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Operation: D&D Spring clean

Ok, just thought it would be nice if we could have some centralised discussion regarding my mass nominations. Title shamelessly stolen from Jack. At this time, I have nominated around 30, and around 10 have been nominated by Boz and Shadzar combined- I'm guessing we're gonna need hundreds to cover all the monsters, deities, NPCs, (locations? Minor supplements? Minor modules?) that we have but don't need. Now, there has been a suggestion from Ig8887 that a single mass nom may have been a better idea, but myself, Jéské and Jack have all commented in various places that that is a bad idea- I don't think it is gonna happen, the AfD would just end up being closed, nothing would be achieved. A comment was left on my talk page- see here. Any thoughts on that? Should nominations be slowed to give people time to work on them? Personally, I say no. These have mostly sat with tags for a long, long time. People could have fixed them then. Even now, they have five days, and if they need longer- myself (or maybe another admin- Jéské?) could restore the articles to userspace after they are deleted, and they could be moved back into the article space when appropriately referenced. Anyway- centralised discussion regarding our mass nomming. J Milburn (talk) 19:02, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I would say not. The only shining moment for this set is that Gavin.collins is not nominating them, and for good reason - he invited a indef'd Grawp sock from a case he was involved with to comment on the Brain in a Jar AfD, showing that he didn't even bother to read the page. -Jéské (v^_^v +2 Pen of Editing) 19:12, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
  • While I don't have a problem with deleting most of these, 5 days to look at and evaluate 40 articles is more than a bit tight. Perhaps it is time to let these go through before any more are added. As it stands most will be deleted with a cursory examination at best. - Bilby (talk) 21:51, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
since i participated in this dibocle i guess i should chime in. i see many of these articles unedited and having cleanup tags and no references or only stub article for 6 months. now if something was more detailed than a single paragrhap it should be given time. for these articles i see them all as a way of replacing the need for buying the published materials. don't want to sound like you know who, but there is no need to reproduce everything form the SRD on wikipedia jsut because the license says you can. everything about D&D isn't notable within the game let alone outside of it. i think the majority of these, or at least the ones i nominated or vote on are little more than just an attempt to give every mosnter its own article. thats silly. from what i understand there is a D&D wiki somewhere, and that should be the place for lists of every monster and what not. i don't really like encyclopedias, but if we are gonna have information i prefer it to be decent information and not tidbits of trivia about things, and not about trivial things at that. i jsut don't think many of the current ones have any chance of becoming decent articles as there is little to no information on them at this time. 4th edition could change that, but i dont think it to happen overnight. maybe Tieflings deserve an article now with the controveries of them being in the PHB for 4th edition, but prior they were just a setting specific monster to my knowledge that wasn't even mainstream within the game, so how would anyone outside of the game know about them? i didn't until i played the minis game and got a Tiefling blademaster. so it may stand a chacne of notabiltiy and having its own article, but a siren by any other name is still a siren and really doesn't need its own article for D&D use. well that my 222 cents (inflation considered) and reasoning for my nominations. and i am glad to see some of the useless articles being removed. shadzar-talk 22:09, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
I've seen material from the D&D Wiki and can say w/o hyperbole that I could post information on the Kacheek race sitting on my computer without raising an eyebrow. I suggest against it. -Jéské (v^_^v :L10 Lucario Cleric of Mew) 22:12, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, I second that. I mentioned on the talk page, I believe, about the terrifyingly bad quality of that wiki, like how their article on Eberron was a stub. One of the current campaign settings, and it was a feckin stub. These nonsense articles we have about some random gnomish deity from one supplement have more information. That's not good. Howa0082 (talk) 13:04, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
well then i guess some things jsut don't deserve articles at all then since there isnt a place for them that can be for their specific genre that is as good as wikipedia.org. i never visited the D&D wiki so didn't know, but hoped maybe it was somewhat like here where people provide facts on published material rather than homebrew. that seems more like a fansite than a wiki to include homebrew. sorry for suggesting it then. shadzar-talk 22:58, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Suddenly the cops burst into the clearing, and the Spamshiners knew they were busted. -Jéské (v^_^v :L10 Lucario Cleric of Mew) 23:05, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Actually, I don't know if I've ever nominated an article for deletion - it's just not my style. I think there should be a home for just about everything, in a list if nothing else. Even if I feel something really does need to go, someone else will get to it sooner or later. But I do agree with Bilby, the current pace is a lot of work to keep up with. Maybe take a break until most/all of the current AFDs are settled, and then do maybe 5-10 a week or so. I know that will take a while, but it will be easier for the community as a whole to deal with, and you're not flooding the AFD people with work. It might be a whole lot easier to PROD some of the less notable articles, or simply redirect them - that you could probably do en masse without much complaint. (and if anyone does complain, well then AFD away!) BOZ (talk) 01:38, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Cool. I'd like to point out that my comment was a little off; Spring is three months long. I'd say that the batch queued up at the moment is of a manageable size. I also see that there are a few new ones I've not commented on yet. I believe the ones on now are really, really, low fruit and will mostly go without fuss. The 5-10 a week suggested above is probably on the tame side; I would suggest not nominating too many more while the current crop is being harvested and next week, the same nominators put another batch up - keeping to say the number deleted/redirected out of this batch. Cheers, Jack Merridew 07:56, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm surprised nobody went after these sooner. I posted the above section to a forum I frequent with D&D players on the chance that they can improve the articles on the chopping block or, failing that, comment constructively on the AfDs. -Jéské (v^_^v :L7 Kacheek Defier) 08:27, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Most of these I had not seen before; there are thousands of D&D articles. Cheers, Jack Merridew 10:10, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
  • As an aside from all the comments above. In general I think this is a good idea. I say though lets limit the number of AfDs called at one time to give all participants the chance to either vote or give them chances to improve the articles if needed. Web Warlock (talk) 13:33, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Why don't we just redirect them instead of deleting them.
1. People can go at whatever speed they want, and if an article has potential a normal user can revert and add sourced info without having to recreate the whole page. I think this would also save time and effort.
2. We could create a subpage of this project that lists them alphabetically so their easy to find. I think that would make it easier to prevent recreation in the future as well. You can watch the redirected pages, or just check the related changes of the subpage I think. I think there's a way to watch nonexistant pages on your watchlist too, but that would just be a thousand pages watchlisted just like watching the redirects so related changes or whatever might be the easiest way. The subpage could even link to google news searches (or site:wizards.com monster on google or whatever) for the monster or whatever so people could easily check if they've become notable (probably too much work though).
3. If someone finds a good place or way (bot?) to transwiki them this would make it easy in the future to do so.
4. We could add a link to this discussion in the edit summary, and people wouldn't have to !vote on thousands of different AfD pages. We could also add a template or text on the redirect page explaining that we're trying to improve more important pages or whatever would be an appropriate explanation.
5. Redirect them where? Wherever we decide. We could point them at their respective creature type section or at the main D&D page or whatever.
6. If you really want to get rid of them, you could just delete the bunch of redirects after they've sat for a month or whatever. I think keeping this as in house as possible will also prevent non members from joining in and adding pages that do have potential.
This just seems like the easiest/best way to do it to me. It's a lot of work to get rid of pages that should be gotten rid of, and it will also end up deleting the (very) few that shouldn't be deleted. Maybe some or all of my points are incorrect, but there has to something easier than voting a thousand times at AfD. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 18:00, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
I forgot to mention possible edit wars. If someone reverts something that shouldn't be reverted, hopefully they can be directed here and reasoned with. If not, then you can AfD it. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 18:21, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with redirects. People are gonna resent their work being just casually removed en-masse, apparently without discussion. I have seen such a thing lead to RfCs and AbrCom cases- for instance, the recent television episode stuff was sorta similar. And I think that such redirects would be really poor- a redirect from some unheard of outsider to some section somewhere on outsiders is useless, at best. I also disagree with your idea of keeping this 'in-house'- sure, we're the people most likely to be interested, but that doesn't mean we should invent our own processes and shut our selves off from the rest of Wikipedia. The is the most transparent way of doing things- people can't challenge our methods like this. It also ensures that there is discussion about whether the article could be saved- redirects would be at the whim of a single editor, rather than the two or three minimum who will see an AfD. As I've said earlier, if someone really does want to restore it later, I will happily move a copy of the deleted article to their userspace. I also disagree that this method will remove the good stuff- as I've said, exactly the opposite. This way, the removal is discussed and considered by as many editors as are interested, and not just on the whim of a single editor. We don't all have to comment on them all. I will, and maybe some others will, but there are also AfD regulars who will chip in on discussions, and if not enough people have commented, then it will be relisted, so we can attract attention to it, by bolding it on our list above. J Milburn (talk) 19:03, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I, too, disagree with redirecting most of this sort of stubby stuff. The whole idea of WP:DEADLINE is to not create such articles until there is solid ground for doing so. What has, in fact happened (and by no means only in D&D-land) is articles have been created for every named thing under the Sun (Dungeons & Dragons). Oh, and any idea of keeping this sort of thing in-house smack of WP:OWN. If folks wish to secede from the project, there's Wikia. Have fun. Cheers, Jack Merridew 08:30, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Right, more than half of those nominated so far have been closed as delete, the others are on the verge of closing as delete (other than a couple which will probably be relisted). As such, I am nominating a batch more. J Milburn (talk) 09:33, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

  • Fair enough. I've got no hassles with getting rid of a lot of these, just so long as we have time to check each one out. Thanks for keeping the volume manageable. - Bilby (talk) 09:35, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
    • Agreed - the slower pace is much appreciated. It may frustrate certain individuals, though even then may now see how much work can be involved in saving articles they care about when it seems like most others want to delete it, no? BOZ (talk) 20:47, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
      • Series of distractions prevented me from nominating more than a couple more. I will get around to it, but yeah, going too quickly is not good for anyone. J Milburn (talk) 21:01, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
        • Understood. I may not be in favor of removing articles in general, but when consensus is in favor of it, there's not much I can do about it. BOZ (talk) 21:30, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Requests

More tagging

Gavin Collins has been walking the D&D monsters in alphabetical order adding tags, including some that don't seem even vaguely reasonable (weasel words?) and others that are at the least highly debatable. Given his rate of adding them, I have some doubt as to if he's actually reading the articles. As far as I can tell, he's not skipped any yet, including Beholder and Elf (Dungeons & Dragons).

This isn't a new editing behavior for him. An RfC was filed regarding his editing months ago, and the result seems to be that he's reduced the number of articles he's nominating for deletion. I don't know that there is much to do about this but remove these tags where appropriate. Rray (talk) 22:15, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
The "weasel words" template in particular seems very odd and out of place on a lot of these though. Rray (talk) 22:43, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Yeah, and even more fun, a user Duergarthedwarf is removing them just as quickly. I don't think that's helpful... Lots of these are bogus, some aren't. But removing them all is really not much better. Hobit (talk) 22:57, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
I just left you folks a note on my talk page. I'll leave it to the project folks to sort it out from here. I'm not part of this project. Cheers. Toddst1 (talk) 16:17, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
The Weasel template is very pertinent to some of these articles. Check out the article Sarrukh; it has so many weasel words you will be coughing fur by the time you have finished reading it. It is one of the worst articles I have ever read.--Gavin Collins (talk) 21:46, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi, I put this somewhere else too, but could you please provide exact examples (in this article or elsewhere) where you are seeing these weasel words? I just don't see it (and thus can't fix it). Hobit (talk) 22:23, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Monster of the Week

Hi, all. Given the above tagging discussion, I thought that it would be helpful to do something productive about it rather than what I was doing. So, I've got a proposal. We work on two monsters a week and do as good a job as has been done with Death Knight and related articles in AfD. I'd suggest we find one article that we agree can make it to WP:GA and also pick the next one in alphabetical order and see if we can't meet notability requirements in a clear way for it. If not, we label it for merger into a "minor characters" list and create such a list once we have 10 or so of them so labeled (otherwise the list would look silly). Of course, this will take more than a year, but... Hobit (talk) 21:02, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Things to do for Monster of the Week

  • Create a page that list all the monsters in "work space". Ideally in alphabetic order. (Gavin, I think given that you are managing to tag things this way it might be reasonable to ask you to put together such a list? )
  • Create a page that allows disccsion of what monster to select next for
  • Go to enworld once a week and ask people to see what they can find sources for these two monsters that are non-trivial third party sources. (or some other board, but I'm an enworld person...)
  • Perhaps templates or something else are needed on the talk page to show the status of this "monster of the week" review?

Hobit (talk) 21:02, 18 January 2008 (UTC)


Comments on idea

Thoughts? Hobit (talk) 21:02, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Take your pick from the following lists:
Good luck: you have several years of work ahead of you! --Gavin Collins (talk) 21:52, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
(note: moved your comment down to the comments section just to keep things clear. If you object, please feel free to move back Hobit (talk)
  • Right, but I noticed you were walking some kind of a monster list and I'd like it if you could create a page for this project that uses that list. The ones you cite are missing lots of monsters and have lots of non-monsters. Hobit (talk) 21:58, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Yep, at 2 per week it will take a couple of years. But it will improve things and that's the goal. As noted, your help would be welcome. So hopefully that's several years of work ahead for us. Hobit (talk) 22:24, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
  • My suggestions are
  1. Redirect a vast majority of the articles (at least until their notability can be established, if indeed it can be) to something like Creature type (Dungeons & Dragons), or some suitable section of that article, or maybe to Monster Manual or something like this. Do this now, and then once references are located, a properly sourced article can be written. Keep in mind that primary sources are okay to use to provide references for factual material provided that third party references are used to first establish notability, that you maintain a neutral point of view, and so forth.
  2. When doing such a redirect, make sure that some comment is noted in the edit summary like "redirect to ... pending locating sources for notability" or whatever (something other than just "redirect" or, worse yet, no edit summary of all). Maybe even adding a note on the talk page before doing a redirect might be warranted as well (saying why the redirect is being performed, so at least there some explanation if someone bothers to read it), keeping in mind the collaborative effort that is supposed to be involved in WP. Also, a comment could even be added to the main article page when doing the redirect (using the usual comment tags to do so), again with a brief explanation why the redirect was performed.
  3. Clean up, find third party refs, etc for Creature type (Dungeons & Dragons) first as it's currently under multiple tags.
  4. Concentrate first on the most "important" (i.e. most notable ones I guess) such as Dragon (Dungeons & Dragons), Elf (Dungeons & Dragons), etc. For example, take the article Beholder. In that article, it suggests that the beholder wasn't based on a mythological creature, but was created for D&D itself. I don't know this for sure (although there is some, possibly primary, reference) that would seem to back this up. If so, to me this would suggest notability, provided, of course, that other people have written about it (i.e. third-party references, blah, blah, the usual WP:RS criteria). It's quite likely the vast majority of the creatures that have articles here are not notable, and therefore don't deserve to have an article of their own (but I'd welcome being proved wrong, as should any other editor who doubts their notability).
  5. When you add sources to an article, make sure to actually cite them in some appropriate place in the article, otherwise you're just setting up a situation where another editor is going to add a {{nofootnotes}} tag to the article, and justifiably so.
  6. Avoid using "fannish" language in these articles, overly long plot summaries, miscellaneous game statistics, etc. Keep in mind that you're supposed to be writing for a "general audience", i.e. people who may not be familiar with the intricate details of D&D (or any role-playing game for that matter).

I know you've likely heard all these things before, but I wanted to state them all right here since you asked for comments. --Craw-daddy | T | 15:19, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Thanks! The only part I disagree with is the preemptive merging. I think that will make it harder to clean up later (not to mention be a huge amount of work right off the bat). I suspect the majority of the monsters will end up merged, and that's fine. But I think we've seen through the AfDs that given concerted effort, many monsters can be cleaned up. Hobit (talk) 16:50, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Give me a little bit to digest all of this. I have a good grove on now finishing up the White Dwarf's I have. I was going to next tackle the handful or so other mags I have. Plus, I want to hit the Dragon mags for all the other games. Web Warlock (talk) 15:39, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
We also need to decide what creatures we need to save and what others we do not. For example. No one who has ever played 1st Ed AD&D considers the Flumph an inportant monster in the game, but it is an important creature in teh history of D&D because of how reviled it is and how it became the whipping boy of what was wrong with the Fiend Folio. But given all of that, does it need it's own article?? I don't know. Plus we run into the issue of copyrights and IP. We are not really going to find too much third party info on Mind Flayers because Wizards never released them under the OGL. Web Warlock (talk) 16:18, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Mind flayer will actually be pretty easy I'm guessing. There are almost certainly "ecology of" articles and lots of pre-SRD articles on it. They certainly play a significant role in nethack. But I agree with your major points. Hobit (talk) 16:49, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
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