Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of cult television shows

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 delete‎. ✗plicit 14:07, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

List of cult television shows

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Vaguely defined, subjective classification. I bet every long enough soap opera has millions of viewers and large fanbase. - Altenmann >talk 13:49, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, per WP:NOTDB. Even the wikipedia "article" (sub-section of a larger article) has a very vague definition of what cult media is. If there was some subjective criteria to determine whether media was cult or not, then this list might be of value. As it stands, it's just a random list of shows that someone once said has cult following, a term that is used indiscriminately in the media.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 13:57, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Television and Lists. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 14:51, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete "Cult" is a very broad and somewhat vague term. All it means is that there are some people who really like it! That it retained popularity among some people after its release, or that it may not have a particularly broad fan base. But this is not an intrinsic or distinguishing characteristic. When the inclusion criteria here is that one person used a certain term once to describe a show, that isn't necessarily a relevant commonality or a useful description. This is simply too broad of a concept to justify us maintaining a large context-free list. Cult_following#Television could be expanded with more examples in context, but when most of these articles don't even mention what makes them cult shows, this is simply indiscriminate and not useful to readers. I see so many long-running and popular shows here, this term is so widely used it's lost some of its meaning. Reywas92^Talk 21:55, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep If reliable sources call everything on the list a cult television show, then that's what we go by, not personal opinions. Also it gets coverage. Click the reliable source search at the top of this AFD, and you immediately see https://variety.com/2023/tv/columns/favorite-cult-tv-shows-1235833379/ https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/10-cult-tv-shows-netflix-should-revive-11275690 https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-lists/last-laugh-tracks-the-40-best-cult-tv-comedies-ever-21334/ and more. Dream Focus 01:42, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Those sources are reliable in their coverage of other things, but the linked articles merely call something "cult" without even bothering to define the term. And that's why we're having this discussion, because an encyclopedic article needs to be built on a verifiable definition. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (TALK|CONTRIBS) 13:17, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete unless a much clearer inclusion criteria can be agfeed, otherwise it is WP:INDISCRIMINATE. The breadth of the term and wide contexts in which it may be used by sources make the list uninformative and unhelpful: 24 and Dragon Ball Z have no conceptual relation to one another simply because a reliable source or two described their respective fan communities as having a 'cult following'. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 12:20, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: Per WP:LSC, selection criteria should be unambiguous, objective, and supported by reliable sources. This doesn't meet the first two points. As one of the sources says, "exactly what makes a TV show a cult classic can be hard to pin down." The listing of several popular, mainstream shows such as Adventure Time and Family Guy along with obscure ones such as Aeon Flux doesn't help categorize it. See also WP:NOTTVTROPES. StreetcarEnjoyer (talk) 03:00, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - I have little to add beyond what the other "delete" voters have said above, and the WP:LSC and WP:INDISCRIMINATE policies have been cited properly. Putting every single thing that somebody once called "cult" into a vague and never-ending list is not encyclopedic. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (TALK|CONTRIBS) 13:20, 5 April 2024 (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.