Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Thong in the news

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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 Keep, the impressive improvements to the article, primarily by User:Aditya Kabir, have demonstrated an encyclopedic article can be written. Almost all contributors who have commented since the changes were made have been persuaded that the article should be kept (including the nominator). The title of the article and a possible move should be discussed on the talk page. Davewild (talk) 19:01, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thong in the news

Thong in the news (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

The page is just a list of news items, most of which are of dubious notability to say the least. -mattbuck (Talk) 21:21, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Weak Keep per improvement to the article. The name needs to be changed, though. ~ mazca talk 18:00, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge with Thong (clothing) and delete.(See below) Reads like a trivia section, and while some of the trivia is, as Mazca says, entertaining, most of it is probably not notable, and certainly not notabe enough to have its own page.--Aervanath (talk) 21:35, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment Just a note: merge and delete is not a valid option under the GFDL. Bfigura (talk) 22:13, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the tip, although you could have phrased it in a slightly less baffling way. ;) WP:MAD is an explanation of this in case anyone else is as confused as I was. ~ mazca talk 23:07, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Sorry about that. (I haven't actually seen WP:MAD before, so thanks for putting it up). Best, --Bfigura (talk) 21:50, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Slight merge of the most significant items into Thong (clothing). --Metropolitan90 (talk) 02:49, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Weak Delete as news/trivia (or merge if there is anything of value in it). JJL (talk) 03:37, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Cleanup Why do you people want to delete something that can be cleaned up? Because we're being lazy and a delete is the quickest of solutions? What do you do to your ailing grandma? Delete her? Aditya(talk • contribs) 05:48, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Strong keep per Wikipedia:Lists and Wikipedia:SOFIXIT. Aditya makes an excellent point. The article could use a better lead, but this article is very well referenced (i.e. verfiable) and definely discriminate. And even in a worse case scenario with some arguing to merge above, we would redirect without deleting per the GFDL to keep contribution history public. Best, --Le Grand Roi des CitrouillesTally-ho! 06:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Just because it's well-referenced doesn't mean that the topic itself, or any of the news items, are particularly notable. There are plenty of events happening every day which are reported in reliable sources, but we don't include them because Wikipedia is not a newspaper. --Aervanath (talk) 11:14, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
WP:NOT#NEWS may be a bit irrelevant here, as that particular bit of policy is about news coverage of particular happenings (i.e. President Bush's trip to Morocco, or something like it), and not at all about something that has been on the news over the time. In fact, continuous news coverage over time very much establishes notability of a subject. And, content forking (i.e. keeping this article separate from the Thong article) is very much in line with Wikipedia traditions. Nothing wrong there, apart from desperate need for cleanup. But, "this needs improvement", as I see, is a call to constructive editing, not deletion. Aditya(talk • contribs) 12:23, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
I already adxded the vaguely relevant bits to Thong (clothing). -mattbuck (Talk) 13:30, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Which means we cannot outright delete this article then; we'd have to redirect without deleting per the GFDL. Best, --Le Grand Roi des CitrouillesTally-ho! 18:20, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Aditya, you are absolutely right that continuous news coverage establishes notability of the subject, which in this case is Thong (clothing). However, in order to justify forking an independent article discussing the news coverage, we would have to find reliable sources discussing the news coverage as news coverage. All the sources in this article are talking about the item of clothing, NOT the news coverage thereof. If the article were instead to draw on sources analyzing the ways that the news reporting about thongs has been notable IN AND OF ITSELF, then I would switch to Keep. But if not, then there's really no point in having it.--Aervanath (talk) 15:07, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. That'd take a day or two, though. Aditya(talk • contribs) 15:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
A day or two to...what? find those sources?--Aervanath (talk) 17:44, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
(inserted) Find what sources? The news coverage issue can be addressed by use of expansion, reorganization and copyediting, and that's what I'm trying to do. Though the article definitely would benefit from a better title. But, I don't think "hey, it has a wrong title" can ever be a reason for deletion. We have a move button that works much better than deletion discussions at that. It still weighs more on the cleanup side than merge or delete.
(undented) I don't think anyone has said "Let's delete this because it needs a better title." If you can think of a title that would fit it better, and would convince people that it should not be deleted, then, please, by all means, mention it here, and the closing admin can move it to that name, if that's what the consensus is.--Aervanath's signature is boring 04:14, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete - anything that can't constructively be added to Thong (clothing) isn't needed. The alternative is a couple of million Foo in the news articles. Pseudomonas(talk) 15:20, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
    • As has been covered by Bifurga and myself above, per the GFDL, if we merege, we cannot delete, we would have to redirect without deleting as contribution history must remain public in the case of a merge. There was a recent AN thread on the topic and consensus was that this is indeed the case. Best, --Le Grand Roi des CitrouillesTally-ho! 17:48, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
      • Since mattbuck has already added the worthwhile bits of this article to Thong (clothing), any talk of merging is pretty much moot, so there's really no need to preserve this article, or its edit history.--Aervanath (talk) 18:17, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
        • Actually if anything was added as you say, then a merge was in fact done and according to the GFDL, the edit history MUST be preserved. Best, --Le Grand Roi des CitrouillesTally-ho! 18:20, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
          • I keep seeing this argument, but I've never really seen any real specific explanation for why this is so. The Wikipedia:Merge and Delete essay doesn't really do a good job of this either. --Aervanath's signature is boring 18:51, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
            • It is necessary for the sake of copyrights and possible problems with an article that whoever contributed the content remains clear. Anyway, here's a discussion we had on the subject (notice that by the end of the discussion, the consensus was to merge the history). Best, --Le Grand Roi des CitrouillesTally-ho! 19:06, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
  • vote changed to Merge and redirect per Grand Roi des Citrouilles--Aervanath's signature is boring 19:46, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment If anyone else was as confused as I was about the merge and redirect thing, the relevant section of the GFDL is 4-I. Cheers,--Aervanath's signature is boring 19:58, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge, which has already been performed. My compliments to mattbuck for doing a good job with the merge.--Father Goose (talk) 21:45, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
    In its rewritten form, keep. Nice job, Aditya.--Father Goose (talk) 03:31, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep in its current state--though Im not sure of the proper title. This is nota place where NOT NEWS applies--it is a discussion of multiple events on a common theme, not a particular news item. DGG (talk) 00:33, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Why are we really going round and round discussing how this article needs to be merged (or deleted, as all that's relevant has been already merged)? Is it because we are tired of expanding and improving articles? Is it because we find it easier to gut existing articles and shove them into another? My, I was under the impression that growth doesn't happen that way. Anyways, I have started working on the article, and some help there would be very nice. I found it pretty distressing that only one editor so far has done something more constructive than discussing a reduction of the wikipedia, where as many people come to read on Pokemon characters as Quantum Mechanics. Aditya(talk • contribs) 21:38, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
We are not tired of expanding and improving articles. However, some articles do not meet the standards of Wikipedia, either through lack of notability or other reasons, and can not be improved to meet those standards. That is the reason why we have the Speedy Deletion, Proposed Deletion, and Articles for Deletion processes. However, sometimes articles CAN be improved to the point where they no longer deserve deletion, which means that the nominator simply, in good faith, was mistaken. That said, I'm still not convinced that this has happend. This subject still doesn't (even after your substantial, and, I must say, well-written, improvements) warrant its own article. If the article were to be changed to a redirect, and the article condensed to a section of Thong (clothing), I still think that would be a better treatment of this topic.--Aervanath's signature is boring 04:14, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the compliment. It is really appreciated, though I know I have not been able to expand an improve it much, yet. The first thing that needs to be changed is probably the title (something in the line of Thong controversies, Social impact of thong or something). Not daunted, though, as this article shows enormous potential to grow into a formidable piece with time, patience and hard work. Already the amount of information has grown somewhat beyond the scope of integration into another article (and, I can't take the credit for that, not in the least).
But, what I see is that only three bits were picked out of the long line of significant thong information to be integrated into the mother article (plus one highly suspect piece of information on thong hygiene quoting Yahoo Answers as a source). Not enough, not remotely enough, especially if we want to remove this article by way of merger or deletion. Wikipedia:Summary style and Wikipedia:Content forking are two pieces of guidelines that may guide us in this situation fine (i.e. when content keeps growing it's appreciated that articles are split out). Of course, there has to be a {{main|this article}} type link put into the relevant section of the mother article. Therefore I'd propose to invoke WP:HOPELESS and WP:IDONTLIKEIT here (also Template:Sofixit, may be).
I find the information presented comfortably encyclopedic (as opposed to you finding this as one of those articles that "do not meet the standards of Wikipedia... and can not be improved to meet those standards"), as they clearly represent an impact of thong on the society (Laws and bills? Beauty Queen demoted? Schools panicking? A child-porn controversy? A GI controversy? - there is way too much in there for a delete, or even a merger). WP:BRAIN may be a nice essay to understand the situaion. Since notability, reliability and verifiability of the information in the article is firmly established, I'd still say it requires a cleanup, which may require harder work than simply wiping it out of existence. Aditya(talk • contribs) 17:57, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Withdraw nomination - due to the stirling (or is it sterling?) work done on this article by Aditya, I withdraw my nomination, although the article does still need attention, I feel it has justified itself on grounds of notability and such. Less references from The Sun and The Daily Mail would help though. I encourage all participants of this debate to help Aditya's work. -mattbuck (Talk) 21:02, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

"Social impact of the thong"? Aditya(talk • contribs) 12:24, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Works for me.--Father Goose (talk) 03:03, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep. WP:NOT#NEWS is for people like Corey Delaney, etc.—this isn't him (although I'm loving the irony I just thought of in that the title contains "thong"...). Per DGG and Le Grand Roi, this is a discriminate and useful list. It's sourced. It can be improved. So can most things. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 07:07, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete as unencyclopedic. Wikipedia is not a news collation service. Stifle (talk) 15:55, 19 April 2008 (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.