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. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 01:44, 2 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

List of fan fiction terms[edit]

List of fan fiction terms (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)

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Article is a dictionary of neologisms and unsuitable for Wikipedia. Previous AFD ended with keep after a user proposed cleanup which doesn't appear to have taken place three years later. Anything that is a notable neologism appears to already have its own page. GetOutFrog_ribbit 00:35, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 01:09, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename to Glossary of fan fiction terms, and cleanup, down to the sourced/articled entries. -- Quiddity (talk) 01:51, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep and deal with it as Quiddity suggests. There is no time limit for improving an article. DGG ( talk ) 03:14, 22 February 2010 (UTC).[reply]
• Keep Don't rename since "WP is not a dictionary" probably covers glossaries. The list as it is is very useful to a person trying to understand the world of fan fiction. It is easier to have the information here in one place than to spread it out among other articles. Ignore the rules a little and keep it.Kitfoxxe (talk) 04:15, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per WP:DICTIONARY, which says, "Wikipedia is not a dictionary or a slang, jargon or usage guide." I note above commentors suggesting glossarys are not covered by WP:DICTIONARY and if so I'd appreciate my attention being drawn to the relevant policy but in its absence this type of page appears to be specifically forbidden. This content can be appropriately covered in the main article on fan fiction. (I should note my bias: fan fiction is the lowest form of comedy, even when it's not trying to be funny. But the logic of my argument should still stand.) - DustFormsWords (talk) 04:26, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am usually a deletionist and would agree with you. However in this case I am advocating ignoring the rules since this list (not a glossery or dictionary :-) ) is probably the best way to present this information to someone who wants to learn more about fan fiction, after they read the main article. Kitfoxxe (talk) 04:35, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Also doesn't the fact that this is a list of related terms make a difference, somehow? So it's not like a list of "New Jersy slang" or something like that.Kitfoxxe (talk) 04:38, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I understand that argument, and this information should be on Wikipedia in SOME format. But policy is pretty clear that this isn't the appropriate format; it can be presented appropriately through normal article-writing, possibly over the course of several articles. There's no need, for example, for a "list of computer gaming slang", because terms will appear in context in the course of relevant articles and link to pages explaining the term. If it's a valuable list, someone from the relevant projects will undoubtedly be prepared to do the work to move it into an appropriate format; if not, it can deleted safe in the knowledge that no one will particularly miss it. - DustFormsWords (talk) 04:53, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See Portal:Contents#Glossaries (Portal:Contents page is linked from the sitewide sidebar) for examples of glossaries. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:23, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Transwiki to Wiktionary as an appendix. 70.29.210.242 (talk) 10:25, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• There is a Wikipedia:Manual of Style (glossaries) and a Wikiproject for them, so I'm sure glossaries are allowed here. Rename to Glossary of fan fiction and trim, per Quiddity. Polarpanda (talk) 13:21, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as this list has no verifiable definition at this time in accordance with WP:Source list, without which it is just a collection of loosely assoicated of topics without any externally validated rationale for inclusion in Wikipedia. A verifable definition is also needed to demonstrate that it is not the product of original research.--Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 22:25, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge some of this info into fan fiction. There's an organization of the main article in place to take in much of what is on this article, allowing what is presently a poorly constructed list to be turned into prose. There's also a lot of stuff that I would just stuff into "See Also" links at the bottom. --MASEM (t) 22:41, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep It seems easy to find sources for this notable topic such as Boldly Writing. Colonel Warden (talk) 22:58, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. I am, off the top of my head, aware of three scholarly treatments of fanfiction published in academic presses - Camille Bacon-Smith's Enterprising Women, Constance Penley's Nasa/Trek, and Henry Jenkins's Textual Poachers. Well over half of these terms could readily be sourced to those three books alone, and I have not pursued the question of academic study of fandom in any detail in well over five years. I know that attention to this subject has only increased, however, and that more sources than those three books surely exist. A quick Google Scholar source shows that Textual Poachers is cited by over 1000 things on Google Scholar alone, Enterprising Women by about 200, and NASA/Trek by another 100. Several of these are also book-length works. To say that this cannot be sourced requires the willful ignoring of so many sources as to be comical. Phil Sandifer (talk) 18:15, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think there's an issue with asserting a researchable topic on fan fiction - the issue is that the way this list is approach is much better suited to be prose in fan fiction than as an iffy glossary. --MASEM (t) 18:23, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • That seems to me likely to overwhelm the article. Certainly it does not seem to me a slam-dunk case for such a merge - step one, I think, is clean up and source. Then look at what we have and go from there. In terms of AfD, unless the rules have shifted depressingly since I last was stupid enough to involve myself in one, sourcability is sufficient to save an article. Phil Sandifer (talk) 01:05, 26 February 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.