Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Unsourced popular culture articles

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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 Nomination closed'. A sufficient number of commenters below feel that an en masse nomination in this case prevents each article from being properly evaluated. This closure is without prejudice to individual AfD listings of the articles. Xoloz 16:11, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unsourced popular culture articles

NOTE: This is an omnibus deletion vote. If the consensus is to delete, then ALL of the following articles:

will be removed. All these articles are basically detached trivia sections. They contain few or no references, and therefore violate WP:V and WP:RS. Furthermore, most of these articles are shot through with original research, inferring the presence of something that might be a reference to the subject. None of these subjects are so culturally ubiquitous that they need a separate "popular culture" page; a few especially prominent examples in the subject's main article should suffice. (There's already a separate article for the iconic Che Guevara photo, for instance; the rest of the stuff in his popular culture article is rubbish.) As Wikipedia has begun to take sourcing policy more seriously, the trend has been to delete articles such as those nominated here. Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 22:38, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Delete All for the extensive reasons given in the nomination. Having taken the time to look them through individually, they are completely arbitrary lists that make no attempt at all to place a collection of pop-culture references in any kind of framework, or distinguish between the significant and the trivial. Andrew Levine 23:27, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete all per thorough nom. Bravo! Sr13 (T|C) 00:01, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Do Not Delete Other than missing sources, I don't see anything wrong with the majority of these articles. They may need clean-up here and there, but deleting them all is just silly. --Darth Borehd 00:47, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Close and if desired relist separately. Sorry, but there's a number of reasons not to make mass nominations, and I think this is one of them, namely that each article may have its own merits. And I do not agree with the nomination's reasoning in many salient points. First, lack of references is not always a reason to delete. In some of these cases, it may not be necessary to have a reference other than the work itself. Take Mark Twain. Only one of the entries would I say needs a source outside the material itself, and that's the Jimmy Buffett entry. It could easily be removed if it can't be sourced/verified. Second, several of the subjects are quite culturally ubiquitous, especially the ninja, secret societies, and mercenaries pages. Individual people? I might see those better as merging, but those concepts are more than wide enough to support articles. Might merge the Illuminati one to secret societies though. Still, I don't think this mass nomination is the way to go, especially with your declaration that they must all go. That is not the way bundled nominations work on AfD. FrozenPurpleCube 00:59, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Close AfD and Keep. I agree some of these should be deleted, but some should be kept. The nominator seems to be trying the lazy mans approach. It's not that simple, nor should it be made that simple. There is no Wikipedia rule against IPC articles and many of these are perfectly valid and useful articles. -- Stbalbach 01:11, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep - consider in particular Mercenaries in poplar culture, Ninjas in popular culture, and secret societies in popular culture. In each instance, the portrayal of these subject in modern media is SIGNIFICANTLY different from the historical or factual subjects themselves, and therefore articles on the portrayl of these subjects in modern media will contain information the articles on the subjects themselves could not possibly or justifiably contain. Such articles discuss significant aspects of modern culture and should therefore remain. Remember, Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. Zelmerszoetrop 02:06, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep as such articles can in fact become featured per Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc. Such articles are spun off from main articles to avoid excessive cruft in large articles, but are still valid. There is nothing wrong with Trivia sections as long as they are effective - Arrested Development (TV series) became a featured article with a Trivia section. This is just "I don't like it" hack-and-slash. ~ Switch (✉✍☺) 01:35, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep as per SwitChar's reasons above. Deepdesertfreman 20:29, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep You can't lump articles discussing the important cultural depictions of Che Guevara together with List of references to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in popular culture. -- Zleitzen(talk) 01:41, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Close Afd and re-nominate separately. Although most of these articles, at first glance, seem to be worthy candidates for deletion, the commmon nomination is problematic. Some parts of some articles might have some merit, and this could lead to keep-votes for the entire collection. Please re-nominate the articles separately though, and I will try and join the debates so that the articles that deserve so are deleted. (From the nature of your nomination, perhaps you would be interested in Wikipedia:WikiProject Trivia Cleanup?)Dr bab 01:54, 7 April 2007 (UTC).
  • Close AFD and nominate separately per Dr bab. Many of these such as Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, Che Guevara or Nikola Tesla could easily have as many references added as desired. Edison 04:30, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep Did you trie to ask for references first before asking for an ombibus vote? I think this makes a mockery of the entire procedure. User:Dimadick
  • Keep The few I clicked at random look rather nice, some may need cleanup, but deleting all of them is definite no-no.  Grue  08:24, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete all - indiscriminate collections of information seeking to capture every reference to their subject or any reference that in the mind of some random editor reminds them of the subject. The arguments in favor of keeping these sorts of articles generally boil down to variations on WP:ILIKEIT and earnest promises to clean up the articles, which rarely if ever happens. Otto4711 14:01, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Nah, that's WP:JUSTAPOLICY - there is no way to generalize that every single entry, in every single article, of this AfD violates policy. -- Stbalbach 15:39, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep All -- If "taking the sourcing policy more seriously" means deleting inadequately sourced articles, then a huge chunk of Wikipedia content has to go besides ones WP:YOUDON'TLIKE because they're to do with popular culture. Like any article or stub that that is not up to snuff, the solution is to edit it, tag it if necessary, remove material in it that is inappropriate or unverifiable, etc., on the principle that many Wikipedia articles are drafts needing work, not deletion. Perhaps some of these should be deleted, but there's no way of discussing the merits or notability of these subjects when they're all lumped together, only whether some imagined quality standard is met in how the subject is presented. bobanny 15:43, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong keep - I think the first step has been made to draw attention to these articles, now we can find ways to improve them and make them uniformly worthwhile. I think they are useful in that they show the significant influence that people like Edgar Allan Poe and Jack Kerouac have had on popular culture - and that's hardly trivia. Besides, deletion en mass is dangerous. Midnightdreary 17:40, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Speedy-close this nomination and deal with them separately. The underlying issues are not identical in each of these cases. They need separate investigation and discussion. Rossami (talk) 20:29, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep deletion based on lack of sources should be based on the inability to find reliable sources after diligent effort or the impossiblity of finding such sources. Here, with effort nearly every claim in these articles probably could be sourced if someone took the time and expended the effort to do so. Carlossuarez46 23:45, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
    • I've tried to prod the admin community to take the deletion/attribution policy more seriously but the apparent consensus that I've seen (in the responses to my call to action) has been more laissez faire, so why tilt at that windmill any further. Carlossuarez46 23:47, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep and source them. Everyking 10:42, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep. Mukadderat 18:04, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete some and Keep some. Basically speedy-close and re-list separately. --FateClub 15:58, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom. Thewinchester (talk) 05:49, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Close mass AfD, Keep and renominate individual articles: There is no firm Wikipedia guideline that "in popular culture" category has been depreciated. Each article needs to have its own AfD and be argued on its own merits - not all of them are in violation of WP:V. This nomination is smacks pretty much of WP:IDONTLIKEIT - whats the hurry to delete them in a mass AfD? WP:NOTPAPER - articles with sourcing problems can be addressed and fixed, only the articles that do not meet WP:NOTE should be deleted. In short, close, keep and renom only those that fail WP:NOTE --Eqdoktor 09:36, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep - many of these are relevant, accurate, notable and sourced. Indeed, many of the entries in these articles consist of references to the works in which the people and phenomena concerned are depicted. Any single articles that are actually ropey should, naturally be relisted. Otherwise, this looks like a job for cleanup rather than deletion. AlexTiefling 14:12, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep All -- I would much rather have this information on a subpage then have anonymous IPs dumping this stuff onto the main article. Of course, some of these pages need cleanup, but much of it is quite notable. Additionally, I don't understand why an editor would nominate these few when I suspect hundreds, even thousands more of these type of pages are out there (I've seen several articles with these, and take at look at a Google search for these pages: [1]). If we are going to delete some of these, it should be on a case by case basis, not in some kind of random nuke. Danski14(talk) 23:05, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Storng keep i found the references on the jack kerouac page very useful when i wrote my dissertation on him.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 147.143.248.109 (talk • contribs).
  • Keep although tag all as unsourced. Quadzilla99 17:03, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Close and renom separately. If completely separating the debate is undesirable, let me note that there are several different types of articles in the list above. (1) (General thing) in popular culture articles: Ninja, Illuminati, Mercenaries, Highwaymen, Secret societies. There are probably articles that could be written about these things. (2) Cultural depictions of (specific person): Sammy Davis, Jr., Isaac Newton, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Rasputin, The Rosenbergs, Dylan Thomas, Mushashi. Although these articles are in some cases not sticking to the topic, their title implies a restricted topic, namely, places where that specific character is depicted in fiction. Unlike a list of depictions of, say, God, these lists can have well-defined boundaries. (3) Articles about "references": Jacqueline Onassis, Oscar Wilde. (4) (Creative person) in popular culture: Some of these have salvageable material. For instance, the article on Poe in popular culture restricts itself to Poe appearing as a character, so with renaming it may be okay, and the article on Philip K. Dick is somewhat unfortunately named but really seems to be about the influence of an important writer, not just unincorporated trivia. I hope this explains why these are hard to discuss as a group. (I do agree, most of them need deleting, though). Mangojuicetalk 17:22, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
  • delete all per nom and seem like trivia. Gman124 01:42, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep per Stbalbach and Danski14. --Aude (talk) 03:58, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong keep are going to be sourced soon. --Bryan Seecrets 06:05, 12 April 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.