Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/KH-13

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 no consensus. Black Kite (t) (c) 18:13, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

KH-13[edit]

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Article is entirely conjectural and consists of OR and irrelevant information. None of the references provided contain any mention of "KH-13". G W… 14:51, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 23:52, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Technology-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 23:52, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. This is a clear violation of WP:CRYSTAL. There doesn't appear to be anything salvageable from the article. Parsecboy (talk) 01:35, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Topic is notable, references are available; article should be salvageable. Hawkeye7 (talk) 10:20, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't believe it is either notable or salvageable. 8X or whatever they ended up calling it is notable and should have its own article, Misty is notable and has its own article. I fail to see how an article which only covers speculative identifications of unrelated reconnaissance satellites which may or may not be related to the KH series (which stopped at 11), can be considered notable. --G W… 00:39, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:00, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Despite the name being unofficial it is the one still being used in books. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 17:08, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Of the first ten results, seven are fictional works. This book has a brief paragraph of completely conjectural material; this one doesn't even have a complete sentence in reference to the satellite, and this one isn't viewable. The rest of the results don't improve on this pattern. The name might well be used in dozens of novels, but there isn't anything here to meet the requirements of WP:V. Parsecboy (talk) 17:55, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't matter if the source is fiction, or speculation in books on spy hardware. Even if the concept was entirely fiction, we have articles on characters from movies and books that never existed in real life. See, for example, Quidditch. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 18:00, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That totally misses the point. How exactly does a novel qualify as a WP:RS? Parsecboy (talk) 18:05, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We use books and movies as the source for every plot summary in Wikipedia, thats how fiction works. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 18:07, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Those are perfectly fine, because they are sourcing themselves. Fiction cannot be used to cite real things. Parsecboy (talk) 18:14, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

None are used as a source in the article, and yes fiction belongs in the article too just as Quidditch or any other plot device in fiction is in articles. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 18:20, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a fictional plot device. It is an alleged satellite program. Fictional works cannot verify anything about this satellite program. They are therefore irrelevant to this discussion. You might as well start using Red Storm Rising to prove that the F-19 was a real super-sonic fighter and not just a cover for the F-117. Parsecboy (talk) 18:26, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Bring in others if you disagree ... its all moot and silly to argue over, since none are used as references for technical aspects as you are suggesting in your strawman fallacy argument. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 18:32, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't say they're being used as references in the article, I said you're attempting to use them to satisfy the article's verifiability requirement, something they simply cannot do. Speculative works are just as unusable. Parsecboy (talk) 18:42, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Fictional references never WP:V real-world claims. --j⚛e decker ^talk 20:38, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Richard, setting aside the real-world satellites, if you believe the article should cover "KH-13" satellites solely based on their portrayal in fiction, I would contend that in that context they are completely devoid of notability. Yes, we have an article on Quidditch, but because it has a major role in a series of very well known books, and has attracted real world attention. We do not have an article on every character from, to use an example picked randomly from the English novels category, The Coma by Alex Garland, since the book is obscure (I for one had never heard of it before I picked it from the category), and hence the fictional content within it is even less noteworthy. Neither of the books mentioned in the KH-13 article at the moment even seem to have articles of their own. --G W… 21:02, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Sources are full of unreliable conjecture. Binksternet (talk) 19:35, 12 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I grant there is reasonable contention about the appropriate name of this article, but the Winning the War: Advanced Weapons, Strategies, and Concepts for ... - Page 46, is non-fiction statement alleging to make a non-conjectural statement, just to pick a single exampe I have no reason to beieve it does not qualify as an RS. Now, should some of the conjectural material be cut out of the article? Of course. Should the article be renamed? Possibly. But delete? No. --j⚛e decker ^talk 20:04, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- If you remove the conjectual and speculative information, you will be left with half a paragraph of text about the 8X programme. Nothing more. --G W… 20:19, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - What Wikipedia policy (WP:DEL#REASON) do you believe suggests that that is a criteria for deletion? I don't believe that it is, but if I'm wrong, I'm happy to be corrected. Instead, the usual solution for small articles like that is to mark them as a WP:STUB or merge them with another article and redirect (see WP:SIZERULE.) That's one source, Darling and Darling [1] might contribute another sentence or two, and who knows what might come down the road in the future. Now, if you'd rather have this listed under 8X, I got absolutely no problem with that, although I think a redirect would be in order. --j⚛e decker ^talk 20:35, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    - A stub is defined as being "not so short as to provide no useful information". I feel that cutting away non-conjectural information would leave this article in such a state. If you are confident that you can provide enough information to make it useful, then please edit the article and do so. The article should be moved to Enhanced Imaging System, which was the correct name for the programme which grew out of 8X. If these two concerns are met, I will happily withdraw the nomination. --G W… 20:48, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      - I guess we disagree about what's useful, then. Even the information that there are these names, that they refer to spy satellites, that they've successfully launched, and have highly elliptical orbits (I think, having come into this AfD blind, that I've seen RS for those statements without having looked hard) is enough to be a useful stub, you should see some of the sportspersons stubs I've sourced in the past month. ;) Where we do agree, I'll guess, is that material about facts can not be sourced based on fictional representations (save for statements like "such and such appears as a notable element of this fictional work"~~, but I don't think that's enormously relevant here.~~) Statements based only on those can be deleted from the article immediately, and probably should be. The reported sightings section sounds like (and I haven't looked) it might be a harder question, but I say that without having dug into it. Of course, if the result of this AfD is keep, I'll happily participate (save for August, where I'm pretty much off in Greenland all month) in the process of chucking the more contentious material from the article, but the fictionally-sourced stuff should (IMHO) be gone yesterday. --j⚛e decker ^talk 02:15, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        Correction: Looking at the article again, I don't see where fiction is used to source anything except "this is used as a plot device in fiction.", which is a perfectly valid sort of use. --j⚛e decker ^talk 02:24, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep There is no doubt that the designation KH-13, whether official or not, for a certain type of US spy satellite has been sufficiently covered by wp:reliable source to make it wikinotable. What those sources disagree about is the details of this program. Those divergences should be reflected in the wikipedia article. Compare with Aurora (aircraft), wether it has been buit or not, when, experimental or operational, if it is still active or abandonned, etc. ^walk victor falk^talk 10:02, 17 July 2010 (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.