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 and cleanup. Mr.Z-man 00:39, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Development history of the Final Fantasy series[edit]

Development history of the Final Fantasy series (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Article is a direct duplication of development paragraphs from Final Fantasy (video game) and Final Fantasy II pages. As a result, it focuses on minute details and technical trivia of individual games rather than attempting to draw a global view of the development of the Final Fantasy series; it is basically a changelog in prose and not an encyclopedic article. Since the actual information should fit in the main Final Fantasy article (with further information in the articles of the individual games), there is no need to have a distinct article for development. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 11:24, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of video game related deletions. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 11:28, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. It is accepted practice to make spin-out articles for sections that would be too large in the main article if expanded. In my honest opinion, the detail is not too minute and everything is referenced. - Mgm|^(talk) 11:43, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep — provided the duplicated sections are cut out of the main articles. In other words, you can have one or the other, but not both. Otherwise, the standalone article as-is is sourced OK (maybe needs a bit of cleanup as a few of them are of the primary nature). MuZemike (talk) 12:54, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Change to disambiguation page or list - same rationale as MuZemike, but different conclusion. The development history of each game is already covered in each article on each game, and I think that's a better place to include the development of each game. There's no such thing as the "development of a series": it's just the development of a bunch of games compiled into one article. We really should just have a list of links to articles/sections, rather than copying the full section into its own lengthy article. Randomran (talk) 17:52, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - First, as others noted, there's duplication of content with the FF articles, so we've got a situation of one or the other. Given that video games should first and foremost talk about the out-of-universe game aspects - development and reception - over gameplay and story, I'd rather see these kept in their original articles. If the FF articles are running long, there's other ways to make them shorter, but the last thing I'd remove is the development. --MASEM 00:02, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Considering the breadth and influence of the FF franchise, a break-out article is justified and as noted it is common practice to do such articles to prevent the main from being too long. Obviously if there's duplication in the main, then that should be remove and replaced with a link to this article. 23skidoo (talk) 17:07, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I just want to point out that this is a terrible idea, as it would basically gut out several good articles and featured articles. A "development" section is necessary for an article to hit that level of quality. Clearly the better place for that information is in each article about each game. Randomran (talk) 05:39, 30 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Duplication is not a problem, and this is the start of a useful history article. Phil Sandifer (talk) 17:28, 30 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - duplication of information found in series article and individual games. No reason to duplicate, no reason to split per Wikipedia:SPINOUT. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 18:35, 30 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep epic game series with huge amount of history + influence. Content too big to squeeze onto FF series page. Have added link to this article on Final_Fantasy#History too. --Oscarthecat (talk) 15:34, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - I agree with MuZemike that the duplicated information should be located mostly in this article instead of the individual game articles. However, the game articles should be clear about where the missing information can be found. I suggest reducing the sections in the game articles to stubs and adding the ((main)) template to the top of each of them. SharkD (talk) 15:49, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: I'm not sure if people realize they're proposing that we cut the "development" section out of eight featured articles, effectively demoting/ruining them. And I'm also not sure if people realize there's no development history "across" or "between" the games: every development section is distinct, and really has no value in being compiled together. Randomran (talk) 16:08, 31 October 2008 (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.