Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jeopardy! in popular culture (2nd nomination)

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 no consensus; may require cleanup. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:42, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jeopardy! in popular culture

Jeopardy! in popular culture (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Prior discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jeopardy! in popular culture was closed as delete. This was brought to deletion review where there was no consensus to endorse. Original nomination was that "Collection of random trivia about Jeopardy!. The Jeopardy! article has an abbreviated "popular culture" section; this was probably forked out to allow room for all the cruft we now see here. "In popular culture" articles are not a good idea; see also WP:TRIV and WP:TRIVIA. The list is very indiscriminate and unsourced (except for one item)." Discussion at deletion review seemed to lean towards merging. Please read both prior discussions and the article before opining. I have no opinion myself, this is a technical nomination. GRBerry 04:22, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

• Strong delete as an indiscriminate list and directory seeking to capture any mention of Jeopardy in any medium regardless of the importance of the reference either within the fiction from which it's drawn or the real world. Otto4711 04:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. I concur with the nomination. A few examples are appropriate in the main article. This is an unmaintainable and indiscriminate list. Encyclopedias are not concordances. Rossami (talk) 05:56, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete as an indiscriminate list. -- Chairman S. Talk ^Contribs 06:08, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. WP:TRIVIA is an essay, WP:TRIV applies to article sections, and this article is not just a "list of isolated facts", but more like a list of lists of isolated facts, with each list in its own section, which is what articles are. Jeopardy! is a particularly notable show, enough to have picked up a variety of references from other notable shows during its time. This significance in popular culture warrants an article of it in popular culture. It is unsourced for the same reason most plot summaries are unsourced, though you can verify each item by perusing the specific work. Has there been some published study referring to Jeopardy! as an important cultural phenomenon? I don't know, but just look at this list with WP:COMMON SENSE. The grouping of these cultural references is not inherently WP:OR. If you cite WP:NOT#IINFO, please explain why it does not belong on Wikipedia, as that policy says nothing about this particular article. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, so what is it about this article that makes Wikipedia more of an indiscriminate collection of information such as this? The article itself cannot be 'indiscriminate'; it has a definite scope and a maintainable size. It being 'trivial' only means it is useless to you, which is a purely subjective claim. See also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wheel of Fortune in popular culture. –Pomte 11:16, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per Pomte, since he covered everything and then some. Also, not getting a result that you like doesn't mean nominate until you do. Deletion review has to mean something. - Peregrine Fisher 12:49, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment In this case deletion review's overturning the first AfD doesn't mean that the article was/is good, only that its original AfD did not come to a consensus and was ended prematurely without sufficient numbers and by a potential misunderstanding of WP:COI on the part of its closing admin (as per his explanation which can now be found in his talk page archives). My keep vote for this article can be found in the first AfD, and I hope that the arguments found there will be addressed in this AfD, and that arguments found here that duplicate those in the original AfD will not be given more weight simply because people have repeated them. Robert K S 14:33, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment The deletion review had no consensus on what to do. That means the community is not done deciding what to do with the article, hence it is back here to continue the discussion in the normal forum, hopefully with some additional participants. GRBerry 17:28, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete as an indiscriminate collection of factoids that does nothing to actually contribute information to the encyclopedia. As with every "X in popular culture" article that is out there, it should really be an encyclopedic entry on the subject of "x in popular culture" such as the impact that it has had, and not just a list of instances. Arkyan 15:56, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete as a collection of trivial pop culture references. -- Whpq 17:37, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
• Merge the most notable parts into the main Jeopardy article, a collection of trivia some of which doesn't even fit in that article. RHB ^{Talk - Edits} 18:26, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
• Strong Keep as per WP:SUMMARY. The Jeopardy! article was too large, so it was split off into sections. Yes, the article does need to be pruned; but, in my opinion, if this article gets deleted, WP:SUMMARY needs to be completely revisited. Andy Saunders 18:40, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

• WP:SUMMARY does not mean that the resultant split off article is somehow exempt from the standards that are supposed to be applied to every article. Splitting off a trivia section into its own article and labeling it "in popular culture" doesn't make the information any less garbage in the new article than it is in the old. Too many times editors decide to dump this kind of mess into someone else's lap by forking it off into a pop culture article rather than dealing with it in the article where it came from. But junk is junk whether it's in the main article or in a pop culture article and better here than there is spectacularly uncompelling. If there is no better reason to keep an article than its information might end up cluttering another article, then the clutter article should be deleted. Otto4711 19:14, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

You're completely missing my point. My point is that with anything more than just cursory popular culture references, the Jeopardy! article is too large. I would say that 75% of the stuff in the article right now should be pruned, but the other 25% is notable, and that the Jeopardy! article does not have room to list that 25%. Yes, we need to do a better job of pruning, but that in itself is not reason to delete the article. Andy Saunders 20:41, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

It's funny how often that "keep but prune" gets offered up as a defense for these garbage dump articles. The funnier thing is that once the AFD closes, I rarely if ever see any of the people who are so desperate to keep but prune actually do any pruning. The funniest thing of all is that when I go in and try to prune them, most or all of what I take out gets put right back in again. So you'll forgive me if I put absolutely no credence in the "keep but prune" defense. Otto4711 23:19, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Sure, let me prune the list without consensus on which items should go. I am bold in many areas, not in this. However, I have assessed what is notable shortly after I posted my comment but I haven't posted that yet. I will post that on the article's talk page shortly and I will delete what I think is not notable, under peer pressure. Tinlinkin 03:12, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

• Strong Keep per rs. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 21:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep and cleanup I view the article as a legitimate split of the main article. However, if it is an article in its own right, the mess should be cleaned up. I agree with Ponte's view, that there are significant references to Jeopardy! in pop culture. I would view a notable instance from popular culture as follows (all of the following is my view, not policy or guideline that I know of):
  1. The Jeopardy! reference in a TV show's episode constitutes a major part of the episode's plotline
  2. Jeopardy! references are regularly and repeatedly presented within a TV series
  3. A memorable or regularly occurring parody
• What would not be notable is:
  1. A passing or brief reference to a Jeopardy! element
  2. Appearances by Alex Trebek, Merv Griffin, etc. on behalf of Jeopardy! are not necessarily notable in their own right
  3. Individual non-recurring sketches on sketch comedy shows
  4. Parodies within a program (not 100% sure about this)
• In a TV episode, if Jeopardy! plays on a TV set or someone hums the "Think" music, that's not notable. Without commenting on other subject areas, a well-known thing (tangible item) would not warrant a "in popular culture" article. A media work would justify a "in popular culture" article, provided that the media work has been discussed across many other works. I will create a list of what I think are the notable pop culture references in the article's talk page. Perhaps this would help the article rise above being nondiscriminate. Tinlinkin 21:58, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. Jeopardy! has had a pretty profound effect on popular culture, and the article is pretty good (for a list). It can be expanded out from being "just a list", though, and there's a little bit more already starting up. I think it's time to get the hedge clippers out on it, though. --UsaSatsui 00:00, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
• Weak keep. Many "In popular culture" articles are unmaintained and thus massively erratic in the quality of the entries. They also often dive into a mere list of occurrences rather than discussing cultural impact and how X is seen in culture. Considering that Wikipedia seems to attract these sections like crazy, I think we should at least give the better-maintained ones a chance. That way we can at least point to a "good" "in popular culture" article and challenge the bad ones to either improve to that standard, or be deleted. That said, while this article looks better than most, I'd say that some pruning could still be done, and more prose to tie things together would be nice as well (even if that involves skirting original research). SnowFire 03:32, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per Pomte. Kolindigo 06:09, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, certainly notable, WP:NOT#PAPER. Matthew 10:06, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment The spirit of WP:NOT#PAPER is harmonious with the concept of sensibly forking overlong articles into families of articles organized with categories and templates, which is how we've been trying to manage Jeopardy! topics on Wikipedia. Robert K S 13:31, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete - an indiscrimiante colletion of information. If it does not belong in an article of its own, it does not belong in another article. The arguments that it is split have no actual bearing on the appropriateness of the article. I could split any part of an article into any number of pieces and then use it as an argument for keeping it. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 17:41, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete I don't see what was so bad about the first AFD that this has to go through it again. The first AFD was clear-cut, and gave plenty of good reasons to why this should not be kept. Encyclopedias need to be overviews, not a hodgepodge of trivia. The section on the main J! page is fine and give proper/notable pop culture mentions. 69.218.255.54 18:03, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

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.