Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Next War (board game)

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. Withdrawn by nominator with no opposing delete votes. (non-admin closure) Natg 19 (talk) 00:24, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Next War (board game)[edit]

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Did not pass WP:GNG or WP:SIGCOV. Coverage from BGG does not make it notable, not to mention that BGG is not WP:RS. SunDawn (talk) 07:40, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Games-related deletion discussions. SunDawn (talk) 07:40, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

~~Weak delete~~. I found an interesting mention in passing here: "When Dunnigan’s huge commercial wargame The Next War came out in July 1978, the defense contractor BDM took notice and hired the game’s developer, Mark Herman. So began a chain of events that would lead commercial wargaming techniques into the heart of the U.S. defense establishment". But this is not WP:SIGCOV, and being sourced to an email does not bode well for finding more. At best, the game could be mentioned somewhere where this fact is relevant (wargame?) and then this could be redirected there. (Note I am not suggesting merge and redirect now since this fact I found is not mentioned in the article which is just unreferenced fancruft description of this product). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:06, 21 March 2021 (UTC) PS. Changed to weak delete per sources found below, the odds are they provide sigcov but this needs to be verified, we can't just assume that they are based on tables of contents. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:44, 22 March 2021 (UTC) PS. Changed to abstain given the further arguments, but I am not comfortable voting keep without being able to verify myself that the sources (that I think nobody here was...) are indeed in-depth. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:43, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:07, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The game was influential as noted above and in sources such as On Wargaming – How Wargames Have Shaped History and how They May Shape the Future. It was naturally reviewed and discussed in the relevant pre-Internet journals such as Fire & Movement and so it's just another case of WP:NEXIST. Our policy WP:ATD therefore applies, "If editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page." Andrew🐉(talk) 11:57, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Andrew Davidson, Guinness323, Sadly, I can't even verify that the game is mention in the On Wargaming book - if anyone can, could you provide page ranges and confirm that this is more than a mention in passing? Likewise, for the Fire & Movement, can we get proper details - issue numbers, pages, etc.? Sometimes such publications contained 'capsule' one-two sentence reviews that don't meet SIGCOV so we can't assume the existence of a review is sufficient. The review needs to be in-depth. That hasn't been shown to be the case. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:41, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The article is not well-written, but this game was a signifigant step in wargaming, and was reviewed in all of the big wargaming magazines of the era. I have added a list of five such reviews. As such, the game is notable. Guinness323 (talk) 15:52, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Guinness323, The odds are that at least some of the reviews you link are in-depth, but this needs to be confirmed. While unlikely, it is not impossible that all of those were tiny capsule-like reviews that don't meet SIGCOV. Can anyone get access to one or more of these reviews to verify that they are in-depth? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:42, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I had assumed all of them are in-depth examinations/reviews of the game because in-depth examinations of wargames with critiques of rules and possible strategies and tactics were the norm for wargame magazines of the 1970s. The index for Strategy & Tactics #69 here only lists seven items, one of them being the article on this game by C. Kamps -- unlikely that a capsule review would be indexed. Likewise the ToC of Paper Wars #52 here lists the review for The Next War by Wade Hinkle on p. 36, with the next entry on p.42. Even allowing for a couple of full-page ads, that's a 3–4 page article. Likewise the index for Fire & Movement #15 here only lists 7 articles. The article about The Next War has three authors (R.DeBaun, R.MacGown, M.Saha), so very likely to be an in-depth examination of the game.Guinness323 (talk) 16:26, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Guinness323, That is reasonable. I will withdraw my deletion vote. Thanks for rescuing this! _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:42, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Withdraw AFD per all reasons above, thank you. SunDawn (talk) 11:24, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per comments above showing this game meets the WP:GNG. BOZ (talk) 16:21, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Withdraw AFD per all reasons above, thank you. SunDawn (talk) 11:27, 23 March 2021 (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.