Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/M1911 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 Delete all, on the balance of arguments, not the !vote tally. The main argument for keeping appears to be that adding this unencyclopaedic information to the main entries bloats them (a view to which there appears to be no significant dissent), therefore the unencyclopaedic information should be in a separate article. I find that extraordinarily unpersuasive. Lists of the films in which a particular weapon can be glimpsed are almost without exception original research, and there is no suggestion that these are the subject of the films. We don't have an article for, say, the Ford Crown Victoria in popular culture because every US cop show based in the last decade or so will of course have Crown Vics in it; similarly, every war film orr shoot-em-up based in the 39-45 period will of course have the Garand and various other weapons in it. The content is functionally equivalent to a list of popular culture references to combat based in the period foo, where foo is the period over which the weapon was used. A subsidiary argument for keeping is "I like it". WP:ILIKEIT does not trump WP:V and WP:RS. We have no authorities for the vast majority of content here, and no authorities for the significance of the individual weapons within the pop culture item (film or whatever) nor of the significance of the film to the subject. The example of the F-14 and Top Gun cited in the debate is an excellent one; where a weapon is integral to the plot of a film that justifies a one-liner in the main article. Where it's a prop, it most surely does not. Finally, as per the nomination, if we have a reliable source for the ubiquity of the weapon in films of a period, then that, too, can go in the main article. We do not need a list of World War II films in every article on any weapon used in World War II. To pick an example not in this collection, the M3 Half-track was used as the generic half-track, on all sides, in almost every film, with very few notable exceptions. That doesn't take long to say and we sure as hell don't need a list. Guy 09:06, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] M1911 in popular culture

I am nominating the following "Firearm X in Popular Culture" pages, because Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, specifically, it is not a directory of prop appearances. Moreover, these articles incur severe WP:V problems. Visual confirmation is often insufficient; there is often debate over which model of M16 is represented; short of commentary from the prop staff, these lists violate WP:V and WP:OR.

This follows the AfD's Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of firearms in films, Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_firearms_in_video_games, and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/M16 rifle in popular culture.

While I cannot rule out the existence of an item of pop culture that prominently featured a firearm in the way that Top Gun featured the F-14, none of these rise to the occasion. Even if it were, it would deserve a 1-liner in the main article. A wholesale list of prop appearances is irrelevant and often speculative. What's next? Honda Accord in popular culture? Ikea furniture in popular culture? I am willing to accede that a reliable source may make a statement about the ubiquity of some firearm in a film; such a statement should go in the original article.

These are not articles. That much is clear. A comprehensive list is unmaintainable, difficult to verify, and ultimately original research unless the prop director can be quoted on the matter. Visual confirmation does not satisfy WP:V, as evidenced by the debates over what a weapon was. (is that a MAC-10 or a lookalike? Which Beretta did he carry? Who cares?)

Can they be converted to lists or categories? Given the severe verifiability problems and notability issues, I say not. Do we need a category for each prop?

Up for co-nomination are:

• Heckler & Koch G3 in popular culture
• Dragunov in popular culture
• Uzi in popular culture
• Colt Python in popular culture
• MAC-10 in popular culture
• M2 Machine Gun in popular culture
• H&K MP5K in popular culture
• M203 in popular culture
• FAMAS rifle in popular culture
• M14 in popular culture
• Browning Hi-Power in popular culture
• H&K PSG1 in popular culture
• FN FAL in popular culture
• Walther WA 2000 in popular culture
• M82 in popular culture
• GLOCK 18 in popular culture
• Heckler & Koch G11 in popular culture
• XM29 in popular culture
• Steyr TMP in popular culture
• M79 in popular culture

I am nominating these together because the criteria for deletion applies equally to each. Mmx1 01:44, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Added 17:00, 28 September 2005

• Heckler & Koch MP5 in popular culture
• Beretta 93R in popular culture
• FN P90 in popular culture (recently reverted from a redirect)

Another editor brought these to my attention. The same arguments pro/con apply equally unless there are individual objections below.

• Recommend Delete and protect against recreation as they appear to be popular steamvalves. --Mmx1 02:01, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

• Keep Useful list, although I'm sure for what. --Mysmartmouth 02:56, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

• delete It's silly, and no one needs them. It just comes down to a bunch of wanabee middle schoolers thinking there bad because they knew that said firearm in said movie was a Mac-10 or watever.Jigsaw Jimmy 16:51, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

• I have created some of these articles, and my reason for doing so was to keep this kind of trivia out of the main firearm/weapon article. If any pop culture section is left in a firearm/weapon article it tends to grow out of control as every video-gamer wants to put their favourite game in, same thing with movies. If we just delete these references as and when they are put it in leads to revert wars and the whole thing just becomes a never ending maintenance issue on the articles. Some say "only leave in the references which are somehow iconic or significant", but of course that's entirely subjective as to which are iconic or significant. The solution which seemed to work best was to create the separate articles for pop culture refs, so that they could just grow and all the gamers and film buffs would be happy but the main article would be left alone. Not ideal - I agree that this stuff shouldn't be in at all, but it WILL keep being put back in the main articles unless you give them somewhere else to put it. So I say Keep unless someone has a better solution to the problem of pop culture cruft. Riddley 03:10, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Hence my recommendation for a protection against recreation template on these pages. Point them to that and this AfD discussion. A better solution that has worked well on the aircraft pages was to establish a wikiproject consensus [1], which established itself in the wikiproject guideline on contentWikipedia:WikiProject_Aircraft/page_content. These guidelines have stifled many potential edit wars. How about we take it up before the general Wikiproject Military History?--Mmx1 03:27, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I absolutely agree that a consensus policy in the project which we could point to would be essential if we are to "police" the main articles to keep the trivia out. Riddley 03:39, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Brought it before the Military History wikiproject: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history#Popular_Culture. Fire away. --Mmx1 04:01, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Now that we have the policy, Delete all - scorched earth and see how it goes. Riddley 22:42, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

• Delete all per nom. Arbusto 03:11, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep as per Riddley's recommendation.Orca1 9904 03:35, 28 September 2006 (UTC)Orca1_9904
• Delete Trivial nonsense. I realize weapons fetishists love to seek out where their particular favorite gun was used in a film or anime, but it's just not important. Keep out all the pop culture references, unless it is something truly iconic like James Bond using the Walther PPK. --Junky 03:43, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete them all per nom. Listcruft. Nuke the sites from orbit, it's the only way to be sure. --Dennisthe2 05:20, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. Non trivial pop culture references should be OK in articles, just use common sense.--Peta 05:32, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete alll per nom. TJ Spyke 05:48, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
• Comment (Neutral). I agree that this is not encyclopedic, not notable, etc., and shouldn't be in a separate article. But I have seen similar things in other articles. The "Messiah" article once had a section on "Jewish Messiah Claimants" that eventually wound up taking up about 3/4 of the article with a list of nobodies. The result was that people stopped contribting useful information until the list was split into a separate article. Deleting the articles and protecting against recreation will simply restart the problem in the main articles. RickReinckens 06:42, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete this and all lists of random objects appearing in random series. It's not encyclopedic or necessary, and hopefully this AFD also discourages similar lists in the articles for the objects themselves. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 07:19, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
• Merge and redirect any articles that have high-profile mentions of the weapon in the film/show/book that can be verified from published sources (not watching film in question). Delete the others. Mgm|^(talk) 09:59, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. This is a legit spinoff from the main article. Pop culture articles spun off from regular articles are well established on Wikipedia. They almost always survive deletion, or they get merged back and spun off again. Billy Blythe 10:05, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Really? I'm not seeing any previous AfD keeps on these.

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/M16 rifle in popular culture (delete)
• Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/A-10_Thunderbolt_II_in_popular_culture (delete)

--Mmx1 10:37, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete, protect from recreation, etc., etc. This belongs on the NRA's website or something, not wikipedia. Ultra-Loser ^{Talk | BT sites} 13:21, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete and all its friends. These deserve, at most, subsections in other articles. If a particular appearance is important then write an article on it, but comprehensive lists aren't useful. Orpheus 15:22, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per above. This is crap disguised as substance.UberCryxic 15:04, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
• KeepThe U.S is a gun-ocracy, so this is an important topic.Edison 16:09, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete ALL per above. Naconkantari 16:10, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete all after checking that any genuinely notable (and sourced) references exist in the parent articles (merge if any are needed). WP:NOT a trivia collection. Barno 17:27, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep - Wikipedia will eventually evolve into a bastion of ALL information, great or small. Yes, that includes a biography of every person named "Bob Jones" in the world. There will be 1,000,000,000,000 articles on Wikipedia one day. This list is a perfect example of information that is highly useful to those who truly care about it (for example, gun enthusiasts who are curious about references in popular culture). Ignore all those who wish to suppress information, for they are akin to the book burners of the past. Inclusionist Wikipedians, UNITE! - Cloudreaver 18:57, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Amen brother! I second that wholeheartedly. Orca1 9904 19:43, 28 September 2006 (UTC)Orca1_9904
• Delete Not only do many of the articles contain trivial and often unverifiable information, many of them contain next to nothing! Marcus22 20:50, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete—Unencyclopedic. Isn't there a gun buff site or wiki where this energy can be redirected? —Michael Z. 2006-09-28 21:11 Z
• Keep Since when are comprehensive lists a bad thing? It's not like we're debating a list called 'Record of Homer Simpson's burps on The Simpsons'. This does have substance, and I'm tired of deletionists monopolizing everything. 76.18.163.141 21:38, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Original research (just for starters).--Glendoremus 23:37, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Keeps the gun pages from getting overshadowed by these lists. I think that a particular objects existence in popular culture is notable. They should be referenced though. AmitDeshwar 00:38, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete all as per nom. Listcruft Bwithh 02:58, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete all per nom & A Man in Black. Angus McLellan (Talk) 08:21, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. I created some of these (following the existing pattern) in an attempt to get it away from the main article, but I suppose the proper solution is to remove it completely. We should then also remove the "pop culture" sub setions from the main articles, because it just invites trouble unless it is really notable (e.g. James Bond and his PPK or Dirty Harry and tehe .44 magnum). --Deon Steyn 10:56, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete & Protect all per Mmx1's excellent nomination. No need for "in pop culture" sections in individual articles, either (save the truly notable ones, as noted by Deon Steyn above). Why can't people clean up and expand articles on extremely notable subjects like (for example) Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, rather than just producing endless lists like these? ergot 14:03, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete and protect all. I'm not opposed to having one single article listing all of these references (e.g. List of firearms in popular culture), as long as we keep the main articles free from these references/lists and all individual "…in pop culture" articles are deleted and protected. —Squalla 15:47, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. These articles prevent the content from filling up the pages on the individual firearms (look at the histories for the pages if you don't believe me: [2] [3]). Another comment: if we trimmed it down to merely 'notable' appearances, there's a huge grey area there. It's obvious for movies like Enemy at the Gates that the Mosin-Nagant should be listed, as the movie centers around one man's interaction with this rifle. But what about The Boondock Saints and the Desert Eagle? It plays an integral part in the movie, but it's only on-screen for a few minutes? Where does an appearance no longer become notable? --UNHchabo 19:57, 1 October 2006 (UTC) Vote originally posted 16:57, September 30, 2006 --UNHchabo 19:57, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

  When a third-party reliable source makes note of the role of the weapon in the movie. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 23:04, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

  I think the point is that in the article about the weapon Mosin-Nagant, there's no encyclopedic point in listing movies, television programs, video games, novels, short stories, and paintings it made an appearance in, perhaps not even a point in listing the fine film Enemy at the Gates, when the article already mentions sniper Vasily Zaitsev, who is portrayed in the movie. If there was some cultural or other significance about the weapon's portrayal in the movie, it may be worth mentioning, but just having appeared is not notable in itself. (Mentioning the weapon in the article about the film Enemy at the Gates is a different question, but I notice the model of rifle isn't even significant enough to mention there, except in passing in a trivial bullet-point about a poster-illustrator's mistake)  —Michael Z. 2006-10-01 01:45 Z

  Yes, my point was that this stuff should be kept off of the weapon pages, and the best way to do that is with the pop culture pages. Most movie pages are generally void of weapon mentions, except for action-centric movies like Equilibrium. And about verifibility -- would something like this (a page I made in about 3 minutes) be sufficient to put down that the Desert Eagle was in The Boondock Saints, or do we actually need more than that? --UNHchabo 04:33, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

  Verifiable perhaps, but—please don't take offence—not a reliable source. If three-minute web pages start to be considered suitable citations, then we have a problem with not only 50,000 items of trivia which can easily be deleted to improve the encyclopedia, but the icing on the cake would then be a constantly-growing web of tens of thousands of "authorities" which no one could ever fact-check. Better to honour the word and spirit of encyclopedic notability (see WP:N, WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NOR), and keep the trivia elsewhere. —Michael Z. 2006-10-01 16:56 Z

  My point was that from that screenshot it's plainly obvious that the pistols are Desert Eagles. It's the only pistol shaped like that, and according to the canon of the movie, they're fifty caliber (hence .50AE). It's verifiable, as anyone who watches the movie can say for certain that the screenshot is accurate. With those going for us, and the fact that the site is 3rd party (so WP:NOR is taken care of), does it really need to be a "reliable" source? Do I have to be a master armorer, and display my credentials on my site, or be a member of the film crew, to be taken at my word that those pistols are what they are? --UNHchabo 19:57, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

  My point is that you are ignoring Wikipedia:Reliable sources. I haven't seen the movie and I am no armourer, so I don't know if that is a screen shot from the movie or if those are indeed so plainly obviously and unambiguously Desert Eagles. I also have no way of knowing whether the editor who cited this "reference" and its anonymous author knew what they were talking about (nor do I know that the screenwriter who gave Agent Smecker his line knew what he was talking about). What you are advocating is choosing to ignore WP:RS when you feel that it's obvious to you, and to ignore WP:NOR by making your own bogus "references". I agree that some things are so widely accepted that citing references to support them is not a high priority, but I completely disagree that what you're describing constitutes a reference at all. As an example of what a real problem this would be, I keep having to remove armour values from modern AFV articles: they are usually uncited, usually pasted from some mil-fan forum or other, and sometimes an editor will revert-war over them until I eventually track them to their source at an "armour estimates for wargamers" page—quite a lot of work removing false information because someone didn't take these Wikipedia guidelines seriously.  —Michael Z. 2006-10-01 23:16 Z

Will the original "Keep" please attribute his vote? The sig may have gotten lost. As for the argument is that it is a steamvalve; a guideline is being hammered out at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history#Popular_Culture that will provide a better and long-lasting solution. --Mmx1 17:12, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Done. My fault, I neglected to sign the original post. --UNHchabo 19:57, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you but please review WP:RS. Self-published websites are not considered reliable sources. I could just as easily put up a page saying it was a Baby Eagle, not a Desert Eagle. Who's right? Given the amount of debate over which guns were used in movies and that often you don't get good angles (Which gun did Al Pacino use in HEAT?), visual confirmation is insufficient.--Mmx1 22:24, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

The page was created for illustrative purposes -- not that I'd like the page to be cited as a source, but if an extensive set of screenshots would suffice. Here's another example from the movie Snatch: let's assume that this page was not created by me. How reliable does my source have to be if it's even more plainly obvious (compared to the previous example) in the shots themselves? --UNHchabo 06:37, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Have you actually read WP:RS? —Michael Z. 2006-10-02 14:04 Z

Again, please review the guidelines for reliable sources. Self-published, i.e. personal websites, are not permissible. FYI, the actual desert eagle carries no such markings; the imprint is engraved and of a smaller font:[[4]] Guess that isn't a Desert Eagle, after all. --Mmx1 12:55, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep Per the stuff about bloating other pages.†he Bread 02:45, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per Bread. Michael Dorosh^Talk 15:38, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, but for different reasons. I think these articles should be trimmed and reformatted into something other than lists, so that we only mention notable appearances (such as signature weapons of main characters, or pivotal roles, or places where they're specifically referenced) but I think that such a trimmed version would have no need to be separated out, and could be integrated back into the main article except for big cases like the AK-47, which has massive massive influence. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:56, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
  • To quote Wikiproject aircraft as linked above: "This section should not be a compendium of every trivial appearance, but significant ones of relevance to the airframe. The canonical example would be Top Gun for the F-14 Tomcat. Due to the large number of survey and arcade simulations, an effort should be made to avoid tallying every sim appearance unless there are very few of them. Fictional versions and speculation about fictional likenesses should not be included, as they constitute original research." I agree with that, just replace top gun with james bond and the F-14 with the Walther PPK. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:02, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete all per the new guideline adopted by the Military history WikiProject. Kirill Lokshin 22:04, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
• KeepJeffklib 06:48, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep As per other keeps. The impact of firearms is highly notable to both those interested in guns, and culture. Ve3 04:08, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

The big-picture solution is for someone to create a TriviaWiki or PopCultureWiki sister project, so all of this less-encyclopedic information, which does have some value after all, can be offloaded there. An encyclopedia article can have an external link directly to the related page on the sister project, while remaining suitably sober and academic. Anybody know how to get that started? —Michael Z. 2006-10-01 01:51 Z

• That sounds like an excellent idea. Certainly better than continuing the ongoing vicious cycle of deletion and re-adding. Orca1 9904 05:25, 1 October 2006 (UTC)Orca1_9904

• I also think this would be an excellent idea. Unfortunately, I don't have any idea how to go about setting up something like that, either. Maybe ask about it on Village Pump? ergot 14:29, 2 October 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.