Wikipedia:WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons/Where

WikiProject

Portal

Assessment

Cleanup

References

Mergers

Watchlist (changes)

Article alerts

Article hits

Where did the articles go?

This is an essay and guide about articles on fictional elements which fall under the banner of WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons.

Where did the articles go?

WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons once contained many articles on fictional topics, but most of those have been either merged, redirected, or deleted over time. The majority of these articles were written before the notability guidelines were firmly established for Wikipedia, and since that time there has been a push to enforce those guidelines on content that does not display an adequate amount of independent reliable sources to demonstrate the notability of the topic.

What does this mean for the WikiProject going forward? Well, we are not going to close down, that is for sure. Aside from the remaining articles we have on fictional topics, we also have a great many articles about rulebooks and adventures, game designers and artists, licensed D&D video games, and much more, the majority of which has established its notability.

So what to do with this so-called "non-notable" content? If you are interested in preserving what we still have, then the obvious next step is to add reliable sources to all articles for which you can find them. It may be difficult, but it is not at all impossible to find adequate sourcing to build articles on fictional topics, as the articles for Drizzt Do'Urden, and Dwarf most readily demonstrate.

The goal in building (or rebuilding) an article on a fictional element is, by following the manual of style about fiction, to build an article with a "real-world perspective" by minimizing in-universe descriptions and use of primary sources, adding information on how the element was developed by the authors, how the element has been utilized in publications and other media it has appeared in, and what reception the element has received in independent reliable sources to demonstrate its impact and legacy on the real world.

In this sense, a fictional element can be a character (including gods and monsters), a location, an item, a concept, or anything else which exists in the game and its related fiction, but does not exist in the real world.

Is a deleted article always gone forever?

By all means, no! Some topics are so minor that it is unlikely that independent reliable sources exist or ever will exist. But other topics have been merged, redirected, or deleted, even though such sources did exist but were unknown at the time, or new sources have appeared at a time after the topics were removed. If the notability of a topic can be established after the fact, then the article can absolutely be restored and fixed to demonstrate its notability!

The following is a brief list of articles which have been redirected or deleted, but which may have the potential to be restored if additional sources can be found, and whenever possible a link has been provided to the last good version of the article:

• Kalashtar [1]
• Far Realm [2]
• Athas [3]
• Blood War [4]
• Obould Many-Arrows
• Liriel Baenre [5]
• Paladine [6]
• Assassin (Dungeons & Dragons) [7]
• Artemis Entreri [8]
• Bruenor Battlehammer [9]
• Demogorgon (Dungeons & Dragons) [10]
• Rod of Seven Parts [11]
• Lady of Pain
• Fey (Dungeons & Dragons) [12]
• Blink dog
• Undermountain [13]
• Lycanthrope (Dungeons & Dragons) [14]
• Githyanki [15]
• Golem (Dungeons & Dragons) [16]
• Tarrasque (Dungeons & Dragons) [17]
• Orcus (Dungeons & Dragons) [18]
• Demon (Dungeons & Dragons) [19]
• Halfling (Dungeons & Dragons) [20]
• Rust monster [21]
• Hag (Dungeons & Dragons) [22]
• Asmodeus (Dungeons & Dragons) [23]
• Lolth [24]
• Bulette [25]
• Waterdeep [26]
• Kara-Tur [27]
• Jarlaxle [28]
• Ravenloft domains [29]
• Rudolph van Richten [30]
• Yuan-ti [31]
• Githzerai [32]

For a more comprehensive archive of deleted articles going back to 2010, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons/Article alerts/Archive.