Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Battle Cry (Milton Bradley game)

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. Sandstein 17:57, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Battle Cry (Milton Bradley game)

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I prodded it with the following rationale: "The coverage (references, external links, etc.) does not seem sufficient to justify this article passing Wikipedia:General notability guideline nor the more detailed Wikipedia:Notability (companies)'s section for products requirement. WP:BEFORE did not reveal any significant coverage on Gnews, Gbooks or Gscholar." It was deprodded by User:Andrew Davidson with no meaningful rationale (despite the fact that I explicitly asked for one in the PROD). PS. More in-depth look at the sources shows the following: [1], [2], [3]. But they don't seem to meet WP:RS, being more like blog reviews or otherwise self-published. BGG page lists no reviews at all. Thoughts? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:22, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Games-related deletion discussions. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:22, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:22, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Products-related deletion discussions. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:22, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:22, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delete lacks SIGCOV in multiple RS so failing WP:GNG. Mztourist (talk) 04:30, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep According to The Civil War in Popular Culture: Memory and Meaning Battle Cry "was almost certainly the best-selling game on the Civil War" Geo Swan (talk) 05:20, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Geo Swan, Good find. It's a nice start, but one sentence like this is not sufficient to establish notability which requires more than trivial / passing mentions. If nothing else can be established from RS, we could add this factoid to the article about the publisher (Milton Bradley Company). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:59, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  - Piotrus, thanks for your reply. Can I draw your attention to my email to Scott Mingus, this article's original author? Contributor Scott Mingus, who started this article in 2006, is no longer active on the wikipedia. My email notes that his 2006 version would have been considered a fine addition to the wikipedia, in 2006. I told him I was concerned its nomination "might be a good example of a bad phenomenon".
  - Strong compliance with the obligations of WP:BEFORE can be tricky. I didn't rely solely on the google searches generated by the AFD template. This game was a collaboration between Milton Bradley and the American Heritage magazine, so I added "American Heritage" to my search terms.
  - I am working on an essay, User:Geo Swan/opinions/When complying with BEFORE is not straighforward. That essay isn't near being ready to promotion to the wikipedia namespace, because there are so many wrinkles to performing the really effective BEFORE searches older articles like this one really deserve.
  - Could you see your way clear to being more specific as to what you think the topic requires to merit a standalone article? Geo Swan (talk) 18:07, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    - Geo Swan, With the caveat that it is impossible to provide 'perfect measures', I interpret WP:GNG in general as requiring 2+ sources and WP:SIGCOV as clarifying that a single sentence is not sufficient to make the source non-trivial. SIGCOV gives the example of a dedicated book as a non-trivial coverage, but of course, a dedicated article or chapter will do as well. In practice, we often accept several paragraphs or even a single one as possibly being in-depth, but that can vary, and the content of those paragraphs is relevant too (for example if we discuss a piece of fiction, we tend to ask for a non-plot summary type of coverage). Anyway, for a board game, I'd like to see 2+ reliable sources that discuss its significance/impact / etc. in few paragraphs each. Usually, reviews in gaming magazines or portals are helpful here, but for older games we do run into the problem of such reviews not being digitized. Unfortunately, WP:THEREMUSTBESOURCES notes we can't just assume they exist. Hence, the best solution could be to WP:SOFTDELETE this article by redirecting it to the publisher, making it easy for someone to restore it if the found better sources in the future. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:09, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      - Okay, thanks for another thoughtful reply. My reading of the references I found is that Milton Bradley collaborated with American Heritage magazine on four games: Dogfight (World War 1 aerial warfare), On the Beach (WW2 Pacific Island landings), and the fourth was naval warfare from the War of 1812. That is 1961. A fifth game was added some time later.

If there are some references for the other games I suggest this be moved to a new article on the collaboration, with American Heritage magazine and Milton Bradley Corporation both linking to that new article. Geo Swan (talk) 02:49, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Geo Swan, Right, but as we don't have said sources, I'd suggest discussing that collaboration at Milton Bradley Company in a dedicated section. Assuming we can find sources at all, the last time I checked said collaboration was mentioned in our articles without as much as a single source, sigh... _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:08, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The sources seem to indicate the game is notable for its time. The game is significant enough that a copy is held in the collection of the Strong National Museum of Play.Guinness323 (talk) 19:18, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per above comments, and per WP:ATD and WP:PRESERVE. BOZ (talk) 20:33, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I had no difficulty finding a good account of the rules and game play. It has a realistic map but a dice for movement and combat by jumping and so is interesting as a transitional form, between the parlour game and conflict simulation. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:49, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Andrew Davidson, And if we have a reliable source saying what you just did, it would go a long way to making this topic notable... _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:19, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  - The nomination lists some sources for a different game which we have covered elsewhere. It's the nomination which is unreliable. My !vote stands. Andrew🐉(talk) 21:19, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Per above comments and by looking at the existing sources- plus the additional ones that have been found through this process. I see no good reason to remove this page. Nightenbelle (talk) 16:03, 10 February 2021 (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.