Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stephen Hawking 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 was no consensus. —Doug Bell ^talk 10:16, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stephen Hawking in popular culture

Stephen Hawking in popular culture (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Delete. Cruft, this entire page could easily be condensed into 2 paragraphs on the main page. Ckessler 06:43, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

• Delete This is unnecessary. Not only is 'popular culture' a rather ambiguous term, it is also unencyclopedic for an article as it will almost certainly result in pure original research. Anything encyclopedic can be found in the Stephen Hawking article. --The Way 07:54, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Comment I've shifted any actual media appearances Hawking has made over to a new section in the Stephen Hawking article. All that is left is an uncited list references to him in TV shows, music, etc. Ckessler 08:07, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

• Weak keep We can source it. When Hawkins is reffered to explicitly it isn't OR and this is a good way of keeping WP:V-compliant trivia off of the main Hawkins page. JoshuaZ 08:13, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
• Comment That's the problem. How can you cite this information in a a way that's consistant with WP:RS? Ckessler 08:16, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
• Delete - indiscriminate list and directory loaded with unreferenced pieces of meaningless trivia. We do not need a list of every time Hawking has been mentioned in a movie, TV show or song. Strongly oppose any merger of this contentless content to Stephen Hawking. If it's crap on its own it would be crap in the main article. Otto4711 08:20, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
• Strong Keep, if this page needs to be deleted so does Mark Twain in popular culture, Thomas Edison in popular culture and Abraham Lincoln in popular culture. If the page is deleted then it's content will eventually end up on Stephen Hawking anyway. Philip Stevens 09:25, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Comment The existence of other similar articles is completely irrelevant to whether or not this article should be kept; the issue is whether or not this article meets the requirements of Wikipedia policy. Indeed, the articles you mentioned probably should also be deleted and I may nominate them in the next day or two (several 'in popular culture' articles were nominated for deletion yesterday and the consensus in all those AfD's appears to support deletion. Popular culture articles are inherently POV and suffer tremendous original research problems; what defines 'popular culture?' This concept of 'popular culture' is US/Western oriented and, as such, POV. This is inappropriate for an encyclopedia article. --The Way 09:51, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Delete I'd support deleting all these articles. The content deserves a paragraph or two in the main article, not an article of its own. JulesH 12:49, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

• Delete, overgrown trivia section. Gazpacho 11:32, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
• Weak Keep as sadly there is no current consensus (that I know of) regarding "X in popular culture" sections of articles on wikipedia, so my guess was this was a split-off article primarily intended to reduce article clutter. To that extent, I'd say it was an admirable split-off decision as most of the information is trivial to a primary subject, but of possible interest to the topic of how this scientist has been presented outside of his scientific field. Obviously no one is going to argue that Hawking himself isn't notable, the question is the relative notability of the details of how his celebrity personality (as opposed to his scientific contributions) has been presented. Celebrity is still a valid topic in it's own right, and I'd rather see this information in a sub-article than the main until or unless wikipedia decides that influence on pop culture is not encyclopedic. I agree Philip Stevens' argument per WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS is superficially specious, but in this case I'd say there's some validity to examples of the overall trend which this article represents. -Markeer 13:36, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

• I understand your reluctance to !vote to delete absent your seeing a consensus, but I would submit to you that !voting to delete these articles, if you don't think they should exist, is how consensus is formed. As noted, a number of "...in popular culture" articles have been nominated over the last couple of days and in each case sentiment is running toward deletion and in a number of cases the articles have been deleted. See for example the AFDs for References to Calvin and Hobbes, List of appearances of C96 in popular culture and Rush in popular culture. I am comfortable in asserting that consensus to delete this sort of article does exist. Otto4711 14:04, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Reply I understand that some "in popular culture" articles have (quite correctly) been deleted, but I would suggest that your examples do not represent a consensus to delete all "in popular culture" articles but instead were case-by-case deletions of those specific articles. C96 or Rush certainly can't be compared to Stephen Hawking in a discussion of culturally pervasive individuals (in my opinion) so to my mind deletion of those articles (which I admit I did not read pre-deletion) wouldn't necessarily be representative of a larger consensus to delete by wikipedia editors.

Granting that some individuals have sociologically significant impacts based on a public persona larger than their personal accomplishments, and granting that some detail of how and when that state is expressed is of encyclopedic value, I went with a Keep vote based not only on the lack of consensus on the larger issue, but with an assumed acceptance that THIS individual is a clear exemplar of a significant pop cultural icon. In other words, lacking an existing consensus against all "in popular culture" articles occurs, Stephen Hawking is most definitely NOT a place to start building such a consensus. -Markeer 14:28, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that of the other articles Otto4711 refers to the AFDs of, this is by far the best article. But that's primarily because of a couple of useful bits and pieces scattered throughout the article, that show both Hawking's attitude to popular media and other people's attitude to him. I think this could (and should) be usefully condensed to a few paragraphs in the main article, which is why I feel deletion is appropriate). But for this article, it isn't as clear cut as for the others. JulesH 14:31, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

• I would say that Rush is at least comparable to Hawking for purposes of this sort of pop culture article. There are other AFDs open which are also comparable, including Sammy Davis Jr, The Who, Aerosmith, Aleister Crowley and Elvis Presley. The only one that's running close to being kept is Crowley. I would definitely say that Elvis has had a far greater impact on poular culture than Hawking and his pop culture article looks to be on the way out. I'm not saying there is no place for "...in popular culture" -style articles. There are some that are well done including one for Joan of Arc and one for of all things the Superman logo. But these sorts of data dump articles where editors play games of I spy for everything that might possibly be in some way connected to or inspired by a person, place or thing are worthless. Otto4711 16:16, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't know about consensus, but there is a style guideline about it. It's WP:TRIV, which says that such things are not worth keeping around in list form. Gazpacho 00:08, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

• Keep or merge -- the nom writes "this entire page could easily be condensed into 2 paragraphs on the main page". That's true, but yet it is not in the main Stephen Hawking article. Seven of the sentences are sourced and should be merged to Stephen Hawking. Thus, this is a case for WP:MERGE rather than deletion. -- Black Falcon 18:55, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
• Delete as most if not all of this article is unable to be attributed through the use of reliable third party sources. Failing that, cite what you can (IMDB profiles, news articles, DVD commentaries) and merge that content and that content only back into the article. Watch as the section expands with "Character X obviously is based on Steven Hawking, although nobody ever mentions it" and "In Episode Y, A Brief History of Time appears in the background for 1/2 second", gets split out, and ends up back here. -- saberwyn 21:02, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep the Brent Spiner quote here is impressive for establishing notability. CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 22:16, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

• That quote has no reliable source. It is currently sourced by a Snopes article which does not confirm that the quote was actually said by anyone, let alone Spiner. Otto4711 23:58, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

• keep I have no idea why this page is being considered for deletion. Niffweed17, Destroyer of Chickens 02:14, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

• That's not actually a keep reason. GassyGuy 05:46, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

• Keep sourced or sourceable appearances, but delete those that can't be. MalikCarr 03:03, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
• Delete, possibly add a few of the facts to the main article. This is trivial information, much of it can't be reliably sourced. I agree with JulesH that it could be condensed, but this article gives the concept undue weight. GassyGuy 05:46, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
• Delete - Trivia, not encyclopedic. Wickethewok 17:37, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. To me, for this "In popular culture" article to be kept, it would have to actually be an article about Stephen Hawking as an element of popular culture. This is not, and comes nowhere close. The only elements that would be useful already exist at other pages (see, for instance, Descent (TNG episode)). While it might be reasonable to keep this bad article around in order to make a good one, I feel the chances are so low, we should just delete. Mangojuice^talk 00:25, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
• weak keep We do not have such a section for Albert Einstein, and perhaps we should. This would be a start. DGG 04:32, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

• That we don't have such an article for Einstein is a good thing, as a willy-nilly list of every appearance of Einstein or someone with Einstein-like bushy hair would be exactly as useless as this article. Otto4711 14:43, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
  • And thats what 90% of the article would be. A list of very minor one-shot characters with wild white hair. -- saberwyn 22:02, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. Cleanup verify etc.. but nothing inherently wrong with the articles existence. -- Stbalbach 22:54, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per WP:SUMMARY. There is a precedent for splitting off sections into subarticles that go into detail on various aspects of a topic. Pop culture is always something (not me, so much but) lots of people are interested in. These subarticles are a good way to manage this sort of information. I suggest looking at Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc as an example of how this type of article can be done well. --Aude (talk) 23:03, 23 February 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.