Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tooth Fairy Rule

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 delete. - Mailer Diablo 06:33, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tooth Fairy Rule

As far as I can tell, this has no basis in anything. The first results in Google for "tooth fairy rule," aside from copies of this article, indicate that this concept doesn't exist except as nonce. The examples include:

As she sets off to retrieve her first tooth she knows that the most important tooth fairy rule is to never waken a sleeping child in the process.
...we have a rule in our house that tooth fairy money cannot be spent on sweets - its the tooth fairy's rule!! My children get a pound but...
The Tooth Fairy Rule The child in the family always witnesses the supernatural events in a movie first and knows what's going on, but any attempts to tell the grownups will fall on deaf ears.

In searching Google groups, there does seem to be a concept remotely related to the one described in the article, but both of them appear to be nonce, or something close to it:

He notes that people such as Hapgood and Gallex have done similar work, but "violated the one rule that astrophysicist Richard McCray calls the 'tooth fairy' rule, which states that a credible theory can invoke a mysterious unknown agent ('tooth-fairy') once, but only once. The above-mentioined authors' works contained a number of 'tooth-faries'. As to his own tooth-fairy, and the says "The only unknown agent will be the postulate of transfer of Eskimo [Thule Inuit - he previously notes that these Inuit were historically called Eskimo and for that reason uses this term] geographical information to Europe via Norsemen... I endeavor to supply a plausible basis for every other implication of a given interpetation".
Larry Niven is generally considered a "hard science fiction" writer. His knowledge of science is good, he always makes an effort to make his stories realistic, and generally sticks to "one tooth fairy rule" - a SF story may break one law of physics, but only one.

Interesting as it is, neither of these sound like general-usage concepts, and I can't find anything closer than that. Jun-Dai 06:57, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. It's really just deus ex machina, isn't it? -- Mikeblas 08:50, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have a problem here. I know that there is a school of science fiction writing that has a (paraphrased) "Take the existing universe; change or add one thing; and extrapolate from there." maxim. I know that Niven, Asimov, and others write like this. Yet I'm having trouble finding the sources from whence I obtained this knowledge. I've just checked Asimov's Mysteries and The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton, whence I thought I had obtained this knowledge (and also mentioned on Talk:Tooth Fairy Rule), and it isn't actually there. (They both discuss rules for writing detective fiction.)
On the gripping hand, I certainly don't recognize this as the name of a rule employed by such a school of writing, and the article is zero help in my remembering sources, given that it cites none at all. Therefore I am currently at weak delete for being original research. Uncle G 11:43, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - as WP:OR. Even if sourced I wouldn't think it would merit more than a mention in the Deus ex machina article, and although there are writers that use the device mentioned by Uncle G, it doesn't appear that this article is referring to that concept. Yomangani ^talk 13:03, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - as original research. Most Google results are references to the WP article. Wickethewok 13:32, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as original research. --Arnzy ^{(whats up?)} 14:14, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom as original research. --Big top 19:49, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per the non-existent neologism rule. RFerreira 21:48, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Clearly, it's OR. rootology (T) 01:12, 22 August 2006 (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.