Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Combine combat technology in Half-Life 2

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 Delete.--Hús ö nd 00:08, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

List of Combine combat technology in Half-Life 2[edit]

This is a low-quality fanpage, of little use in a general encyclopedia. It's full of advice for the reader, technical detail (like specific stats and damage), and unsourced speculative claims. Additionally, it's full of unnecessary non-free images. This is not at all suited to an encyclopedia. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 07:04, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as instruction manual. Combination 16:28, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete It could be rewritten, some of the junk removed. However, it's the notability and sourcing that bother me. Kwsn^(Ni!) 16:56, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Combination. Oyster Guitarst 21:34, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Eye-glazing instruction manual detail. --Calton | Talk 16:30, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Anyone who doesn't think that the exhaustively well-researched sub-articles for the main Half-Life 2 page aren't one of the reasons why it's a featured article should re-examine the spiderweb of articles coming from it. Additionally, this is all relevant to WP:POINT anyway. MalikCarr 21:27, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You caught on to my plan to disrupt Wikipedia by nominating for deletion an article I feel is composed entirely of original research and game guide. I'm meeeeeeeeelting! - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 15:19, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I'm afraid to say that your belief that this article is composed entirely of OR would be a false one. MarphyBlack 16:30, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep - I was never entirely wild over the existence of this article, but I believe the reasons given to delete are very weak:

"low-quality"
- Not only is this is a personal opinion, this is in no way a valid reason to delete an article. Note that AfD is not the place to send articles that need cleaning up. Simply use a template if you feel there are quality issues. Also be aware that claiming an article is low quality without reasoning is akin to an attack on all the editors who work to maintain said article.
"full of advice for the reader"
- Granted. However, this article isn't simply an instruction manual. I understand how a statement such as "City scanners can easily be destroyed by launched objects" can be construed as "You should kill City scanners by launching objects at it with the gravity gun to save ammo", but there's a crucial difference between the two. One is describing the characteristics and abilities of a game entity; the other is directly advising the reader about gameplay techniques and strategies regarding them. There is certainly a fine line as to how far a game description can go without becoming a game guide, but this article is definitely no how-to book.
"technical detail (like specific stats and damage)"
- Then simply remove the technical detail! It's not like these bits are deeply entrenched within the writing. They're clearly labeled (First Seen, Health total, Weapon damage, and Entity), and removing them would still leave a great deal of prose leftover. The specific NPC data has indeed bothered me for some time too. I've simply been too swamped with work and other things to get around to removing them.
"unsourced speculative claims"
- You're simply going to have to assume good faith here (Oh, the horror!), but I have personally been keeping a very close eye on this article, and you're just going to have to trust me when I say that a majority of the article is based on citable facts. As the rather meager references section indicates, much of the information is stated in Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar, the official strategy guide (Which, contrary to what its title suggests, actually offers a great deal of extra backstory and explanatory stuff), or is directly alluded to within the in-game dialogue itself. After a quick glance at the whole article right now, I see there are a few glaring speculative statements that have slipped in over time, but those can be weeded out with little effort. I know there are no inline citations, but that happens to be a very long and tedious process which I'm not exactly jumping at the chance to do. (We're not in a rush here, right?)

Ideally, I would like to greatly condense and merge the useful information here to Combine (Half-Life 2) and make this a redirect. In the mean time, though, this article is hardly as horrendously delete-worthy as it's being made out to be. MarphyBlack 14:41, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The article is low-quality because of all the other problems I state after saying it's low-quality.

How is a description of how to best bypass, defeat, or overcome that entity anything but a game guide? A game guide doesn't have to be in imperative form, and this article is somewhere between one-third and half game guide by volume.

No amount of assuming good faith makes these statements not speculative:

"It appears that city scanners are mass-produced in the Citadel"

"It also appears that a city scanner was used in one of the more recent "evolutions" of Dog"

"This is perhaps a reference or inspired by the film Toys, where in one part teenagers unknowingly controlled remote-controlled military robots in a vast arcade with varying games to "play.""

"Some fans have noted the rollermines have a resemblance to a katamari from the Katamari Damacy video game series."

And those are just the glaring examples in the first third of the article. I could easily quadruple the size of that list.

The problems with this article are systemic, and it's never not going to be full of statements like "It appears that..." or "Players have speculated..." or "The best way to defeat them is..." - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 15:19, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One could argue that merely mentioning Mario's signature stomp attack or Sonic's famous spin-dash could constitute game guide information since both are abilities used in each character's respective game series for, uh, gameplay purposes. There's a difference between describing a video game character's attributes and telling the readers how to play the game. Also, as I said, there were a couple glarlingly obvious speculative statements, and it seems you selected the precise few sentences I was speaking of. Not hard to fix. (I will point out, however, that the use of a scanner for Dog's face is a fact, not speculation, so I don't know why that sentence is worded as such. Other than being brutally obvious, you can also find this confirmed in writing here, among many other places. Again, if you have problems with the wording in an article, simply tag it for cleanup, not AfD.) MarphyBlack 16:30, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mentioning Mario's stomp is fine. Mentioning that there are enemies that are immune to it in every Mario game is fine. Listing those enemies is where you start having problems. This list describes the ideal way to deal with each of these objects that is an obstacle, and none of these are even close to the importance of Mario or Sonic. There's a difference between describing gameplay as part of a larger context, and devoting an entire article to it.

I don't have a problem with the wording of this article. I have a problem with the fact that it's a game guide written by observing the article subject and deriving conclusions from that personal observation. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 16:37, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Per above --SkyWalker 17:36, 5 July 2007 (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.