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.
A search found nothing in the way of WP:SIGCOV in any sort of secondary, reliable source. Lore content that is more fit for a rulebook or a fan Wiki, that lacks any relevance for non-fans and fails WP:GNG entirely. The article is completely sourced to game-related books and handbooks, many created by Gary Gygax or Wizards of the Coast. I'd say it should be transwikied, but it already exists in far greater detail at the Forgotten Realms Wiki. ZXCVBNM (TALK)18:11, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Dungeons & DragonsPlanescape. Haven't had a chance to check for any significant independent coverage in reliable sources (I'm guessing there isn't any) but on the surface at least it appears it could be a searchable term for the main D&D base, so a redirect seems appropriate. — HunterKahn18:24, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I believe it's still appropriate for a redirect because it's a term someone might use if searching for Dungeons & Dragons-related content, so a link to the main page is still useful even if the Outer Plane is not discussed on the article. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I don't believe there's a specific policy that says it must be discussed in some level of detail for a redirect to be made? Though, to your point, perhaps the D&D page should have information about this topic, so maybe a Merge is more appropriate, or I suppose this could be an argument for keeping the page... — HunterKahn22:03, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete/Redirect to Planescape - The fictional concept is really only covered in-depth in primary sources. The only non-primary sources are extremely brief or tangential mentions of them. And, the majority of the content in the article is unsourced, in-universe WP:PLOT information. I agree with the nom that the main Dungeons and Dragons article would be inappropriate to redirect/merge to. However, the article on Planescape, the setting that dealt specifically on the planes of the D&D multiverse, does talk about the Outer Planes, so if anywhere, that would be the most logical place to serve as the redirect target. Rorshacma (talk) 22:32, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Selective Merge & Redirect to Plane (Dungeons & Dragons) - I still think 99 percent of this article should go - most of it is unsourced plot information that even the sources brought forth in this AFD do not cover. However, some of the sources below, particularly the "Dread Trident" book Rendall found, show that there are some reliable sources regarding some of the non-plot elements of the concept of the Planes in D&D in general. Not enough that a independent article on the Outer Planes is necessary, but enough that, if all of the cruft is excised, could be discussed in the main article on Planes. Rorshacma (talk) 04:50, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep because secondary sources exist, even if few of them are used for the article so far. This is a merge target for a number of articles not deemed notable on their own, so both secondary sources dealing with the concept of "Outer Planes" in total as well as individual planes should be taken into account:
Four secondary source are already used for short sections of the article.
Also, a low number of Google hits is often used as an argument for deletion of an article. Here on the contrary "Outer plane dungeons and dragons" leads to 1,100,000 hits. I expect a few more among these will be secondary sources. And that's before searching for the individual fictional planes. Daranios (talk) 19:51, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Sources merely existing is not grounds for an article. It has a total lack of WP:SIGCOV. All of these minor sources can be incorporated into Planescape - which, wouldn't you know it, is actually what they are referring to, rather than the Outer Planes specifically.ZXCVBNM (TALK)20:38, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we have one source which does significant coverage, and many other sources covering individual aspects, which together, in my view, represent signficant coverage. WP:SIGCOV does not require siginficant coverage in one specific source, and the topic "does not need to be the main topic of the source material". So how do we improve Wikipedia by removing this article?
That said, I stand by my opinion to keep this article, but if the independent judgement would be against this I obiously prefer merge and redirect, and Planescape would be a reasonable target. Daranios (talk) 21:07, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
While WP:SIGCOV does say that the subject in question doesn't need to be the main topic of the source, it also says it needs to be "more than a trivial mention", which are pretty much what is the case in those sources. Not to mention that a number of them are not from reliable sources. Rorshacma (talk) 16:08, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The wired.com article and the "Dangerous Games?" only touch on the subject, ok. Schick is very short, but gives a definition and some planes. All the others, as far as I could see, have some information of which/what/how these planes are, or development history, or reception of the concept (or individual planes), or some combination, so I don't think that's trivial. Daranios (talk) 22:32, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
1. The first sentence of this delete nomination is not correct. With not much effort, I found these secondary sources that mention or cover Dungeons and Dragons Outer Planes:
* Dread Trident: Tabletop Role-Playing Games and the Modern Fantastic (covers the Outer Planes and the history of its conception quite extensively, and even supplied a needed citation in the Planes article)
* Game Magic: A Designer's Guide to Magic Systems in Theory and Practice
* Celtic Cosmology: Perspectives from Ireland and Scotland
* Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds
* Jason Salavon: Brainstem Still Life (artist's work interpreted as a reaction explicitly to dnd cosmology)
* 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons
Arguments for deletion citing WP:SIGCOV are refuted by the above list of sources.
2. WP:SIGCOV does not strictly apply to spin-off (and -out) articles such as this one in any case. Splitting out an article for length is allowed according to policy, particularly when the split is into a list as is the case here, irrespective of notability. q.v. WP:SPINOFF and WP:SPINOUT.
3. Merging to Plane (Dungeons & Dragons) is the 2nd best option, but after merging, the original article will bump up against WP:Article size, necessitating a revisit to this solution again.
4. Redirecting to Planescape as suggested above is not ideal as that is a specific "campaign setting", a kind of fictional chapter, within this game, while Planes and Outer Planes and such are canonical cosmology that apply to all "campaign settings" by default, not just Planescape. qv. Dread Trident, above.
Comment The choosing of Planescape as the target was for two reasons, mainly. One, that article already has a section discussing the cosmology of the D&D multiverse as a whole, including the Outer Planes. And two, it is an article that actually demonstrates notability through reliable, secondary sources, and would be very doubtfully ever be nominated or deleted by an AFD. The Plane (Dungeons & Dragons), on the other hand, arguably does not. Rorshacma (talk) 16:08, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Reply Chapter 3 of Dread Trident: Tabletop Role-Playing Games and the Modern Fantastic entitled "Dungeons and Dragons Multiverse" pretty much alone crushes any argument against the Planes or Outer Planes that cites a lack of suitable secondary sources, in my opinion, because it covers its history thoroughly from an academic perspective. If you want to read it yourself, search for cosmology dungeons and dragons in Google book search and maybe the Google sprites will let you see it. I can't link to it directly though, because then definitely they won't. Rendall (talk) 00:55, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That book is a pretty good find. I don't think it can be used to support this as an independent article (the discussion on the outer planes, specifically, is pretty light), but I think I can get behind a selective merge to the overall Plane article now. Rorshacma (talk) 04:50, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: ZXCVBNM's statement "Sources merely existing is not grounds for an article" is explicitly contradicted by policy. WP:NEXIST says: "Notability requires only the existence of suitable independent, reliable sources, not their immediate presence or citation in an article. Editors evaluating notability should consider not only any sources currently named in an article, but also the possibility or existence of notability-indicating sources that are not currently named in the article." Daranios' citing of Religions in Play: Games, Rituals, and Virtual Worlds and Heroic Worlds: A History and Guide to Role-Playing Games are reliable secondary sources. -- Toughpigs (talk) 00:49, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Of the sources suggested by me, some have Planescape/one Planescape product as their topic, some talk about Planescape, some don't mention Planescape at all. None of them were suggested to demonstrate the notability of Planescape and then use that as a justification to have an article about the Outer Planes as a topic within Planescape. All of these sources, no matter their main topic, say something either about the Outer Planes as a group, or individual Outer Planes. Therefore WP:NOTINHERITED should not be an issue here. Daranios (talk) 16:05, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The non-primary sources found by Daranios and Rendall are enough to establish notability. Not a very active user (talk) 05:25, 11 February 2020 (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.