Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Monsters in 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. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:29, 29 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Monsters in Dungeons & Dragons[edit]

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I believe this page should be deleted because no clear consensus has been formed on what its purpose should be. It has numerous issues that have persisted over the years, and a variety of editors have created conflicting and confusing edits and redirects. In addition, this page is highly repetitive with numerous other pages that list and discuss D&D monsters in various contexts.

I originally wrote this page to be a holistic explanation of D&D monsters--an attempt to create a high-level overview. As an example, the page currently includes some discussion of the belief that monster-fighting is itself "sociopathic." This discussion is not about any specific monster per se, but rather the concept of fighting monsters to gain experience. At the time I created the page, this discussion seemed noteworthy but did not clearly fit in existing pages.

However, it is clear that the D&D pages are organized differently, and this page does not fit into the overall D&D project. This page has created more problems than it has solved, and I believe its existence lowers the quality and clarity of all D&D pages. The talk page for this article is, in my view, a record of this article's confused purpose, the errors it's generated, etc.

Attempts have been made to fix these problems through edits, but this has resulted in stagnant editor conflicts while the article itself has only gotten worse--less clarity of purpose, more confusing edits, etc. So I propose deleting outright.

My rationale in bullet point:

This page is redundant and harmful to the overall D&D project
It was not created by consensus or by the D&D project to solve any particular problems; rather, it was created by one editor (me) who now thinks it has done more harm than good
The problems with this page are uncontroversial: it has a variety of issue tags that have not been contested nor addressed
Failure to achieve clarity/consensus on the page purpose has made it a magnet for WP:LISTCRUFT
Attempts to fix through editing and discussion have failed. Anything salvageable would be better achieved through WP:BLOWITUP

Geethree (talk) 19:20, 22 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2023 May 22. —^{cyberbot I}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 19:32, 22 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep While there are certainly things I don't like about this article, such as the maintenance tags, the topic is clearly notable and fixable problems are not a reason for deletion. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 19:33, 22 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 19:52, 22 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Like Pppery I think the topic is clearly notable and very relevant. I does have issues, but that is not a reason for deletion as they can be solved by normal editing - although that editing will involve a lot of work. I think it is far from perfect, but still a lot better than having no treatment of this topic, so I do not at all think it hurts the project. I did not percieve a stagnant edit conflict, but I am sorry if I did generate that impression when I undid a large good faith trimming effort, because I have thought then and still think now that useful content had been cut out together with overly detailed content. The current state is to a significant degree a result of a great number of decisions over a number of years not to have a number of sub-topic articles, leading to cover them here as the parent topic. I still think this article can work fine in a two-partite way which we more or less already have in place: A general discussion of the topic (currently headings 1-3) and a collection of relevant monsters which are yet not notable enough for a stand-alone article and do not have a more fitting place (currently heading 4-6). Some secondary source to help improve both parts have already been collected. Daranios (talk) 20:02, 22 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Science fiction and fantasy and Games. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 20:17, 22 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Deletion is not a substitute for discussion, and this does not address the amount of work that has gone into making this whole topic less bad over the past decade. Look at "what links here" and you begin to see this is not a typical article, or even a typical list article. Jclemens (talk) 21:43, 22 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, but I would not be averse to creating a project-space draft alternative to propose for substitution for the current content. BD2412 T 03:57, 23 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per all the comments above - no problems here are unsurmountable. BOZ (talk) 04:35, 23 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep: Agreed with all editors involved. CastJared (talk) 08:30, 23 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Per WP:NOTCLEANUP. This article needs heavy removal of plotcruft, especially of minor monsters. But the subject of D&D's monsters is notable overall and has been discussed in reliable sources. I don't see the benefit of deletion here. Sorry, but "this page could be fixed but I'm too lazy to" is not a convincing argument, stop kicking the can down the road. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 13:48, 23 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep This feels like ownership behavior ("it was created by one editor (me)"). I think many of this article's issues stem from it being a target for merged content from other deleted articles. But in general, this type of conversation on a scope & structure should have started at either the article's talk page or at the relevant project talk page (echoing above that AfD shouldn't be used to trigger cleanup).Sariel Xilo (talk) 15:31, 23 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Sariel Xilo: In fairness, such a discussion had been started at Talk:Monsters in Dungeons & Dragons#Cruft removal, it just stagnated after not producing a solution equally accepted by everyone, or something like that. Daranios (talk) 19:43, 23 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't intend to claim ownership and I apologize if it came off that way. Rather, I wanted to add context that this page did not originate as a community project, was not intended to solve a consensus problem or gap, etc. I do still believe it would be better to start over and establish a stronger, more clear foundation, but I am happy to defer to consensus. It's clear my approach is a distinct minority. Geethree (talk) 16:10, 24 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Due to multiple deletions/mergers/redirects from a number of other articles and lists, this current article is certainly a complete hodge-podge mess. But, the notability of the topic itself is pretty clear. And I don't believe this is a case where a WP:TNT argument is justified, since most of the actual cleanup can be done simply by deleting a lot of the unsourced or non-notable lists that are scattered throughout it. Just for example, it seems like when the old Fiend (Dungeons & Dragons) article was merged into this one, it was simply copied and pasted over in its entirety, resulting in a random list of non-notable creatures with no non-primary sources appearing in the middle of the article - removing things like that is pretty simple, and would go a long way to improving the article to decent shape. Rorshacma (talk) 18:17, 23 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep (cleanup): I think the original idea of an article as a high-level overview is a good one. Needs edits to better fit the lede and purpose but that can be done.SomeoneDreaming (talk) 23:15, 23 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Keep. It seems that, as others noted, this needs cleanup and de-cruftigying from some too inclusive mergers in the past. But why blow it up? The topic was and is notable, isn't it?
_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 13:16, 29 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. There might be work to be done, but the topic is notable and this is hardly WP:TNT material. /Julle (talk) 21:26, 29 May 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.