Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Frogs in popular culture (2nd nomination)

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. Hut 8.5 11:17, 25 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Frogs in popular culture[edit]

Nearly all unsalvageable trivia that's hard to read. Hardly anything is referenced. Anything we might want to keep can be easily incorporated into the Frog article. See Wikipedia:"In popular culture" articles and Wikipedia:Trivia sections. Phoenix-wiki ^{talk · contribs} 17:57, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment How "unsalvageable" is it? Has an effort been made to source any of these statements? I'm seeing Talk page complaints, but not salvage attempts. I'm also seeing a former AfD that suggests no progress is being made on fixing what was wrong 4 months ago. I would suggest sourcing what can be, removing what cannot be, and trimming the IPC lists to items that demonstrate something (other than "I saw a frog"). This may be a case of WP:PROBLEM. / edg ☺ ☭ 18:28, 19 December 2007 (UTC) edg ☺ ☭ 18:28, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Well, hardly any effort has been put towards fixing it, to be honest, but I strongly doubt we'd be able to find references for most of it--Phoenix-wiki ^{talk · contribs} 18:44, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Merge and Delete. A good article could be made on this topic, which seems notable enough, but there is no sign this article ever will become encyclopedic. I have merged Frogs and the French (sourced), Frog proverbs and Frogs in Egyptian mythology (both unsourced) into Frog for consideration by editors there. The rest, if kept, can only be the foundation for a rambling IPC list. / edg ☺ ☭ 19:36, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - There is no such action. Uncle G (talk) 21:30, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      - If you insist. Delete. / edg ☺ ☭ 22:04, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Proverbs are also merged to Wikiquote. / edg ☺ ☭ 19:55, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I'll bet this can be tidied up to resemble Cultural depictions of spiders. Articles like this would be a good start. And this book has a chapter about frogs in folklore. Frogs: Art, Legend and History sounds most helpful, although I can't get a good description of it online. Zagalejo^^^ 19:16, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and execute Zagalejo's suggestion. Lots of dross in this ore, but with the refining fire of sources, this is at least a nugget, if not a full bar, of a cool, interesting, and useful article. I note, btw, that WP:NOEFFORT is an argument to leap over. Ribbit! —Quasirandom (talk) 19:42, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as it contains prose and is referenced. Best, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles^Tally-ho! 19:43, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- These references don't really make a case for this article. Of the 5, only Why do the French call the British 'the roast beefs'? (now merged to Frog) applies. An article for boiling frog exists elsewhere, and the IMDB link documents a spotting, but is otherwise uninformative on the article topic. The other two are science links not relevant to "Popular culture". / edg ☺ ☭ 20:48, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - David P. Badger's Frogs (S.l.: Voyageur Press, 2001) includes chapters on "frogs in popular culture, their physical characteristics and behavior, and environmental challenges." Best, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles^Tally-ho! 21:17, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep there'll be independent refs to add. Will get to this. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:12, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - largely in poor shape currently, but there is referenced material and it is patently salvageable, contrary to the nom. --Dweller (talk) 20:17, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The Continuum Encyclopedia of Animal Symbolism in Art (ISBN 0826415253} devotes pages 188 to 191 to frogs, beginning with Neolithic representations, and including Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Aztec, Olmec, Moche, Mayan, Japanese, Hindu, and Christian frog symbolisms. Wikipedia should be no less of an encyclopaedia than that. An administrator hitting the delete button is not required to make that so. What is required is that editors hit their edit buttons and make the article better, using ordinary editing tools in the ordinary way.
And yes, renaming the article to Cultural depictions of frogs is certainly the way to encourage editors to stop thinking that a collection of examples of frogs in 20th/21st century pop culture somehow magically forms a coherent article when it exceeds some critical mass. Administrator privileges are not required in order to rename articles, either, though. Uncle G (talk) 21:30, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- The references being Googled up in this Afd could surely help one write a very good article on Frogs in popular culture. Not like the trivial fork nominated for deletion here. / edg ☺ ☭ 22:04, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - An administrator hitting a delete button is no part of the article improvement process that makes poor articles better. Editors actually hitting their edit buttons is. We all have an edit button. AFD is not cleanup. Uncle G (talk) 22:31, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep There's lots more to be said on the subject. Frog Went A-Courting, Ethel the Frog and more. And, by coincidence, I bought two Frog bicycle lights today. Colonel Warden (talk) 02:01, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep & Comment - This is a clearly notable topic and deserves to be included. I've changed the title to fit in with most other pop culture pages (Cultural depictions of spiders & Cultural depictions of lions to name a few), and this also makes it sound more sophisticated. JSYK. Cheers, Spawn Man ^{Review Me!} 03:58, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I know this is a poor argument for this article, but...I like reading stuff like this. It's kind of fun and enjoyable. I like going to bed at night knowing there are cool articles like this waiting to be read in Wikipedia. Ozmaweezer (talk) 12:26, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete A horrendous and purposeless trivia article. Un-fixable. Just nuke the whole thing, and start afresh, perhaps using the new title.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 03:41, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Erm, guidelines state shouldn't be dleted on quality alone. Thanks for noting one should start afresh. Suggests you think topic notable. :) cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:25, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Can't tell if it's still up for AfD, because the template was removed from the article. But keep obviously. AfD is not clean-up and what's there now is a better start than an empty edit window. --JayHenry (talk) 07:10, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Notable subject, terrible article presently. Lawrence Cohen 07:14, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep This was a fairly good page,and almost everyone here realises it. Even if it were "Nearly all unsalvageable trivia" the salvageable parts could be salvaged; being" hard to read." is not cause for deletion and "Hardly anything is referenced" is a reason to reference, not delete. So all parts of the deletion rationale fail. But the article is referenced, and there is by now consensus even at WP:FICTION that material can be sourced from the fiction itself. DGG (talk) 15:50, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- While any given example of a frog in fiction can be sourced from the fiction itself, it would be original research to source statements like "The theme of transfiguration of and into frogs also features prominently" or "pop culture tends to portray frogs as benign, but ugly, and often clumsy, but also with hidden talents" to fictional examples.
  Also, the factoid that a book entitled Frogs has a chapter on "Frogs in popular culture" (added during this AfD) is unencyclopedic; its presence in the lede section is comparable to writing don't delete this article it is very notable in the article text. Perhaps a guideline on what "salvage" means can be written to discourage article space wikilawyering of this kind. / edg ☺ ☭ 17:04, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Erm, I agree that I wouldn't have placed a chapter entry like that but it serves to highlight that material is out there, and hence challenges the whole idea it is non-notable. There are vast amounts of material out there than many people here are not aware of. Edgarde have you been to any cinema/film bookstores or humnaties libraries (at university not municipal that is). Much of this stuff is out there. No need to stray into OR as it will be able to be sourced. And please don't use words like unencyclopedic as it doesn't mean anything in context here but WP:IDONTLIKEIT cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:25, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, "unencyclopedic" was pretty vague. What I mostly mean is unhelpful filler posing as information. If someone needs to learn about Frogs in popular culture, the fact that an otherwise-unknown book has a chapter about Frogs in popular culture does not really tell them anything about Frogs in popular culture. A Google book search is not a substitute for information on the subject. / edg ☺ ☭ 18:26, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Lucky then that I have a couple of books on my bookshelf with info rather than just relying on google. However a positive google search highlights the fact there is secondary source information around. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:48, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. However, the statement that such information exists does not create an article. And there have been comments about how this article will be improved for close to a year now. The good material has been merged back to Frog. If someone wants to write a scholarly article on the subject of Frogs in popular culture (by whatever title), the resources clearly abound, but there is nothing here worth retaining in a separate article. / edg ☺ ☭ 21:49, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Do not delete information that is probably true, that people will want to read, and that isn't causing a problem. WAS 4.250 (talk) 23:18, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We have no idea whether it's true or not due to its lack of references. As for people wanting to read it, it's just useless info that people won't care about. It's causing a problem because of the last two points.--Phoenix-wiki ^{talk · contribs} 13:28, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's your opinion regarding what is useless info. For any real assessment of trivia's popualrity just look at any newsstand and see what the biggest selling magazines are. There are references coming so both points are invalid. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:10, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We are an encyclopedia, not a collection of random info. That is an extremely badly presented collecion of random information.--Phoenix-wiki ^{talk · contribs} 21:29, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK so its messy. We don't delete on article quality. And there are cohesive sources, so that doesn't apply, and consensus seems to not agree with you. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:20, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There a four references for the whole article.--Phoenix-wiki ^{talk · contribs} 13:39, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

...and? Better than none, and the sort of material which qualifies for RS would not often be in an average municipal library but more fine arts bit of uni library or specialist bookstore. One day someone will trot down and find some nice stuff to slot in...maybe it will be soon, but at least google etc. shows that the subject is notable :)cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:47, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And if it isn't referenced, we don't know it's true. And what do we do with information that isn't true? That's right, delete.--Phoenix-wiki ^{talk · contribs} 15:21, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is there really any doubt that The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County has a frog in it? We don't need a outside reference to make that conclusion for us. Zagalejo^^^ 17:47, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Phoenix-wiki, we don't delete information that's unverified. We delete information that's not verifiable. There's an enormous and extremely important difference. --JayHenry (talk) 02:11, 24 December 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.