Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of famous smokers

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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 TO DELETE, unfortunately. The article's a mess. All of the Keep votes noted that the article needs major work, generally pruning. There were some comments suggesting a split (of the potheads) or a merge, but not significant support for those solutions. I will now proceed to prune the article with a vengeance, as everyone agrees that that is a condition of it being kept. No prejudice against a renomination if the article doesn't soon figure out what it wants to be and moves in that direction. Herostratus 03:51, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of famous smokers

List of famous smokers (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

This list was nominated once before as Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of iconic smokers. At the time, the article lookedlike this.

The final keep vote acknowledged the need for substantial cleanup. The top of the article begs for references on the hundreds of claims made below. On the talk page, the following comment sums up my impression of the situation:

== This article is a total disaster. == This article has got to the point where any celebrity who has been photographed smoking is included. "Tony Yayo"? I really have no idea who he is, he certainly doesn't belong in this "iconic" article alongside Bette Davis and George Burns. This article needs MAJOR pruning. PatrickJ83 21:49, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Let's throw this article in the ashtray. And while were at it, let's throw in

Nicotine users and former users, List of (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

YechielMan 04:15, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

  • Weak Keep List of famous smokers. The list does need major clean-up, but I don't think that is a sufficient reason to delete. The list need to be sourced because right now it is a magnet for all sorts of dubious claims (pictures "surfaced" of someone smoking a joint, so-and-so is "said" to have smoked pot everyday, and numerous references to people being marijuana smokers because they simply sang a SONG about smoking marijuana). The list should be reoriented to the original purpose of iconic smokers, not just anybody who was ever seen with a cigarette. janejellyroll 04:28, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment. I am biased in that I like lists, which makes me want to keep it (with some serious cleanup), but I also don't see how this is helpful, because there are way too many smoking celebrities out there. Useight 04:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong delete - smoking is not defining or unique or in any way indicative of notability. Otto4711 05:18, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Comment - these are people who are 'notable' already who just also happen to smoke. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by HisSpaceResearch (talk • contribs) 08:23, 30 March 2007 (UTC).
  • Strong delete - This list is never going to be of interest to anyone. None of these people are famous for smoking. We may as well have a list of Famous people who wear brown trousers. Which someone is probably writing right now. - Iridescenti (talk to me!) 12:37, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
  • How about we turn this in a list of famous people who advertised smoking and a list of people who are known primarily for their smoking (Cigarette Smoking Man comes to mind)? Although the second list may be controversial, the first is definitely useful and either one or both together could eliminate a lot of the dubious entries on the current list. It would also greatly improve manageability (which is almost non-existent now). - Mgm|(talk) 12:58, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep. Prune, if need be; and revert it if it becomes unwieldy, but keep it. Might be best also if it were to move back to the former title, List of iconic smokers; but certainly it cannot be denied that figures like Fidel Castro, Winston Churchill, or Humphrey Bogart are indeed closely associated with smoking, even if they are not famous for smoking. FWIW I would remove any references to causes of death from the article; that comes across as waspish and so last-century. - Smerdis of Tlön 14:12, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Extinguish. I find it curious that the purported definition as given by the lead section is "This is a list of famous people, for whom smoking is clearly a recognised part of their public image, or who are known for some unusual aspect of smoking", when the very first entry is for someone who "Was a closet cigarette smoker, a fact that came out shortly after her death". Despite the assertion by the lead section this is nothing more than an intersection between people who are famous and people who smoke - and given the popularity of smoking at one point in time the people who fit both those qualifiers will be enormous. Arkyan • (talk) 15:42, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep and prune. Only people whose smoking is iconic should be listed, entries like "Jessica Simpson was once photographed with a cigar" should be removed. --Strangerer (Talk) 17:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete per Arkyan ⇒ SWATJester On Belay! 17:51, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment this should rise or fall with List of notable drug culture figures, either we prune the list under discussion back to the iconic and name it appropriately, or delete it, I don't frankly care which, but if this goes, I will nominate the the drug culture figures most of which are people who admitted that they inhaled (injected, or whatever) and really aren't iconic. Carlossuarez46 00:09, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep. This is of great interest to so many people, I don't know how some of you people can say otherwise. Brown pants, indeed! (Iridescenti, above) (For all we know, you "delete" voters could work in the tobacco industry and want a lower profile because of negative publicity. I've been a proud anti-tobacco campaigner for decades.) Some evidence for public interest are the campaigns to get celebrities to be better role models and the campaigns to reduce smoking in movies so that young people (the main movie theatre-goers) are less influenced to smoke. To participate for or against such campaigns, it helps to know about whom you are talking, so let's draw investigators to Wikipedia for that encyclopedic information! Many of the delete supporters are voting based on the quality of the article now, instead of how good it can be after we work on it more. We don't delete an article because it is unfinished and needs references. We should keep out the word "iconic" (too limited and trendy) in the criteria. Arkyan (above) has a good point--probably a great majority of entertainers in Western culture in the 1940s smoked. But because almost everyone believed the world was flat long ago doesn't mean that today's flat-worlders are not notable. Korky Day 01:21, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge the newer article. I recently started the article Nicotine users and former users, List of (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs). That was before I knew about the older article (because the latter was hard to find!). Then I realised that the two articles are not exact duplicates. The chewers, etc. are added in mine. But more importantly, I have a section for ex-users. This is of great interest, for instance, Fidel Castro quit smoking, which greatly interests people and is an argument for admirers of Fidel to quit smoking. So I'd like to see the two articles merged, with all the features of both. Korky Day 01:21, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Separate non-tobacco. As part of the merge suggested above, how about separating the cannabis users and putting them elsewhere? They never really seemed to fit in this article. Korky Day 01:21, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete and merge elsewhere. The cannabis smokers could get their own article, SqueakBox 23:16, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete per Arkyan. --Dariusk 03:46, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete Objectivity Persue Wikipedia and delete everything that does not conform to most current accepted propaganda on whatever subject. Let's have a Wikipedia Dogma to spread over the internet ... right? DasV 18:56, 5 April 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.
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