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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 merge to Campaign setting. Vanamonde (Talk) 10:28, 21 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Metaplot

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Metaplot (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Unreferenced WP:OR. Intrestingly, the definition ended up being cited (and attributed to Wikipedia) in a RS (a book published by McFarland, p.118, footnote confirming the source is Wikipedia is on p.123]. Without the attribution this definition ("overarching storyline") also appears in this academic paper. The term does appear in few more (academic, reliable) sources but I can't find anything that meets WP:SIGCOV. Aside of the interesting case of almost WP:CITOGENESIS, I wonder if anyone can rescue this, or should be just delete or redirect this? (redirect where? Maybe Setting (narrative) or even better, perhaps, Campaign setting?) The best I have is half a sentence long reworded def in here. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 10:54, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Literature and Games. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 10:54, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge to Metanarrative, perhaps? I think the article is poorly thought out, the list incomplete, and I'm not sure it's worth saving. It includes Rifts (role-playing game) which seems to me the quintessential "Let's throw all this stuff we wrote together and call it a multiverse" as opposed to previous games from the same developer such as The Mechanoid Invasion. Classic entries like The Morrow Project are missing, and it doesn't at all engage with literature-driven games like Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game). Could it be salvaged? On first read, my inclination that it does such a bad job of what it sets out to do that it shouldn't be. Jclemens (talk) 16:57, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Jclemens I don't think metanarrative is a similar concept. Or they are just both badly written, perhaps (metanarrative has sources but it is also a postmodernistic mambo jumbo). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 20:08, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science fiction and fantasy-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 15:21, 9 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not sure if this belongs on Wikipedia as it is probably a WP:DICDEF but [1] uses the term and formally defines it as does [2]. [3] uses it, and as noted by Piotrus, cites this article. It is also used as "meta-plot" in sources like [4] and [5] which define it in a similar way but for different types of fiction. I'm leaning toward keeping and expanding from a WP:N viewpoint. I'm less sure about the DICDEF issue. I do think the world is probably (very slightly) better off with this article given it has been cited by external sources. But... Hobit (talk) 18:51, 9 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Hobit ... citogenesis. Although the topic of Wikipedia creating knowledge deserves some proper academic attention. Succesfull citogenesis can still create notable entities (ex an OR essay in Wikipedia that creates a new, notable concept that becomes notable). The thing is, I an not seeing sufficient sourcing to suggest that the concept of metaplot is notable, with or without considering any citogenesis, hence my recommendation to redirect this for now. In the RPG context, what's the difference between metaplot and campaign setting? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 09:26, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd say a metaplot is likely an aspect of a campaign setting; if anything, that may be a good place to merge or at least redirect. BOZ (talk) 11:04, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Piotrus: The campaign setting is the geography, characters, etc. Often this is presented as a snapshot at one specific point in setting time. The metaplot is if there is an overarching development in setting time (well, a plot). Some settings have that, some don't. So in my view you can't have a metaplot without a setting, but you can have a setting without a metaplot. Daranios (talk) 15:30, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    <ec>Quite a bit IMO. A setting is a place. A metaplot is a plot running through multiple stories ("adventures" in this context). I'd argue that many of the pathfinder adventure paths are in a setting and that often each book has a plot, but the whole adventure path has something of a metaplot. And then things, like the conflict between the gods, that sometimes resolve just a bit in different adventure paths are somewhere between campaign setting and metaplot. I'm also seeing that "meta-plot" predates the use of metaplot in RPGs and has a very similar meaning. So it's not just citogenesis (which is a cool word btw). Hobit (talk) 15:32, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Hobit @Daranios I am still having trouble grasphing this concept; isn't it simply an "idea that connects multiple books"? As such, it likely was invented as soon as some presumbly ancient artist decided to make a sequel, prequel, or simply split his work into two parts due to size... Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 16:22, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    It could be. But some books, like Lord of the Rings, really is one story in multiple books. Other things, like say the Sherlock Homes stories have what I'd say is metaplot--Watson getting married and how that all worked out for example. Those examples are most certainly OR, but I think we have enough sources to at least describe the idea. Hobit (talk) 16:57, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I was actually thinking of Lord of the Rings myself, but that would only be a good example if the stories in each book were more disconnected from each other rather than just being pieces of one huge story. Many book series that feature a single protagonist or group of characters could be seen as having something like a metaplot, if plot elements from previous books continue to be relevant in later books. BOZ (talk) 17:34, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Taking Silmarilion into account, I think Middle-Earth is extremly metapolotish. This is really ORish, but hmmm, take Bank's The Culture (or Pratchett's Discworld). Each book is independet but set in the same universe. Some characters occasionally overlap. There is connecting narrative. What about metaplot? It's all subjective... point is, there is something here, but it doesn't appear sufficiently research to make a good Wikipedia article at the moment (certainly not an RPG-focused one, since we are already discussing non-RPG works). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 19:09, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge oder keep. Most of what is in the article now can be referenced to secondary sources. Contrary to the nomination, this source does not only have half a sentence of definition (p. 12), but also a bit of commentary with the example of Shadowrun on p. 43. Taking together the sources, this article could be extended just beyond a stub, beyond the size suggested for merge reason "Short text", and beyond a dictionary definition. If no more sources are presented, it would remain short, so I have no objections against a merge to Campaign setting, which in my view is by far the best target. As for WP:CITOGENESIS, well, we don't know if the definition appeared before Wikipedia somewhere, but the term is used now by secondary source both with and without reference to Wikipedia, so it should appear in some form in our encyclopedia. For what it's worth, the primary source Exalted Storyteller's Companion, p. 6, has used the term in 2001, before the existence of our article, in our sense here. (And other sources have used it in a different sense...). Daranios (talk) 15:30, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Hah, Shadowrun. Now that's metaplot galore... Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 19:09, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Löschen. I haven't been able to find any significant coverage beyond what's already been raised in the above discussion. The sources that have been raised aren't cumulatively sufficient to indicate notability, and don't provide a basis to write an article that goes beyond a dictionary definition. McAbee 2014 has to be set aside due to the citogenesis issue. Carraro 2022 and Bowman 2010 are passing mentions. Faricelli 2015 is self-published (Lulu.com). Byrnes 2008 uses the same word to refer to an entirely different concept. Daranios is right that White et al. 2018 comes the closest to constituting the sort of significant coverage we require, but we'd need at least one other source dicussing the subject in at least that level of depth for WP:GNG to be met. A merge or redirect could be viable, but I'm not sure merging to campaign setting is a good idea given the very poor state that article's in, and metanarrative is definitely a non-starter (I'm mildly surprised we don't have some sort of glossary of role-playing games where this could go). – Arms & Hearts (talk) 16:27, 13 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Citogenesis, as far as I know, isn't a good reason to not use a source here IMO. Even if the original source was Wikipedia for the word (which it is not), that doesn't invalidate the source. Hobit (talk) 20:03, 13 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • There are lots of good reasons to avoid citing sources that cite Wikipedia. Aside from the significant risk of questionable material (unsourced facts at best, made-up nonsense at worst) being reproduced, the fact the author and editor thought it wise to cite Wikipedia in published work should put the rigour of that author's work in question. These problems exist in relation to any source that cites Wikipedia; they're significantly exacerbated when the source cites the Wikipedia article it's then being cited in, and are exacerbated further stll when the article they're citing (as in this case, which cites this version) is or was itself entirely unsourced. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 12:38, 14 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 18:23, 13 August 2022 (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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