UESPWiki:Deletion Review/Lore:Slavery

This is an archive of past UESPWiki:Deletion Review discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.

Lore:Slavery

The article is sloppy, but there's no point in cleaning it up because I don't think this article is necessary and it sets a bad precedent. We don't have an article on taxes, or civil liberties, or death, or the Tamrielic economy. I think we should be sticking to articles which can have a tangible focus - a person, a place, an organization, an event, etc. Stretching that focus out to a concept like what has been done here with slavery would vastly expand the number of articles we "should" have while providing very marginal edification for readers.

Further, concept-focused articles will often have an enormous scope, which means we would be spending enormous amounts of time researching, writing, and maintaining all of this information for insubstantial gain. Try doing a search here for "slave", and imagine combing through and analyzing all that data. It's just not practical. It might be different if a concept was some strange TES invention, but the real-world concept of slavery and the one held in TES are fundamentally the same. There's no need for us to reinvent the wheel on this.

I have not been a contributor to this page.

• Delete or userfy: As nominator. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 00:23, 15 March 2013 (GMT)

• Comment:Before any action is take, it needs to be moved to the morrowind page and retooled, because the morrowind page at the moment is just transcluding this page, with some quests and such added on. Jeancey (talk) 00:29, 15 March 2013 (GMT)

• Comment:That's basically a simple copy-and-paste. This nomination will be up for debate for a minimum of seven days, so we have plenty of time to deal with that later, if it seems necessary, while we argue the merits now. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 00:32, 15 March 2013 (GMT)

• Question: Why is this at deletion review rather than just being a proposed deletion? Did someone object somewhere before it was even proposed? Or are you looking back in the history to the 2008 Prod? – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 02:42, 15 March 2013 (GMT)

• Comment: There have been no objections, but I felt it would be inappropriate to simply assume that no one would object to the deletion of a five-year-old page with numerous contributors. If I've interpreted the deletion policy correctly, a deletion review should be used when there's some expectation that one or more people might object to the deletion. And since, yes, I knew from the history and the discussion at Lore talk:Slavery that the page was proposed for deletion shortly after it was first made which evidently failed. But I didn't get a chance to give my two cents back then, and there was no record of a deletion review ever happening, so here we are. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 02:55, 15 March 2013 (GMT)

• Keep: This article is of a major concept and ancient tradition of the Dunmer, and it was central to their way of life. Look at the rather unique circumstances of slavery, such as the fact that it was permitted by the Armistice when it should otherwise have been illegal, and that there were major political events in Morrowind related to the practice of slavery, including at least one war directly related to it. And, of course, there are known instances of slavery beyond just in Morrowind, such as the mention in the tag of enslaved Falmer and goblins. I find this to be a very worthwhile article to have, once it gets cleaned up and the article is made more neutral and less Morrowind specific.

And, as for the lack of articles on taxes, or civil liberties, or death, or the Tamrielic economy, is there anything mentioned about these concepts? I know only of a one liner about a Balmora tax revolt, I don't think anything about civil rights has been mentioned, beyond the basic premise that all sentient men, mer, and beast have the standard rights to freedom and life, I don't think death is mentioned in detail either, beyond the Dunmer ancestor worship and that men of Arkay handle the dead. And, the economy is never mentioned at all, to my knowledge. Slavery, on the other hand, has a significant amount of lore to it, has been extensively detailed in Morrowind, and more and more details about it crop up in each subsequent game, such as the mention of Helseth's abolition of slavery, the Dwemer enslavement of Falmer, the Altmer enslavement of goblins. And, we have these two (cited!) statements in the opening to the page.

"The Ayleids, often depicted as brutal slavemasters of whole races, lost their hold on heartland Tamriel after the rebellion in 1E 242, led by Slave Queen Alessia.[1] Even the former slave race Imperials pursued slavery, as Tiber Septim's army sold captive Bretons into slavery after the Battle of Sancre Tor.[2]"

I personally find this to appear to be a very lore significant concept, and as such, it would be inappropriate to not document it. Snowmane➚^{(talk•email)} 04:40, 15 March 2013 (GMT)

• Comment: Absolutely, we can and will document it all. I'm pretty sure we already have, though there's always a few holes to fill. All that information you provided is all relevant to articles and sections related to the Dunmer and their culture, the Armistice, the Arnesian War, Falmer, goblins, and other pages. None of it will be lost, it just won't be needlessly reiterated on a page with an overbroad scope; instead, slavery will be discussed in depth on the race, place, and people pages where it is relevant. We inevitably have a lot of redundancy on the UESP, but there's no need to exacerbate that problem, and that's all having a page specific to slavery does: adds to the redundancy. To reiterate much of what I was saying in the IRC, this is not like the Dragon Break or the Way of the Voice. Those are concepts specific to TES; I have no problem with them. But the concept of slavery is not specific to TES. Our readers know what slavery is, and they don't need us to explain it. There are many major concepts in TES that we do not have pages for. Like I mentioned, death is one such concept that is present in every TES game and a major part of every story. We could have a whole big page talking about the ins and outs of death, documenting each and every death that has occurred in every game, note literary references to death, and explain various cultural beliefs about death. There's certainly enough information for it. Same goes for piracy. But what would creating and maintaining any of that really gain us, and how many other projects could we complete with that time? We already have backlogs of pages which need to be properly maintained, and we shouldn't let editors get side-tracked. The benefit to the reader from such long, concept-focused articles is extremely minimal, and yet this type of article requires enormous amounts of time and attention to create and maintain. If you look at the history of the deletion reviews, this proposal is very similar to the lore pages that have been nominated (and deleted) before, and for essentially all the same reasons. Like I said, there are many major concepts which we don't have pages for; the only reason slavery got a page was because of its pronounced importance in Morrowind, which essentially makes this a game-specific page despite the existence of slavery in other places. It got a page due to its game-specific importance, not because slavery is any fundamentally different or more important than it is in the real world, and that should be the only criteria we should consider in making concept-based lore articles. Allowing it and pages like it is just begging editors to waste their time when there are certainly much better ways to improve the lorespace and help readers.

And to address your addition, there's all sorts of information about civil liberties. Freedom of speech and expression comes up whenever a ruler decides to close down a production or orders a bard arrested. The segregation of the Argonians in Windhelm was a hot-button issue during Skyrim. The Empire guaranteed all citizens the right to marry citizens of any other race. The list goes on. And we know tons about the Tamrielic economy. We know the default prices of virtually all basic necessities in several provinces at various points in time. We could document an enormous amount: costs of living. Real estate prices. Transportation fees. So, just like slavery, the question is not "can we?", it's "should we"? And the answer is clearly no, because we're not benefiting our readers by investing that much time for so very little gain. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 05:39, 15 March 2013 (GMT)

• Delete: I'd hate to lose an article that I've personally contributed to, but Minor Edits makes a good point. Except for slavery in Morrowind, there's not much to say that couldn't be incorporated into the Lore articles on various cultures that practiced slavery. I'd be willing to support the deletion if and only if we make sure that all the information currently in the article is already found somewhere else on the site. I'd also like to point out that we'd have to go through this list to see which links should be redirected to Morrowind:Slavery and which should just be removed altogether. -- Kertaw48 (talk) 12:27, 15 March 2013 (GMT)

• Weak Keep: I'm not all that invested in this, but if the article could be given some more info that isn't Morrowind-specific, it might be worth keeping around. In its current form, it is kind of weak and very much limited to one game, but that could definitely be improved upon. Maybe it might be worth waiting until ESO comes out to see if that adds any significant lore that would be relevant to the topic. (It is set in the 2nd Era, when slavery was supposedly far more prevalent, as far as we can tell from the existing 2E lore. It will be interesting to see if they address this at all in the game.) — TheRealLurlock (talk) 19:41, 15 March 2013 (GMT)

• Weak Keep Userfy: I was going to be neutral, because the information could be kept here or removed and replaced on appropriate province/race articles, but TheRealLurlock makes a very good point: ESO could add a lot of lore on this topic. I'd like to wait until then before looking at where to distribute this info. Vely^►t►e 23:27, 18 March 2013 (GMT)

Edit: If the page is preserved in userspace to be looked at again once ESO comes out, and the current information is moved to the appropriate pages, then I'll support its deletion. Vely^►t►e 01:36, 19 March 2013 (GMT)

• Comment: Vely, I've already preserved it here, because if nobody else wants to put in the effort to tidy it up, I'd do it myself when I had the free time to manage it. Snowmane➚^{(talk•email)} 01:46, 19 March 2013 (GMT)

• Comment: This page is a solution in search of a problem. Even if ESO or any future game substantially dealt with slavery, that would not justify keeping this page. It's like saying we should have a page explaining contracts or civil wars and insurrections because so many of the TES games have dealt with the topics before and likely will again in the future. Also, if the concern is that the page might become worth having in the future, that's an argument to userfy and preserve it, not for keeping it on the wiki now. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 23:36, 18 March 2013 (GMT)

• Comment: Here's how I look at this page, personally: Slavery is quite noteworthy and is mentioned in other places on many, many occasions, so what I see this page as being is a page where information on slavery can be documented, and it could all be in one central location. Suppose, for example, you were reading about slave revolts, and you wanted to read about slavery in general, and how it's affected the whole world over the eras. This page, like the other lore pages, provides a central location where you can read about the whole topic in one place, without having to find the many obscure links detailing it out in pieces, similar to the function of every lore page.

Do we need a page saying "Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work.", just like on Wikipedia? Not at all, and like ME said, it's common knowledge what it is. Do we need a page detailing what a civil war is? No we don't. That is what I think you view this page as, and it's how you word your arguments to appear in my opinion. This page is not that at all. It's a page that describes the effects of slavery on Tamriel, and how the people have responded to it historically. That's what this page is about, and that is why I find it to be a noteworthy page. Snowmane➚^{(talk•email)} 00:00, 19 March 2013 (GMT)

• Comment: You can say all that about racism, could you not? It perfectly matches your criteria on what concepts deserve an article. It's often just an aspect of racism, anyways; no doubt the racism page and the slavery page would overlap significantly. So why single out slavery? That's the problem: there's no proper reason to single out slavery, thus inevitably, it will lead to similar articles. We could create a whole lore category of redundant articles about all of the example articles I have mentioned in this discussion, all of them repeating each other over and over. And all the while, they would be documenting no truly unique and special information; that's what really irks me about it. The Slavery page doesn't add any information that shouldn't be available on some other lore page; it's purely superfluous. That's why I feel passionate about this; I don't want to open a floodgate to the creation of a bunch of unnecessary articles which will by their nature require extensive time and energy to create and maintain properly. And inevitably, they won't be done properly, and they will end up being eyesores on the wiki, along with other pages which didn't receive attention more quickly because editors wasted time on concept articles. I don't mean to downplay the noteworthiness of slavery, I merely believe this page sets a very bad example. Slavery is an important topic, and its importance should be clearly highlighted and fully discussed on the many relevant pages we already have. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 00:34, 19 March 2013 (GMT)

• Comment: True, but in my opinion, slavery is different. It's more tangible, IMO, and while racism is prevalent, slavery is debatable more prevalent and noteworthy. But, I've given my opinion, as have you, so we can just go around in circles over this to no avail. I'm done for now commenting on this. There's not much more I could say without becoming redundant. Snowmane➚^{(talk•email)} 01:46, 19 March 2013 (GMT)

• Delete: Pretty much as ME said: Slavery is part of a culture, therefore should be on race pages. Do we have a lore page for, say, art? ~ Dwarfmp (talk) 01:57, 19 March 2013 (GMT)

Consensus: Userfy. Definitely plenty of thoughts from multiple view points here, but userfying it seems to be the preferred choice. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 20:10, 2 May 2013 (GMT)