Talk:Billboards of Lahore

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Article listed on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion June 12 to June 30 2004, consensus was not reached. Discussion:

• Wikipedia is not paper, but this is an unprecedently tiny level of granularity. Also, billboards generally are, by definition, transitory, with the advertisement changing as often as monthly. Do we really want to try to maintain such a narrow-focus article (or if we set this precedent, potentially thousands of "Billboards of <cityname>" articles)? As for the homes article, I think an article about [[Architecture of Lahore]] would probably be OK, but this is apparently just a few pictures of random houses in Lahore, with no claims of notability, nor information about the homes or their architecture. I appreciate that the contributor has given Wikipedia many new images, which is great (other articles in the series include Churches of Lahore, and Mosques of Lahore, which I have no problem with (as long as the individual church names generally don't get linked, since VFD has routinely rejected local church/mosque/synagogue articles) and The Lahore Zoo, Shalamar Garden, Lawrence Gardens, Bibi Pak Daman, Lahore Railway Station, Badshahi Masjid, Iqbal Park (there may well be others)), but I think we can find more appropriate articles for the house and billboard images. For example, the lone billboard picture could add a more international flavor to Billboard (advertising). House could also use more variety. Architecture currently only has public or commercial building pictures--adding a house (residential) picture seems useful. The house pictures could probably also be used in articles about specific styles of architecture, or other articles about specific elements of architecture. Niteowlneils 20:39, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
• Delete the billboards article, and move the homes article to Architecture of Lahore IFF the photos are of significant places. RickK 23:00, Jun 12, 2004 (UTC)
  • Agree with RickK. I see little chance for this article to become anything more than a collection of photos, and that's explicitly listed on Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:40, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
• Keep the article on the billboards; I would love to see a good article on that. Homes of Lahore might be better replaced by a more general Architecture of Lahore. Everyking 00:44, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
• 

  

  Blonde Blue Eyed Girl Selling Cold Creme to Lahore Girls

Hi, this is Pale blue dot.

Regarding the justification for the Billboards of Lahore page, (which I presume I'm supposed to give), I submit to you one picture of a billboard and one question. Do you know what's considered beautiful in Lahore? More precisely, what's considered a beautiful girl in Lahore? Well, as seen in the billboard shown, at least one cold creme maker seems to think that a blonde, blue eyed, white girl, makes a good example of a beautiful girl. Only problem is, there is not a single blonde, blue eyed, white girl to be found anywhere in Pakistan, let alone in Lahore. Please don't misunderstand me - I love blondes - and have dated two of them. Do Lahoris think that blonde is beautiful when none of them is blonde or will ever be blonde?

Someone said, are we now supposed to have an article on Billboards of city X for every city in the world - well, personally I would just love, love, to see billboards in let's say, New_York_City, Los Angeles, London, Berlin, Karachi, Paris and some other places. Personally, I'm just dieing to see billboards in these places - they are like a time capsule. Don't you wonder what were the billboards in Lahore or London, in say, 1956? How about 1975? Or 1983? I feel billboards reveal a stunning amount about the culture of a place at a particular point in time. I could be wrong.

If you give me some time, the lone billboard picture will be joined by other friends. I have some more pictures already, but I don't like their quality and that's why I didn't upload them.

Regarding the justification for the Homes of Lahore page - well, it may not make too much sense today to show pictures of contemporary houses in Lahore. However, when you view the timeline of housing architecture in Lahore, the progress in home architecture begins to appear quite interesting. I think, one should start an article on Architecure of Lahore as well, but housing architecture is so unique in Lahore, which is something not visible from the handful of pictures up right now, that imho, it really deserves a page of its own.

I would have loved to write a few words of all homes that I show; unfortunately, architecturally speaking, I'm illiterate. The only way I could comment on the architecture of the homes is if I had access to an architect in Lahore. Well guess what, I know someone who knows someone, who is an architect. Once the pictures are up, I can then request that particular architect to write captions for the home pictures, from a Lahore architect's point of view. Do you like that idea? Of course, this will take time, and if you decide to leave the Homes of Lahore page, for a while, that page will only contain pictures without commentary, until my architect, or some anonymous architect that wanders upon the Homes of Lahore page, (like I wandered upon wikipedia while searching for something), gets around to adding comments. We'll have to be patient until then.

If my arguments have failed to convince you, then please, feel free to delete these pages, since I have many other pages to work on and others I'm thinking of starting. For example, I want to upload some pictures of the city of Sialkot in Pakistan. Sialkot has become the first city in Pakistan, where the local community has built an international airport for itself, out of purely its own money. This is a remarkable achievement. Sialkot also exports more than US$650.00 million worth of leather goods to the western world each year. Another remarkable accomplishment, considering the relatively small size of this city.

Lastly, I really like user Niteowlneils' ideas about using the pictures in the Architecture, Billboard_(advertising) and House pages and may show some of these pictures there once I get the time to read those pages. Thanks for reading!

Cool. Are all of you people who are voting to keep this volunteering to go to Lahore and take new pictures, and update this article every time the billboards change? RickK 22:56, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)

KEEP. That is a stupid, assinine comment, and you know it. You've just chosen to pick on this article at any cost. Are all of the people who support the existance articles such as "Wright County, Iowa" now expected to go to Wright County, Iowa and monitor changes? Are Montreal residents the only ones allowed to want to keep that article? It's obvious to everyone that the purpose of the bilboards article is not to keep track of every bilboard in Lahore, but to highlight the more interesting ones, which, as a whole, are a strong indication of a multitude of socioeconomic factors in the area.

What possible reason would I have to "pick on this article at any cost"? And please review Wikipedia's policy on personal attacks. And sign your comments or they are ignored. RickK 22:49, Jun 15, 2004 (UTC)

Way to ignore. What I mean by "pick on this article at any cost" is simply that you are arguing a point which has lost all credibility. However, instead of giving up, you keep fighting. To the death, as they say. Tenaciousness is commendable, not a personal attack! Do realize that the following is a personal attack: (I await the full wrath of Wikipedia to rain down upon me torrentially, as the fire of God. I can only pray that punishment will be swift and relatively painless...)

Delete. The significant changes of demographics and sites of municipalities occur on the order of years, and so can be updated reasonable well. This is especially true of those listed in an encyclopedia; ephemeral things like advertisements on billboards are simply not listed in an article about a town. This is true for your particular example. The population, number of housing units, racial composition, and income is not going to change significantly in the next few years, or maybe even decades, and when the next census comes out, a bot can be used to replace the information, the same way it looks like it was added here. Billboards change on the order of weeks and months, and the article is not a description of the socioeconomic factors in the area, it is a bunch of pictures none of which are not going to be there within a few months. There is not even an explanation of what those billboards indicate about the socioeconomics of the area. Stating that it will not be feasible to keep the page up to date is not the same as saying that only residents of the area may maintain the article. To quote your words, it's obvious to everyone. - Centrx 03:58, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Why does it need to be kept up to date? It would be nice if it was, but even if not it says a lot about the local culture at the time the pictures were taken. But of course it should make the context of when the pictures were taken clear. Everyking 05:04, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

• I think these are reasonable material, although we might want to think about (1) whether the images could be cropped better and (2) whether the article shoudl be defined as narrowly as "billboards of Lahore". How about "outdoor advertising in India" with these as a section? That is an article with a lot more potential to grow into a normal encyclopedia article. - Anonymous

• Hi People,

This is Pale blue dot again.

Just to clarify one point, the city of Lahore is in the country of Pakistan. India is a separate neighboring country to which the lands comprising Pakistan once used to belong, over 50 years ago. Since then, they have become two completely separate countries, in 1947.

Anyway, I must say that the passionate way in which some of you are voting to keep my poor Billboards of Lahore page has touched me. And I like the new suggestion that the Billboards page, perhaps should be part of a broader article in which each billboard is followed by a little commentary as to its socioeconomic significance.

I must admit, since these factors are known to me, at least to some extent, enough to provide me with some context, I didn't realize that to someone who has never spent time in Lahore, they might be completely unknown. Others may need to be told some background to make it easy for them to grasp the context.

One point that the billboards page can show are the two kinds of Pakistanis and Lahoris in Pakistan.

• • Type A: The educated, westernized, urban elite (where educated merely means, fluent in English and thereby able to read the English billboards and impress the local 'riff raff', which is how many Pakistanis view their less fortunate country men and women). The first billboard of a happy couple is a prime example of the urban elite. The B-class Pakistani doesn't look like that and doesn't have that kind of outlook on life. (I'm sorry I didn't invent these terms - they are a fact of life in Pakistan). These are also the types of people who built Pakistan's bomb.
  • Type B: The uneducated, or not-so-well-educated village dweller, or freshly arrived from the village person, to whom the billboards in all likelihood, appear like nothing more than a bunch of giant pictures (which is probably entertaining in its own way). This kind of person would be more attracted to the Lollywood movies and their billboards since these movies are almost always lowbrow and lack almost all inclinations of an intellectual exercise. The reality is, that even today, Pakistan comprises mostly of these kinds of people. But thankfully, this is changing rapidly and the the village 'jutts' are turning into yuppies at an ever increasing rate. A lot of NGO's are actively pursuing the goal of educating Pakistanis.

So, in the next few days, provided my satellite dish doesn't get blown away again, like it recently did in a windstorm in Lahore, and provided that I still have a Billboards of Lahore page to write on, I shall endeavour to provide some context and history of the area with each billboard, to highlight the signifance of the billboard. Pale blue dot 05:31, Jun 15, 2004 (UTC)

• Comment. Pale blue dot, this is interesting stuff. I honestly didn't understand before how the billboard could be read as a comment on Lahore's culture. The problem for me is: how can you make this article clearly fall in the category of "encyclopedia article" rather than "personal essay?" I wonder whether it would be better as an article entitled "Billboards and Culture" with a section on Lahore and the hope that others would add to it? Please keep in mind that you are perfectly free to develop this material in your own user area, e.g. User:Pale blue dot/Billboards of Lahore where it will not be deleted and you can take your time on content, formatting, etc. Can you reference novels, magazine articles, etc. which comment on the ironies and make about the same points you wish to make? For some reason I'm remind of a line in Shaw's Major Barbara, where, if I recall correctly someone is castigating an alcoholic for his drunkeness and he says something to the effect that it would be easier for him if he weren't constantly being confronted with brewery ads spelled out in "letters of fire..." Dpbsmith 16:35, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
• Nobody asked my opinion, but frankly, I think that there are lots of places on the internet which offer free webspace (Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod?) and that this sort of thing is better off there. This isn't very encyclopedic in its content or its intent, despite being interesting. I think if our page creator made a page that was "Billboards from around the world", and on it requested that people feel free to send him/her their photos of local billboards, and maybe linked to it from an article on billboards that would be more appropriate. So... it's interesting, but doesn't belong in an Encyclopedia. This isn't supposed to be just an info dump. My advice to the poster: get some free webspace, put it up there, ask for pictures on the page, maybe link to it from another Wikipedia page (billboard, advertising, Lahore, etc.). So, I vote to delete but qualify it a bit. Interesting stuff, though. --Fastfission 19:31, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
• Keep Billboards of Lahore: interesting and useful. For example, it is significant that "Beauty Girl" is pale skinned; it shows she doesn't have to labor outdoors. I agree that a comprehensive catalog of billboards wouldn't be appropriate, but that's not what Billboards of Lahore is -- it's just "some billboards". -- No vote on Homes of Lahore; it's really sketchy as it stands, but I'm not willing to delete it at present. The author should be encouraged to work on it. Wile E. Heresiarch 06:31, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
• I would like to delete this personally, a group of pictures doesn't really mean much to me (something I'd expect in a travel brochure more then an encyclopedia), but I won't until a relatively stable agreement about this has been reached. May I suggest a simple, tallied vote on the matter? Oberiko 23:06, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
  • I count 6 delete, 3 keep, 2 anonymous votes, and 1 comment at present. Wile E. Heresiarch 21:25, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
• Delete the billboards article. I agree with the above comments—individual billboards are too ephemeral to be worth documenting in and of themselves, and as for the billboards as a whole, the social commentary reads more like a personal essay than an encyclopedia entry. What NPOV description there is in the article would be better covered under billboards, or advertising, or even "western advertising in the eastern world." Lahore is hardly unique in having caucasian beauty ideals used to foist products on its non-caucasian people. The homes article should be merged with the main Architecture of Lahore, to possibly be split off later when there is more substance than just a collection of pictures. Postdlf 17:01, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

End discussion

[edit] Cleanup

Well, it might have survived vfd, but it's formatted in such a way that it's very difficult to follow. There must be a better way of writing this than in tiny columns. Rewriting it to wiki standard might also address some of the problems in the vfd arguments above. Grutness|^hello? 00:29, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)