Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Themes in Blade Runner

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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, default to Keep. WaltonOne 16:26, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Themes in Blade Runner

Themes in Blade Runner (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Unnecessary fork from Blade Runner and excessive WP:NOR. Wikipedia is not a film studies course; we don’t need a series of extensive articles. Merge it into Blade Runner’s main article.BlueVelvet86 14:14, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

  • Delete The article is a big collection of original research. Jay32183 18:55, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep I believe a good encyclopedic article on such an important movie should give details about the symbolism used. But giving all these info would overcrowd the main article. I think we should keep it as a separate article. We can work on referencing more, if people are worrying about the original research. There are several books and countless webpages about BR. -- þħɥʂıɕıʄʈʝɘɖı 19:07, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
  • This AfD nomination was incomplete. It is listed now. DumbBOT 12:47, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep Too large to merge back into main article; one of a few films that merit study at the university level. Mandsford 13:38, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong keep. Highly notable film that inspired countless imitations, largely because of its thematic richness. If the page contains OR, then the parts which are OR should be deleted, not the entire article. It does, however, have a large number of sources, at least some of which are reliable, and should therefore be kept. JulesH 14:10, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
    • The entire article is OR. Jay32183 20:05, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
      • So what are the sources about then? JulesH 19:51, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
OK: the following content from the article is directly supported by the source at footnote 4:
The first sentence. The second half of the second paragraph. Most of the content of the fourth paragraph. All of the fifth paragraph. Most of the content of the first section. Some of the content of section 4. Some of the content of section 10.
There are several other sources that appear from their titles to approach the subject in a similarly informative way, although I don't have time to read them in depth and analyse the article for the points they match. My point is that there is clearly referenced content here which is not OR. Yes, there may be some OR between it, and yes, the style of the article is totally inappropriate, but the answer is not to delete it, but to improve it. JulesH 20:19, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
And just to prevent questions about the reliability of that source, it is one that has apparently been frequently quoted by indisputably reliable sources on the subject of Scott's films, and therefore should be considered reliable. Other sources that I haven't read may or may not be more clearly reliable than this one. One is a book, which I suspect is. JulesH 20:24, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
Plus the author of that source is apparently an award-winning film director, so clearly qualifies as an expert in the relevant topic, per WP:V. JulesH 20:47, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
  • I (personally) wouldnt proclaim expertship based on an award at the "Catalonian International Film Festival". Corpx 19:06, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong keep. It is articles such as this one that make Wikipedia useful to a wide segment of net users. The utility of OR material on Wikipedia has obviously been debated by many better writers earlier than this, but still if Wikipedia has a problem with articles containing OR than there could be some tag options that clearly segregates OR material for the reader, rather than the wholesale deletions of useful articles. User:dkholm 12:07, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
    • Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought. Wholesale deletion of original research is a good thing, because it never should have been included in the first place. Jay32183 20:05, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete this article is almost entirely Original Research Corpx 19:40, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Weak Delete It's an essay. Now, I'm not sure exactly what Wikipedia's policy is regarding the substitution of essays for articles (if there is in fact a policy, I'd be very interested to find out what it is), but the article does seem to violate WP:OR. The problem is that rather than presenting objective information, it presents a perspective on a subject. The perspective is debatable and strongly subject to interpretation, rather than reflecting an academic consensus. Calgary 23:56, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
  • I think pretty much ever line in the page would have to be cited from somewhere for it not to violate WP:OR Corpx 00:13, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Question: Have you read all of the sources that are referenced by the article? Because the one I read could be used as a source for somewhere in the region of 10% of the content in there. The rest of them could easily bring the amount covered to 50%. And if an article's half OR, the correct response isn't to delete the article, it's to delete the OR. JulesH 20:31, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep There are enough sources there to keep it from being rejected out of hand. It does need some work, I'd like to see more footnoting, but it is well written and represents a significant view in film studies. This seems to be the kind of article we want more of. If you want to delete some bad articles about fiction, check out some of the Family Guy or The Venture Bros. articles. Cheers. L0b0t 02:03, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
  • I have to say that most of those sources are from fan sites and from user essays. Corpx 16:23, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
The one source I examined in detail may have appeared to be from a fan site, but the author is an award winning film director, so I think it qualifies as a reliable source. See my comments above. JulesH 08:16, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep, the themes in Blade Runner have been analysed by many; sources exist, and the article already includes many inline cites. A merge back into Blade Runner is unnecessary as that article has already gone too large. John Vandenberg 23:36, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Weak keep - Themes are probably one of the more important things a Wikipedia article can comment on. Keeping a more detailed page on the subject seems fine to me. The "weak" is because this article could still use a lot of improvement as an article. Cedars 08:08, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep Blade Runner is one of the most influential films the last quarter of century. Themes are by definition subjective, and subjectivity is not the same as NPOV.--Victor falk 18:42, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
1) npov: Can people agree that themes in Blade Runner are the film noir private eye, genetic cloning and the relation between the eye and the memory? Yes? That's Neutral POV. Do people agree that Blade Runner is an unmistakable metaphor for the relentless struggle of the proletariat (the replicants) against the oppressing superstructure in the form of a giant pyramid? No? What about Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) being a Randian archetype in the pure Nietszchean sense of the type? not either? that's POV.
You may interpret those themes as you wish. For instance, in 'Harry met Sally', one may interpret the theme as a dire warning against the decay of arranged marriage. Nonetheless "boy meets girl" remains a (the main) theme of that film, whatever interpretation one may have of that theme.
2) or: Research, not writing. Original research is claiming to have found something novel or not widely accepted on the subject, ie original. Eg, "A Theme in Blade Runner: hero detective saves his homeland by kidnapping sexy replicant" The article does not do that, neither by claiming somesuch itself nor by using sources to do it.
Original writing, now that's another thing altogether. Check the Sherlock Holmes article (as an aside, study especially 6.1 for "themes"); that's a lot of text. How did such a long article with so much text write itself without violating copyright? The answer is elementary.--Victor falk 06:52, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Sorry. Missed that you were arguing or, not npov. My bad. I think wikipedia makes me ripe for the American Asociatiotion for Anonymous Acronym Abusers.--Victor falk 06:56, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
    • You may wish to actually read WP:NOR to see all the different thing OR could be. One thing original research can mean is interpreting a primary source. Without a citation to a secondary source, interpretation and analysis are original research. Jay32183 18:12, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
      • Actually, original research is normally understood as interpreting a primary source in a way which no reliable sources have done before. Because most of this article contains only statements that others have made previously, it isn't original research. JulesH 18:57, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
        • This article doesn't cite any reliable secondary sources. Jay32183 19:09, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
          • As I've said repeatedly, yes it does. The following sources (at least) are reliable per the definition at WP:V:
            • Unnecessary Destruction: The Lost Films of Ridley Scott
            • Kerman, Judith. (1991) Retrofitting Blade Runner: Issues in Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" and Philip K. Dick's "Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep?
            • Gossman, Jean-Paul. (2001) Blade Runner - A Postmodernist View
            • Newland, Dan. (1997) Christian Symbolism
            • BBC News article about Ridley Scott on Deckard being a replicant
            • BBC1 documentary program, Hollywood Greats
            • Telotte, J.P. (1999). A Distant Technology: Science Fiction Film and the Machine Age. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 165, 180-185. ISBN 0819563463.
            • Menville, Douglas; R. Reginald (1985). Futurevisions: The New Golden Age of the Science Fiction Film. Van Nuys, CA: Newcastle, 8, 15, 128-131, 188. ISBN 0893706817.
          • Unless you can come up with a reason these sources aren't reliable, then de facto they are, because they all meet the requirements of the relevant policy. 22:29, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
            • If you think that those are reliable sources, why haven't you already deleted everything else? Don't wait for an AFD to result in keep to cut OR. If you want to save the article then fix the problems now. Jay32183 23:20, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
              • Because I haven't read all of them, and therefore do not for certain what is & isn't included in them, so cannot clearly tell what is & isn't OR. I've determined that approximately half of the article isn't OR, but determining what is OR is much harder. JulesH 07:58, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
                • If it looks like OR and it's unsourced, assume it's OR. The burden of evidence falls on those wishing to add or retain material, removing portions of an article for being unsourced is allowed. Adding unsourced content is even one of the user warnings. Jay32183 21:27, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep; Strong, was forked from the article (by me) for good reasons; and is one of the most complex films thematically in cinematic history. While glancing over the article there is undoubtedly plenty of OR there; however I made a conscious effort to stay within themes that were discussed widely. So even though there is not enough ref's, more can be added from existing materials; and plenty can be made from "Future Noir", a reliable secondary source... its just a matter of doing it. - RoyBoy 800 20:26, 12 July 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.