Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cyclops (Dungeons & Dragons)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Keep as this seems enough to close (NAC). SwisterTwister talk 22:55, 25 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Cyclops (Dungeons & Dragons)

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All of the references given here are primary sources— none of them provide "coverage" or "discussion" of the role playing game "D&D" cyclops via a secondary source. This is a classic example of a character from a film or a video game not warranting a standalone article because they are not notable independent of their film/ game, though they may be mentioned many places (somewhat like the WP:Pokémon test issue). If not deleted outright, this article could also be merged into the already extant article on the Greek cyclops. KDS4444^Talk 03:48, 19 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. Everymorning (talk) 03:58, 19 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The Pathfinder and "for dummies" sources are secondary, and thus the WP:GNG is met. If this were merged back into Cyclops proper, it would provide undue weight on elements not relevant to the mythological creature, but appropriate for its depiction in games. If there were to be a merger or a change in focus, it might be more appropriate to treat this as an "in popular culture" article and incorporate game appearances from non-role-playing games. Jclemens (talk) 06:43, 19 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. No independent, secondary, or relaible to even remotely establish that the DnD cyclops has some sort of particularly notability as an independent topic. A minimalist reference should (maybe?) be added to the main Cyclops article, but I question if that is even worthwhile, given that the cyclops has appeared in numerous different works and media pertaining to fantasy and mythology, and Wikipedia is not the place to create an article about where every fictional creature or topic intersects with every game, comic book, movie, novel, or whathaveyou. Further, pretty much every last word of content seems to be summary of material found in rulebooks for these games. This is just not encyclopedic content in any reasonable sense. I'm sure this can find a home on a wikia somewhere (indeed, I'd be surprised if it's not on a dozen), but for Wikipedia? Sorry, no. Note also that the image in the infobox is pretty much without doubt a WP:COPYVIO that is not allowed under our policy exceptions, so someone should look at that as well.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Snow Rise (talk • contribs)
Keep per Jclemens, or merge. BOZ (talk) 14:29, 19 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Jclemens source discussion. WP:GNG is met. --Mark viking (talk) 20:14, 19 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Inquiry: BOZ, Mark viking, Jclemens, do me a favour and try to explain this position to me, because I'm having a hard time seeing it here. Are you saying that you think one "for dummies" manual is a high-enough quality WP:reliable source to establish the general encylopedic notability of the cyclops in the dungeons and dragons context? Because let's say we grant this source all benefit of assumption that it meets WP:RS standards (I suppose we could ask WP:RSN). There's still the matter that all it sources is the following content:

"The cyclops impaler was ranked tenth among the ten best mid-level 4th Edition monsters by the authors of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition For Dummies. The authors described the cyclopses as 'one-eyed giants from the Feywild that often serve more powerful masters,' with the impaler having 'all kinds of ranged powers that make it a great monster to put at the back of a band of other, more melee-oriented creatures" since "the cyclopes impalers hurl spears and use their evil eye and impaling volley powers to harass the heroes from a distance'."

That's it; all of the additional sources are clearly primary and the material they support violations of WP:NOT(DND)MANUAL including those Pathfinder manuals which are clearly not providing independent subjective analysis of the topic, but are in fact just replicating the same market as the original manuals which make up all of the rest of the sourcing here. That's to say nothing of the outright WP:COPYVIO content. All of that has to go--the absence of anything encyclopedic to say at this juncture doesn't mean we fill the void with WP:FANCRUFT not sourced to independent or reliable sources or outright violating our non-free content policies. So the question here seems to boil down to: do you see an article as warranted for the sake of having a brief stub that says that the Cyclops (of DnD context) was briefly mentioned in a "four dummies" manual about DnD? I gotta tell you guys, that's a tough sell. Snow ^{let's rap} 04:13, 20 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

COPYVIO is a serious charge. Please substantiate it, so we can fix it if it exists, or withdraw it as reasonable but unfounded. That is, I agree that it SOUNDS like parts of the article, specifically the original creation, may have been lifted from somewhere, but I haven't been able to find where. I googled and found this, which is 2 years later than the 2006 creation of this article, and appears to rely on it. I have no idea whether the article itself was copied from somewhere else, but I do not recognize it if it was. Mind you, my D&D knowledge is decades out of date, so I'm far from an authority on it.
My personal view is that each "edition" of D&D is its own separate game, because characters and settings cannot be used seamlessly with each other. If you get a new edition of Monopoly, you can use the new board with your old pieces and money... not so with D&D. Thus, we have about three different TSR-published games, three separate WotC-published games, and one Paizo. No matter how you slice it, they can't all be primary--others are necessarily derivative, and while WotC is clearly a successor in interest to TSR, they are equally clearly not the same company, and two separate companies cannot both be the author of a game for primary vs. secondary concerns. Thus, your question isn't germane, as I find no less than FIVE secondary sources, not simply the 'for dummies' one. I highlight that because I don't have to explain it to people who aren't familiar with the 'family tree' of D&D-like games. Jclemens (talk) 07:23, 20 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The copyvio alluded to is the non-free image, clearly ripped from one of these products listed here, if not another entirely. The rest of the content is presumably not straight copyvio text, although from the way the content is presented, it is almost certainly meant to be closely parallel the format and purpose of what can only be a game manual (again, exactly the kind of content prohibited against in WP:NOTMANUAL)....which is is why it all sourced to game manuals.

As to the other issue, you'll have have to be more specific if you want me to know which five of these sources can possibly be considered secondary, let alone qualify for WP:RS for establishing the encyclopedic, independent notability. I honestly don't see a thing that qualifies. Again, I suppose we could request an WP:RSN analysis. Snow ^{let's rap} 07:44, 20 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Surely you've been around long enough to understand fair use, and see that the image is appropriately tagged? Please confirm that you understand this. Jclemens (talk) 15:20, 20 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Throwing on a fair use tag is not a magic talisman (pun intended in this context) which automatically makes a copyviolation ok; en.wikipedia in particular has extremely high barriers to the use of non-free images. So do you understand fair use, as it means on this project and not as just a general concept. Because, per WP:NFC guidelines: "All non-free images must meet each non-free content criterion." And WP:NFCCP8 and WP:NFCCP2 are both clearly violated here. Under criteria 8, "Non-free content is used only if its presence would significantly increase readers' understanding of the article topic, and its omission would be detrimental to that understanding." Are you trying to tell me that the picture in question is absolutely vital to understanding this topic and that there will be some concept discussed in the prose that our readers could not get their minds around otherwise?.

Even more concerning in this case is criteria 2: "Non-free content is not used in a manner that is likely to replace the original market role of the original copyrighted material. Non-free images are meant to be used sparingly, for encyclopedically significant topics, where the image might be necessary to understand the analysis and commentary reported from our secondary sources. What has happened here is that someone went through and made hundreds upon hundreds of articles replicating the content of various entries of Dungeons and Dragons gaming books concerned with their fictional monsters, and then pulled the images out of those entries and stuck them in as well, putting them in exactly the role they are utilized in, in a commercial context. That is unambiguously a copyviolation of the most blatant, obvious sort. Sorry, but we regularly delete many other images that are of massive value to the readers of the articles they are in because they do not meet out non-free content guidelines; this image fails two and its in an article that is itself a pretty clear WP:NOTAMANUAL violation itself. NFC is definitely flunked for this image. Snow ^{let's rap} 20:35, 20 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Now you are being ridiculous, if you genuinely think that image damages the market rights or monetary position of the copyright holder. #8 is a perennially debated criteria, I grant, but invoking #2 in such a manner demonstrates an unequivocally fringe view of NFCC. If someone were to print Wikipedia pages, bind them, and try to sell them as a "monster manual" replacement, they would not be entitled to use the images as fair use, so NFCC #2 cannot apply.

But what's MORE important than whether or not we agree on how NFCC might apply to the image used in the article, is that you have just admitted you never had any suspicion of the article itself being a COPYVIO, but yet you threw that term in to an AfD. Falsely conflating issues that may or may not apply to an image to the deletion discussion of the article in which that image appears... what is that? Gaming the system? Casting aspersions? However you slice it, raising the issue was simply not appropriate. Jclemens (talk) 03:53, 21 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A) Before you start making comments that use language like "gaming the system" and the like, consider that those are strong words usually only reserved for concerted WP:Disruption, not my simply citing policy and my opinion of it. That's considered a WP:Personal attack on this project if you can't provide explicit examples of a person violating a behavioural guideline. At the very least a deeply perplexing and troubling inability to WP:AGF. So let's back this away from the personal and actually look at the issues. You might want to especially reconsider your words after you go back reread through this thread and see that I made clear from my very first post that the material I was talking about with regard to copyviolation was the image. You misinterpreted what I said in my second post here, and assumed I was suggesting that the prose section was a direct copyright (even though, if you look closely you will see that I also addressed that already too) and then when I explicitly went through the trouble of making that point explicitly clear to you, so we'd be on the same page, you use that as some sort of launching point to attack me for supposedly trying to manipulate you? Believe friend, I choose my words very carefully on this project and for maximum clarity and specificity as to what I am talking about. I'm not trying to "slip one past you" (how would that even work?) so please calm down.

B) Now, getting back to the actual issues... Discussing which amount of material can and cannot be retained in light of our content policies is a regular and basic part of the RfC analysis process. As to WP:NFCI2, at the risk of raising your ire again, I'm just going to say that your stance here (that using this image in this way cannot be construed as a violation of "respect for commercial opportunity"--as a general concept and especially under our policies) suggests that your understanding of the relevant common law on the matter is limited. And anyway, this is only one of many reasons we have placed strong limits on "fair use" arguments on Wikipedia. Our WP:NFC policy is clear: the image must clearly pass each test, not just the ones you feel you can make a good argument for. And never did I say that this image was the only content that needs to go for inconsistency with basic policy. Once again, if you look above, you'll see that I note that basically not even a stub's-worth of content is presently sourced to anything that approaches an WP:RS.

C) That's the sum total of my perspective on this. I'm going to leave it at that for the present time, as the climate here is feeling, frankly, a little WP:BATTLEGROUND and anyway, I think the main issues are all a matter of record; anyone further responding can take a good look at the article and the sources and decide which of us is calling this correctly with regard to policy. If response remains low in the coming days, we can relist and/or post a request on WP:RSN. Snow ^{let's rap} 06:14, 21 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per Jclemens. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 07:52, 23 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.