Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cop slide

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. For the record, article creators can contribute to AfD's as readily as any other editor. Daniel (talk) 10:32, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Cop slide[edit]

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A playground slide that was popularized due to a viral video of a police officer sliding down it. I believe that the video is worthy of a mention in a list of viral videos or internet memes or in the Boston City Hall Plaza article, maybe even some coverage about the slide itself as well in there for the consequences that happened because of the video, but not a whole article for the slide, which is really only notable for one relatively small and unusual event and had a bunch of other small events occur afterwards as a result. It's still just a single component of a playground structure. Waddles 🗩 🖉 05:05, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Internet, United States of America, and Massachusetts. Waddles 🗩 🖉 05:05, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Police-related deletion discussions. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 05:50, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. I'd take issue with the assertion that it was a "relatively small" event due to the media attention it recieved from a respectable number of large pop culture magazines and websites as cited in the article, even though these were not the biggest broadsheet newspapers. I may be incorrect, but the fact that it is "unusual" is more of a reason to keep it up, no? I'd also argue that the article name of "cop slide" refers to the phenomenon as a whole, not just the slide, and so it would lack its whole context if relegated to other articles, with a lot of information about this phenomenon being deemed out of scope there. Keep in mind that I created the article, so I'm happy to be corrected! JamJamSvn (talk) 14:10, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@JamJamSvn: I'm quite sure that an article's creator cannot cast a vote on an AFD though they still can contribute to the discussion.

An article's topic being "unusual" doesn't really dictate whether an article should be kept or deleted. The decision is made based on the article's merits or how notable the topic is. I think that this phenomenon is notable enough that it could be incorporated within an article about viral videos or internet memes, but not enough to warrant its own article because it still a relatively unremarkable event. Viral videos are created on a daily basis and will inevitably receive coverage or have other events that happen as a result, but they only become notable enough for their own articles when the events that occur as a result could be notable by themselves too.

Take for example, Latarian Milton. He received widespread coverage because he took his grandmother's car on a joyride as a kid, which was something basically unheard of at the time. All the other crimes or events he was involved in subsequently were covered, but only because he was involved in an event before, not because the new events were notable. Assault cases in their own right aren't typically notable and don't make the people involved in them notable, so that, in the scope of Wikipedia, doesn't produce further notability for the person who was involved in a single notable event prior to it.

In the case of the "cop slide", it's a police officer who slid down a slide and was injured while doing so, and it just so happened to be recorded and went viral as a result. The following events, like the failed lawsuit against the city after a woman went down the slide and was injured and the removal of the slide, are not notable in their own right, and only received coverage because they were connected to the "cop slide" video, just like the Latarian Milton situation. Waddles 🗩 🖉 22:00, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, sorry! Please disregard my false vote. Thanks for the clarification also. JamJamSvn (talk) 00:04, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@WaddlesJP13 do you have a policy citation for that? I can't find anything like it at WP:Deletion process or WP:AFD or Admin deletion guidelines.

@JamJamSvn note that the proper vote is keep, not oppose. Oblivy (talk) 01:56, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Oblivy: I don't know about a policy to cite which is why I'm only speculating. If I knew for sure, I would have cited one, but I'm only making a positive guess. My assumption is based on the fact that I have seen discussions where the creator had their voted to keep their own article struck through. Waddles 🗩 🖉 02:11, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You said you were "quite sure [they] cannot" without any other hedging language. Even if (in some dialects) quite < very, it's still a pretty definitive statement. I can't remember seeing instances of an article creator's vote getting struck unless they were a sock or similar.

Unless there's a policy against it, anyone gets to vote at an AfD. The closing admin can give the votes their proper weight. Oblivy (talk) 02:47, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. I mean, it passes the General Notability Guideline, and it doesn't feel like the kind of article that causes problems (for example, it's neither a walled garden nor does it lack citations. It's a well-put-together article that might not have a huge number of hits in a few years, but here's the daily page views for several featured articles, including one of mine: [1]

Cop slide has dozens of times more views than any of them, so even if it becomes more obscure, it's likely to still have a long period of decent interest, after which it'll be a useful documentation of the internet of this era.

Looking at the event notability, it has diversity of sources - just the ones in the article include British and American sources, and date across 2 months (Although most are in August), which is more than a brief news cycle, and even ignoring the outlier, there's a good two weeks of coverage and updates, which is beyond a single news cycle. And, again, I'm only looking at the reference section of this article. The physicist report on the slide also provides that later depth and reanalysis that WP:EVENT says is a good sign of notability.

In short, this seems to be notable. It's not the kind of thing I'd think to write on, but then, we have passionate editors for hurricanes, U.S. roads, and obscure Victorian plays (that one's me). Internet memes aren't the worst choice. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.6% of all FPs.} 05:32, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I will admit I found the video very funny when I saw it a while back, and immediately knew what it was from the name of the article. Before reading the article I was skeptical as to whether it should be an article, yet now that I read it I am baffled by how wide the coverage on this has been. City hall dealing with and influx of people making a pilgrimage to the site of where the police officer came out of the police officer dispensing machine. Scientists being interviewed on why it happened. All thoroughly documented. The slide itself as a physical structure might not be notable, but the events surrounding it certainly are. The article is more about the latter. Acebulf ^{(talk | contribs)} 08:10, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep for reasons given by @Adam Cuerden and @Acebulf, enough notability shown through diverse and somewhat sustained press coverage and reports of real-world notoriety.

Acebulf's comments notwithstanding I wonder if the proper article subject isn't the slide itself. Something perhaps to consider if the article gets kept. Oblivy (talk) 03:33, 9 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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.