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. Nom withdrawn and article reduced to stub (closed by non-admin). RMHED (talk) 23:06, 9 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Law in Star Trek (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Text of the article is entirely original research, with the only two reliable, independent sources in the lead. Consequently only a single sentence of this entire article is verifiable. Current text fails deletion criteria - "Article information that cannot possibly be attributed to reliable sources". Verifiability concerns have been raised in a previous AfD and on the talk page since 2006, so no significant improvement seems to be possible. Tim Vickers (talk) 19:25, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Withdrawn - based on the general dissatisfaction with the state of the article below, and as an attempt to reach consensus, I will withdraw this AfD and reduce the article to a stub - by the deletion of the original research that relies on primary sources. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:55, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science fiction-related deletion discussions. —• Gene93k (talk) 21:03, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment (no vote). The article is junk, a mix of plot summary and original research. However, somebody in the real world has addressed it as a serious topic.[1] Is there enough material out there for a rewrite that passes WP:FICT? I have no idea. • Gene93k (talk) 21:13, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agree - the article is not currently, to wiki standards, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be brought up to par. The topic IS researchable, there has been plenty written and published on the subject. I personally feel that it is a serious topic worthy of keeping, in the hopes that the article can be improved, that could be of interest to non-fans and fans alike, and even if the interest was mainly for fans, the 'star trek universe' is a significant and notable genre. Non Curat Lex (talk) 22:49, 5 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong Delete per nomination.This topic is un-researchable. Stem the tide of fancruft. --Wtshymanski (talk) 23:22, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep The article documents a notable theme in this fiction. Not seeing the original research. Colonel Warden (talk) 02:23, 5 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Take for example the section on "Death penalty", from a set of episodes an editor has divined that "planetary law and Federation law may be separate, analogous to the legal concept of federalism" the possibility of the existence of a "supremacy clause" and that the Federation of the 24th century has apparently abolished capital punishment. None of these statements are present in the original material, but this has been interpreted and synthesised by the author - this is original research. Tim Vickers (talk) 03:45, 5 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Saying that the Federation has a federal system is a statement of the obvious. The examples of where capital punishment was or was not applicable are drawn directly from the source material. And none of this is a reason to delete since such content can be edited to taste. Colonel Warden (talk) 08:10, 5 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If this is not original research, in which reliable source is the existence or otherwise of a "supremacy clause" in Federation law discussed? Which source discusses the distinction between planetary law and Federation law? Tim Vickers (talk) 00:04, 6 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep another misguided attempt to reduce the coverage about notable fiction. This is a compilation of material sourced from the primary source in an obvious fashion, and thus not OR. There's real junk to get rid of, bit we should not be deleting articles like this. DGG (talk) 02:35, 5 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per Tim Vickers. Achromatic (talk) 05:37, 5 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per DGG. CarbonLifeForm (talk) 11:07, 5 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• keep i feel this nomination is a WP:IDONTLIKEIT, no offence intended. Fosnez (talk) 12:31, 5 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• None taken, but you are incorrect. Also, it is better in these discussions to discuss the content of article, rather than making guesses about the motivation of the nominator. Tim Vickers (talk) 14:53, 5 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete or Stubify Most of the "references" are Star Trek episodes. They are also referenced in a manner inconsistent with a general purpose encylopedia (listing TOS and assuming the reader knows what that means, as opposed to a proper {{cite episode}}.) This article is a textbook synthesis of source materials. It is based on a series of "A and B, therefore C" (the section quoted above about the death penalty in Star Trek is a good example). If someone wants to write a new article based on secondary sources, that's fine, but this article needs to start from scratch or be deleted. --Phirazo 18:45, 5 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. I agree with Gene93k and Phirazo in that there may be a possibility the topic is notable (as evidenced by the book dedicated to it); but this article is wholly referenced to primary sources as it stands, and ultimately a synthesis of plot and original research and not an encyclopedic article. — pd_THOR ^{| =/\=} | 00:49, 6 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete The article is entirely retelling of plot combined with Wikipedian interpretation of plot. If there are suitable secondary sources for writing an article, then what we have here is in the way of writing a proper article. Deleting everything we have here and starting from scratch is the best way to write a proper article in this case. Original research is that harmful, and there is a lot of it here. Jay32183 (talk) 03:24, 6 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. This article is terrible; however, AFD is not article cleanup. But the claim at hand is that this is not a verifiable topic. It isn't? There is a whole book about the topic (Star Trek: Visions of Law and Justice, ISBN 0966808029). At least one chapter of that book (the one by Sharf) was originally published in the University of Toledo Law Review. There is further discussion of the issue in other scholarly sources as well, such as the article "Law and Film: Introduction" in the Journal of Law and Society 28 (1): 1-8 and even explicit comparisons with real world law and politics, including "On a Wagon Train to Afghanistan: Limitations on Star Trek's Prime Directive" in the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review [2003]. Serpent's Choice (talk) 16:30, 6 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that none of the text in this article is verifiable and the article has been in this state since the last AfD in 2006. I agree that the topic is in principle notable, but since no improvement is forthcoming, deleting this original research and allowing somebody to start again in the future seems one of the best options to me. If you think the article shouldn't be deleted, what do you think about the idea of cutting it down to a one or two sentence stub, but retaining the further reading and the two reliable sources? Tim Vickers (talk) 17:29, 6 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I wholly agree that the current text needs pared down sharply. When writing about fiction, the primary material can be used for statements of fact, but not for opinion, analysis, or assumption. As a result, a lot of material will need to go, pending revision and the inclusion of the third-party sources. But, even if that process takes the form of "stub and rebuild", it is an editorial action, not a deletion. Serpent's Choice (talk) 16:06, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It actually means trimming everything but the basic definition of Law in Star Trek. Deleting and starting over is better for the article and Wikipedia than allowing this mess to sit in the edit history for people to access later. Jay32183 (talk) 20:17, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. Some of the primary references are statements of fact from the scripts. Many more, admittedly, are OR. But there are sources on the topic, and primary statements can be used to add context to second-party analysis; the fact that this article has a lot of work ahead of it is not cause to toss the current version, flawed as it may be, down the memory hole. That's just not what the deletion policy says. Serpent's Choice (talk) 22:30, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A database of fictional laws doesn't belong on Wikipedia and it is OR to selectively pick the laws from Star Trek to talk about. It can be original research simply because a Wikipedian chose an example to signify a particular importance. Jay32183 (talk) 07:49, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's why the material selected from the primary sources is used to support the secondary sources in a properly written article. We don't pick random content, the second-party sources do. But we can quote or summarize the primary source as appropriate to the context. And with so much drawn from primary sources at the moment, there's probably something that will be useful. I'd do more work on this article myself, but I don't have easy access to the secondary sources for this one. I'd promise to get to it, but I'm way behind on cleanup projects. Whoever wants to tackle it, though, please drop me a line and I'll do what I can. Serpent's Choice (talk) 18:06, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Television-related deletion discussions. —Tim Vickers (talk) 19:55, 6 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• keep. A quick google search enables us to add to the sources noted by Serpent's Choice: P. Joseph and S. Carton, "The Law of the Federation: Images of Law, Lawyers and the Legal System in “Star Trek: The Next Generation”", University of Toledo Law Review 24 (1996), pp 43-85; and Bradley Stewart Chilton, “"Star Trek" and Stare Decisis: Legal Reasoning and Information Technology”, Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 8:1 (2001), available here. As TimVickers just suggests, stubbifying would be a more appropriate way of dealing with the ramified OR (drastic as it is, it's less drastic than deletion). --Paularblaster (talk) 22:30, 6 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak keep sourced, and a reasonable split of Star Trek which would otherwise be enormous. JJL (talk) 04:43, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep It's now got at least some proper reliable sourcing and is apparently notable. The quality of the writing is not a proper subject for an AfD discussion. - Dravecky (talk) 14:21, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - the series is notable, and the concept of law within it is notable, so the article should be retained. With that established, it is sufficient to rely on primary sources for much of the material. I acknowledge that it could do with trimming. - Fayenatic (talk) 14:39, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, verify, expand... per Serpent's Choice. Andrzej Kmicic (talk) 05:26, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - This article is a prime example of both what Wikipedia is not supposed to be and ignoring all rules. Voting to delete would be meaningless unless most of Category:Star Trek goes with it, along with similar stuff like Category:Star Wars, Category:The Lord of the Rings, and other topics certainly worthy of articles, but not in depth examinations of topics like Category:Star Trek ships which includes vessels in its subcategories that appeared briefly in an episode. Many people who do not enjoy these topics consider articles like this to be useless information about a fictional subject, while those who support the article and others of its kind are simply doing what we told them to do. Anynobody 05:27, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP:IAR is not a free pass and it is not all or nothing at an AFD. We can deal with articles one at a time. Jay32183 (talk) 07:49, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • That's the theory; the practice is that in the meantime articles sprout like weeds while much learned consideration is given to AfD votes on an individual basis. You end up running to keep still. It would be better (I suggest) to come up with a blanket policy, let members of the various Wiki-projects put their articles in order, and then cull the rest. Piecemeal hacking at the undergrowth isn't the way to go.--Major Bonkers (talk) 14:50, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

--Article has now been cut to a stub-- Tim Vickers (talk) 17:18, 9 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. This is a perfectly good stub, with a reference to a law review article, for Jimbo's sake! It's better than most other law stubs! Bearian'sBooties (talk) 02:14, 9 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep and as above, verify and expand. The Star Trek fictional universe is one of the most documented in recent history, and the programme itself frequently raises social and cultural issues which reflect the times in which it is made. It follows that an academic analysis of the legal frameworks created therein are worthy of description as a mirror or critique of contemporary societal values, which are exemplified, for example, by attitudes in the series to the death penalty in different fictional cultures. Whether this can be properly sourced, I cannot tell; but science fiction, in my experience, has an analogical propensity to tell us more about the way we are now than the way we might be in the future. Accordingly, I think that properly written, this article has great potential to focus on legalities and their limitations and should be allowed to stand. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 03:09, 9 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per Paularblaster. John254 03:16, 9 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep I agree with the above that a stub is adequate, but an entire article is unnecessary. Jophus00 (talk) 02:27, 18 February 2008 (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.