UESPWiki:Deletion Review/Oblivion:Useful Spells

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.

Oblivion:Useful Spells

This article is just another one of those "dude use this awesome spell that will kill a whole town" kind of pages. There is some good information, but nearly every edit has been reverted because the spell was just pointless, stupid, or unhelpful. The page needs to be deleted, and any truly useful effects should be documented on the appropriate spell page, where is will be more visible and beneficial. Elliot (talk) 22:21, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 1

• Merge / Delete - Maybe the redundant information on this page (and there's a lot of it) could be deleted, but some of the more useful spells, such as the water walking spell, could be moved to the Spell Making page under "useful spells" or something like that. Otherwise, delete it. Kitkat1749 ;) 23:42, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

• Keep Much as I hate the way this page keeps getting edited by people who think they're being original by adding some overpowered shock/frost/fire combo, there are far too many useful spells here for this page to be deleted. Go back through the archives and look at the work Timenn did to cull the real cruft, and then look at the way the page has been maintained since. Apart from arguments about ****ing chaining, it's been reasonably static. This is one case where the good outweighs the bad. Definite keep. rpeh •T•C•E• 23:58, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
  • One point worth making here is that there are currently 53 links to the Useful Spells page. There are only 7 from article space, but many of the links from talk space are answers to questions of one kind or another. rpeh •T•C•E• 00:25, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
    • (edit conflict) Don't you think it would be better to focus on the effects rather than a list of all of the "good spells"? I mean, there is some useful stuff, but it would be better on the effects pages. We should put the gist of the spell concept on the effect page (without the lame names...), so people can learn the perks of some spell types? Or perhaps we should semi-protect it and weed out the horribly useless spells currently on the page. And I have never been one to think that keeping a page solely for it historical worth is a good idea. Elliot (talk) 00:28, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
      • Sometimes, yes, and that's why I've fought to keep this list as short as possible... and been unsuccessful in the case of chaining. Putting spells on the effect pages would mean duplication in the case of multi-effect spells, and duplication is rarely a good idea. Let's get some more opinions here... rpeh •T•C•E• 00:53, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
        • I agree with Elliot, we could semi-protect it and get rid of all the useless ones or the duplicates. (From Fear to Eternity- Eddie The Head 02:34, 7 August 2011 (UTC))

• Hesitant Delete - I had intended on going through that page...eventually. But looking through it I must say that I would prefer to delete a good 95% of the content... Rather than support this with specific examples I will just say Read the Entire Page. So many of the spells are totally obvious or come with warnings that rule out most practical use. --DKong27 ^{Tk Ctr Em} 00:01, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Comment - Looking at the page, a lot of the spells, especially those listed under "Peculiar spells" are just plain unhelpful and redundant. *Heart Attack, C-4, and "Taser" to name a few. Quite a bit of the page looks like people competing to see who can make the most destructive spell. Kitkat1749 ;) 00:12, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

• Hesitant Delete: Having given this page a good read through, I just find it to hard to justify getting rid of it. First off, let me say that I understand the reasoning for getting rid of it completely, I find it nearly impossible to maintain this page as it is a magnet for less useful contributions and ideas. More importantly, this is one of the "idea" pages (For example, the role-playing pages or the mod ideas pages all fall into this category), and I think I speak for all of us when I say those are the greatest pains in the ass to patrol. Finally, there's the heavy levels of redundancy on display on this page, as an example take the spell suggestion "Water Horse", which simply suggests that you create a Water Walking spell on touch so you can have your horse walk on water. This note is already covered at Oblivion:Water Walking however. But I still can't say "This page is worthless and should be deleted.". Definitely not the best article on the wiki, and almost worth saving. I'd imagine that a semi-protection to this article would take care of most of my gripes, and if this were to happen I'd change my vote to keep. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 03:24, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

• Keep. I hate the stupid names and the stupid additions and feel that the page needs to be changed somehow but I don't think deletion should be it. Too many people can learn from it, improving their quality of play. Which benefits the whole community in the end. Datacaust 04:40, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

• Keep: I don't condone hoarding a slew of useless information about "useful" skills, but I feel that a few of those have their place here, especially in the sense that this page doesn't just present spell effects, but rather presents combinations of those effects that many players might overlook. As a side note, I feel a Wiki should be a place to welcome original and creative work, so long as the article's purpose isn't to compile only authoritative information. Chris Cowart 07:36, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

• Keep: While the page isn't pretty, not all the spells are useful, and most of those names are really horrible, it's still quite interesting. The spells are a bit too technical to split amongst the respective pretty spell pages without cluttering them and confusing new players, and often cover combinations anyway, so I don't think we could move that information to other places. But they are a good start for the players trying to discover a bit more about the complexity of spell making, and to realize that you can make creative, unusual things. I'd say it's a necessary evil in this case, and I'd regret to lose access to that information. Forcing people to use the talk page to propose a new spell and have a brief review/vote on usefulness could be neat - I don't know if it represents too much trouble though. Kharn 10:35, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 2

(Moved to Oblivion_talk:Useful_Spells#Spell_Review)