Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Prime Minister parodies (Private Eye)

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. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 06:35, 1 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Prime Minister parodies (Private Eye)[edit]

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Nearly unsourced WP:MADEUP fancruft topic. I found one source that actually verbatim uses this term, but that does not an article make. Dronebogus (talk) 08:09, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Popular culture, Lists, and United Kingdom. Dronebogus (talk) 08:09, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep meets GNG, meets NLIST, including coverage by Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair [1], WSJ [2] and more [3][4]. Article needs some love, but AfD is not cleanup. —siro χ o 08:33, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Explain how VF, WSJ, and Daily Beast (is that even reliable?) actually talk about this as a coherent topic. Dronebogus (talk) 08:37, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I second Drone. I've rrviewed the first source and it does not seem related to the topic here, we are not discussing the deletion of an article about the show, but about a minor gag in it. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:32, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This was my first toe-in-the-water "clear keep" refdump, I later listed some more sources below as questions came up. Regarding the first source, I do think a commentator as prominent as Christopher Hitchens writing, Each new prime minister got his or her parody—in Thatcher’s case the cleverness being a parody of her husband—and within weeks the image and idiom would have stuck. is a very strong signal of notability of the topic itself. —siro χ o 00:18, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 09:06, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - another one split from the parent article. Really needs more sources, but topic itself is much discussed and meets GNG. at most could be pruned and merged back into Private Eye. Jdcooper (talk) 15:53, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment This article should be moved to Prime Minister parodies in Private Eye because the disambiguator is misused and lacks a base title (Prime Minister parodies). –LaundryPizza03 (d c̄) 17:20, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with this move. —siro χ o 17:21, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Important and significant parodies going back decades. I wonder if a lot of the sources are offline, making it considerably more difficult to find them online. Thatcher apparently hated the version PE published and Blair would come to be called "Vicar of Albion" in columns and articles. It's in need of a tidy up as an article, I don't deny, but it summarises something significant in British culture without doubt doktorb _words^deeds 20:48, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:ITSIMPORTANT Dronebogus (talk) 12:39, 11 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - These have been a major part in shaping how several Prime Minister (Notably Wilson, Heath, Thatcher and Blair) were seen and generated some significant spin-offs. Dunarc (talk) 20:31, 11 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That would be a good argument for keeping it. Sadly, it is not mentioned in the article, and you provided no references to back up this claim. See WP:OR. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:32, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. None of the sources in the article, nor any of the sources provided above, indicate this satisfies WP:GNG or WP:NLIST. Of the sources provided by Siroxo, Hitchens in VF has a single sentence on the phenomenon; Weiss in the Daily Beast has a paragraph on a specific parody (not the topic of this article as a whole); and Holledge in the WSJ doesn't really have anything directly relevant at all; Farr in The Wire, meanwhile, is a good source, but a single source isn't sufficient. In other words, the coverage seldom treats these parodies as a group and doesn't go beyond what you'd expect as a natural part of coverage of Private Eye. By comparison, if a novel is notable and widely-reviewed, there'll be lots of reviews that comment on its specific settings or characters; this doesn't amount to notability for those settings or characters, however (and if it does it's a case where WP:PAGEDECIDE would need to be factored in). There's no real case for a merge as very little of the present content would survive a WP:NOTPLOT-minded pruning, and the Private Eye article already has the single sentence that this topic merits. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 15:56, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Just to be clear, there's no shortage of coverage on this topic eg. [5][6][7]. —siro χ o 16:30, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
These are all descriptions of particular parodies (and McKay has only a brief mention at that), so don't contribute to notability for the topic of Private Eye parodies of PMs as a whole. McCann has a bit of background on previous parodies, but the substantive discussion is of Blair. There could be enough here for an individual article on St Albion's Parish News (cf. Joe Biden (The Onion)), but that would be an entirely different article and disussion. What we would need for notability for this article are a couple more sources like Farr, which discusses the parodies in depth and as a group. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 17:33, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
They're likely to be off line sources and cultural references which aren't easy to find online. We're in danger of deleting culturally significant material because Wikipedia relies on online sourcing doktorb _words^deeds 22:57, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be willing to accept a couple of actual citations for offline sources along with summaries of what they cover. Either the author or publisher having some other reliable publications would probably be a sensible criterion. I'm not aware of any such sources beng raised in any of these four AfDs, and I haven't seen any cited in any of the sources I've looked at. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 18:42, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:14, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, looks fine with the sources here, especially when considering that there may be quite a few that we dont' have access to right now. WP:GNG and WP:NLIST seem satisfied to me. Actualcpscm^{scrutinize, talk} 18:35, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep note I would likely fail this article at AfC based on the way it's currently written - the sources provided in this discussion clearly show notability but the article needs help and has for a long time. SportingFlyer T·C 20:48, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I find the recent parodies very feeble compared with the older ones, but maybe that just reflects their targets. Anyway they need to be included for the sake of completeness. Athel cb (talk) 08:48, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Not a well-maintained article but the subject is notable. NavjotSR (talk) 17:07, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Clearly a consensus to Keep but since this is such a poorly sourced article, I'd like to see a review of the sources found by Siroxo to see if they can help establish notability. Editors saying that something is important and significant isn't valued as much as these comments reported by independent reliable sources. What seems obvious to you has to be support by secondary sources so if you are arguing to Keep this article, these have to be located, at least before I will close this discussion.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:00, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete or redirect. Nothing in the article suggests GNG is met. Not seeing any explanation how sources presented in AfD meet SIGCOV, etc. The first source cited by Siroxo is about the show, not about PM parodies in it (the gag is mentioned in a single sentence). This is low quality OR FANCRUFT and it needs to be WP:TNTed at best. The keep votes above are very weak (WP:ITSNOTABLE, WP:ITSINTERESTING, WP:ILIKEIT...). To elaborate, not a single source in the article or outside seems to cover topic in any depth, so WP:SIGCOV is clearly failed. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:27, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If we have a lot of good sources do we need to go through and explicitly say they're SIGCOV? The article does need a lot of cleanup but it's clear from articles like The Wire and the books found by siroxo that these have at least mostly been discussed clearly by secondary sources. And you've said "the show" twice - do you not understand that this is a magazine? SportingFlyer T·C 11:51, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment few more sources:
1. a source that discusses the topic in general and covers at least 3 specific parodies [8].
2. Here’s one that compares a couple of them [9]
3. Here's a book with page or more of SIGCOV [10]

—siro χ o 00:23, 26 August 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.