Talk: World of Warcraft: Game Manual

Deletion vote

Summary:
The nomination to delete the article page was rejected. -- Alayea (talk / contrib) 04:27, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Votes

Delete

1. Delete — foxlit (talk) 23:15, 23 May 2014 (UTC) - (It seems impossible for this page to have non-trivial content.)
2. Delete g0urra[T҂C] 00:49, 24 May 2014 (UTC) - (As above.)

Keep

1. Keep — SurafbrovWowpedia administrator T / C 23:19, 23 May 2014 (UTC) - (Provides information about the Game Manual itself. This book is official, and also contains official lore.)
2. Keep Cemotucu (talk) 18:17, 24 May 2014 (UTC) - (As above. I believe the relevant lore sections should be transcribed to WoWpedia, just as the W1 and W3 manuals.)
3. Keep PeterWind (talk) 10:39, 10 September 2014 (UTC) - (If a manual, per definition, is a reference book, I would say that makes this publication a book. My personal opinion on this however is that I think we should strive to document, if not thoroughly, at least the existence and the basics of all official Warcraft material (be it in-game or real-life books or merchandise}. While i can agree that making more or less empty articles is not optimal, it makes no sense to me, to delete an article about something that clearly exists just because an extensive article hasn't be written about it.)
4. Keep --Mordecay (talk) 22:21, 17 January 2015 (UTC) - (Page completed.)
5. Keep Alayea (talk / contrib) 00:37, 30 July 2015 (UTC) - (It existed, it's official WarCraft, so therefore should be documented on Wowpedia.)

Comments

It's unclear to me what purpose this page serves, except as being a blue link for Template:Bookfooter/Manuals (similar concerns apply to other game manual "articles" in that list). Would we lose anything if we simply referred to it as [[World of Warcraft]] game manual in non-navbox incoming links? — foxlit (talk) 23:18, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

This book contains official lore, it can and I believe already being used as a reference. — SurafbrovWowpedia administrator T / C 23:24, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Meanwhile, this article contains almost nothing that couldn't be inferred from the phrase "World of Warcraft game manual": namely, "October 2, 2007" and "208 pages". I'm not even sure the former is correct -- isn't the very same booklet included in the vanilla WoW box, released way back in 2004? Calling the subject of this article a book also seems like a stretch (reasonable threshold: does it have an ISBN?). — foxlit (talk) 00:14, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't even think this article is completely finished. I have the book physically with me right now. And apparently, this book was released in the year 2004, not year 2007 (but seems to follow up with the WoW BC). This book does serve a purpose. Why delete something that's official but not yet completed? — SurafbrovWowpedia administrator T / C 00:45, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

A game manual is not a book. --g0urra[T҂C] 01:18, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Of course, but functions like a book. — SurafbrovWowpedia administrator T / C 01:19, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

If its official, why can't it be here? Even though its a game manual, along with the others, why can't it be moved to its own template for game manuals itself? I believe, the official stuff from Blizzard Entertainment, including this game manual, that are related to the Warcraft Universe should be here to be as a reference. — SurafbrovWowpedia administrator T / C 01:24, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

The underlying concern is that this page can never have any non-trivial content -- in other words, just because something exists, does not mean that we have anything of value to say about it (and hence there's no point in creating a separate article for it).

At the time of the VfD nomination, this page was 4 months old, consisted of a single sentence and an infobox, and contained no indication that it was "unfinished." You've since added "Table of Contents" and "Credits" sections containing nothing but stub tags (which you should not do per WP:STUB). There is, in my opinion, no benefit in reproducing either of these sections in the article. The added external links also seem dodgy to me -- the Amazon storefront link is essentially the equivalent of linking an ebay search; and it is unclear whether the PDF version of the manual is even legal to redistribute (or who is publishing it on their S3 bucket).

In short, it appears that we still have nothing of value to say about the subject of this article. — foxlit (talk) 14:55, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

As a reply to PeterWind, there's no need to make an infobox article about a game manual, unless the relevant information is added to the article. In fact an infobox is unnecessary (page numbering, release date) and can be replaced with just the image to the side. See Warcraft II manual as an example. --g0urra[T҂C] 17:48, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Date

The infobox says 2007, but was the manual around when wow first launched in 2004? --Mordecay (talk) 20:16, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Thought that was strange and checked my own copy, when I noticed that mine was the World of Warcraft Official Strategy Guide, which just uses the same cover. Can't help on this one it turns out :/ PeterWind (talk) 20:35, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

But I suppose that might be the one you were thinking of, as the official strategy guide was released in 04. PeterWind (talk) 20:36, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

I looked in my Blizzard Archive and yes, in fact it was released in 2004 along with the World of Warcraft package, but in 2007 they included it with the first Wow Battle chest. — SurafbrovWowpedia administrator T / C 22:45, 16 October 2017 (UTC)