Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nightlife
- 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. (non-admin closure) iMahesh (talk) 02:55, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Nightlife[edit]
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It is entirely possible that the subject of this article, 'nightlife', genuinely merits coverage in something approximating to an encyclopaedia. This random collection of badly-sourced stuff vaguely relating to the topic, as long as you don't think about it too closely, and as long as you limit the range of the article to the narrow confines of personal experience as a (rare?) Wikipedian who leaves their basement during the hours of darkness to socialise rather than doing actual research, isn't it. Accordingly, I propose that this abomination be deleted per WP:TNT, and suggest that anyone wishing to start from scratch does a little more investigation not just into the subject matter (which surely extends both culturally and chronologically way, way beyond this factoid-farm, and quite possibly back to the discovery of fire...), but into how to structure prose into something a reader might find vaguely informative, rather than brain-rot-inducing mush. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:21, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
- Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Popular culture and Social science. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:21, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
- Keep. This is not a Good Article, but it tries. Much of it is a section on 'Sociological research'. It cites a totally reliable academic article by David Grazian. The history section is significantly based on a PhD thesis. That's not terrible at all. As someone who has brought stuff to AfD and called for TNT, sorry, Andy, I don't see this being the case here. PS. The 'Regulation' seciton is meh. But seriously, "This random collection of badly-sourced stuff vaguely relating to the topic"? I don't think we are looking at the same articles, or perhaps our standards are different. What you wrote would apply to a lot of crappy lists in the popculture category, some of them even kept, sigh... but this is much better than that. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 08:46, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
- There's nothing wrong with Grazian as a source - for what he's writing about, which is an interesting discussion based around a very limited subset of what a general article on 'nightlife' ought to be about, in my opinion. The problem is that using his piece in the manner it has been reinforces the idea that 'nightlife' is somehow only found in the bars and nightclubs of the contemporary urban 'west'. This is essentially the same issue (or rather one of many issues) I have with Wikipedia popcult coverage. It isn't 'popular culture' in general, it is 'the popular culture of a subset of Wikipedia contributors', who in turn are a narrow subset of those who have (or have had) 'popular culture' - i.e. more or less everyone, living or dead. Systemic bias is inevitable in a project like en.Wikipedia, but our popcult coverage actively reinforces it, by encouraging the substitution of primary-source personal experience for sourced critical analysis. Not quite what's going on here with Grazian, where the problem isn't with the source so much as the narrow outlook of whoever chose to cite him. Maybe I'm asking too much of Wikipedia though: I long ago reached the conclusion that Wikipedia habitually bit off more than it could chew, article-topic-wise, and that some subjects - especially broad and ill-defined ones like this- would be better left to specialised sources, and that Wikipedia's attempts to be an encyclopaedia of everything get less and less effective as it broadens its scope way beyond subject matter a crowdsourced project can reasonably expect to do justice to. But then Wikipedia is what it is, it does what it does, and maybe I'd be better off just standing on the sidelines heckling, rather than trying to fix the structurally unfixable. AndyTheGrump (talk) 11:28, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
- This is just a start-class article. It is expected to be far from comprehensive. And it's on a broad topic, and we know how tough those are to write. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 09:48, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
- There's nothing wrong with Grazian as a source - for what he's writing about, which is an interesting discussion based around a very limited subset of what a general article on 'nightlife' ought to be about, in my opinion. The problem is that using his piece in the manner it has been reinforces the idea that 'nightlife' is somehow only found in the bars and nightclubs of the contemporary urban 'west'. This is essentially the same issue (or rather one of many issues) I have with Wikipedia popcult coverage. It isn't 'popular culture' in general, it is 'the popular culture of a subset of Wikipedia contributors', who in turn are a narrow subset of those who have (or have had) 'popular culture' - i.e. more or less everyone, living or dead. Systemic bias is inevitable in a project like en.Wikipedia, but our popcult coverage actively reinforces it, by encouraging the substitution of primary-source personal experience for sourced critical analysis. Not quite what's going on here with Grazian, where the problem isn't with the source so much as the narrow outlook of whoever chose to cite him. Maybe I'm asking too much of Wikipedia though: I long ago reached the conclusion that Wikipedia habitually bit off more than it could chew, article-topic-wise, and that some subjects - especially broad and ill-defined ones like this- would be better left to specialised sources, and that Wikipedia's attempts to be an encyclopaedia of everything get less and less effective as it broadens its scope way beyond subject matter a crowdsourced project can reasonably expect to do justice to. But then Wikipedia is what it is, it does what it does, and maybe I'd be better off just standing on the sidelines heckling, rather than trying to fix the structurally unfixable. AndyTheGrump (talk) 11:28, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
- Keep - this is listed on Wikipedia:Vital articles. Perhaps that is enough for a procedural close? - Indefensible (talk) 06:24, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
- Keep - Notability doesn't seem in question, so it's just a matter of whether to WP:TNT. It doesn't look like it's completely unsalvageable to me... it's just a typical low-quality broad topic article. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:24, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
- 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.