Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Erekosë (2nd nomination)

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

The result was redirect‎ to Eternal Champion. Discussion and analysis of the sources supports the conclusion that there is insufficient coverage of Erekosë qua Erekosë to justify a standalone article. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 02:20, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Erekosë

AfDs for this article:

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Non-notable book character. This appears to be an article fit for Fandom, not Wikipedia. The previous AfD (from 2018) yielded a few book sources but to me this does not appear sufficient for WP:GNG, as they focus on the books rather than the character. All references in the article are to the book series the character appears in. – Muboshgu (talk) 02:01, 14 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Fictional elements, Science fiction and fantasy, and Literature. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 17:53, 14 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Eternal Champion - as with 5 years ago, it does not cite any secondary sources and no improvements have been made. This WP:OR and WP:ALLPLOT article is unencyclopedic. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 18:40, 14 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect There are no secondary sources for this character. QuicoleJR (talk) 04:51, 15 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's blatant nonsense. this is secondary, just not reliable. I just picked it as the first non-Wikipedia ghit for the character name to illustrate the fallacy of broad, universal pronouncements such as this. Jclemens (talk) 06:10, 15 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
FANDOM is such a bad source I consider it nonexistent, but the sources you gave in the last AFD convince me here. QuicoleJR (talk) 15:58, 15 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as with 5 years ago, WP:NEXIST has been met. The fact that noone bothered to incorporate the sources illustrated in the last AFD is not an argument against keeping it. Jclemens (talk) 06:10, 15 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I said they're insufficient for notability, imho, not that the current state of the article is the reason to delete it. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:29, 15 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What sources? Can you link them? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:56, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per sources provided by Jclemens 5 years ago. QuicoleJR (talk) 15:59, 15 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per above. Notable and sourced. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:24, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to The Eternal Champion (novel). That's a lot of "keeps" above with no source analysis. Since the article cites no reliable, secondary sources, let's look back to the last AfD. All sources cited there discuss Erekosë in the context of the Eternal Champion novel, therefore we should cover Erekosë proportionately in our article on the topic. In doi:10.1007/978-1-137-07657-1_11, Erekosë is only mentioned in context of plot, with no analysis specific to the character, independent from plot context. czar 21:12, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Czar: Analysis specific to Erekosë has been found as discussed below. Daranios (talk) 10:39, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep WP:NEXIST Lightburst (talk) 04:29, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Can we have source analysis.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spartaz ^Humbug! 07:59, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - There are 10 references on the page, but these are all stories by Michael Moorcock in the Eternal Champion series. The information drawn from these falls short of WP:NOTPLOT which states that Wikipedia treats creative works ... in an encyclopedic manner, discussing the development, design, reception, significance, and influence of works in addition to concise summaries of those works. The reference to these is plot and not encyclopaedic discussion. They are essentially to be discounted as primary sources. So what we have left at this time are the sources raised in the previous AfD. Two of these were found, but the suggestion is that this was a non exhaustive list. If there are more, we should consider them. However, looking at these two we have:
Scroggins, Mark (23 December 2015). Michael Moorcock: Fiction, Fantasy and the World's Pain. McFarland. ISBN 978-1-4766-2417-4.
Hoey, Michael (2000). "Disguising Doom: A Study of the Linguistic Features of Audience Manipulation in Michael Moorcock's The Eternal Champion". Imagining Apocalypse: Studies in Cultural Crisis. Palgrave Macmillan UK: 151–165. doi:10.1007/978-1-137-07657-1_11.

So Scroggins (2015) mentions the subject throughout. He says, in the introduction,

“he cleverly interwove the otherwise disparate worlds and quests of a whole stable of heroes: Urlik, Erekosë (the Eternal Champion), Corum Jhaelen ...

That is Erekosë is identified up front with the Eternal Champion, although it clearly is more involved than that. Yet the nuance is about plot. What the author does not do is to look at Erekosë and discuss the character as a concept, discussing development, design, reception, significane or influence. Rather it is the concept of the Eternal Champion that gains such treatment. Mentions of Erekosë in this work are all about the specific plot element. An example:

“John Daker has not merely gone to bed John Daker and awoken Erekosë, but—as The Eternal Champion’s sequel Phoenix in Obsidian will demonstrate more explicitly—has awoken to his own destiny as the self-conscious embodiment of the Eternal Champion, the occupier of that subject-position who is able to recall his own previous incarnations, and to feel the weight of the endless battles he is constantly reborn to fight.”

So here Erekosë, along with John Daker, is the name of the character, and the concept being discussed is the Eternal Champion.

What then of (Hoey, 2000)? Hoey's abstract begins:

Michael Moorcock’s The Eternal Champion (1970) has a simple enough plot. Humans on a parallel Earth call to their aid an eternal champion, Erekosë, to help them rid the world of the Evil Ones, the Eldren

The title of the paper is indicative of the content. The paper is discussing the writing of Moorcock, using the concept and sequence of the Eternal Champion as its source material. That Erekosë is the name of the champion is incidental to the thesis of the paper, and, indeed the context of the chosen source material. Per czar, there is no analysis of the specific character of Erekosë here. The mentions are again specifically about plot.

So on this source analysis, I think we are left with nothing. A redirect to Eternal Champion would clearly be sensible, but I see nothing to indicate a keep. Before posting that as a !vote, I would ask if there are any other sources we should be considering, as Jclemens inidicated the posted sources were not exhaustive. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 14:40, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Sirfurboy: From the pages I can see in Google Books I agree with the analysis on the book. From the two first pages I can see of the paper I have to disagree: Both the title and the content do not refer to Moorcock's concept of the Eternal Champion, but rather the specific novel The Eternal Champion and its main character. The paper acknowledges that Erekosë is one incarnation of the Eternal Champion, but that's it. Everything else is specific to the Erekosë from that one book. Like him being a metaphor for the nuclear apocalypse. Daranios (talk) 19:05, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

(Hoey, 2000) is a chapter in Imagining Apocalypse, which you can borrow from Open Library here: [1]. It is at page 151. The abstract just reproduces the start of the chapter and the chapter itself is definitely a study of Moorcock's writing technique using a large data corpus to analyse linguistics. On that score I stand by what I said, that the paper is not about Erekosë. It is about Moorcock's writing technique. However, on page 152, we read:

My interest in this book, however, lies elsewhere, namely in how Moorcock succeeds in portraying a hero who is unremittingly destructive and commits two great acts of genocide and yet does not turn into a villain.

And herein lies a small amount of analysis that is also mirrored in your Black Gate source. Because the reason that Hoey is looking at this book is because, in the character of Erekosë, there is an incarnation of the eternal champion who commits two genocides and yet is not treated as evil. As you say, it is this incarnation that interests Hoey. He is interested in how this is carried off linguistically, but it is relevant to the thesis that Erekosë has done something we would generally be inclined to disapprove of (genocide of the human race). The character's actions are important to his choice of subject material in conducting the analysis. So, to run this through GNG, we have here and below two reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject. The question is whether they reach the threshold of significance. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material. so Hoey is relevant. Yet we are still left with the question as to whether we can write an article that discusses the development, design, reception, significance, and influence of works in addition to concise summaries of those works. These sources are not really enough for that. We have a character and any page on the character is going to be almost all plot, even with these sources. Almost, but not entirely. I expect that Erekosë would better be dealt with on the page of the Eternal Champion, which, as you say, is in poor shape. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 20:08, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Sirfurboy: In general I agree. One additional piece of analysis rather than plot summary in Hoey is the embodiment of real-world contemporary fears of a nuclear apocalypse in the universal destroyer Erekosë with his radioactive sword. I expect all analysis taken together might be enough to produce an article on Erekosë beyond stub-length (as usual balanced by a reasonable amount of plot summary + publication history). I am unsure if that would be better treated wholly within the Eternal Champion article or not, so I will refrain from !voting here and let others decide. Daranios (talk) 11:08, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, my lack of !vote up to this point also reflects my own uncertainty. I think my preferred outcome is a redirect with Eternal Champion. I think that places the information we have within a context it can be encyclopaedically discussed. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 17:37, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Another secondary source is the Black Gate article Erekosë and Me, which has both plot summary and commentary on this specific incarnation of the Eternal Champion. I could see this information used either in our separate article here or the Eternal Champion overview article, which is not in great shape. Daranios (talk) 19:05, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That WordPress blog does not show any hallmarks of source reliability. czar 08:16, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Czar: Black Gate is not a blog but a fantasy magazine covering both fiction and non-fiction, according to the The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy (and the Wikipedia article). Daranios (talk) 09:48, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Its former incarnation as a print magazine can be judged on its own merits, but its current incarnation is no different from a personal blog in lacking hallmarks of reliability: a site fact-checking policy, a masthead of professional editors, recognition by peers as reliable for statements of fact. czar 03:31, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Eternal Champion (which as a parent article has huge plot problems itself) for WP:ALLPLOT. Notability (claimed or real) is irrelevant if this topic wasn't, isn't and likely won't be covered encyclopedicly here. – sgeureka ^t•c 08:07, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Sgeureka: Isn't that exactly WP:NOEFFORT, an argument to avoid in a deletion discussion? Anyway, now that secondary sources with some non-plot information have been identified, you are very welcome to just fix the problem that it likely won't be covered encyclopedicly here. Daranios (talk) 10:39, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No, it's the argument that if you remove all unencyclopedic content as per WP:NOTPLOT/WP:ALLPLOT, which in this case means removing everything, you may as well redirect the article until someone comes along who actually wants to add something encyclopedic. – sgeureka ^t•c 13:43, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

But if your argument is based on WP:ALLPLOT, the guidance this essay gives us to deal with such a "bad article" which "little more than a synopsis of the plot" is not to remove all content. It rather says that it should "be improved to provide more balanced coverage", because "A good encyclopedia article about a work of fiction will almost always include a brief synopsis of the major points of the plot". So the plot summary here may need trimming, but not wholesale deletion. Also, I think the publication history should be preserved. Daranios (talk) 14:05, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To be clear, a close as redirect will preserve publication history, and that history can, of course, be referred to by any editor in the future, either on this page or, by attributed copywithin, on another page. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 16:18, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep 1, 2, 3. 𝕱𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖎𝖆 (talk) 16:14, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
These sources only underscore the above source analysis, that Erekose as a concept is only discussed within context of Moorcock's oeuvre (ref 1) or the Eternal Champion cycle (ref 2) but not independently as the subject of analysis. Ref 3 is straight plot analysis, in which Erekose is incidental. These sources support a redirect rather than a dedicated article for the character. czar 08:13, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree with your assessment of the sources. There is discussion of this character specifically and how he differs from the other incarnations of the Eternal Champion in the other 2 sources. "Erekose himself remains the only avatar of the Eternal Champion actually conscious of his enforced desitny..." (pp. 492-3)
Yes, I said that Ref 2 discusses Erekose within context of the Eternal Champion cycle. It's content that one would expect to find within the parent article on the Eternal Champion novel or cycle. It would need wider and more coverage specific to the character to warrant a summary style split-out. czar 03:34, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect. I am not unsympathetic to the claims this topic may be notable, but we had years for someone to try to start a section on analysis/reception. Having done so for many articles I care about, well, the ball is in the court of keepers, b/c so far I see here and it the prior AfD vagues claims that this topic is discussed in source A, B and C. I glanced and I see plot summaries. Sure, it was just a glance. Maybe there is analysis there. If so, take a bit of time and add few sentences of analysis to this article and ping me and I'll gladly vote keep. Until that happens, we have a plot summary that does not merit being kept outside of a redirect. Again, I'd prefer to see this rescued, but I have nor time nor will to do it myself here (I just expanded the relevant section in G'Kar and my time to edit Wiki today has just run out). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:00, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Eternal Champion. I have reviewed the sources provided here, and there are decently reliable sources that have substantive literary analysis in them. However, the analyses I have seen have to do with either the narrative arc of Moorcock's books or with the arc of the Eternal Champion as a character; and are thus better handled at those articles. Covering fictional subjects in an encyclopedic manner does not mean dredging up every fragment that mentions them and sticking them into an article; it means summarizing the analyses at logical titles, which can certainly include articles about specific fictional characters, but does not in this case. Vanamonde (Talk) 15:06, 29 July 2023 (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.