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 redirect‎ to Series fiction. While numerically there wa a split here between those advocating delete, merge, redirect, and keep, those advocating keep did not, on the whole, provide much in the way of sources or other policy based reasons to explain their rationale. There was a general sense that a merge might be useful by several editors and this may still be appropriate; when a close can be reasonably closed as either redirect or merge I tend to close as redirect because this does not prevent a merge (as the history is preserved) but also ensures the AfD is completely resolved rather than leaving the final merging still to happen. Barkeep49 (talk) 07:34, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Heptalogy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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While trilogy is notable, subsequent (longer) concepts are very rarely discussed in depth in literary dictionaries, encyclopedias or other academic woks. This is a "4th" nom but as far as I can tell the previous noms were mass noms including, among other, better known tetralogy. Let's start from the most obscure end of this spectrum. My BEFORE as well as the quotations used for refs here do not show that 'heptalogy' has WP:SIGCOV anywhere, this is just a rarely used dict-def term) that can be redirected to Series fiction (which I am writing now) per WP:ATD-R. The article is just a dict def plus a list of notable heptalogies. Frankly, as I have recently begun incrasingly reviewing and writing about literature, I very much doubt we need more than the article on trilogy, as from the perspective of literature studies, there is no significance difference between the number of installments in a series outside 'short' and 'long'. For now, however, let's cut some dict-cruft. And if anyone wants to keep this - pleas show us how this meets SIGCOV. PS. Perhaps the list could be split into the list of heptalogies, if WP:LISTN can be shown to be met... _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:41, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Literature and Lists. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:41, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I take it you're bringing this here because of prior AfDs, rather than BLAR'ing it when your new article is ready? Jclemens (talk) 09:04, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. Also called septology, cf. Jon Fosse. Geschichte (talk) 14:12, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• delete I have to say that the division of serial novels according to the number of volumes really makes no sense except as part of a general discussion of the class. Maybe. It's particularly obvious when you have something like the Earthsea books where for a long time there were three, then a fourth, and I lost track at how much further Leguin went after that. Does anyone refer to the series as an N-olgy where N is greater than three? And does anyone care what N equals? I'm just not seeing this as a meaningful class. Mangoe (talk) 14:51, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge Nice work on the Series fiction article! Obviously the exact number of works is not a defining characteristic that connects a series to others with multiple volumes. A curated list may be good for the main article, but not sorted by number of works. Reywas92^Talk 14:57, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep: obviously a notable topic and a useful entry (See the three precedent AfDs, please; lists of notable works that are considered so include https://www.babelio.com/liste/6017/Les-plus-belles-heptalogies (in French)). -Mushy Yank. 16:46, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  WP:ITSNOTABLE, WP:ITSUSEFUL, WP:LASTTIME. Congrats on managing to get three separate arguments to avoid combined into a single short sentence or two. Nor does your WP:UGC link confer even a whiff of notability to the topic, which if it were so obviously notable, wouldn't require resorting to a French source in the first place. Moreover, if you had actually looked at those previous nominations that you brought up, you'd see they were split between delete, keep, and no consensus. And the keep was part of a bundle so is harder to judge on its own. 35.139.154.158 (talk) 01:04, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep (an edit-conflict with the above response), no, I disagree. Several of the sources currently used in Heptalogy discuss specifically the seven-ness of these series, stating that there is special significance to the author's choice of seven. The C.S.Lewis references are the obvious ones. These are rock-solid evidence that the concept is wikinotable. The same applies to trilogies, with even more force. The problem here is that our articles on both trilogies and heptalogies are rather poor, lazily producing lists rather than discussing the underlying concept as covered by literary scholars. But AfD is not for clean-up, and the lists aren't awful enough to merit TNT. Merging is a possibility, but I think it might unbalance the Series fiction article; trilogies, for instance, merit an absolutely enormous discussion because three has been seen as super-significant by many authors. There's also a strong need to distinguish, in series-fiction, between those series that are 3/4/5/6/7 by accident, with no underlying significance beyond the author's getting bored and moving on, and those where there is real meaning in the number. I think it's safer to cover this by having articles on the significance of a trilogy/heptalogy etc. rather than repeatedly trying to work out which series are "true" trilogies/heptalogies in the series fiction article. Elemimele (talk) 17:09, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Elemimele I am happy to be proven wrong, but could you expand the article with a few sentences based on the sources that "discuss specifically the seven-ness of these series"? That would help make it more than a list. That said, I expect most n-volume long series, including heptalogies, are that long simply because that's when the author run out of steam, without particular planning to reach that particular target number. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 13:57, 16 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  To be honest I don't feel strongly enough about it to buy the book on C S Lewis, which is obviously one of the major sources, and I don't propose to start writing articles without access to the sources. But the source does exist, which makes deletion awkward. We shouldn't delete just because we can't be bothered to read. Elemimele (talk) 09:27, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Elemimele Without reading, we cannot be sure the sources exist or discuss the topic in a way that meets WP:SIGCOV (i.e. are not mentions in passing). As for the book, have you checked Z-library/Anna's Archive? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:40, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I have not checked Anna's archive because in my country it is illegal to do so. I do not think we should assume that a source we haven't read is inadequate. To be fair, it's actually the job of the proposer to demonstrate that the sources are inadequate. Elemimele (talk) 12:44, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I am not sure what country has such draconian rules (North Korea?). Anyway, you are wrong abut the "job", see WP:BURDEN. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:36, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. I can't find anything that even the concept of a heptalogy is notable, let alone something that justifies creating a list of them -- a list with a criterion which can be difficult to settle without performing OR due to questions of whether books belong in the same series or not by being set in the same universe (Neal Stephenson's come to mind here). Nor have any convincing arguments been put forward. Frankly, I'm highly dubious that anything past trilogy really deserves an article, but we'll leave that for another day I guess. 35.139.154.158 (talk) 01:00, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Owen× ☎ 07:08, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to the newly created series fiction article. I think this information should be somewhere, so I would not have voted delete at the last AfD, but I think it fits well here. PARAKANYAA (talk) 01:31, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Vanderwaalforces (talk) 11:43, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep and improve. A heptalogy is not just a series of seven fiction books: a quick look on Google Scholar shows that it also refers to dialogues by Plato [1] and operas by Stockhausen [2] (which he planned for performance on each evening of a week, so the seven-ness was definitely significant). So redirecting to an article about series fiction would be inappropriate. RebeccaGreen (talk) 13:52, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Your argument presents a reason not to redirect, but no reason to keep. We could disambiguate or delete it instead. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:18, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  My argument for keeping is the same as Elemimele's. RebeccaGreen (talk) 08:09, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Which is faulty as they have not shown that WP:SIGCOV exists for this topic. WP:THEREMAYBESOURCES is a very weak argument. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:42, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Your sources given merely use the word in reference to a single occurrence each, with no particular attempt to consider them as a group, nor to discuss the specific concept of "heptalogy" in any detail, so they do nothing to establish any kind of notability. Nor does your vague wave of "improve" give any indication how this could be improved. 35.139.154.158 (talk) 21:28, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Thanks for the phrase "vague wave of improve", I like it. I am not required to say how an article could be improved (though I do often either improve articles at AfD, or suggest content to do so (eg Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Butt of malmsey). However, this topic is not a priority for my editing time. RebeccaGreen (talk) 10:32, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Selectively merge to Series fiction. Contra several colleagues above, the sources I looked at contain content about thematic arcs over the course of a seven-book series, but as far as I can see do not contain much that is inherently tied to series of seven books, rather than ones of six or eight. Furthermore, the sources I found are heavily focused on Narnia or Harry Potter, by far the best known heptalogies, and constructing an article based on the phenomenon in those two seems untenable to me. Also, in my view Elemimele is quite incorrect above - it is impossible to prove that a subject isn't notable, only that specific sources are insufficient, and when specifics haven't been put forward the nominator is being asked to prove a negative. With respect to balance, I would agree that trilogy is probably too hefty to merge into series fiction, but merging this article causes no balance issues at all; there's hardly any content there to begin with. Indeed the second table can likely be dumped per WP:CRYSTAL. As far as ASOAIF is concerned I will believe it is a heptalogy if and only if seven books have been published and GRRM has signed an affidavit in blood that he will write no more. Vanamonde93 (talk) 17:28, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  To clarify, I'm not asking for proof that something isn't notable. My objection was to Piotrus' comment "Without reading, we cannot be sure the sources exist or discuss the topic in a way that meets WP:SIGCOV (i.e. are not mentions in passing)". I actually agree, but the other way round: At risk of putting words in his mouth, I felt this was tantamount to saying "Yes, I am aware that a source exists, but I haven't read it, and therefore I am justified in assuming it is trivial/passing". I take the complementary view: if a source definitely exists, we cannot discount that it might be in-depth/relevant without someone taking the trouble to read it. But my "keep" opinion on this isn't something I'm going to lose much sleep over. Elemimele (talk) 17:57, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Elemimele Per WP:BURDEN of proof is on those who want to create or keep the article. As I noted above, we cannot assume that WP:THEREMAYBESOURCES. If you want this kept, you need to identify sources that contain WP:SIGCOV and present them here. I am very amenable to changing my mind, voting keep and withdrawing my nomination, if I can be shown that good sources exist. But, "at risk of putting words in someone mouth", I am not amenable to being told "I googled a few sources in which this term appears, maybe they have SIGCOV, maybe not, I did not care to read them, but since it is possible there is some useful content here, let's keep this". This is simply against our cited policies, as well as bad practice; if we accepted such argument, nothing that is google'able would be deletable (not to mention that not everything is google'able, so we can even extend it and argue that because there may be sources not digitized or in foreign languages and non-latin scripts, everything could be notable and kept). Fortunately, the BURDEN is simple: show us SIGCOV sources, or this topic is assumed to be not notable. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:50, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I might add to this that we have had editors here at AfD that have made a habit of pointing to sources as a reason for keeping articles without having read those sources, even when those sources have been easily accessible for them to check, and in some cases even lying about having read them. Perhaps unsurprisingly, those sources have not-uncommonly been found to not be fit for purpose (sometimes not even about the topic in question). We have to read the sources to evaluate them. TompaDompa (talk) 06:35, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Piotrus: (and TompaDompa I do sympathise with your position, and understand the need to weed out bad articles. The problem is that AfD gets such appallingly low attendance. It's difficult to strike a balance between "automatic delete unless the two people who bother to turn up to AfD are willing to spend their own money buying books they really don't want in order to verify that the article's author wasn't exaggerating the coverage" and "automatic keep of every bit of crap that anyone's every written because it's referenced to something that's difficult to obtain, so no one can evaluate whether the source is rubbish". But I'm sorry, this isn't the place for my general concerns about AfD. I'll leave it at that. I don't have particularly strong feelings about heptalogy. Elemimele (talk) 09:56, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  To that, I'll add that some editors who have been doing this ("pointing to sources as a reason for keeping articles without having read those sources, even when those sources have been easily accessible for them to check, and in some cases even lying about having read them") have been topic banned from AfD. Just food for thought... _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:37, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Lest there be any confusion, I am positive that Elemimele is acting in good faith here, even if I find their perspective misguided. There have been cases where bad-faith actors have pretended to know that certain sources are adequate when in fact they did not, but this is very obviously not such a case. TompaDompa (talk) 08:24, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Final relist.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, ZyphorianNexus ^Talk 18:06, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge to Series fiction. I feel like this info would be better if its actually covered in the series fiction article since it lacks WP:SIGCOV. 🍕BP!🍕 (🔔) 07:07, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Er, just delete? I read the whole discussion first before going to have a look at the article, and I have to confess, I no longer understand the arguments. Merge what? The one-sentence definition? The tables? If there's some reason to mention any of these at Series fiction, any editor can simply... mention them. Nothing here is creative work that requires attribution. -- asilvering (talk) 02:23, 12 February 2025 (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.