the AfD commented on. Maybe it should be relisted considering the last version prior to deletion and see what someone other than you and I have to say? Because the last version just before deletion could not possibly be deleted based on the reasons in the nomination. Sadly as we are not admins, we cannot see that version. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 01:33, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
                      • It would be a better idea to actually directly quote and cite sources in future instead of providing uncited interpretations of them; for now, I have no idea whether what you tried to quote to me was actually reliable or not. I've already addressed the content you added as being simply not enough to constitute a separate article; notability isn't comprised of solely a few reliable sources from various reviews of the game. This is why the content should be userfied; it is simply not ready for an article yet. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 01:55, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
                        • Which is exactly what I did, i.e. cited sources in the actual article and improved it rather than just kept on typing up replies to try getting it deleted. And I did so with published books, i.e. not just reviews of the game. The article is indeed ready for a spinoff article by any true wikipedic standard. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:50, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
                          • Whatever you claim you did, (the article was still largely original research at the time of deletion) I have not seen these sources you cited and therefore cannot agree with your claims of there being sufficient content to justify a separate article, which there was neither before or after your insufficient improvements to the article. Either directly (by which I mean NOT just Google links) cite these sources or cease discussion, because all these claims of "I've got sufficient sources to establish notability" are currently doing nothing to resolve the whole issue. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 22:16, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
                            • No objective editor can honestly look a the last version of the article which consisted of several paragraphs of unoriginal research that justified a separate article. Despite your insufficient votes to delete, no one has provided any honest and valid reason why the article should remain deleted and not undeleted and redirected. Someone should ignore all rules and just undelete and redirect anyway, because the bottom line is it is a legitimate search term with mergeable content in the edit history. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Closing editor's comments - I would have redirected it, had it not been such an improbable search term. As for merging, Is there an editor who wants me to put the article into their userspace? If so, I'd be more than glad to do a quick Ctrl-C Ctrl-V. yandman 21:10, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • Yandman, I am not convinced that it is an improbable search term. To be entirely honest, I frequently search for articles by "List of..." and I reckon many other editors and readers do the same. I reiterate my request that if you are open minded to userfying for merge purposes to just undeleted and redirect for simplicitly and to really satisfies all parties. I cannot imagine anyone being so bent on deletion here that a redirect with undeleted edit history is a big deal. If worst comes to worse, it can always have a protected redirect after undeletion. Please for simplicity and to prevent a needless rehashing here, undelete and redirect. Thank you for your time and help. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 21:17, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • I'd be happy to userfy/projectify this page, history included, as I suggested in the AFD. I don't think yandman would object to this. - A Man In Bl♟ck ( conspire - past ops) 22:28, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • I as always will accept userfied articles; however, in this instance, I truly do not see a consensus to delete. Also, I don't know how to transwiki, but if the basis here is for transwikiying, then the version prior to deletion this morning should be transwikied as it contained additional sourced information versus the one currently at the strategy wiki. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 00:18, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse well-reasoned close. WP:NOT 1:0 WP:ILIKEIT, I'm afraid. Guy ( Help!) 21:23, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • The problem is that the calls for deletion were in effect WP:IDONT:IKEIT and it passed what Wikipedia is, which is why closing as anything other than no consensus or merge and redirect was unreasonable. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 21:25, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • Mm. ILIKEIT is a fine argument for "I like how this information is presented" when the alternative is "This is not how to present this information." We are free to make personal judgements about the presentation or form of data; it's only personal judgements of the subject itself that are problematic. - A Man In Bl♟ck ( conspire - past ops) 22:45, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse Excellent, in-process close. Eusebeus ( talk) 22:06, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • Even though it went against consensus? Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 00:18, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse- an excellent example of a closing admin determining consensus from strength of argument rather than just a quick head count. Reyk YO! 22:59, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • If we went by strength of argument, then it would have closed as keep. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 00:18, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • No, no you're quite wrong. I know you consider "I like it" to be a strong argument, but it isn't. And general consensus is that it isn't- and that's why the article was deleted and why the deletion will be endorsed. Reyk YO! 01:42, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
        • I don't consider "I like it" a strong argument. As much as you openly see these things as some kind of battleground where to " fly the Deletionist flag", I, however, believe in arguments based on something other than subjectivity and personal opinion. The strong argument here is that reliably sourced information from independent published books and reviews was used for outr of universe sections on Innovations, History, and Reception of the units, which means it was not all original research, nor all plot. In fact, a book even said that the units here are a "notable example" of a change from earlier games. Thus, the final version of the article prior to deletion met our guidelines and policies at least in a manner suitable enough for a merge and/or redirect with edit history intact. Sure, some who know me will come here to reflexively say to delete just because I say to keep, but no reasonable admin will look at the article, see the inaccurate claims as to why to delete and still take issue with it that they would not undelete and redirect. If this is indeed not a vote, then deletion will not be endorsed. If it is a vote or if subjectivity is what matters, then deletion will be endorsed, but there's no benefit in keeping the edit history deleted and redirecting even if it's a protected redirect. There is however a potential benefit of keeping a legitimate search term available and providing edit history from which reliably sourced content may be merged. As you are unable to see the last version before deletion, you can't reasonably say that the arguments against it being kept really matched how it looked as of the AM hours last night/this morning. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 01:54, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
          • Please stop misrepresenting my position. I have told you numerous times that, although I have strong opinions regarding quality and notability and will defend them, I argue based on policy and because I have the interests of the encyclopedia at heart. I am not here to pick fights or bulldoze people, and I have told you this before. Why do you continue to deliberately misrepresent me? Reyk YO! 02:15, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse. The close was well within admin discretion in interpreting the arguments, and kudos to the closer for making his reasoning clear. Deor ( talk) 03:16, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • It went with "arguments" that did not reflect the actual reality of the article. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:12, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse deletion and props to the closer for thinking this thing through carefully. AKRadecki Speaketh 04:13, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • Even though the reasons for deletion did not truly represent the actual condition of the article? Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:12, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse, within admin discretion. Echoing comments above, I appreciate the closer's detailed explanation. A couple keeps mentioned only sourcing and article quality, which turned out to be irrelevant to the final decision. Flatscan ( talk) 04:58, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    Per Ikip, I moved the GFDL subsection to the talk page. Flatscan ( talk) 04:52, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • The delete's claims were largely false or misleading. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:12, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse as absolutely correct application of admin discretion. With respect to User:A Nobody, from time to time his apparent understanding of the word "consensus" means "arguments on my side are strong, and arguments against me are weak". Stifle ( talk) 14:06, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    And if there's a GFDL issue, put a null edit in the edit history saying "parts of this article were taken from articles foo, bar, baz, and qux, written by editors quux, corge, grault, garply, waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy, and thud". Stifle ( talk) 14:07, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • In the case the "arguments" for deletion were simply not really all that true. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:12, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse – good close. — sephiroth bcr ( converse) 15:11, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • Even though it went against consensus? Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:12, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • No, because it was in line with consensus. Take your annoying badgering elsewhere. You're not helping your case. — sephiroth bcr ( converse) 18:33, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
        • There was no consensus to delete. Your dishonest comments need to be challenged. The admin said on his talk page that he counted "merge" and "redirect" as delete. Huh!? "Merge" means "merge"; "redirect" means "redirct." Neither means remove edit history and redlink. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 19:16, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
          • It's accurate enough, considering both involve deletion to varying extents. A redirect would result in the deletion of the entire article's content and a merge would result in a redirect with the merged content being largely trimmed down, which this article's would especially be due to the fact that it's largely composed of either unreliable or irrelevant sources and reams of OR. Anyway, mere words mean nothing compared to the respective arguments. Wikipedia is not a democracy. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 22:16, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
            • No, mergeing and redirect are editorial decisions closer to "keep" than "delete," because both result in the content being kept in some manner and something other than redlinking and especially when coupled with the decisively strong arguments for keeping that crushed the weak non-arguments for deleting. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
          • "Dishonest comments"? I fail to see how a subjective assessment could ever be dishonest. Fun, fun. Semantics aside, I suggest you listen to Protonk and realize that badgering everyone in the freaking discussion doesn't help you. The closing admin doesn't give a rat's ass how much you reply to other people's comments. — sephiroth bcr ( converse) 17:59, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
            • That's exactly it. The only claim for deletion is based on subjective criteria, because if we went objectively, it would unquestionably be kept. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 18:01, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn this is basically descriptive material , much of it well sourced from other publications, with some details sourced from the game and in no sense a game guide (it would be a pretty poor game guide with such undetailed material as this). . The closing admin saw the improved actual content of the page and made a deliberate decision to ignore it, and said as much. He was completely wrong to say " There's been a pretty clear consensus over the years that these articles should not be included." It's blatantly wrong on its face, since the previous afd had closed as no-consensus, and the !votes at the present one were 10 keep/6 merge or redirect/5 delete. How one can make a consensus to delete out of that for the present discussion I do not understand. Even more, in combination with the previous afd , and the erratic results for similar articles, how one can make multiyear consensus on such articles in general from that I even more do not understand. I wish we did have a consensus on these one way or another, but we clearly do not. This is a case of IDONTLIKEIT on his part, and, alas, on the part of many of those commenting above. A minority wanting to delete, supported by an admin who thinks likewise. I think a close like this should not only be overturned, but might want to refrain from further closing in this subject, as if he has a preformed opinion on the general subject regardless of the merits of the article. DGG ( talk) 18:00, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    It seems rather poor form to accuse the closing admin of acting in bad faith when the material which purportedly assured the article's notability was added after the majority of the AfD comments had already been made - while closing admins can evaluate the discussion as they see fit, it isn't usual for them to ignore the whole lot because of some recent and unnoticed changes to the article. The less said about the "there was no consensus, see the following head count" argument the better, too. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 20:29, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
If he failed to take account of improvements in the article, this was a bad close. Consensus is made by the people present at the discussion. The admin just determines what it is. Finding for a minority view is of course possible if there is explicit reason to discard some votes as not based on policy. But to discard them based on one's opinion of the underlying issue is wrong. i could just as well close such debates according to my underlying view of the issues. It would be just as wrong. DGG ( talk) 23:18, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
There's one thing he didn't fail to do, though, and that was to actually read the article, and the last-minute edits made by A Nobody were not sufficient enough to establish the article's content enough to justify being split from the main AoM article. He did nothing to address the majority of the article's content, that in the table of units, which suffered from wholly being sourced from either irrelevant historical information sites or game fansites, and little to add any content to the article other than a few more reviews, which could just as easily be integrated into the AoM article. Admins have their own judgements too, and, as far as I'm concerned, these last-minute additions did little to turn the tables and were sufficiently ignorable. If a Good Article's worth of content was there at the time of deletion I think he would have thought twice, but that was clearly not the case. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 00:08, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The bottom line is you failed to present a legitimate case for deletion, which is why my edits made the article pass all of guidelines and policies with flying colors by using sources from both Google News and Google Books. Anyone who objectively looked at the article would have seen this relevant information as potential for a good article. Best, -- A Nobody My talk 17:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
Then let's see these wonderful " flying colors". Without them, you've failed. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 18:10, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
Undelete the article and you'll see them. Best, -- A Nobody My talk 18:12, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
Uh... I'm not an admin. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 18:19, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • Chris, yes, I made the changes at sort of the last minute, but in part did so, because there was no way I could have seen it closing as delete and wanted at the end to just make good on my claims that the content was improveable and that I was going to begin doing it even though it seemed clear it was already going to be saved, i.e. I wanted to show that just because it seemed obvious it was going to be saved, I wasn't going to move on and not actually do what I could to improve it. I would have continued to improve it further had it been a "no consensus" as I see real educational value in these sorts of articles as I find these list helpful for students, i.e. players of the game can use it as navigational tool to learn about the 'real" history behind the subjects they enjoy as games and to those interested in games in general could use the article to see how units have evolved and are used across different games from the three out of universe segments at the top of the article. While the main game article may provide the general overview of the games, these lists are good go tos for those who want a bit more information on specific aspects of the game and I am confident that I was setting in motion a revision that while probably not satisfactory to everyone as some just don't like this stuff, but would objectively meet our guidelines and policies anyway. And because we both know people misinterpret things, argue emotionally, etc. an admin should look at the article and see if the criticisms really are reflective of reality. Whether a discussion seems to have consensus should take into account if that consensus is based on reality, but even so, in this case, as much as I wish it were a straight out keep, I wouldn't have closed it as keep, maybe a merged and redirect as a middle ground, but the most accurate read of that discussion based on arguments, head count, and the truthful state of the article and potential for further development would unquestionably have been "no consensus." And it doesn't matter whether or not you're inclusionist, deletionist, like me or dislike me, "no consensus" is the most accurate read of that discussion. Finally, the main request here is that the edit history be undeleted so that mergeable content can possibly be taken from it and then a redirect be created. How can that possibly be a big deal or a bad thing? We want a redirect that provides convenience for the countless editors who search for lists as I and obviously many others do. We want the edit history available so that we can improve the main article. Keeping the edit history deleted accomplishes what? Deletionists get what they want by not having the separate article anyway, so what is the big deal about undeleting edit history that can be used to improve the main game article, and redirecting something that multiple editors beyond me do think a legitimate search term? If several admins and editors beyond me said in the AFDs and DRV that people do search for the subject based on that "List of..." string, why would we not have that as a redirect? Did you catch " Breast Cancer Show Ever"? There's a point near the end of the episode where Cartman just keeps going on and on and Wendy says something about how he already "won", so what the heck? Well, here, okay so we don't have a separate article, why then would a merge and redirect be such a problem? Or how about the article was being improved, why not allow for greater improvement? IF our interests are really what's best for the encyclopedia, why be so beholden to one snapshot in time five day discussion when improvements are taking place? Why not see how far those improvements go? People think we shouldn't be the guide to everything for some debateable practical reasons. Okay, fine, but to suggest that an undeletion of edit history with maybe even a protected redirect is somehow some kind of unreasonable request in an AfD in which deletion was the MINORITY opinion is disheartening. I really would like to assume good faith and all, but I cannot think of any legitimate reason why anyone would actually oppose an undeletion of edit history from which content can be realistically merged and even a protected redirect for what several editors have said is a valid search term. I think the closing admin might have been amenable to that given further discussion and hope that regardless of this DRV he still is. And I hope others will seriously step back and think if as an admin outright said off-wiki that my participation in AfDs and DRVs "attract people who vote delete purely to try and oppose" me is really what's best for the project. Had I not commented in the AfD, how would it have closed? What about this DRV? Would the same editors have gone the same way? Would some have even commented in that AfD and this DRV? Are statements like that one by the off-wiki admin quoted above, who also wrote, "Personally, when I see such inane crap at AfD, it spurs me to close those AFDs as delete regardless" (that admin was as far as I know NOT the one who closed in this case, just to be clear), the real situation? Whoever closes this DRV, please consider not the one line "good closes" by various accounts with past disputes with me, but the actual benefit of the request to undelete the edit history and redirect, i.e. what kind of honest sense it makes/doesn't make to keep deleted mergeable content and a valid redirect location. Best, -- A Nobody My talk 21:08, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • All this text and you've shown absolutely no proof of the existence of sufficient sourcing for the article in question. That is the essence of any and all deletion discussions and notability on Wikipedia and it is never going to bend to allow your conflicting "keep things until they're sourced" ideology, which I've already shown is not how things work. The essence of the issue is that the article is question, even with your improvements, did not contain enough reliably sourced, relevant information to constitute being split from the main Age of Mythology article, and that, without a sufficient amount of such information being directly proven to exist, it is going to stay deleted. Rant on about the benefits and drawbacks of deletion, the closing admin's decision and others' judgements all you want, but if you can't present enough reliable sources to establish the subject's notability then you've got no grounds on which to argue. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 00:03, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
        • Despite all of your replies to everyone wanting to keep the article, you have shown absolutely no proof that the sources were insufficient. The three out of universe sections sourced through reliable sources establish the subject's notability by any reasonable or honest standard. You can pretend that they don't and declare that they don't but the reality is of course that to any objective and honest reader, the article already was sourced enough to meet our inclusion criteria. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:48, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
          • Yes, I have, with quoted examples and numerous references to Wikipedia's policies. You haven't. And, at the end of the last AfD, the article was still flooded with sentences lacking that essential superscripted number at their end. Sorry, but until you can directly show that there are numbers to be appended to (the majority of) those sentences, you have no basis to argue the overturning of this deletion. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 22:24, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
            • You have not presented any valid reason to delete. Quoting policies is meaningless when not accurate. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn deletion and return to No Consensus. Undoubtedly the deleting admin had a tough job of it, but the article (being improved even as it was being discussed at AfD), showed itself as an example of how to correctly handle such material for these types of games, as it was (in many keep opinions) a properly detailed and coherent list of essential information that were not minutiae, being properly formated per current guideline. What the nom called irrelevent, other readers found valuable to their understanding of the article. And that's what Wiki is about... enlightening the readership, no matter who might think an article is worthless. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 01:51, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • WP:ILIKEIT isn't a valid reason for keeping an article. The criteria for inclusion on Wikipedia is notability based on the citation of reliable source, not "detail", "coherence" or "value", and if information lacks the necessary sources, it is deleted. This article was severely lacking in such sources and provided reams of useless minutiae, examples of which I provided in the AfD, and wholly redundant, irrelevant sourced information on historical subjects which failed to provide notability for the units of Age of Mythology. Furthermore, apart from some vague Google results, barely any additional sources were provided in the AfD; while the improvements A Nobody added towards the end of the AfD did improve the article, the reliable sources the article was composed of still only consisted of around ten or so reviews of the game, which is nowhere near broad or numerous enough to sustain a separate article from Age of Mythology; it did nothing to back up the majority of the article's content, which was still a list of non-notable game guide minutiae. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 04:59, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • To the unsigned respondent: Neither is WP:IDONTLIKEIT, and no where in my comment did I say anything that could be contrued as "I Like It". I granted the closing admin must have has a tough time, said the material was supported by guideline for such lists, the article was still being improved during the AfD, and that the information contained therin was supportive of a reader's understanding. However, the AfD dicussion is on another page... not to re-argued here, specially since I doubt that any opinion of mine is of any worth to you. I support overturn of the deletion because unlike you, I am not as all-fired certain the the consensus supported a pure delete. If it's overturned, then you can speedily re-nominate the article. Thank you. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 04:35, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
        • The "I like it" I perceived in in your claims of the article being "interesting" and "coherent", neither of which are criteria for inclusion. This is entirely a place for discussion of the AfD and notability of the article, as the overturning of this deletion will display on Wikipedia a largely unsourced and therefore inappropriate article, per WP:OR. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a non-selective repertoire of information, and, per WP:NOT, the deletion of content is as constructive as addition. As far as I'm concerned, those opposed to deletion have provided insufficient citations of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines and that renders the consensus heavily weighted towards deletion. Mere opinions alone mean nothing; Wikipedia is not a democracy. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 05:16, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
          • Oh. So you see this DRV as a continuation of the AfD discussion? In see. That explains much. Thank you. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 06:31, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
            • The DRV guidelines clearly state "This page exists to correct closure errors in the deletion process and speedy deletions, both of which may also involve reviewing content in some cases." I think, considering the lack of evidence provided to this article's notability, the content is a very significant factor in this case, as that is what this DRV's nominator has failed to provide. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 14:52, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
              • Which is exactly what we have here, no one is seriously contesting the obvious notability of the article. That's unquestionable. The problem is that we had a majority opinion to keep backed by policy arguments and arguments to merge discounted as deletes. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
        • I'm not seeing where the closer said that it was supported for the guideline for such lists. In fact, the closer cited several similar lists that had been deleted. Granted, I'm a partisan here, so I admit I won't necessarily have an unbiased view. Could you point out to me where the closer said anything about this list meeting any guideline? - A Man In Bl♟ck ( conspire - past ops) 09:21, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
          • Comparing to the other lists isn't really fair (apples and oranges), because this list contained out of universe sections not found in many similar lists. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:48, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Comment – it should be noted that the closing admin counted the !votes for "merge" and "redirection" as the same as "delete", as indicated here. MuZemike 20:01, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse We could also restore the history and protect the redirect to allow selective merger of information to the main article. I voted "weak keep" on the first AfD on the basis that the article was reasonably well written and was on the margin of GAMEGUIDE/PLOT/VGSCOPE. I didn't see the second AfD and I don't want to recapitulate those arguments, but the basic consensus that this shouldn't have a standalone article was reflected in that AfD and properly judged by the closer. I will note, as a general warning, that extended filibustering and badgering have strong diminishing returns and that those who insist on turning debates on individual articles into slugfests on notability will find that the fate of the article is often worse off for their efforts. Protonk ( talk) 20:23, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse well within admin discretion and no one has brought up anything new here. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 21:23, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • What is new is that he closed it by counting merges and redirects as delete, when merges and redirects mean merge and redirect, not delete. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 17:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
That's not exactly what I said, and I think you know it. I considered "merge" closer to "delete" because you yourself stated you had already merged a lot of it into the main article. And as for "redirect", well, I think my closing comments were pretty self-explanatory. Anyway, let me be the tenth person here to repeat it: AFD is not a vote. I don't "count" anything. Interestingly enough, DRVs are very similar. Although a user may have spammed generic refutations after every comment, that does not mean his arguments magically improve. yandman 19:34, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
"Merge" should not be considered as anything other than "merge," neither closer to keep nor closer to delete. It means just that, i.e. "merge." And despite the closing comments when there is a clear redirect location and editors, admins and editors in good standing beyond me, say it is a valid search term, there's no reason not to have the redirect. Why would we want to be less convenient for our readers? I agree that AfD like here is not a vote, but a discussion in which editors interact with each and thus as far replies after "every" comment go, unless if anyone also takes issue with the nominator as well as another editor replying to practically everyone who argued to keep in the AfD and everyone who argued to overturn in this DRV, then there's not much to say against any one editor here. In a discussion people engage each other. If this is not a discussion and a vote, then it will just be a list of bold faced "votes" with no interaction. But the bottom line is we have a case where there was no clear cut consensus for deletion across two AfDs concerning an article that scores of editors have worked on for years and that gets several thousand page views a month. My initial request, which really should have just been granted and this whole DRV avoided (remember, I did not initiate the DRV...), was given those circumstances to just undelete so we could see what can be used for merging and therefore avoiding playing games and additional steps with userspace, and to just then have a redirect even if protected as some (myself and others) do indeed do searches on Wikipedia with "List of..." How that can even be an issue is beyond me. If we have editors saying there's mergeable content, then it is far more important for the project that we see what we have to improve our coverage. If we editors saying there's a valid redirect here, then it is far more important for the project that we make our navigation more convenient for our readers. Dwelling on being tied to some snapshot in time five day AfD as a definitive verdict even if it means preventing us from accessing mergeable content or providing greater convenience to our readers is not to our project's benefit. And as such that anyone would oppose undeletion and redirection is downright mind-boggling, far more so than in any recent deletion related discussion have participated in, which is why I am not just letting this one go. I don't see this as a matter of trying to win some argument, and I'm here to help contribute to the cataloging of human knowledge far more than to make friends (I like making friends, but the priority is the good of our project). We're not making some ridiculous request here, but a simple, "Hey, we can use some stuff from the edit history of something that is not a hoax or libelous, please undelete so we can improve the main article, but given the AfD, if you want to make a protected redirect, that's fine by us." Such a request should not involve even a moment's hesitatuon and that is why I am so disappointed here. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 22:09, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The article content can be merged, it's under the GFDL here. And you have my approval if you want to create a redirect. The page isn't protected. yandman 22:30, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
When I clicked that link, it doesn't have the stuff I added this month, i.e. the sections on Innovations, History, and Reception. Best, -- A Nobody My talk 22:33, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
You don't need an article history to merge that. You own those contributions, you can resubmit them wherever you like. - A Man In Bl♟ck ( conspire - past ops) 22:39, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
Yeah, I don't think this is going to be resolved unless a live version of that version of the article is on display somewhere, i.e. a user namespace or StrategyWiki. It's hard to argue about what's effectively only in our memories at the moment. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 22:41, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Ick I can't see the article and didn't !vote on it (this time). I think the discussion didn't focus much on the validity and relevance of the sources. I'd discard the !votes based on "game guide" because it's plain it wasn't *just* a game guide. Much of the rest of the discussion was a war between "ILIKEIT" and "IDONTLIKEIT". I think the underlying issue is that both sides are trying to set the policy on breakout articles. So overturn to no consensous until we get that policy figured out. The arguments on both sides were too weak to delete. And frankly, I personally am not sure that the article should be kept (I'd likely have !voted delete this time around unless the article was *much* better than last time I looked.) Hobit ( talk) 19:35, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn and relist. The closing administrator did not take into account late changes to the article that could've changed the outcome. The proper course of action would've been to extend the discussion. When closing an AFD, care should be taken that the votes tallied actually discuss (in big lines) the article that is being deleted. - Mgm| (talk) 12:35, 22 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • The problem here seems to be that there are two discussions going on. There seems to be a majority of "overturners" worrying about using the content for the main article. For those of you who wanted an overturn on the basis of needing the content for the main article (Ikip, Nobody, Mike), I've userfied the article here. I've checked the revision history, and all the content added since the strategywiki merge is from A.Nobody, so there are no GFDL problems. Secondly, for those who believed that newcomers would type "List of units in the age of mythology series", I've created a redirect. And please let's avoid cries of "why didn't you do this in the first place", as it was the first thing I proposed. Anyway, let's go and write an encyclopedia. yandman 17:51, 22 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse I see a lot of articles come to DRV where the majority side of the debate claims the decision was inappropriate when it's handed against them, but Wikipedia isn't a democracy and this is why we have trusted admins close debates instead of bots. The arguments to delete were rooted in policy and were not adequately refuted by the arguments to keep, so they were stronger in the end. Themfromspace ( talk) 01:44, 23 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • The "votes" for deletion were mostly false, whereas the arguments to keep were guideline and policy based, which is why an undeletion of edit history and redirect or "no consensus" closure would be the right call. And given the improvements to the article that adequately addressed the initial concerns, there's no valid or legitimate reason for deletion. Best, -- A Nobody My talk 01:52, 23 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • You keep saying you've cited policies and guidelines, but what are these? Merely WP:PRESERVE won't mean much, as there's still the problem of that table of units, which is wholly original research apart from the irrelevant historical information. I simply do not see, at the moment, how the rest of the information justifies a split from the main article; the only other content is composed of three rather lacking paragraphs (the former of which contains far too much quoted text) which do not really present enough information to support this article. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 03:13, 23 February 2009 (UTC) reply
        • It meets WP:N, WP:V, WP:PRESERVE, etc. The article contains relevant historical information that balances with the table. I see no justification for deletion due to the excllent out of universe paragraphs that clearly have potential for even more improvement. We should be able to get a featured list out of this one with just a little more work. Best, -- A Nobody My talk 03:16, 23 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • (edit conflicts) You say that but nobody has convinced me otherwise. I want to see point by point proof that the arguments to delete were false. On wikipedia, we do delete articles based on failing the notability guidelines, so that is not a false argument. In order to refute that you'll need to demonstrate the article meets the guidelines, not give a personal opinion that the guidelines are invalid. Also, WP:PRESERVE is an invalid argument for keeping articles. Not all information belongs here, that's why we have AfD in the first place. Themfromspace ( talk) 03:18, 23 February 2009 (UTC) reply
        • Gladly:
          • Claims in nomination:
            • Deletion claim of game guide: article in final version contained out of universe sections on innovations, history, and reception not typical of game guides.
            • Deletion claim of little sourcing only from fansite: article in final version contained multiple sources from Google News and Google Books, i.e. secondary sources per WP:RS.
            • Deletion claim of irrelevant: well, that's subjective, as it's obvious relevant to those of us who created, work on, and want to read it
          • Next user to say "delete" also supported both transwikiying and redirecting; final version of article had more to it than the version transwikied months ago, why not transwiki the latest version?
          • The next delete was a "per x" and also was okay with a redirect.
          • Next delete also okay with a merge.
          • The next delete had an WP:ITSCRUFT claim, i.e. "I don't like it" and essentially talks up the main series game article and says information can be found in the game's instructions. Well, pretty much everything we cover can be found somewhere else, but that's no reason why we wouldn't cover it as well.
          • Next delete just repeats the not entirely accurate game guide claim.
          • As does the next one.
          • The final delete yet again repeats the already challenged/refuted claim of being a game guide as well as the inaccurate claim that it is only sourced by fansites (again, I used Google News and Google Books only...) and finally claims that it is not notable, even though one source says that what makes the game "notable" (actually uses that word) is its innovation with its units. That line alone should be mergeable.
        • But if nothing else, what is the big deal here? It was not a unanimous deletion by any means, editors are willing to work further to improve its out of universe context using solely reliable secondary sources, it's not a hoax, copy vio, libelous, etc. We should be courteous enough to our readers and editors that under such conditions we allow them to continue improving the material as best as they can. Why we would want to just stop those efforts is downright baffling. All this effort trying to get this deleted has not magically produced good or featured articles. By contrast, the time I and others have spent defending it in discussion could have been used improving it further. Trying to do both simultaneously is needlessly frustrating. Sincerely, -- A Nobody My talk 03:31, 23 February 2009 (UTC) reply
          • "consensus" doesn't mean unanimity, it means consensus. We don't work on what could exist, we work on what does exist, and all unsuitable information should be excluded until it becomes suitable. The current version of the article is userfied, there's something there to work on. When it actually contains a sufficient amount of verified content instead of verifiable content, it should be recreated. However, at the moment, the vast majority of the content is very weakly sourced and the remainder insufficient. Haipa Doragon ( talkcontributions) 04:00, 23 February 2009 (UTC) reply
            • Even if we went with what does exist, we would keep this suitable information as it meets WP:RS, WP:V, and WP:N even as is. But yeah, we do and should consider potential. Best, -- A Nobody My talk 04:04, 23 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • As this has now been recreated as a redirect to Age of Mythology, I think this DRV is moot. Stifle ( talk) 09:40, 23 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
  • Good Germans – Deletion endorsed. If someone wants to create an expanded encyclopedic version based on the extant history, all of which is available at Wiktionary, that would of course be fine by usual standards--as long as it's a significant improvement, it will not be deletable without an AfD (though one might well be undertaken). Note Ed's comment below, however, that sourcing must be improved compared to the earlier versions. If that happens the history can be undeleted. – Chick Bowen 03:18, 25 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the article above. Please do not modify it.

Good Germans (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) ( restore | cache | AfD)

Good Germans This page has been deleted. The deletion log for the page is provided below for reference.

  • On the deletion review page, there is an instruction "Deletion Review is to be used where someone is unable to resolve the issue in discussion with the administrator (or other editor) in question. This should be attempted first – courteously invite the admin to take a second look". I haven't noticed this discussion taking place. While I'm aware that some users consider this an optional step, I would appreciate if the nominator could please explain why he omitted it (or, if there was a discussion that I missed, point it out)? Stifle ( talk) 15:58, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • NOTE: User:Stifle's 15:58, 18 February 2009 (UTC) comment is fundamentally the same as the original comment by User:Mugs2109 on 5:23, 18 February 2009 (UTC), above: It also appears as if the article was deleted without any readily-accessible wikirecord of that action until now (here). Mugs2109 ( talk) 19:33, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • Just to clarify, as there seems to be some confusion. Stifle was asking why Mugs2109 did not discuss the deletion with Wehwalt before listing it here at DRV. Stifle was NOT asking why didn't Wehwalt discuss before deleting. -- Kbdank71 21:06, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      • Correct. The instructions to this page say that you are supposed to ask the administrator who deleted the article whether he/she is willing to undelete it before making a listing here. Why did you not do that, Mugs2109? Stifle ( talk) 14:22, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
        • Endorse deletion by default due to the nominator's failure to respond to a reasonable query, and poor behaviour at this DRV (see unclean hands). Stifle ( talk) 09:10, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Undelete: Overturn the deletion and restore the wikiarticle since this is (was) a very useful encyclopedic wikiarticle with numerous literary citations and links that substantiate the validity of the wikiarticle's content about an important World War II history term (the term was even used as the title for a movie). Mugs2109 ( talk) 15:23, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    By nominating here, you indicated your disagreement with the deletion. Placing extra bolded comments saying "undelete" may misrepresent your position as having more support than it does. Stifle ( talk) 14:22, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Undelete: The wikiarticle shouldn't have been deleted since there was no "discussion ... attempted first". Stifle ( talk) 15:58, 18 February 2009 (UTC) Comment struck, Stifle did not request this, it was added by Mugs2109 [27] -- Kbdank71 21:06, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Keep Deleted !vote struck, was added by Mugs2109, not Davewild Comment: Although not available at Wiktionary:Good German, the article appears to have been transwikied to http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Transwiki:Good_Germans. struck the above comment which was not my (Davewild) wording and restored the original wording It does appear to have been transwikied to wikitionary - [28] - and did appear to be a pretty clear dictionary definition so unless there is something I'm missing here, it does appear to have met the relevant A5 speedy criteria. Davewild ( talk) 19:12, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • The article has not yet been transwikied to Wiktionary and, in addition to missing a lot of original information, still contains 12 wiktionary syntax errors at the transwiki location, so it is not "a pretty clear dictionary definition". Mugs2109 ( talk) 19:33, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • You should immediately revert your last edit - [29] - which completely changed Stifle's comment and altered mine and completely misrepresented Stifle's comment at the very least. This is completely against the Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines - "Do not misrepresent other people" and "do not edit others' comments" which this page is like and either yourself or a neutral editor should clean up what that edit has done. Do not alter the structure of this disucssion again please. Davewild ( talk) 19:44, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Keep deleted. Has been transwikied, CSD would appear to be proper. -- Kbdank71 20:43, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Reviewing the history that is now at wiktionary, the versions of the article through 22 Sept 2008 [30] are borderline Wikipedia content. In the next edit [31], Mugs2109 made it a dictionary definition and gave an edit summary including "used wiktionary format". The next editor looked at it and said "this belongs on wiktionary". [32] Fundamentally, this was transwiki'ed because the nominator for this discussion made it belong there instead of here. Five days after transwikiing, it was deleted here. Now Mugs2109 is upset because it has been transwiki'ed. I wouldn't object to restoring all edits prior to the Ocotber 2008 edit by Mugs2109 and sending that to AFD, but I suspect that the answer at AFD would be that even that material is better suited to wiktionary than to wikipedia. Eventually the wiktionary editors will complete the transwiki process. Since Mugs appears to already know how that project works, he could just go finish it if speed is of the essence. Since the nominator made it a dictionary definition and it has been transwiki'ed, the article meets WP:CSD#A5 and thus I endorse deletion. GRBerry 21:23, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse, what Stifle said. Request makes no real sense in context, I'm afraid. Guy ( Help!) 21:25, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Restore prior version (and send to AFD if deemed necessary). First, I would like to ask my fellow editors to please disregard the behavior of User:Mugs2109 in this DRV, as his actions have made it very difficult for the issues to be considered fairly and dispassionately -- and in addition, it was this very editor's ill-considered unilateral decision to change the article's format which kicked off the sequence of events that has ended up here.
I feel that the original version of the article does belong on Wikipedia, and should never have been converted to Wiktionary format in the first place. I certainly would have contested the conversion if I had been aware of it; however, that took place about a year after my last edit, and with a monstrous watchlist, I had ceased checking in on the article, since it had remained stable for quite a while. The content that was added by Mugs2109 should have been used to expand what was already there into a more substantial article -- which is what will happen once the article is restored to Wikipedia. His edit also had the highly deleterious effect of removing the lines quoted from the 1945 New York Times article which was presumably the among the first times the term "Good Germans" appeared in print in a mass circulation newspaper. Now there is just a link to the NYT website -- and only to a brief abstract for the article which doesn't include the key lines. Cgingold ( talk) 10:39, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • One more thought: If one editor can come along and unilaterally dispatch an article to Wiktionary, after which it is summarily deleted, there is something fundamentally wrong with the process. If this article had, instead, been taken to AFD, the creator of the article and its other major editor (myself) would rightly have been notified -- but since it was "merely" sent over to Wiktionary it slipped under the radar. What a contrast. I had no idea this sort of thing could happen -- it strikes me as a gaping loophole in the normal deletion procedures. Cgingold ( talk) 23:31, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Strong endorse. The requester is wrong on a number of levels. First, the page does exist, at wikt:Transwiki:Good Germans, showing that it has been properly transwiki'ed. Second, a review of its edit history there shows that it was tagged with {{ Move to Wiktionary}} on October 25th, and the tag remained constantly in place until December 20th, at which point the transwiki was done. During that entire time, the article was written in Wiktionary format. So there's no reasonable process complaint here, the content is not appropriate for Wikipedia, and further Mugs did not attempt discussion with the deleting admin, or this probably would have already been cleared up. If someone wants to make the case that a Good Germans article belongs on Wikipedia, I suggest they write one that belongs, and that clearly goes beyond defining a neologism. Mango juice talk 17:32, 24 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Permit reconstruction I am usually quite flexible about the overlap between a dictionary and an encyclopedia, but in this instance there was in fact when it was deleted only dictionary material, and it is all presently in Wiktionary. Therefore, it was properly transwikified. I see no reason why an admin cannot do this via speedy in obvious cases, and I consider this a not unreasonable interpretation of "obvious". However, there is very often a much better solution than transwikifying, which is to expand into a proper article. Many phrases of this sort and many common nouns could be the subject of an encyclopedic article--this almost certainly can. So I agree with Cgingold that this should have been expanded rather than converted to dictionary format. Ideally, the admin would have spotted it and restored the original version and marked it for expansion. Though admins should try to improve rather than delete articles, none of us active at CSD or prod patrol can really write or rewrite as many articles a day as that would require. This should have been rescued by someone during the Prod. If more people participated in rescuing, we could do all the ones that were rescuable. We really need two improvements in our procedures:a better way of sorting out & working on the improvable articles than random chance, and a rethink of the transwikifying process at least for Wiktionary to help catch them. What I am saying is worded differently, but is compatible with what Mangojuice said immediately before me. DGG ( talk) 18:38, 24 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse deletion without prejudice to recreation of a better article, by anyone who is confident that it would survive review here. In particular, neither the latest version nor the September version (before it was made a dictionary entry) would be suitable. (The September version was badly sourced and might well have succumbed to AfD). A genuine creative effort, based on a new search for sources, would be needed. EdJohnston ( talk) 19:10, 24 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the article above. Please do not modify it.

Kotava (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) ( restore | cache | AfD) ( AfD2)

While a constructed language, it is recognised as an ISO-639-3 language and is therefore notable enough GerardM ( talk) 09:28, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply

  • On the deletion review page, there is an instruction "Deletion Review is to be used where someone is unable to resolve the issue in discussion with the administrator (or other editor) in question. This should be attempted first – courteously invite the admin to take a second look". I haven't noticed this discussion taking place. While I'm aware that some users consider this an optional step, I would appreciate if the nominator could please explain why he omitted it (or, if there was a discussion that I missed, point it out)? Also, it's nearly four months since Kotava was deleted at AFD; could the nominator please explain why there has been such a delay in bringing this request? Stifle ( talk) 09:37, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    that's advice, not policy. Attempts to make it policy have not been successful, nor should they be, for all nonobstructive ways of appealing admin decisions are beneficial to the community. And old potential errors need to be reviewed as much has new ones. DGG ( talk) 18:54, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    It's part of the DRV instructions, as well as common courtesy. Stifle ( talk) 14:23, 19 February 2009 (UTC) reply
    • Endorse deletion by default due to the nominator's failure to reply to a reasonable query. Stifle ( talk) 09:11, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      Please don't make it personal. Judge the article and the deletion debate on their own merits. Whether GerardM performed a certain action has no bearing on the debate or any potential changed situation for the article. - Mgm| (talk) 12:26, 22 February 2009 (UTC) reply
      It's nothing personal, I do the same for any user who, to use a legal term, fails to prosecute his/her appeal. Stifle ( talk) 15:58, 22 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Notice that this DRV actually applies to the Kotava article, not the Kotava language article which was a redirect to Kotava. I've subst:ed the DRV links and corrected the links to be to the right article. If someone wants to recreate the DRV from scratch to make sure it is perfectly clear, please feel free to. Usrnme h8er ( talk · contribs) 12:59, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Closing admin See discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kotava (2nd nomination), lack of sources and lack of notability are strong arguments at AFD. MBisanz talk 13:03, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse Consensus in the AFD is clear, and fits the longstanding and widespread community consensus and our policies. Nominator here offers no new information, most importantly no new reliable sources with significant coverage of the language. Reviewing the ISO submission documents that were linked in the AFD and are linked above, it does not seem likely that such sources will come to light any time soon, but if they ever do come to light a discussion could be held at that time. GRBerry 17:06, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse deletion The argument about ISO-639-3 was well considered in the AFD and there was a pretty clear consensus for deletion. Davewild ( talk) 19:05, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • While it is nice to decide on formalities, the standard way for language articles is to call them Kotava language this was how I expected the article to be named. Consequently I did not find the move for deletion. Also I do not daily frequent the English Wikipedia and this is assumed in this procedure. Now, Kotava is a recognised language by ISO. This is only given when it is reputable. As to the reason why the delay.. It was only recently brought to my attention. For your informaton Kotava is better localised in MediaWiki then many big languages. Thanks, GerardM ( talk) 12:51, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • The argument that ISO-639-2 does certain things is invalid because new languages are no longer added to it. GerardM ( talk) 12:54, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • The arguments about the ISO-639-3 used to argue its lack of relevance are ill informed. There is a tendency to belittle languages.. this is a living constructed language. They have their Wikipedia now at Wikia and it is doing nicely. There are other categories of subculture that are not looked at in a similar way.. What is for instance the value of an article of a road in New Hamshire, a car with 10 build vehicles, a subcharacter of Pokemon ? GerardM ( talk) 13:04, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse the ISO-639-3 was fully part of the debate and is not late-arriving smoking-gun evidence to overturn what seems to be a proper deletion close. At some point, there may be more written about this language; presumably, somehow one has to apply to ISO to get recognized and ISO deliberates presumably, and perhaps all this generated some discussion in reliable 3rd party sources, but at this point it fails WP:N. You can come back here if (when) the situation changes. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 19:51, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Given that Kotava is one of the better localised languages for MediaWiki, do you not think that is in and of itself enough reason to have an article about it to explain what it is ? GerardM ( talk) 13:16, 21 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Endorse in its current form The article does not provide idependent sources (they're all related to the creator somehow. I totally agree that languages with an ISO are notable and I'd be happy to userfy if more sources exist and someone wants to add them, but there are not enough independent sources given to build an article with. - Mgm| (talk) 12:24, 22 February 2009 (UTC) reply
I am not administrator, I only was the creator of the Kotava article. I full refute the argument about the sources. None the quoted sources comes from Staren Fetcey its creator. The sites noticed are sites in relation to Kotava. They show that a real community of speakers exists, unlike most of the hundred constructed languages having an article in EN.WP. This simple fact is more notable than many historical quotations in catalogues. But as often it is prefered the intellectual comfort of the dusty libraries than the recognition of alive phenomena in margin of the official voices. Upsetting.
And the deletion of the article which was present, improved by several external contributors, was required by someone obviously a badly intentioned towards Kotava (at first in PT.WP). Wikimistusik ( talk) 16:44, 22 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the article above. Please do not modify it.

BrainSurge (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) ( restore | cache | AfD)

deleted as a hoax (presumably G3), but there is a reliable source [33] that appears to give out tickets in an official capacity [34]. Notified User:Ryulong [35] but he declined [36] RJaguar3 | u | t 00:15, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply

  • Restore it was deleted as a "possible hoax" which isn't a speedy deletion criterion. It would now seem that it is a genuine upcoming TV show. RMHED . 00:42, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn Does not meet any speedy criteria and is pretty clearly not a hoax as a quick google search reveals. Davewild ( talk) 08:10, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn and send to AFD as "possible hoax" is not a speedy criterion (although blatant and obvious hoax is). Stifle ( talk) 09:39, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn Ikip ( talk) 19:04, 18 February 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Overturn - "possible hoax" isn't a speedy deletion criterion. – Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone 20:04, 20 February 2009 (UTC) reply
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.

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