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 merge to List of Middle-earth weapons and armour. The Bushranger _{One ping only} 04:22, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Narsil (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • Stats)

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Fictional artefact, does not have enough real world significance to require it's own article. Article should be deleted and any information that needs saving can go in List of Middle-earth weapons and armour GimliDotNet ^{(Speak to me,Stuff I've done)} 05:43, 5 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Speedy Keep The nomination proposes an improper form of merger which would violate our licensing - see WP:MAD. The title of the article is a distinctive search term and so should not be a red link. Warden (talk) 07:37, 5 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - You know, we don't always have to go with the nom's proposal. A Speedy Keep here may be a little too hasty. There's always the standard merger, or the article could end up being kept. Michaelzeng7 (talk) 20:45, 6 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:23, 6 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:24, 6 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Considered keep. It's always hard to tell what is important from works of fiction, and in practice the "discussed in mainstream sources" rule is totally ignored. Lest you suspect that I'm one of those users who votes to keep anything related to stuff I like, there was an AFD less than a year ago when I voted a strong delete for another Middle-Earth weapon or two, but this seems fairly important as an object related to Tolkien's development of the king plot. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 01:53, 6 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't know where this "mainstream sources" come from (at least for me, academic research is not "mainstream"), but anyway, the actual pratice, detailed in WP:GNG, is that if it is not significantly covered in multiple independent secondary and reliable sources, a stand-alone article is not appropriate. Claims of a topic being "important" don't go beyond the user's subjective POV without sources to show this "importance", and and that's not enough to build an article.Folken de Fanel (talk) 12:17, 6 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Seattle Times coverage of replica, Mentioned in NYT coverage of online game, coverage of its appearance in upcoming Hobbit film. That's not including at all the half-a-dozen pay-per-view sources in English that I see via Google News. GNG is met, as this particular fictional element has received non-trivial coverage in multiple, independent, reliable sources. Jclemens (talk) 02:20, 6 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  Seattle Times: just a listing with price and description of a movie replica, it's not about the fictional world and not even proper coverage. NYT: not coverage, just a half-sentence trivial mention. Geeksofdoom: no coverage, just a 4 words trivial mention. PPV articles are unlikely to be different from all that. With these sources, GNG is not met and I see no non-trivial coverage. Jclemens, please stop presenting each hit you get with google as "non trivial", this is misleading as it's obvious you've not even read any of the articles.Folken de Fanel (talk) 11:07, 6 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge to List of Middle-earth weapons and armour. Despite for a few quick mentions of an Arthurian parallel, it seems Narsil has never been proheminently featured in Tolkenian research, contrary to other objects or notions. This is a case where no more an a paragraph could be written besides plot summary, thus a merge is appropriate (WP:WHYN). Besides that, I note that the book/film comparison is entirely unsourced. As said earlier, the "sources" provided by Jclemens don't fit the WP:GNG criteria and are thus unconclusive.Folken de Fanel (talk) 12:17, 6 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge to List of Middle-earth weapons and armour. I agree with Folken de Fanel, but I think I've found two or three reliable publications that reference Narsil: Weapons of Fantasy And Folklore, Bits of Organization, and a German article that analyses the film scene where Boromir cuts his finger on the shards of Narsil [1]; notably this analysis is done from a queer theory point of view. De728631 (talk) 16:01, 6 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge and Redirect to List of Middle-earth weapons and armour per Folken de Fanel. There really isn't very much here that can be talked about that isn't just plot summary, at least not that have proper sources. Even the sections of the article that are labled as things other than plot (such as the Adaptations section) is still just mostly more plot information coupled with some OR. The sources that seem to be available that talk about this are either extremely trivial, such as the sources found by Jclemens, or talk about the sword only in terms of plot, such as the first two found by DE728631. The thid link found by DE728631 has potential, but going by what he says it is about (as I do not speak German and thus must take his word for it), it seems like a very narrow, somewhat fringe analysis, and thus wouldn't really be enough to support much content. Merging the information to the appropriate article, and then keeping this page as a redirect seems to be the best solution, as any actual sourced information would be preserved in the target article, and the concerns about preserving the article history and red-linking the search term, as brought up by Warden, would both be solved. Rorshacma (talk) 17:06, 6 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge to the weapon / armor list. I think deletion would be more appropriate, considering that this article is more or less just a plot summary, which is what Wikipedia is WP:NOT. To the extent that there isn't plot information, it's a miniscule fact stretched into a long padded quote, which isn't the WP:SIGCOV required in the general notability guideline. But I've never felt too stubborn to compromise with other editors if it will help reach a consensus. Shooterwalker (talk) 17:25, 7 August 2012 (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.