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.
Merge, encyclopedic information to main article, and delete the page and rest of the content. Another piece of fancruft and how-to-guides, oh goodness. --Terence Ong(C | R)11:50, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete these articles are patently useless to anyone not playing the game. If there's a CCG wiki, then transwiking might be an option, otherwise, trash it. EvilCouch12:53, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep. I think with a rewrite that cut down on the lists of cards and had a greater reliance on sourced material from MTG.com and major writers at the main Magic fansites, this article would be useful as a subarticle of Magic. However, this article needs to be heavily sourced, and the "this is how you build a foo deck, cards x, y, and z go into "Foo deck variant one"" needs to just go. Do Not Merge, as moving enough content to the main article to justify moving it would clutter up an already sizeable article. This is why we have subarticles. -- saberwyn13:12, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep While Wikipedia is not a game strategy guide, it does include content on games, and this is something that deserves to have its own section in the main Magic: the Gathering article, as the types are defined enough that the creators themselves use them in their development process. Yet that article is rather large, thus daughter articles need to be created. I suppose it may only be useful to people who play Magic, but this is really no different than having articles like Flea flicker or Hail Mary pass. How are those articles useful to people who don't play Football or watch it on TV? Or bunt for folks who don't play baseball? Sure, those sports may be more popular than Magic, but that's no reason not to include Magic content. That said, the article could use some clean-up. For one thing, too many links. FrozenPurpleCube 14:24, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"Sure, those sports may be more popular than Magic, but that's no reason not to include Magic content." I agree we should include Magic-related content but disagree strongly with the notion that articles on Magic strategy are of the same importance as strategy of popular sports. Baseball and football (and cricket, soccer, etc.) all have a larger fan base, far more media coverage and published literature, and a much longer history. The relative importance of the games does matter. I know that I would argue to delete an article on Rich Hoaen or Craig Krempels if we had them, but would keep the article on Sixto Lezcano or Félix Millán. I don't even think either of the former would pass an AfD. Andrew Levine 19:28, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, Football, and Baseball and soccer do have more established bases, and there are more players of those sports with articles, perhaps less notable in comparison to the Magic players listed, even those who have been deleted, but as the discussion on Magic players a few months ago established, that doesn't mean we should delete Kai Budde, Jon Finkel or Mike Long. Not that bringing up players really relates to this discussion, which is about concepts in a game. And that includes strategy. You can see it in the articles on Baseball(with at least three sub-articles that further spread into more articles. The baseball terminology category has at least half a dozen entries I'd say are strategy descriptions), American football strategy(with over a dozen sub-articles), Chess (With one strategy page and several spin-offs(. Now many of those articles could be improved, absolutely, but I doubt you'd convince anybody to delete all of them. Similarily, we shouldn't delete this page. Especially not because Magic is less popular or established than other, more main-stream sports. That would violate NPOV. I can concur that there shouldn't be pages on *every* deck type, but one describing the fundamental deck types is a different matter. FrozenPurpleCube 20:42, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, nobody is arguing to delete Kai Budde (which was the first article I ever created); my point in bringing up players as a subject is that even established and successful Magic players are less notable than barely-remembered MLB players, because the deletion-threshold is different for Magic vs. baseball (or football or soccer). This deletion-threshold applies not only to players but also to strategy elements. There have been dozens of books that discuss Hail Mary pass or hit and run (baseball) (along with hundreds of websites and newspaper articles and thousands of TV and radio broadcasts spanning over 50 years). Because of the strong potential for OR creeping in, strategy elements of games have in my opinion a very low deletion-threshold, meaning that more than a half-century of thousands of reliable sources is to me just a little bit over the line of "keep." By contrast, the terms "Aggro deck," "Control deck," etc. are about 10 years old (some of the decks mentioned on the page are only 2-3 years old) and the sources leave something to be desired. I guess the only sources that would be acceptable for this subject would be magicthegathering.com articles and possibly Mike Flores' book Deckade (but possibly not, since it's mostly self-published). For me that falls below the threshold. Also, you'll have to clarify what "That would violate NPOV" means, since NPOV applies to statements made in articles, not to deletion discussions, and deciding what gets deleted and what doesn't does not fall under WP:NPOV. Andrew Levine 21:31, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
For NPOV, I mean popularity bias. Also possible a bit of age bias. Just because Magic is new compared to sports like Chess or Football doesn't mean we can't have articles on it. Mainstream bias is a bias too. Now I might agree having articles on individual deck types is too much, but that's not what you're asking for here in this AFD. You're asking for the deletion of a page about deck types in general, which is itself is a clear sub-article of the already too large Magic the Gathering article. Why? Because it's a game strategy guide. That's where you fail to convince me, because the fact is, Wikipedia has literally dozens of articles that involve the same kinds of material. The only difference? The game. I see a bias here, and that's why I am concerned about NPOV. And besides the sources you mentioned, I'd add Starcitygames, Scrye, Inquest, Pojo and possibly more. (Is there a Magic: The Gathering for Dummies? Maybe, I dunno, but it's possible for one to be written.) All of them understand and use the concept of Aggro/Combo/Control in their writings. But yes, I would recommend Wizards.com as a primary authoritative source in this case, and since I know where some of the articles are, I'll go add them right now. FrozenPurpleCube 21:45, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Again, nobody is saying we shouldn't have articles on Magic; nobody wants to delete Kai Budde or Time Spiral or Pro Tour (Magic: The Gathering). I strongly disagree about the systemic popularity bias and age bias, because I am pretty sure those biases actually work in Magic's favor rather than against it; interest in editing Wikipedia hits many of the same demographic points as interest in playing Magic, especially 13-to-35-year-olds who are technologically adept. The big sports have much broader interest across age brackets, personality types, and social strata, but the same doesn't hold on Wikipedia. Look at this vs. this or this, which seems to indicate Magic may actually be more popular among Wikipedians than baseball, and almost as much as football. Of course this is far out of line with its popularity among the general population. So I'm pretty sure the popularity bias, on Wikipedia at least, is in Magic's favor. It must again be stressed that WP:NPOVonly applies to statements made in articles, and redefining it to include the idea of whether specific topics should be given coverage is a dangerous expansion of the concept. It does not violate any policy to give, say, Soccer more coverage than Settlers of Catan. Andrew Levine 22:28, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You are saying "Delete this article on Magic Deck types" because it is a game strategy guide but not saying "Delete this article on Chess strategy, or football strategy, or baseball strategy" even though the information is comparable. How is this page any different from Chess Openings(which by the way, has its own category with over 150 sub-articles!)? I wouldn't say there's a difference in terms of strategy-guide ness. That's where the bias comes in, just like having so many articles on Anglo-American stuff represents a bias and a violation of NPOV which we should work to avoid. I can understand the game guide problem. This article is not a game guide, it's just describing a well-known aspect of the game, one the developers themselves recognize and design for, and in comparison to articles like say Sacrifice hit, bunt, Trick play, or Napoleon Opening it has sources. Lots of them. Yes, it could certainly be improved, but that's a clean-up issue, and I agree that it could use some. I'm willing to go with you on individual decks not having articles. I'm even willing to go with you on the deck types listed here not having individual articles. But I draw the line at deleting this content which combines them. One article is fine with me. This is not out of proportion with the importance of this material within the game, nor is it out of line with Magic's importance in gaming. 6 million players? I'd say an article on deck-types is reasonable. Especially if you consider that wizards.com uses them in their design, and included them in their theme week coverage. FrozenPurpleCube 23:10, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep At WP:NOT, the only applicable policy I see concerning this article states:
"Instruction manuals. While Wikipedia has descriptions of people, places, and things, Wikipedia articles should not include instructions or advice (legal, medical, or otherwise), suggestions, or contain "how-to"s. This includes tutorials, walk-throughs, instruction manuals, video game guides, and recipes."
This article contains NO instructions whatsoever. It is in no way, shape or form, a howto guide!
As NorrYtt put it in the related AfD: "There's no 'How to Play' in these articles. They are theory articles. It's not "The Queen's Gambit", it's "Controlling the center squares is an excellent strategy." Magic is too dynamic to write books about it that don't quickly become obsolete. Sources are Internet-based." Crimson3000:45, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Crufty, but seems to describe a basic component of the game's structure/strategy and therefore a legit topic for an article. Not very well-sourced as-is, but the solution to that is to fix the article, not delete it. Fairsing06:00, 17 November 2006 (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.