Deletion of Spells in Harry Potter (3rd nomination)

Comment: The argument regarding verifiability seems ludicrous to me - the information is factual, uncontentious, and comprehensively substantiated by multiple uninterested secondary sources. We do not need a Harvard Law Review article to establish that the summoning charm is a spell in the Harry Potter stories. The references listed in external links do a particularly fine job already. A topic which is intimately related to a story that sold 325+ million books is notable. I gave a more comprehensive spiel which I won't repeat on why I think this article does pass  on the DRV, but whether I was correct or not is really just a trivial technicality. If it were true that the article in question failed the minutia of , , or whatever similar policy, then that policy should be |ignored without hesitation. The topic does not need explicit criteria, because there are no ambiguities any larger than an Archaea|archaeon. There are a finite number of spells involved in the Harry Potter stories, and we can identify names and descriptions for nearly all of them. This is clearly an issue of virtually no relevance to the potential of the article and if it's even worth discussing then that should be done on it's talk page
Stance: keep
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Notability (WP:N||WP:N||WP:FICT||WP:IGNORE)

Comment: the only spells that even have close to the necessary real-world context are ''Expelliarmus'' and possibly the unforgiveable curses. Matching up Latin in  and describing the spells in the detail we have is against 
Stance: merge
Cited policy: Wikipedia:No original research (WP:OR||WP:PLOT)

Comment: per Bfigura, provided individual entries are purely descriptive and there is no  or 
Stance: keep
Cited policy: Wikipedia:No original research (WP:OR||WP:SYNTH)

Comment: It's not a case of , it's a case of , which is a fundamental part of any encyclopedia. The Tolkien article can of course be interesting to those who haven't read the books, that's what's intended after all. The same is true of the Harry Potter article, or those of the individual books. But, not being a Tolkien fan, would you be as interested in a list of fictional spells from ''Lord of the Rings'' (if there was one
Stance: comment
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions (WP:IDONTLIKEIT||WP:N)

Comment: transwiki per Ned Scott, or, at most, merge with Magic (Harry Potter).  says that in-universe information needs to be backed up with real-world sourcing to make it encyclopedic. There needs to be information written specifically about the spells, or it isn't notable enough to have its own separate article. Furthermore, |notability is not inherited. Just because Harry Potter is notable doesn't mean that the spells in the books are
Stance: delete
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (WP:WAF||WP:NOTINHERITED)

Comment: and gut any |OR on etymology. Spells being you know a major element of HP, having an article on spells might actually make sense! Having already been noted by others that there's |reliable sources that can be used, one should note that notability is the pillar of Wikipedia inclusion citeria, and there can be no doubt spells in HP is notable. For the quoters of , I quote just one point while you use it to debate away in this AfD - "it is not set in stone and should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception". When the debate turns into what should be included in the article and how it should be presented, I encourage editors to participate in the article's talk page
Stance: keep
Cited policy: Wikipedia:No original research (WP:OR||WP:RS||WP:FICT)

Comment: I don't think editors should underestimate the importance of this AfD. The guidelines at  have recently undergone some changes, and I think this debate will influence whether those changes are realistically applicable. The question to answer: should editors be faced with a heavy burden to produce real-world information, when an article's subject is already a significant component to an extremely notable work? I myself have no idea. I think the shift toward real-information is a good one; but on the other hand, we shouldn't wikia|ghettoize articles too hastily. According to the current , an article should be kept if there exists an obvious potential to produce real-world sources for it. It also states that the onus should be on the article's defenders to find these sources. Although little or no real-world content has been produced thus far, I have no doubt it exists. I ask the closing admin to allow the article a stay and to strongly encourage that editors find reliable, real-world content directly related to Spells in Harry Potter within the month, before the inevitable 4th AfD
Stance: keep
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Notability (WP:FICT||WP:FICT)

Comment: I don't think  is really a strong argument for removal. The required sources exist (as I've noted above). The only real question seems to be: does this meet ?  Per
Stance: comment
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions (WP:IHATEIT||WP:N)

Comment: first of all (this is not part of my argument so don't invoke some essay telling me this is an invalid argument, because I'm sure such an essay exists ;)) I am quite surprised that a B-class article of mid-importance to a WikiProject is on AfD. At any rate, as a few others noted, there are quite a few secondary sources about this topic to justify keeping it. That seems to have been the only valid argument (the lack of "real-world sources" as you call them) in this mess. Incidentally, someone said "There's no one who isn't already a fan who is going to be interested in it, because it covers details of fiction." - well, ignoring the fact that this is an  argument, I have never read The Lord of the Rings but reading through the information of Tolkien's world was quite fascinating to me
Stance: keep
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions (WP:IDONTLIKEIT)

Comment: does anyone have any of these books that people keep talking about as sources, if so does anyone know anything about them other than that they exist - the publisher, how many copies have sold, are they independent of the material, are they speculation, do the contradict each other, can they be deemed a |reliable source? The fact that's something is in print doesn't mean that it's an independent reliable seocndary source which goes towards a subject's |notability
Stance: comment
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Reliable sources (WP:RS||WP:NN)

Comment: 1) There are no inherent |verifiablity problems, as the information can be verified by reading the books themselves. Using the primary source is not only acceptable, but necessary in cases like this, as the existence of a spell in a book is a simple fact rather than original interpretation. As an analogy, would we |require secondary sources to verify a ''List of characters in Hamlet''? I think not. As others have said elsewhere, the spells can be considered "characters" in these books, and a list of them is valid content in an encyclopedia article. In this case the list was split off for practical reasons of |article size, not necessarily because of the "encyclopedic" (whatever that means) importance of the topic; in a paper encyclopedia, this content might be included as a sidebar, table, or appendix. 2) The list membership criteria should be obvious from the title, as this is a relatively short list and every spell in the books can be included. It's not like a ''List of people from the United Kingdom'', which would be too large in principle and would require inclusion criteria. 3) The final concern in the nomination seems to be |notability. While it is true that "OTINHERITED|notability is not inherited", some of it may be. Remember that there are many millions of fans, and many thousands at least will be interested in a list of spells. This interest can be verified from secondary sources such as websites that have been mentioned. Sure, there is no Britannica article with a list of spells, but WP is different because it is OT#PAPER|not paper and it has more people writing the articles than Britannica does. Using some websites for recent, popular-culture topics seems legitimate to me; not every conceivable Wikipedia topic has an academic journal devoted to it! Finally, some comments who use the |*cruft argument have said things like "who else could have an interest in this article but Harry Potter fans?". But we have many articles on much more obscure topics on quantum physics or mathematics and (fortunately) no one wants to delete them with the argument that "who cares about it besides theoretical physicists?". I would bet that there are more Harry Potter fans that theoretical physicists
Stance: keep
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Verifiability (WP:V||WP:RS||WP:LONG||WP:N||WP:NOTINHERITED||WP:NOT||WP:CRUFT)

Comment: I'm with Radiant.  The first AfD closing in ten hours wasn't because there was anything wrong with the process; it's because the overwhelming number of Keeps compelled a  decision.  This never should have reached a 2nd AfD within the same month, let alone a third
Stance: keep
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Snowball clause (WP:SNOW)

Comment: with a possible '''transwiki'''. Most of the list is just |trivia and, with regards to the etymology, |original research. Very few of the spells have any external references, and even those don't actually talk about the spell or the spells role in the series. Most instances is when an editor using the terms or phrases as metaphors to jazz up their writing, much like they would use phrases like ''jumping the shark'' or ''beyond the pale''. But such usage of metaphors doesn't denote the notability of the spells, but the metaphors themselves, which would make a much better encyclopedic article
Stance: delete
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (WP:TRIVIA||WP:NOR)