Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Loki's Wager

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. (non-admin closure) Ron Ritzman (talk) 04:40, 17 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Loki's Wager

A reference has not been found, after more than a year, for the article's basic premise. Aseld ^talk 10:48, 12 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The article's basic premise, as given in its title, is that Loki once made a bet with the dwarves Brokk and Eitri, and lost. That's not only documented in the cited source, but also documented in plenty of books on Norse mythology as well. Fixing the mere three sentences out of the whole article that attempt to subvert this premise into a discussion of logical fallacies is a matter of simply editing the text of the article. Deletion isn't required. Instead of nominating articles for deletion that need fixing, try fixing them yourself in future. It would have taken you three fewer edits to do so than making this AFD nomination and your talk page discussion contribution did. AFD is not cleanup. Uncle G (talk) 12:03, 12 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- No. The MoS states that the first sentence in an article should summarize its subject: "Loki's Wager is a form of logical fallacy.". This shows the focus of the article as it was created. Read the "What links here". None of those articles are related to Norse mythology; all of them treat the subject of the article as being a logical fallacy. The story is clearly only the example usually used to illustrate the supposed fallacy. This is even evidenced by the title, "Loki's Wager". Proper noun, initial capitals, not to be found in any book on Norse mythology that I have read. This article is about a logical fallacy, not Norse mythology. --Aseld ^talk 13:28, 12 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - Wrong. The article is about Loki's Wager, which is the wager made by Loki, and which is documented not only in books such as ISBN 9781406739893 on page 68 (It's listed as "Loki's wager with Brokk" in the book's index.), but in the very source cited in the article. I can only conclude from this that you've never read any books on Norse mythology.
    Furthermore: What the Manual of Style says should be the case is a far cry from what is the case here. The Wikipedia Manual of Style is a house style guideline. It's not a definition of how to interpret every article, especially poor ones.
    You've identified a problem with the introduction: it contains original research, namely an original analysis of a story in Norse mythology. Please stop acting so helpless. AFD is not a crutch. The introduction is not immutable, and can be edited, by you, as much as any other part of the article. You could even fix the title, with your rename button, to lowercase the second word. You are not helpless. You have an edit button. Use it! Remove the three sentences from the article and write a better introduction. You could have done that in, now, four fewer edits than you've currently made.
    When you see a problem, fix it! See the sign on the door when you arrived here at Wikipedia? It said "Be bold!". Be bold! And stop frittering about with deletion nominations and clearly fallacious wikilawyering over what the Manual of Style says, and edit the three sentences out of the article. Uncle G (talk) 00:04, 13 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The article can be rewritten to focus on the Norse mythology story or be redirected to Loki. At no time is deletion neccesary. - Mgm|^(talk) 12:07, 12 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I learned about this in school and it was one of those things that stuck with me through the years, and I found the fallacy alive and well in the course of many message board debates back when I enjoyed that sort of thing. I continue to be surprised that I (or anyone else) can't find a good reference for it since it was a basic philosophy/Intro to Logic class. I can only find online mention prior to when I wrote the article of it in passing (like a guy who named all his servers after logical fallacies and named one of them Loki's wager) so I know I'm not crazy. Of course, the wager is famous in and of itself, but I think other articles cover it. -- Kendrick7^talk 04:22, 13 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and for that matter keep the three sentences because they provide the background. Just add other material discussing the fallacy. Of course, most topics are covered to some degree by other wp articles, but that's inevitable. Things have connections, This topic is sufficiently distinctive, sufficiently notable & sufficiently sourced., DGG (talk) 04:50, 13 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep It's all right. Thank goodness for Wikipedia consensus. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 05:14, 13 February 2009 (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.