Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kalevala (synopses) (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 keep. Clear consensus not to delete. Whether to re-title can be discussed outside of AfD. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 06:22, 27 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Kalevala (synopses)[edit]

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Of course Kalevala is notable. But this is a synopsis - effectively a plot summary of the work. This seems simply out of scope for Wikipedia. This is pretty much a WP:PLOT (and it is explicitly the exact part of "what Wikipedia is not" in the "Summary-only descriptions of works" example!) for of Kalevala#The_story. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:26, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Finland-related deletion discussions. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:26, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep This is effectively a summary of the work. It is a collection of a large number of different folk poems, with a modern-language telling being 500 pages long: Kalevala suomeksi. The main Kalevala page only goes through everything in a few words and some parts like Lemminkäinen are also not summarized enough compared to everything else on that page. Wikipedia does include larger summaries for works with many characters and complicated turns, for example Inferno (Dante), Purgatorio and Paradiso (Dante) (or just split each chapter/cycle into its own article like Araṇya-Kāṇḍa or General Prologue). One notable thing about these examples is that they all feature a great number of artwork for the individual chapters. The biggest reason for keeping the Kalevala synopses page is that I was going to basically transform this article into a gallery of Kalevala art. I have approximately 50 images prepared and I was about to complete it the following week but now this happened. Most Kalevala art is often incomprehensible even to Finns without a brief summary of the part it is in. So if I were to make a Kalevala in art article, I would have to include most of the summaries of the parts the paintings appear in from here. This article instead would be killing two birds with one stone. I would not be against renaming the article with this reimaging of it in mind, if someone is able to come up with a better name. The main Kalevala article is not fit for showcasing the art, as for example it mentions "Väinämöinen brings trees and life to the barren world." but leaves out the large man felling the great oak. It also has no mention of Väinämöinen literally taking seeds and spreading them. This sparseness repeats for most other parts too. I would have to tell all of the stories in the captions of the images, leading to what I described before. With the synopses, I can just give the name of the work, the artist and the year. I would add a mode=packed gallery with a smallish 160px in size under nearly every song, which looks good and fitting. Example:

Gallery
The Felling of the Great Oak, Joseph Alanen [fi], 1919–1920 Aino By the Sea, Sigfrid Keinänen [fi], 1896 The Forging of the Sampo, Väinö Blomstedt [fi], 1897 Lemminkäinen and the Great Snake, Joseph Alanen, 1919–1920 Lemminkäinen at the Fiery Lake, sketch, Robert Wilhelm Ekman, 1867 Commons additionally lacks about 25 similar works which I'm about to add.

PiercingEyes (talk) 11:52, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

- Galleries are not encyclopedic (WP:NOTGALLERY) and belong on Wikimedia Commons instead. See also WP:GALLERY. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:51, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - You're getting stuck on the word gallery. What I wrote would be the exact opposite of "Photographs or media files with no accompanying text" from link number 1. It would fit perfectly with "In articles that have several images, they are typically placed individually near the relevant text" from link number 2. The two linked rulebooks seem to completely work in my favor, for I don't see anything that wouldn't be certified by them. PiercingEyes (talk) 05:46, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    - Absolutely. The article is no more a gallery than a list of Shakespeare plays, each one's text accompanied by an image, would be a gallery. Of course it isn't any such thing. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:40, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep (and probably rename) per PiercingEyes. The current title is certainly off-putting but some kind of list of artworks and poems is entirely sensible; the notability of the work as a whole is not in question. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:07, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Move to List of runos of Kalevala. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 15:38, 25 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Broadly happy with any suggestion of that sort but perhaps List of Kalevala poems would be better for those who don't speak Finnish. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:14, 25 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This article calls them runos, Kalevala calls them songs. I'd have to check an assortment of English-language sources to see what is the most widely used term. I have no personal preference here. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:19, 25 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Such a name would be less confusing for sure; WP:USEENGLISH is my preference (songs or poems). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:04, 27 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I don't know which, if any, policies this actually violates; AFAICU, not WP:PLOT, given that this isn't the only article on Kalevala, and the main one Kalevala covers the context, background, etc. that WP:PLOT requires. And if we were to merge it into the main article's synopsis section to get around WP:PLOT, the next thing we'd know is someone proposing splitting it into a separate article because it's too much. I think the article is useful, and it would be a pity to lose that content; I'd leave it as it stands, except for possibly a name change (see next point). -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 15:17, 26 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment It isn't perhaps immediately obvious what the article name 'Kalevala (synopses)' means, but then most people will presumably end up there via the main Kalevala article, and in that context it should be clear enough, and I'd leave it as it is. If it were to be changed, then I'd suggest 'Kalevala (synopses of poems)' or words to that effect. I wouldn't have thought 'runo' means anything to non-Finnish-speakers, and for the same reason I'd also edit that term out of the article itself. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 15:17, 26 July 2020 (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.