Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cultural references to pigs

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. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 01:33, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cultural references to pigs

Unsourced crufty article that is another example of the mass trivia cruft all these pop culture/cultural references that has invaded Wikipedia. The excuse of "it was made to help the article be less bloated" has been said many times on Wikipedia, when it comes to this. But a section (in this case, and most/all culture references) should be just trimmed: instead of moved just because it gets too big. Let's use Category:In popular culture as the root of this problem. 12 subcats, along with 81 pages in the regular part of the category. I think people assuming "because this has a pop culture page, this one should be fine too" needs to be put to rest. RobJ1981 03:39, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - no sources provided (WP:RS), probably original research (WP:OR). Some of the statements don't even make any sense. Although this can be fixed, the current article clearly doesn't belong.--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 03:46, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merge any entries where it can be verified through the use of reliable sources that the cultural reference is so frakking important to the plot/storyline/event/whatever that the work/movie/game/whatever could not exist in its entirety without the lifeform in question back into the main article. Merge any entries where multiple reliable fact-checked sources indicate that the appearance is undeniably important to promoting the subject in question into the main article. Any appearance foucsing on a related species should be merged to an article relating to that species instead (warthogs to Warthog, if following the aforementioned limitations and sourcing. Delete anything at this namespace; I believe the rest of the references can get by without a reciprocal wikilink. -- saberwyn 04:05, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep This long list convinces me that pigs are just too important as cultural symbols. You can't merge all the citable items into any article without them overwhelming that article. This list is long and deserves to be long because thare are, in fact, a lot of significant cultural references to the porkers and the myths we've attached to them. I think the nominator has stretched the meaning of "cruft" so that it's meaning isn't "something that only fans of the subject would be interested in" to "something I think is too trivial for an encyclopedia". But pigs, like pterodactyls and orangutans, we will always have, and all it takes is to be interested in culture in general to be interested in this subject. I don't like the lack of references, but again, I think we need to wait for someone to stick the footnotes in, because Wikipedia would be worse off for not covering this subject. And it's too obvious that these items can be referenced for us to use that alone as the reason for deleting. Noroton 04:36, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Um, so far as I know we won't actually always have pterodactyls and havent actually had them for millions of years... Otto4711 12:12, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OTTO4711, you are wrong. You have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. Too many skeptics do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, OTTO4711, whether they be men's or children's, or even pop culture consumers', are little (especially pop culture consumers, come to think of it). In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, OTTO4711, there are pterodactyls. They exist as certainly as love and generosity and carnivorous terror exists, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy, and some damn fine B movies. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no pterodactyls. It would be as dreary as if there were no OTTO4711s. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance or One Million Years BC to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which The Land That Time Forgot fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in pterodactyls! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your Jimbo Wales to hire men to watch in all the World Wide Web sites to catch news reports on pterodactyl sitings, but even if they did not see pterodactyls come squawking out of some excavation site, as in London in 1856, what would that prove? Nobody sees pterodactyls, except fossilized in museums or on "The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers", but that is no sign that there are no pterodactyls. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see unless they rent the right DVDs. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. (On second thought, don't answer that last question.) Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the Wikipedians that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, Netflix, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal terror and horror beyond. Is it all real? Ah, OTTO4711, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. We just have to cite references for it.

No pterodactyls! Thank God! They live, and they live forever. A thousand years from now, OTTO4711, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, they will continue to strike terror in the heart of pop culture consumers. Noroton 15:24, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I take back what I said about the nominator stretching the meaning of "cruft", apparently the nom's usage is used that way by others, as shown at Wikipedia:Fancruft, and I apologize. I will say that I think we should limit the meaning to the more restrictive sense I mention, because one editor's "fancruft" could then be another's "sciencecruft".Noroton 04:49, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merge. This article isn't as bad as most IPC articles, but should still be merged back into the main article. "Pigs and people" could easily be condensed into a well-written prose paragraph or two, "Pig-related idioms" should be transwikied to Wiktionary, and "Music and art" can be mostly trashed as indiscriminate. — Krimpet (talk/review) 05:33, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - indiscriminate collection seeking to capture not only every time a pig is mentioned in "popular culture" but every time something with a name like "piggy" or "pig" exists or is mentioned. Oppose merging any of this to the main pig article or anywhere else. Otto4711 12:12, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep -- obviously this needs work and lots of pruning but I think I can make something worthwhile out of this mess. (Per Krimpet, kind of). Mango juice^talk 12:39, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This one probably needs to stay. It needs to be better organized and broader in scope; my brief look didn't notice some cultural references that belong, like Pigs in the Chinese zodiac. But pigs are a domestic animal, and there are just too many fictional and anthropomorphic pigs out there to merge into the article in chief about swine. - Smerdis of Tlön 14:30, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have gone in and attempted to make parts of the text more discursive and less list-y. I created a section about "pigs in mythology and religion", and "pigs in folklore". Further sections might include "anthropomorphic pigs," "pigs as symbols," "pigs as metaphor", and so forth. - Smerdis of Tlön 16:28, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. It was offloaded from the main text by me "to help the Pig to be less bloated" and it obviously works well - the Pig article remained clean and on-topic since then. Delete it (or even worse, merge it back) and the Pig will deteriorate in no time. The solution, for now, is to take care and improve the ".. in popular culture" article (example of sucessful maintenance is e.g. Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc). Pavel Vozenilek 14:51, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Conditional Keep contingent on cleanup. This is in dire need of sourcing. As it stands it seeems to suffer from a lot of WP:OR but if references can be added to attribute some of these statements that would go a long way to helping this article. If properly sourced this article becomes what a X in pop culture article should be - more than just a laundry list of appearances, it attempts to treat the topic of pigs in cultural references, why they are used, inherent symbolism, etc. However if no sources can be found, it simply becomes OR. Arkyan 15:40, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Referenced, notable. CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 16:26, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per everyone else. Acalamari 16:45, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Keep The one thing that concerns me is the vague term "Cultural references". I might even say that at least a few of the sections in this article could be made into articles of their own. The umbrella term "cultural references" strikes me as almost meaningless. (Disclosure: No porcine related industry or business pays me a promotional fee. I am a fully autonomous pig in these matters.) Pig^man_dialogue 21:37, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep or Delete but do not Merge cultural cruft into serious biology articles. -- Michael Johnson 00:52, 21 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
weak delete Like all articles, these have to be judged individually; I do not see how the same comments can be used to justify the same !vote for three separate articles, either for or against. This one is really vague--the use is not really specialized, and the items included uncritical. DGG 23:45, 21 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
KEEP -- interesting article. --WassermannNYC 06:28, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Worth keeping though it needs work. Captain panda In vino veritas 15:52, 25 March 2007 (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.