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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Imaginary voyage

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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. Even among the Delete views, most agree the topic is notable, but the content needs to be rewritten. That makes it an editorial issue. Despite the popularity of the WP:TNT essay, there is no policy support for using the delete button to facilitate cleanup, except in extreme cases of unverifiability or non-NPOV. Editors are encouraged to stubify and start afresh. Owen× ☎ 21:14, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Imaginary voyage

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Imaginary voyage (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Pointless original research. There are zillions of novelized fictional voyages. --Altenmann >talk 21:12, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

UTC)

  • Delete per WP:TNT, because it’s essentially an unsourced essay mixed with original research. If someone wants to rescue this, please ping me. Bearian (talk) 01:45, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Allright, I have started a bit of reworking with references. I am still convinced that most of the content is correct. Especially, I believe that most novels listed can be verified to be part of the genre by one of the sources found or out there. Pinging @Zxcvbnm and Bearian: Daranios (talk) 14:58, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Adding sources to content that was originally added without any, but rather based solely on an editor's personal feelings about should be included, is a very surface-level approach to improving the article. I would go so far as to say that it only gives the appearance of improvement. The contents of the article should derive from the contents of the sources, rather than sources being added to justify the contents after the fact. TompaDompa (talk) 15:27, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      • is a very surface-level approach to improving the article - Probably. - so far as to say that it only gives the appearance of improvement - I would disagree here. The verifyability has been called into question. If references can verify content, I see no reason to/no benefit in removing them just because they were unreferenced in the past. I am sure things can be done better, but I personally only have energy for these surface-level improvements. As soon as someone wants to go more in-depth, they are most welcome to overhaul everything. Also, the article did have sources before, but was lacking in-line citations. These sources were not completely sufficient, so I agree with some criticism, but again not to the point of WP:TNT, which would mean that all current content is useless and would not be part of an improved article. That's my viewpoint, which might be influenced by what I've seen on German Wikipedia, where it is common that not everything is referenced, but rather editors write what they know about (of course still no personal musings) and are fact-checked by others who themselves know about the topic. Which is probalby an inferior approach to putting in the secondary sources right away, but is not viewed as inherently problematic. Daranios (talk) 17:12, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
        • I'm sure we'll eventually just have to agree to disagree, but As soon as someone wants to go more in-depth, they are most welcome to overhaul everything is kind of my point—your approach basically just kicks the can down the road (if it will have to be completely overhauled later regardless, then it hasn't really been meaningfully improved, now has it?). I can't claim to be particularly familiar with the culture of the German-language Wikipedia, but I think it's fair to say that the English-language Wikipedia is in a sufficiently mature state that it is reasonable to expect/require all content to be properly sourced—the early stage where expansion is what is most needed is in the past, and now (focusing on) improving the quality of the content serves the encyclopaedia and its readers better than increasing the quantity thereof. Obviously there is still a fair amount of "missing" content that should be added, but doing so without regard for maintaining a decent standard of quality is not helpful. Lest we forget, sources are not only for WP:Verification, they are also for establishing WP:Due weight of different viewpoints and aspects. This is one reason I do view editors writing about what they know about without deriving the contents from appropriate sources as inherently problematic—it inevitably reflects the viewpoints of the editors rather than the sources in terms of relative weight and so on. The fact that experience shows that this approach also leads to the introduction of a lot of subtle errors that were presumably added in good faith—as well as some outright egregious falsehoods that certainly were not but nevertheless remain unchallenged alongside the more-or-less correct but equally unsourced content—only compounds the issue. I don't doubt that your intentions are good, but I think your approach is misguided. TompaDompa (talk) 17:39, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Doczilla Ohhhhhh, no! 17:01, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment So far I have exchanged the highly dubious definition inte leder and added some referenced content. I plan to do add a bit more on the history, and look into the listed exmamples, but that may take some time. @Walsh90210: I have qualified and referenced the claim of the term to require it to be "utopian or satirical" - the sources I've seen indicate those as relevant but not exclusive cases. @Zxcvbnm and Bearian: Do all the deletion !voters still believe that everything here is WP:TNT-worthy and that there's nothing worth to WP:PRESERVE in some form, neither new, nor referenced, nor as yet unchecked unreferenced old content (some of which I already know can be referenced with the present sources)? Daranios (talk) 10:18, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Glad this has been relisted. I think there is definitely enough material here for a proper article, and I'll see what work I can do to improve it. From researching, I think there are quite a few key sources of scholarship to use, including the Gove and Atkinson sources (both in article), Paul Longley Arthur's Fictions of Encounter: Eighteenth Century Imaginary Voyages to the Antipodes (https://www.jstor.org/stable/41447880) and his later book-length study Virtual Voyages: Travel Writing and the Antipodes 1605-1837. I'm going to work on incorporating these into the article as soon as I can. I know the definition was an issue for some people, but the Atkinson book (and the Paul Longley Arthur article) opened with a definition I liked, that the imaginary voyage was a) a work of literature written circa 1600-1800, b) about a journey to an entirely imaginary land with a political (utopian/satirical) purpose, and c) about a European protagonist travelling to an area in Australasia or the Pacific. That would mean removing the material about Lucian, but I think limiting it to a firm time and place gives the article more structure. OldSwinburne (talk) 11:14, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Adopting that definition sounds like a terrible idea that would artificially restrict the scope to not even remotely resemble most of what's been written on the topic. It would exclude not only Lucian but also the Odyssey and much, much more. That definition might be a decent foundation for a section on the article on that particular subset of such fiction, but treating it as the entirety of the topic would be, well, ahistorical. TompaDompa (talk) 14:23, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I expect there is an easy solution to this discrepancy: That era was probably the heyday, and could be treated in one extended section, featuring the definition but qualifying that it is one that is not universally acknowledged. And appearances in other time periods can be included but in separate sections. Daranios (talk) 14:29, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    That's more-or-less what I meant by using it as a "foundation for a section on the article on that particular subset of such fiction", yes. TompaDompa (talk) 14:37, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for the feedback. I've gone back in and added some referenced material, as well as a paragraph about the 18th century period. OldSwinburne (talk) 20:10, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep a perfectly fine literary and film genre and narrative. Am surprised it showed up here. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:26, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Bearian: What would that mean with regard to the outcome of the deletion discussion? Work is currently ongoing. Daranios (talk) 18:19, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Got it. Roger. Bearian (talk) 19:04, 14 October 2024 (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.
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