Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/M16 rifle in popular culture

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 of the debate was delete. Johnleemk | Talk 15:16, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] M16 rifle in popular culture

This is not an encyclopedia article. It's a list of movies and videogames. Apparently it was created because this sort of thing was getting added to M16 rifle and people didn't like it there. Well, I don't see how it's any better as a seperate page. There's also M4 Carbine in popular culture, which is a very similiar list, just for a shorter variant of the same rifle. See also the talk pages. Friday (talk) 15:56, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

• Keep — So it's a topic fork from a notable page? I guess I'm not seeing why this page deserves to be deleted, as it's related to the main topic. — RJH 16:04, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

  Well, to me, it treads too close to a indiscriminate collection of information. We could have List of people who work in factories where M16 parts are made, too, but it wouldn't have any encyclopedic value either. As I said on the talk page, this could all be covered by a single sentence in M16 rifle. But, I realize not everyone may agree with that, hence the Afd. Even if people want to keep, does anyone have an opinion on whether M4 Carbine in popular culture should be a seperate artice? It was a redirect for a while but was recently reverted. If we must have such a list, so be it, but do we need seperate lists for every different variation of the rifle? There are verifiability concerns there- see my comments on Talk:M4_Carbine_in_popular_culture. Friday (talk) 16:11, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Delete Wikipedia is not a collection of trivia. The M16 and its variants are so ubiquitous it's pointless to name every movie or video game it appeared in. I doubt there's really a significant appearance like a flight sim might be for an aircraft. This isn't a rare gun that appeared in one or two movies; it appears in practically every modern war movie and modern FPS. It'd be like a Honda Civic in popular culture article with an entry for every 2-bit film where you could see the Civic parked somewhere--Mmx1 16:07, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

• Comment The page is supposed to list only significant appearences, such as being used in major scene (such as scarface), or by major cast (such in a Platoon. Weeding out "2-bit" appearences would require a cleanup tag (or at worst involve a dispute over page content) not a AFD. I would prefer a written format, rather than a list, but this is what people who work on the page have done.

• Strong delete as indiscriminate list. Are we going to scrutinize every frame of every film looking for M16 sightings? And then what about the hundreds of thousands of other products one could find in a film? Slowmover 16:29, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

*Comment Again, the page needs guidlines for inclusion but it is far from indiscriminate. The M16 is one of the most famous firearms of all time, and one of the few that actually make ANY appearence in film. As per my other comments elsewhere, it is certainly possible to have guidlines for the page.

• Delete as unencyclopedic trivia. There are too many "So-and-so in popular culture" articles in Wikipedia. Brian G. Crawford 17:22, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

*Comment Use by the film industry of one of the most famouse firearms ever made should be judged on its own value. There may be to many such pages, but firearm use in film and games is important aspect of firearms history. There are some firearms created soley for use in film. There are items not worthy of pop culture pages no doubt, but that is not a reason against notable objects with them. Ve3 22:30, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. Nothing wrong with doing this type of page since we have an article on M16 and we also have many lists of movies and videogames. Hence, would seem to be highly encyclopedic. -- JJay 18:15, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. This is an indiscriminate list, purely trivial. I don't have a problem with having a "Popular culture" section within an article, as long as it is kept short and under control. However, as soon as people spot a trivia section, they have an uncontrollable urge to add something they've spotted at their favorite movie or game, and it gets out of hand. I'd rather not have popular culture sections at all than having to constantly revert anime and video game fans additions to keep articles encyclopedic.--Squalla 18:32, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Not sure I find this "highly encyclopedic"; actually, how about indiscriminate listcruft. Eusebeus 18:38, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep or Merge them back to the pages the came from. A written article rather then item list would be better for them, but they are well deserved part of firearm articles overall. Pointing out firearm use in movies is well established in firearm articles, similar to how other types of use are listed (e.g. civilian, military users). Ve3 19:59, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

• CommentThere's at least 40 entries on this page and I wager over 100 if you look really hard. It's also very hard to distinguish between these appearances by notability, as I noted above. Do we count screentime? Must you have at least 1000 frames to qualify? There should be a statement about its ubiquity, but other than that, how do you distinguish what makes it into the article? Unless you can give some inclusion/exclusion criteria that makes this list manageable, I say toss the whole bit. --Mmx1 20:18, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

• Comment Whether a page is notable or not would be a dispute over page content, which could be handled in turn by those concerned (perhaps being handled by a major cast memeber?). At worst, it would make the page a candiate for cleanup, not deletion. I should add these were moved off already long M16 and M4 pages. I would also point out FN P90 in popular culture was proposed for deletion, h had similar arguments levled against it and the result was to keep. Finally, I would support doing a proper merger of AR-15 related firearms into one popculture page. The idea of adding stricter guidlines could also be a good alternative deletion.

• Weak keep per RJH. --Hyperbole 21:25, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. Sandstein 21:30, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
• This has come up before; most recently with the FN P90 in popular culture article. There seems to be widespread support for splitting these articles off the parents. Unless we make a widespread policy change to merge them all back in, Keep this one. Georgewilliamherbert 22:13, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. It's better to spin off the "...in poplar culture" sections of articles to their own pages, rather than keep them cluttering up the main pages. User:Zoe|^(talk) 22:35, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

  That's the best argument I've heard for keeping this sort of stuff, but it means we're putting junk in the encyclopedia in order to keep junk out of the encyclopedia. Isn't better yet still to remove the cruft from the main articles and NOT put it somewhere else? Friday (talk) 22:39, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

  Unfortunately, there is a lot of this junk, and if you want to go around removing it from all of the articles it's in, you're going to have an uprising on your hands. This is the cleanest solution. User:Zoe|^(talk) 22:44, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

• Comment: If people really think there could be an article here, not just a list, why not work on Guns in popular culture or something? Does the M16 family specifically have a different impact on popular culture than any other group of similiar rifles? Is anyone actually saying that an AR15 with a 20-inch barrel has a different impact on popular culture than an AR15 with a 14-inch barrel? I think we're either going to end up with a simple list (which should go away for not being an article) or a bunch of original research about the impact of specific models of guns on culture (which should go away for being original research.) Friday (talk) 22:56, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

• • You're coming at it backwards. The logic is... weapon X is notable, and gets an article. In some cases, specific usage in popular culture (movies, games, sometimes books or other) is sufficiently notable to include in that article. In some cases, there's so much of that info that splitting it off seems like the right thing to do. It's perfectly reasonable to question whether that info should be notable; I did so a few months ago, but the conclusion keeps coming up "yes". As long as it's notable enough to keep somewhere, how do we organize it... which is the real problem. Georgewilliamherbert 23:02, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

• • • Maybe there's no getting around the fundamental disagreement. Tools are great topics for an encyclopedia. This is why we have sledgehammer. Notice that we do not have List of people who have used a sledgehammer or List of stores that sell sledgehammers. If reputable sources are talking about the impact of guns on popular culture, by all means someone can make an article about that. Keeping lists for individual guns (and, worse yet, even variations of the same gun) doesn't make sense to me until someone produces a reliable source that says that gun X has a different impact on popular culture than gun Y. I think we're getting this sort of stuff mostly because it's videogame-related, not because it belongs in an encyclopedia. Friday (talk) 23:09, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. This is a good idea for an article as it would remove M16-cruft from the main article and create a description on how, why and where the gun is used in popular culture. However, this article is just a list of media in which images or mentionings of the gun appear. This content is inappropriate as a separate article, and inappropriate in the M16 main article. --maclean25 04:19, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Ludicrously pointless, and misnamed: it's just a list of pop-culture products featuring the M-16 -- a huge trivia magnet, as Squalla points out. --Calton | Talk 04:24, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. I'm with Friday on this one. These appearances have to be notable. Otherwise it's just pointless listcruft. If a movie discusses the M16, have a paragraph about it in the M16 article. Otherwise, it's uninteresting trivia. Fagstein 06:40, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - this is not an encyclopedia article. Pure list. MaNeMeBasat 07:13, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. When you're considering where the best place for M16 cruft is, you really need to include 'nowhere' in your list of choices. Proto||type 10:40, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. It could become an examination of the rifle's prominence in film and other media over the decades. Right now it's at the first step. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2006-03-31 01:48
• Merge to M16 (rifle) or delete. Stifle 23:35, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per Proto. --Khoikhoi 01:00, 1 April 2006 (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.