Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Preternatural

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 of the debate was no consensus. Default to keep. → Ξxtreme Unction {^yakł_blah} 22:00, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Preternatural

dicdef with no hope of expansion, bit of a neologism on the precise meaning (let's quote a work of fiction), could redirect to Supernatural or any number of real articles here DreamGuy 14:51, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

• Merge or redirect per nom. Jasmol 18:31, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
• I hope you don't delete it. I found it on a google search and it was very helpful in defining the term and showing it's difference from the term supernatural. (Above vote is by User:70.22.237.252)
• Make a disambig with supernatural, paranormal, magic, occultism, &c. It's a rare word that people tend to cross-reference if they use it in an article: they think it might need explaining. More than 15 pages link here, including one redirect (praeternatural); outright deletion is going to redlink all of them and invite its recreation. It even has a non-blank talk page. Transwiki to Wiktionary; the quotation may merit transwiki to Wikiquote if it's thought inappropriate for a disambiguation page. Smerdis of Tlön 20:50, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I went ahead and made it a disambiguation page. Smerdis of Tlön 21:04, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
    • I don't understand how it rates a disambiguation page... you aren't disambiguating a term, you are saying it's supernatural or ghosts or etc. which are all just supernatural. At best this is a redirect to supernatural with a mention on that page about the alleged difference between the two. Disambiguation pages are for topics with more than one meaning, not one vague meaning better covered by preexisting articles. DreamGuy 23:17, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
    • P.S. The non-blank talk page consists of three comments spaced out over almost as many years mainly discussing if it really rates a real article, with one using the term to mean something clearly different from the defintion the main article took from a fictional movie. How that by itself is supposed to be a justification for keeping it is beyond me. DreamGuy 23:23, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
      • The fact that the page has beein sitting there in its original form for about three years would seem to argue the other way: this page has been around unchallenged for a long time. A short article directing people to the sorts of things that have been called "preternatural" would appear to be appropriate. FWIW, the articles supernatural and paranormal seem to distinguish themselves one from another; if preternatural covers both, it is a candidate for a disambiguation page in your sense as well. Smerdis of Tlön 14:58, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
        • The fact that it has been sitting there in its original form for three years show that the article was so unimportant that nobody saw it or cared about it. Arguments that "that's the way it's always been" hold no water. Try arguing for it based upon its actual content... which in this case is simply dicdef with neologistic alternate meaning different from standard usage. DreamGuy 18:10, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

perhaps my edit will improve the much-needed disambig process. merge? redirect? i don't know: apologies for unfamiliarity with wikipedia protocols. jaqi, 19 nov 2005

Requesting to improve this seems ok to me, but trying to just outright delete it is nonsense. It's a word not used *that* often and in lieu of an improved explanation of the context this word might be used instead of 'supernatural' etc., this definition serves its purpose. If you go deleting entire pages just because you didn't like how complete it was, how complete is that (much less). (unsigned comment by anon User:65.219.108.116)

Wikipedia deletes dicdefs all the time. That's not "nonsense" that's policy. If anyone wants a definition or a link to a definition in the article they can go to Wiktionary, which is what it is for, and which already defines the word. DreamGuy 17:33, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

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.