Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pterodactyls in popular culture

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 NO CONSENSUS TO DELETE. The raw numbers come to about 5 Delete, 4 Keep, 7 Merge... I may not have that exactly right, but little matter as we are mainly looking at strength of argument here. But there is no clear numerical consensus for any one solution. But a Delete is out of the question as most commentors argue for keeping all or most of the material, via either Keep or Merge. So it must be Keep or Merge. I can assume that the Delete commentors would prefer Merge to Keep; if that is true we have 4 Keep, 12 Delete or Merge... but yet, can we assume that? Maybe not; Michael Johnson has an interesting and I think cogent point: "Keep or Delete but do not Merge cultural cruft into serious biology articles.". This is refuted by Black Falcon, but not decisively; I think the matter is somewhat up the air, both points of view have merit. All in all, I see a strong tendency toward some manner of Deleting the article, yet no clear consensus or winning argument over how to delete it (Delete (with or without Redirect) or Merge). I don't want to Merge the article when the argument against this (per Michael Johnson) has not been decisively refuted. Therefore we are left with NO CONSENSUS, with no prejudice against any editor adding a {{mergeto}} tag. Herostratus 13:44, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Pterodactyls in popular culture[edit]

Yet another crufty pop culture article. This seems like another case of "It's too big, so let's just move it into a crufty trivia article". The most notable points should be in the Pterodactyl article, not in a seperate article. As a note: an unreferenced tag has been on this since July, if that's any indication on how much people care about this article. RobJ1981 03:33, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merge into main pterodactyl article.--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 03:40, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Merge any entries where it can be verified through the use of reliable sources that the appearance is so frakking important to the plot/storyline/event that the work/movie/game 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. Delete anything at this namespace; I believe the rest of the references can get by without a reciprocal wikilink. -- saberwyn 04:02, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Merge cited material into main pterodactyl article, at least as it now stands, and delete everything that hasn't been cited. No mercy if it's been sitting around this long without anyone bothering to cite. If the vast majority of information here is cited, and it shouldn't be that hard to do, then I'd be open to changing to Keep. Subjects of obvious ongoing interest have some value to an encyclopedia, even when they're just the reaction of popular culture. The individual cultural references come and go, but we'll always have extinct pterodactyls to kick around, and there's some research and entertainment value in seeing how we do it. But it's only worthwhile with a worthwhile article. Noroton 04:11, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - indiscriminate, unsourced, plagued by OR and generally unnecessary. Otto4711 12:15, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect -- we must do this to preserve the page history, because this page used to just be Pterodactyl. At some point, the good stuff was merged from there into Pterosaur and the rest moved to the current article. However, there's nothing worth merging IMO, but with a redirect in place, folks can look for stuff to merge if they want to. Mango juice^talk 12:35, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Merge selectively into pterosaur. Like it or not, pterosaurs and other big Mesozoic critters are mainstays of fiction; the use (and nomenclature) of these critters in these works is worthy of mention and comment. It strikes me as beyond reasonable doubt that The Lost World (Arthur Conan Doyle), Jurassic Park, Rodan, and One Million Years BC are all in their way quite notable, and if pterosaurs figure in them, they should be mentioned in a section about pterosaurs in fiction in the article in chief. The notion that including these things in the article in chief would somehow detract from its seriousness is deeply unconvincing, and loses a golden opportunity to contrast paleontology with the fictions it inspired. - Smerdis of Tlön 14:23, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Apparently there's a cycle that tends to go on in "in popular culture" sections and articles, as described at WP:POPCULTURE. That essay, and WP:TRIVIA has some good advice for this kind of stuff.Noroton 14:54, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Humm. The opening paragraph actually is off to a good start but then any hope of a useful article is dashed when it devolves from useful information into an indiscriminate list of appearances. If there is anything worth saving then merge it, but delete this article. No sources, WP:OR, etc etc. Arkyan 15:33, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Merge per Ed. Acalamari 16:41, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Merge highly unlikely readers whould need an in-depth article on this. Antonrojo 17:18, 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 keep This is much less carefully prepared than the chimpanzees article, contains a less focused group of cultural uses, and is poorly sourced. The actual material is still significant. The article needs much editing. Deleting articles instead of editing them is not the best way to improve WP.DGG 23:41, 21 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Merge anything that's actually useful into the main article (a couple of book refs, a couple of movie refs, and a couple of mascots/planes, and that's about it; everything else is "there happened to be a pterosaur there" and slang for a sex position that looks like a good way to kill the mood by breaking up with laughter). Don't delete, due to the page history. I'm biased, though; I hate "in pop culture" articles that are mostly made up of "there was an X present". J. Spencer 21:40, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as it is a good, well-sturcted article
Keep and tag with {{mergeto}}. I agree with Smerdis of Tlön that, "like it or not, pterosaurs and other big Mesozoic critters are mainstays of fiction". I think a selective merge into pterosaur is appropriate, but think it ought to be left to the editors working on one or both articles to determine how selective they want to be. As to opposition to the merger of "cultural cruft" and "serious biological articles", it would be prudent to keep in mind that Wikipedia is not a biology textbook but rather an encyclopedia that encompasses a wide range of topics, of which biology and fiction are two. I can understand wanting to avoid a cluttered article, but there's no need to establish an iron curtain between science and culture. -- Black Falcon 21:11, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per reasons given by Black Falcon. Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 04:08, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete but I agree with Michael Johnson that we should not merge this into the related, serious biological article. 38.100.34.2 22:05, 27 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.