Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tunguska event in fiction

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, unlike a lot of these articles this subject is notable for informing a large amount of fiction, often directly as opposed to tangentally. Some of the micro-trivia could usefully be stripped, though.ELIMINATORJR 22:38, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tunguska event in fiction

Tunguska event in fiction (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Trivia grab-bag, often of bare-mention references, unacceptable under WP:FIVE, or WP:NOT#IINFO. Eyrian 19:42, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

• Delete as per nom Harlowraman 21:37, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, tidy up and find references instead of deleting. The fact that this part attracted enough contributors' interest to grow into an article, instead of just a section, makes it draw fire. However, it would be weird if that resulted in it being deleted altogether. Jake73 22:13, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
• Delete This is similar to those IPC articles.--JForget 00:07, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
• Keep This is a good list, many of these references are from literature, and there is nothing wrong with "in popular culture" articles per se. This is simply a subsection of the main article that grew large enough to merit its own page. Squidfryerchef 05:37, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
• Delete, I am interested in the Tunguska event but this article is an obvious collection of more or less useless information (aka trivia), and that is a fundamental violation of WP:NOT. Anynobody 09:11, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
• Keep It's been firmly established that merely because an article is 'useful' is no reason to keep it. Therefore it follows that arguments that an article is 'useless' must also be invalid. Personally I don't find this article useless at all, it has clear criteria for inclusion - and is therefore not a 'grab bag', and is a valuable addition to Wikipedia's coverage of written science fiction, which is woeful compared to its voluminous TV coverage. The references clearly can be sourced and, as has been pointed out, the fact that so much material has been amassed, and therefore had to be separated from the main article, would be a strange reason to lead to its dissolution. Nick mallory 15:19, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
• Delete cleanse wikipedia of these conspiracy-theory-promoting trivia pages, please. Bulldog123 19:27, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm as against conspiracy theories as you are, but this list is about Tunguska in fiction. Nobody's claiming any of these ideas are true in the article, it's just a compilation of all the uses the event has been put to in novels etc. Nick mallory 00:48, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Still very trivial IMO. Do we really need to list every mention of it in media? Bulldog123 22:02, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

• Keep Tunguska was a real event that happened in the 20th Century and remains a mystery, so it has inspired a lot of fiction (not to mention documentaries). It's hard for me to agree that this as "trivia", any more so than theories about who killed JFK would be trivia. There's always a correct answer to a trivia question. More books, films and shows than I might have imagined. I didn't realize until seeing this one that the centennial is coming up in 2008. Indeed, this does a good job in addressing the speculations of various authors without bogging down in trivia. Well done. Mandsford 23:51, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
• Delete - this is trivia because there is no purpose to the article. How about we list the number of times the letter "a" is used in novels? It would serve the same purpose as a list that about how many times Tunguska is referenced in novels. Who cares how many times it is mentioned? Can it really be monitored and ever be complete? How does one know that it is complete? Is there any other merit other than mentioning Tunguska or providing an explanation? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? There is no value to these types of articles other than to fans making this cruft of the worst order. --Storm Rider ^(talk) 08:18, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

  I don't think there's any mystery associated with the use of the letter "a" in the English language. Answer to last question: All of them, as long as they take turns.

• Delete at first, Mandsfor's argument sounded appealing, but then there are lots of things and events that happened in real life that have been used somehow in fiction so to badly misquote Newton, for each article X there will be an equal and opposing article "X in fiction" which I think would be an unwelcome development. Carlossuarez46 18:26, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. It's very worthwhile to examine how this, originally quite obscure event, has permeated culture and what it's been associated with. RandomCritic 03:47, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
• Keep It's sourceable, both with respect to the individual entries and the general concept--the literature on this event is quite substantial. Not every article will have such a companion--only the ones where there are enough items--or enough notable items. I'd be perfectly willing to incorporate most of them in the articles on the events, except that most of these articles exist because they were split from the main ones as they were too large. It's absurd to go back and forth, especially as it is the clear intent as expressed at this and other afds to eliminate coverage entirely, because a few individual wikipedans consider that the whole concept of collecting in one place the works of the imagination that are based on a subject is trivial. That's their individual view, and they should be forcing it on us here. if the only question were which way to organize the material, there would be much less of a problem. At least half the comments above are of this type, and I think this campaign an outrageous attempt at intimidation by swamping afd. If it were in good faith it would have been proposed one or two a day, not 5 or ten. It's hard to AGF when these are still being introduced after protests at doing it this way, and even after an RfC has been filed about it. X in fiction is a sound academic topic and a very standard way to discuss literature. That some dont like it shows their own predilections, and they are welcome to them, as long as they dont try to recast WP to suit themselves. This is a cooperative enterprise. I tolerate topics I do not think important, and everyone does the same, because if we required 95% agreement on everything, there wouldnt be much left. I would love to delete very article on ever porn star--I think the web covers this part of the world well enough without us, and I would say the same for Pokemon. But I leave those articles alone. I guess there is a solution though--Citzendium should be very hospitable to topics such as these. DGG (talk) 09:59, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
• Keep - But only if there is enough material left after a tidy up to justify a seperate article. Some of the items in this page are mere passing references to the event, rather than examples of the event being an obvious or primary source of inspiration. Blibbka 12:35, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
• Keep (without prejudice to later renomination) per the comments of User:Melsaran and myself at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Eyrian. The nominator is, broadly speaking, right that wikipedia should be purged of inappropriate trivia: however he and the other delete voters in this and a string of related AfDs are immediatists. The right approach is to give the matter considered thought, to review these types of articles with TLC and to extract from them the items that do have merit, and with what's left to consider whether a transwiki is a better option than outright deletion from the world wide web. The greatest weakness of wikipedia is the lack of respect that some members of the community have for the hard work of others, and an inability to see - or even to seek - the diamonds in the rough. AndyJones 07:50, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
• Request to closing admin if this closes as a delete would you, instead, move it (protected if you feel it necessary) to a sub-page of User:AndyJones? AndyJones 07:50, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
• Strong keep This mysterious event has inspired a lot of fiction -- one might call it a notable source of inspiration for science fiction, in particular. It would be sensible to include the fictional representations in the main article, but that article is overly long, so it is sensible to split this off as a subtopic.--orlady 16:57, 6 August 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.