Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dancing puppets trick

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: probable use of sock puppets, SPAs, WP:OR, lack of reliable sources.... Cbrown1023 talk 01:04, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

No consensus; renom in two weeks if no WP:RS added. Cbrown1023 talk 01:50, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dancing puppets trick

Dancing puppets trick (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Bad case of original research. Entire article appears to be based on personal observations of this street scam. Particularly bad is the Locations section, which is just a list of places and dates where various editors claim to have seen this happen. Croxley 01:25, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

• Keep - I've seen this in various tourist traps. It's almost part of the standard repertoire of street scams and illusionism. - Richardcavell 01:39, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment "I've seen this" isn't a valid reason to keep an article. Croxley 02:48, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
• Weak Delete — surely some reporter somewhere has done a human-interest story on this? If we can't find any verifiable sources, though, then it's the rubbish bin for this one. Carolfrog 02:21, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
• Weak Delete If we could get some sources we would be in better shape, but as it stands it is complete OR, probably true but OR nonetheless. --Daniel J. Leivick 04:23, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
• Weak delete per above; seems valid but fails minimal WP:ATT standards. --Dhartung | Talk 05:51, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Found a paywalled one: [1] The Google News Archive result text (not shown here) reads, Glued to the top of the cardboard cutout was another magnet, and they must ... stand up and "dance" in rhythm to music the vendor played on his boom box --Dhartung | Talk 05:53, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep but complete rewrite with citations needed. Jcuk 20:29, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
• Delete Rambling POV article is non-encyclopedic in tone and completely original research. Inkpaduta 20:37, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep but tag for adding citations and cleanup. A mere lack of citations and a problem with "how to" writing do not make an otherwise well-written article into deletion fodder. Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 06:08, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
• Weak Keep - needs citations to published sources; lack of sources not automatically fatal when article still has a chance to be improved. Let this one run its course: put up a warning for citations and verifiability, wait, and renominate if none appear after a while. My own cursory search failed to turn up sources, but I'm not so arrogant as to think that means none exist. Argyrios 22:10, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
• Delete as OR unless references/sources can be found by the end of this debate. WMMartin 16:13, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
• Delete it is all OR as the article stands. If the article is sourced and cleaned up I will reconsider. Nuttah68 18:04, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep and Improve per Dhartung and Argyrios. I've looked around and found some more mention of this: see the Nov. 14 entry here (pic), and the citation of the wikipedia article at the bottom of this tourism page. This website is linked to on the talk page. This seems to be real, so I think it should be kept - however, it definitely needs reliable sources. Maybe there are some in other languages? Dhartung, do you have a direct link to the archived version of that article? Esn 22:26, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
  • An article that uses Wikipedia as its source in the first place cannot be used as a source for Wikipedia, and does nothing to demonstrate that this article is describing a real, properly documented, phenomenon. Uncle G 00:53, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
    • It's not an article, it's a tourist website which advises tourists about something that they may see and links to the wikipedia article to provide more information. That seems to suggest that the article as it now stands does, in fact, come fairly close to reality. I agree with you that reliable sources are needed here; Dhartung's paywalled article seems to be just such a source, but of course it doesn't seem to be available... Esn 10:07, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep and Improve. As the original creator, I think this is a decent article documenting a real phenomenon that isn't documented anywhere except for small fragments of information. I'm fully aware this to some extent makes it original research but this is by no means unique to this article. Many articles about curiosity topics like this don't fit within the framework of other websites and thus end up being Wikipedia articles. By necessity, they do contain some original research. My impression is that many users of Wikipedia enjoy Wikipedia exactly because of the presence of such articles. The article has been here for 1½ years and I've found it referenced from other non-Wikipedia-related articles on the net. Many other users have contributed to the article including a video clip which was removed by another user. I also think it is worth noting that 'Croxley' - who is the one that nominated this article for deletion - joined Wikipedia on February 15th 2007 and so far haven't contributed any content to Wikipedia. He seems, however, to have made it his mission in life to put articles up for deletion. While I think it is good some people are keeping Wikipedia clean I have little respect for people who don't contribute content but who don't mind taking down well-written articles just because they don't fit a narrow interpretation of Wikipedia's rules. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 195.249.189.200 (talk • contribs) 14:40, 4 March 2007.
• Keep and Improve This article seems be the only detailed description on the net, so I think we shouldn't be overzealous and delete it because of a few flaws.Woodward 21:23, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
• Another mention: http://www.bootsnall.com/travelstories/europe/nov02trouble.shtml. I hope everyone can agree (based on the links that have been posted) that the trick exists. I've seen it year after year since I was a kid and I've heard many people mention it. I think it's notable and worthy for inclusion in Wikipedia. Thus, deleting the article is not the solution. Rather people should focus on improving it. The main problem seems to be references. Apparently no authorative online media has covered it yet or that it is at least hard to find. Does that mean it shouldn't be in the encyclopedia? No. I think the article should be cut down and be less instructive and references added where possible even though it might have to be some in passing references. Hopefully, in time people will find more references. Deleting the article seems to be totally unfounded.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 195.249.189.200 (talk • contribs) 19:33, 5 March 2007.

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.