Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Politics and Pop Culture In the United States

Politics and Pop Culture In the United States

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Apart from a couple of dictionary definitions and a list of links, the only content is two unsourced sentences with more the character of the beginnings of an essay or personal reflection than an objective article. (PROD contested by author without any reason given.) JamesBWatson (talk) 18:53, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: Random list of links. EEng (talk) 22:20, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: Random list of links and unimportance. Ray-Rays 23:42, 13 October 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Raymond88824 (talk • contribs)
Keep (for now): If you look at the history on this article it has been put up for AfD less than 24 hours into its existence. I will agree based on its current status, the article is by no means ideal, and if had sat like this for a few months AfD might be the right option - but just because the article is currently a list of links, does not mean we need to bite the newbie while the article is still being worked on. Notwithstanding, a quick google search shows that the University of Tennessee, the University of North Florida and Old Dominion University were all able to have full term classes on the subject, so I would presume there are more sources that can used. For example, MIT had a 2 hour lecture (and has linked additional materials) on the subject, SUNY has published 222 page book on the subject as well - so there are sources out there that can make the article worthwhile.

Disclosure: I am the Campus Ambassador for the students who have worked on this article, for their class and would like to give the students a shot at making the article worthwhile. Epistemophiliac (talk) 01:20, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Popular culture-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:11, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's great that you're trying to bring in new young editors, and I don't want them to be discouraged. The problem is that this is an enormously broad topic, and while it's usually OK for an article to start as a stub and grow with time, in this case it really has to start with a sensible overview of the topic at the high level, and then gradually add lower-level detail. If you start at the low level with examples and nothing tying them together, it looks like an awful mess with no cohesion. The problem is compounded by the liklihood that lots of people will be quick to point out perceived balance problems -- "liberal point of view", "conservative point of view", etc., which is all the more reason that article has to have a careful overview from the very start.

Let me suggest that your team develop the article offline and then submit it. You might be able to borrow some structure from the SUNY book you mentioned for your overview -- with attribution of course if you use it in detail. Unfortunately, in the meantime the article probably has be deleted in its current form. If the topic were narrower I might try to write a new stub myself to get you started, but I don't know how I'd even start in this case.

EEng (talk) 03:18, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I very much disagree with you here, if the article was "Politics and Pop Culture" by all means it would be very broad, but in this case it was already broken down to the US specifically - and if broken down even more would start to get silly. At the same time, if the article was purely developed offline so to speak, and then dumped on to the main-space, we would then find people complaining the article was written without any consensus by the community (due to the potential for having a conservative/liberal slant).

Overall, what I am trying to get at though, is yes it's not an easy topic to break down, nor is it the easiest of topics to stay neutral on - BUT there is a group of three students committed to improving this article (in fact its an assignment where they will need to find 1500 words of valuable information to add to it by Oct 24th) - so if by the end of the month they are unable to make it happen, I will support the deletion. BUT till then give them ~2 weeks to see if they can make something out of it, before hastily deleting it. Epistemophiliac (talk) 21:00, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Limiting to US only takes this from a completely impossible project to only which is merely overwhelming. Make a start offline, take whatever that produces and userfy it (ask if you don't know what that means) and get other editors to help you develop it there, and THEN when there's a general feeling it's ready take it to mainspace. You'd be lucky to get to that point in several months even with many helping, but as long as it stays in userspace it's safe against deletion (and generally people won't be motivated to gripe about perceived biast etc), though less visible and so people aren't going to help unless you recruit them. I agree with P.B.'s comments below. EEng (talk) 22:15, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. This article, like many of those created by these campus ambassador programmes, is clearly an essay topic rather than a suitable topic for an encyclopedia article. There's no point in giving students "a shot at making the article worthwhile" when it will be deleted anyway, not because of any failure of the students but because it is an unsuitable topic. Better that this should be deleted now and that they should find proper encyclopedic topics to write about rather than spend weeks or months on this and only then have their work deleted. I'm seriously concerned that we seem to have many of these so-called "campus ambassadors" who don't understand what topics are suitable for an encyclopedia. This whole programme needs a serious rethink. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:09, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If this is losing battle so be it, but I still believe that we need still need to Assume Good Faith, or if need be Ignore The Rules and give new editors a chance to create something, before presuming guilt.

And one last thing, please do not resort to backhanded personal swipes - it makes you look petty and in this case, I find your comment to be both rude and personally offensive. Epistemophiliac (talk) 04:19, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There was nothing personal or backhanded in what PB said. He's right. You have an official role [1] in the Campus Ambassador's program, yet seem to have a poor understanding of what constitutes an acceptable article. EEng (talk) 04:36, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Surely it is less discouraging to new editors if a few days' work gets deleted than if a few months' work gets deleted, which is the choice here? To criticise your programme is not a failure to assume good faith, rude or personally offensive. Do you have any idea how much volunteer time has been taken up cleaning up after some of the recent programmes of the India Education Project, largely caused by the failure of campus ambassadors to give good advice on topic selection? Let's learn from those mistakes rather than repeat them in other parts of the world, and get students improving our existing articles. Phil Bridger (talk) 08:50, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough, I may have been a little rash and for that I apologise, but the underlining tone sounds like a personal attack - and I should have followed my own advice, and presumed good faith on your part. Epistemophiliac (talk) 21:57, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Disclosure: I'm one of the online ambassadors for the course in question. The article is no doubt in a very poor state right now, and I agree that the student should not have placed such a weak draft into mainspace yet, but the topic itself seems clearly notable to me, and that's what we are debating here. AFD is not cleanup; the question is whether the topic is a valid one for an article. A short search finds this: "For more than a decade, scholars from various academic professions have been turning in increasing numbers to the historical study of the connections between politics and popular culture." That's from Popular Culture and Political Change in Modern America, by Ronald Edsforth and Larry Bennett, published in 1991. I'll see if I can find a sensible sentence or two to place at the top of the current article to make it clearer what the topic of the article is, but the notability of the topic should not be in question. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:02, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've added a couple of sourced sentences to the first paragraph to outline the topic. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:22, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep (maybe userfy) This is yet another student coursework article, and like the rest of them, it's problematic. However we shouldn't be overly harsh to students unfamiliar with WP who've been asked to dive in from scratch and write an article on a named topic, a topic that many WP editors would shoot on sight for being inherently subjective. I would ask the community to be lenient here: not to relax our standards for the finished product, but at least to give the editor time and assistance to understand how things work here, in the hope that we can achieve a result meeting both the course goals and WP standards.

Otherwise, let someone whose first new article was better than this get to delete it! I'm not going to put myself forward. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:42, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I"m a bit torn on the deletion of the article itself, as, given the title of the first reference, it seems like there may possibly be a notable topic buried underneath the essay that is currently there, and thus it may be possible to stub this and restart. But I strongly urge the closing admin to completely disregard all of the arguments relating to who created this article. The course programs already explicitly state in their rules that the students' articles are subject to all of our policies. In fact, given that these articles are being written with guidance from in-class campus advisors, and the fact that the students have access to dedicated online mentors, it seems to me that we should expect these articles to be better than usual new articles. Unless the program can get some sort of community wide consensus that articles made by Campus Outreach participants don't have to follow the same rules that every other new editor has to follow, we cannot allow this issue to effect editing decisions, including deletion discussions. Qwyrxian (talk) 15:54, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. Your point is correct, and ideally we would have followed it. However the situation we're now in is that lots of student effort (and volunteer effort to clean up!) has already gone in a direction that is less than ideal. The question of what we should have done is moot, the only question left is what we do next. I don't wish to punish students for a failure by their course organisers any more than I absolutely have to, so as to restore a clean encyclopedia. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:59, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Userfy. This topic appears to be legitimate, but the actual content of the article is currently very superficial. If the students working on this article are capable of getting this article up to Wikipedia standards, they can do so while the article is in userspace and then bring it back to the mainspace once they have made their improvements. I don't think userfication would be harsh or a punishment; I think it's a reasonable way to resolve the article's problems. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 21:56, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Userfy. Give the students a chance to learn through practice using the user space first after reading the core content policies three or four times. Yet even after doing that, it still takes time to write an article that fits current Wikipedia standards. It's still about continuous improvement, I guess. They have to find a new encyclopedic topic though. Through practice and time, these students will be great at this considering their potential. Pmresource (talk) 06:59, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]