Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mario 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 Merge to Mario. Cbrown1023 talk 01:25, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mario in popular culture

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

Delete - an unreferenced indiscriminate list and directory seeking to capture every appearance not only of the character but of anything that in the POV of an editor bears a resemblance to Mario. Fails WP:NOT, WP:NPOV and probably a bunch of other policies and guidelines I'm forgetting. Oppose merging any of this trivia into other articles related to Mario. Otto4711 21:22, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

• Keep, for obvious reasons such as the fact that we're talking about THE all-time most recognizable video game character and therefore it has relevance to economics, culture, history, etc., etc., etc. --24.154.173.243 21:47, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
• Wow. I didn't know there was this much popular culture in all of world history. Delete it please. YechielMan 21:49, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
• Delete/Merge as per all delete votes above, unreferenced, almost unreadable format. Some parts are mildly interesting and could be (possibly) merged into their relevant articles. Overall, not a sound piece of work Patar knight 21:58, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
• Highly selective merge. There are perhaps a handful of entries that can be selected for inclusion in the parent Mario article. This list as it stands is trivia of a scope better suited for a specialist gaming encyclopedia, however. "In A Link to the Past, his portrait hangs in certain houses." Indeed. Serpent's Choice 04:17, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per reasoning given by 24.154.173.243. As to the reasons others have given to delete, I don't think they are valid according to policy. Arguing that an article needs to be cleaned up or shortened is a clean-up issue, not a deletion issue. Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 17:22, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• Please do not misrepresent my arguments again. I am not arguing that the article needs to be "shortened." I am arguing that the article is an indiscriminate collection of information which is a policy violation and that it is a directory of loosely-associated topics unrelated except for having an image of Mario in them which is also a policy violation. The recognizability of a character (the apparent crux of 24.154.173.243's argument) is not a measure of the notability of the character since fame does not equal notability, and the notability of Mario does not mean that every appearance of Mario in another medium, or every appearance of something that resembles Mario in the opinion of an editor, is notable. Otto4711 13:42, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

• Merge into Mario except for section 1.1: most of the references to Mario from other formats, or in-jokes from other games, are interesting enough (and telling enough about the effect Mario has had on pop culture) to be merged, with a bit of editing, into this section of "Mario". Besides, some less well-known memes have fairly received the same treatment. As far as section 1.1, a few of these appearances are significant but most are far too obscure to keep. Blue Crest 03:44, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
• Selective merge per Serpent's Choice. I would argue that appearances of Mario in other video games aren't notable trivia, as I could easily rattle off two dozen or so. - Chardish 06:26, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
• Merge only the decidedly acceptable, encyclopedic, and notable material to the Mario article, which already has a section so entitled: Mario#In popular culture (and curiously that does not even link to this article in an immediately obvious way (as of now)). I do not believe we need to be responsible for hosting a comprehensive list documenting every minor and casual reference to Mario outside of the world of gaming. There could be tens of thousands of other items out there that editors may feel compelled to add in along with the rest. A sub-section called "Examples of ..." and list a dozen or so of the best of the Mario extra-game-world appearances: those which are especially notable and which would appeal to large segments of society. These would have to be well documented with reliable sources - preferably with cross reference links to other articles where the same event is mentioned, and ideally with an external source link which includes some sort of editorial commentary. For example, if Mario appeared in an episode of The Simpsons, then we would expect to see a link to The Simpsons, and to the episode in question, where Mario's appearance is explained in context as part of the synopsis or plot summary, and then an external link to a respected commentator's reaction to that appearance. It is a tall order, but that is the sort of thing that establishes notability. Otherwise all we have is a useless but perhaps curious list, which may not be particularly reliable or encyclopedic, and end up being deleted as unsourced and non-notable. --T-dot (Talk | contribs) 23:48, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

delete per nom - does Wikipedia need any "X in popular culture" article, especially where "X" is a pop-culture product in the first place? Baudrillard would have a frickin' field day with this (and he's dead) - in fact, this'd be enough to get Baudrillard to start using the word "cruft", immortalizing it as a serious concept in semiotics. I do think T-dot puts forth a valid position too, but I don't want to suggest a merge, especially any merge which would be more than just cut-and-paste of a paragraph, without a volunteer in the wings. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad 05:04, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. Appears to be completely unreferenced. Nothing to be gained from merging such content into another article. WjBscribe 14:44, 6 May 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.