Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rumors and urban legends regarding Sesame Street

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. Sandstein 18:25, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Rumors and urban legends regarding Sesame Street[edit]

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This article mostly repeats various bits of gossip about Sesame Street that are already covered in separate articles. Most of it relates to Bert and Ernie, characters that have their own article where this very issue is mentioned in detail with small snippets of other material related to Sesame Street that could easily be moved to other articles. I see no reason to retain this as a redirect as there would be no obvious place for it to send readers. The Devil's Advocate (talk) 22:27, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Television-related deletion discussions. —Tom Morris (talk) 22:40, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. At best this information could be added to existing articles, though I suspect that the information is already present. --Tzadkiel43 (talk) 23:17, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Most of the information in this article is included in other articles. It's at best a list of trivia. As the one who's become the main editor of many Sesame Street articles, I don't think it necessary and adds very little to WP's body of work about this important show. Christine (talk) 06:40, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Keep - Regarding this nomination, and the two !votes above to delete: what other articles is this information already present in? I didn't see any of this information in the Sesame Street article, other than this very brief, passing mention, which doesn't actually state any of the rumors and urban legends:

"As critic Richard Roeper has stated, perhaps one of the strongest indicators of the influence of Sesame Street have been the enduring rumors and urban legends surrounding the show and its characters, especially about Bert and Ernie."

The same goes for the article Influence of Sesame Street, a very similar one-line sentence without any content from this article. The link in the sentences links to this article being considered for deletion. No personal offense intended, but are these statements of the information being present in other articles based upon fact, or just statements based upon hunches and unqualified by actual facts? Perhaps the nominator and/or delete voters above could provide examples of where this content exists in other articles, because I haven't found this to be the case at this time.

Regarding topic notability, the article should be kept because the topic passes WP:GNG; it has received significant coverage in reliable sources, including:

Los Angeles Times newsblog
USA Today - Graham, Jefferson (1992-04-30). "Muppet Ernie Is Doing Just Fine". USA Today: p. D3.
Chicago Tribune - Herrmann, Brenda (1992-11-10). "Ernie Rumor Just Won't Die". Chicago Tribune: p. C1.
[Manchester] Union Leader - "Muppet Ernie Keeps His Life." 28 July 1991 (p. F1).
Hartford Courant - Lender, Jon (1992-11-23). "Rest Assured, Ernie the Puppet Has Never Felt Better". Hartford Courant: p. B1.

This article would benefit from the addition of more sources and inline citations, and some expansion, rather than removal from Wikipedia. Northamerica1000^(talk) 11:52, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Strong keep, as above. Also, for the years that I was the primary editor of the Sesame Street articles, something Christine is now using to add weight to her delete claim, persistently people would add content to the main Wikipedia article about Ernie and Bert's perceived sexuality, about Veggie Monster, about an HIV+ Muppet.

Veggie?: Two Sesame Street episodes (4115, 4232) have made reference to the Veggie Monster rumor, as has a video, as has an official tweet from Cookie Monster, as has two videos posted exclusively to his Facebook fan page. More

Gay?: A film (Ernest & Bertram) and a musical (Avenue Q) have been inspired by the concept of gay puppets, the rumor kicked into high gear in a 1980 book, Ernie has address students at a university to deny the rumor, Bert has denied it on Australian radio, it's been addressed in at least one major book about Sesame Street (Street Gang), and references to their sexuality have been made on Family Guy, American Dad, Glee, Supernatural, The Colbert Report, Greg the Bunny, The King of Queens, The Cleveland Show, and Medium Large. German comedy series Freitag Nacht News has a recurring segment parodying their sexuality. [1]

Simply put, the article is just under-developed. -- Zanimum (talk) 14:42, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Notability is the not the sole basis for inclusion. In this case we have material that really is not sufficient for a separate article. Claims about Bert and Ernie's sexuality can be included in the article on them, as they are already. Ditto to claims about Cookie Monster and the article on him. The stuff about the HIV muppet could be mentioned in connection with the South African show that appeared to spark the rumor. Rather than stacking all this material on to a separate article to make it merely an indiscriminate collection of gossip, it makes more sense to include it in articles pertaining to the subjects mentioned in the rumors.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 17:04, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Any rumor that gets major news outlets to talk about it, should be here. No sense junking up the actual article with this nonsense though. Best to keep it as a side article here. Dream Focus 00:06, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

For heaven's sake, the material about Bert and Ernie is already covered elsewhere and any details that are seen as important here could be moved there. The material about cookie monster is insubstantial and would again be logical to include in that article. An independent article is just pointless.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 20:00, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Keep per the compelling argument from Northamerica1000. We need to capture these noteable reactions, and per Dream best to have a dedicated article. FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:46, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Northamerica1000's excellent argument. CallawayRox (talk) 20:09, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and merge verifiable information to appropriate articles. Northamerica's argument revolves around two things: that this information is not present elsewhere, and that there is sourcing that confers notability on the topic. I might agree with the first point, although that's not an argument for inclusion of this article. The information ought to be included in Wikipedia. It is verifiable, and it is also interesting! It should be included in relevant articles. Regarding the second point, none of those sources are actually about the topic of this article. They are about individual elements of the topic. There's a big difference between an article covering one such rumor/urban legend regarding Sesame Street and an article covering the topic of rumors and urban legends regarding Sesame Street, and WP:GNG looks for the latter. Coverage of the topic, directly.
I really just don't see the purpose of having this as its own article, and I don't see the justification for it unless sourcing can be found that can establish the phenomenon of rumors about Sesame Street as being independently notable, as a topic, not as a list of examples of said rumors. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 08:19, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I have to agree with the nom here. This is an unnecessary content fork. While Sesame Street is obviously notable, that doesn't mean there needs to be a standalone article about the "rumors and legends regarding Sesame Street". Otherwise we could as well create standalone articles like "Rumors and legends about Barack Obama" and "Rumors and legends about Mitt Romney" , we will find plenty sources for it ;-). I think WP is not supposed to be a rumor mill, so any kind of articles named "Rumors about..." become questionable per WP:NOTGOSSIP. The Sesame Street article is 50kB size ,and this rumors content fork is 5kB size, so it is no problem at all to merge this into a section in the Sesame street article. While a redirect page with this name would not be needed, it is likely to be kept for its page history. MakeSense64 (talk) 08:31, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ignore the 5k number, and look at how much text is in the page. No reason to have all of that in the main article. And this isn't gossip. This is about things that made headlines. Its normal for all the controversies about someone/something to be put in a separate article, since it is something notable, and you don't want it junking up the main article. Dream Focus 08:42, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, it is not normal to put all the controversies about topic in a separate article. That amounts to creating a WP:POVFORK. It is very important to keep the controversies inside the main article for NPOV reasons. Controversies, rumors, legends ... if notable enough to be mentioned, should always be kept in the main article. MakeSense64 (talk) 08:55, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is. Dungeons & Dragons controversies, Controversies relating to the Six-Day War, Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Scouting controversy and conflict, etc. Category:Controversies has ample examples of this. The assassination of JFK has dozens of articles contained in its subgroup. Anything that got media attention, no matter how ridiculous, is kept in a separate article to not distract from the main one. Dream Focus 13:52, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is only done when the controversy is too big and would take over the article. That is the clearly not case here. The article is very small (5kB), there are only 5 items that can easily be merged into the Sesam Street main article or in the individual article about given figure(s) in the show. I don't see how this would create any undue weight problems. Just because there are enough sources that support and describe these rumors, doesn't mean they require a standalone article. MakeSense64 (talk) 06:33, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. There's really not a lot to write about here apart from "There's a bunch of silly rumors and they're all not true". It's not "notable" when there are a few amusing newspaper reports about those silly rumors. If it were, we could have thousands of articles that start with "Rumors and urban legends regarding" about pretty much every noteworthy thing, ever. --Conti|✉ 09:48, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - See WP:GNG. This topic has been covered in reliable sources. This discussion is about this one article, not hypothetical articles that may or may not be created. How does this topic fail the General notability guideline? Northamerica1000^(talk) 12:00, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, or possibly merge all of these rumours/legends are mentioned in the articles on the characters in question, except for the abortion rumour. There is no real justification for presenting all these misconceptions in one article, and that's not how the sources do it (all of them just verify information about one of these claims, none actually address the topic of rumours and urban legends in Sesame Street). If there is any information in this article that isn't in one of the character articles then a merge may be appropriate. The Keep opinions are unpersuasive: the fact that some topic passes the GNG doesn't mean it must be included, and as I've already mentioned the sources do not address the topic of this article. Hut 8.5 13:35, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Your stance seems subjective, as in "I don't like it". The topic has been significantly reported upon in reliable sources. Of course mass media isn't going to report upon the verbatim title of this article. Northamerica1000^(talk) 12:04, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not asking for sources which write about "the verbatim title of the article", I'm asking for sources which write about the subject of the article - namely widely believed things about Sesame Street that are not true. This is the relevant question to ask when assessing the notability of the article subject. Nor is it an impossible requirement, and I give two examples below of articles about widely believed myths which do have sources of this kind. Hut 8.5 12:58, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for clarifying! Northamerica1000^(talk) 09:38, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, merging relevant information to appropriate articles (likely Sesame Street, perhaps to individual character discussion. The problem here is that as a spin-off of the main SS article, it's carrying a strong hint of bias towards confrontational aspects of the show. It is not that the information is bad (we should not lose it), but organizing it into this article is not very encyclopedic. This is likely in relation to the original nom's statement: because all the characters of discussion in this article appear to have articles, this info can be pushed off into them. There are perhaps two points that I would take into the main Sesame Street article under "critical reception", that being the relationship between Bert and Ernie, and the introduction of muppet around the HIV concept. Everything else is minor w.r.t. the show, but appropriate in character discussion. Doing that removes the perceived that this article starts with and we lose no information. --MASEM (t) 14:22, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Popular culture-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000^(talk) 17:31, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per Contil. Just because rumours exist about said topic, that does not mean that said rumours require a separate article, especially when none of them have any credibility. We do not need articles which serve no purpose than to affirm something is not true; otherwise we could go on forever this way. Basalisk ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 23:44, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If the rumors were true, they'd be facts not rumors. People hear about any of the controversies, then they should have a place to learn about them and clear up any mistakes over what they heard. And it can't go on forever, since only well referenced rumors are listed here. Dream Focus 01:01, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I take issue with your claim that "We do not need articles which serve no purpose than to affirm something is not true". Our notability guidelines are what matters here, not what we "need". If, say, The Wall Street Journal and the New Yorker had published long articles on urban legends about Sesame Street, I would hope that you would change your mind on this. (That being said, the sourcing for this article looks quite thin.) Mark Arsten (talk) 02:30, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We do have articles such as List of common misconceptions and Misconceptions about tornadoes (a GA) which focus entirely on things that are not true. However both these articles cite sources which do address the topic of the article rather than discussing individual misconceptions. Hut 8.5 12:54, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, much agreed. BTW, thanks for pointing out that tornado article, it looks quite interesting. Mark Arsten (talk) 16:19, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete So far as I can see, no sources give significant coverage to the subject of "rumors and urban legends regarding Sesame Street". There is of course coverage of individual rumours, but that belongs in other articles where appropriate. Like Bert and Ernie. --Mkativerata (talk) 10:30, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Of course mass media isn't going to report upon the verbatim title of this article. The article summarizes the urban legends and rumors about Sesame Street. You're advocating to delete this information from the public's view on Wikipeida, stating that it belongs elsewhere, without proposing a merge of the information. Northamerica1000^(talk) 12:10, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, this article gave me quite a laugh, I wasn't expecting that. While the general topic has been covered (here, for example) I'm thinking that a selective Merge to the parent article would be the best idea, since the sourcing is a bit thin. Mark Arsten (talk) 02:34, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
~~Delete~~Strong Delete Mkativerata gets it spot on here, coverage of individual rumors belongs in other articles not in this one list. Mt king ^(edits) 02:43, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - If the information in this article is removed from Wikipeida, it can't be merged. If the information "belongs" elsewhere, then why delete this data without at least considering merging it? Perhaps you should consider the idea of merging the content, per WP:PRESERVE, rather than it being entirely removed. Northamerica1000^(talk) 11:51, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for giving cause to re-read this discussion, and it has occurred to me as rumors are by definition "unverified account or explanation of events", why on earth is an Encyclopedia covering them, this makes us look like a supermarket trash mag. Could this article be a way of circumventing WP:RS, WP:V and other policies and guidelines by dressing up rumors as fact ? . Mt king ^(edits) 02:43, 14 January 2012 (UTC) 12:24, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We cover things like this for many subjects because they get ample news attention, and are thus notable. Many people will hear the rumors and its best to set things straight here. And we are not a trash mag since we aren't spreading rumors, simply reporting the ones the news covers, and then showing the official response to counter them as ridiculous. Dream Focus 13:01, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If it is known that a rumour is untrue, then the best strategy is to afford it no square-footage whatsoever. Lest I start writing an article about how the moon is definitely not made of cheese. Basalisk ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 13:18, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

LOL, someone beat you too it: The Moon is made of green cheese. Wow, we really do have articles about everything. Mark Arsten (talk) 16:21, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ha, believe it or not, I did check that before posting, and wondered how long it would take for someone to bring it up. Hilarious. Basalisk ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 16:24, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's the thing about Wikipedia, discussions eventually devolve into everyone bringing up obscure exceptions to common sense all the time :) Oh well, Mark Arsten (talk) 16:29, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Mark, this is exactly why I support a STRONG DELETE. My argument is one from common sense, that it simply makes no sense to waste space with this article when the content, when valid, is in other articles. I've never been able to make a cogent argument from common sense, though, although I suppose that I'm making it now. Christine (talk) 18:19, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You bring up an interesting point, during discussions on Wikipedia a great deal of emphasis is given on parsing the specific guidelines and rules. (I'm just as guilty of this as anyone else.) Simple saying "Delete: this is common sense" (or "Keep this is common sense") is really frowned upon. I know we need to keep WP:NOTAVOTE in mind, but maybe we should be more accepting at Afd (or other venues, I suppose) for people to simply say, "Only one option here seems like the sane thing to do"? Mark Arsten (talk) 18:40, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - If this information is not suitable to be contained on other articles (e.g. Bert and Ernie, Sesame Street) then it's probably not worth being on Wikipedia. If the info is contained elsewhere then this article is basically a collection of trivia. ŞůṜīΣĻ¹98¹^Speak 18:35, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete merge wouldn't be appropriate as I'm not sure this material is approrpiate for inclusion in Wikipedia per WP:IINFO and WP:TRIVIA. Having references is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for inclusion of info, and there's not much I find here that merits being in the encyclopedia in any form. --Jayron32 04:04, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - in general, 'rumors about X' is a poor basis for an article (see e.g. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rumors about the September 11 attacks (2nd nomination)), since it just becomes a place to collect speculation and trivia. In this case, none of the rumors listed seem particularly notable in their own right; but in any case, any which are can be noted in other articles (like the Bert and Ernie ones in the Bert and Ernie article). I'm not convinced there's a need for this article at all. Robofish (talk) 13:29, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That was a totally different case. There is a page which covers all the sourced rumors for that already. 9/11 conspiracy theories This other page was apparently seen as useless, or just filled with unreferenced nonsense. Dream Focus 13:50, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If people are having trouble with the word "rumor" perhaps a different word could be used. Would calling it Misconceptions covered in the media related to Sesame Street make any difference? Dream Focus 13:50, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Nope. Different name, same concept. Basalisk ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 14:03, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that it does not offer anything that would be worthy of a separate article on its own.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 17:59, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. The subject (Sesame Street urban legends) has not in itself been addressed in depth by multiple citeable sources. This is in contrast to (e.g.) 9/11 urban legends/theories - a subject directly addressed by newspapers, books and films. ŞůṜīΣĻ¹98¹^Speak 18:26, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Articles are kept if they meet WP:GNG which this clearly does. Each item gets coverage. No sense making a separate article for each one of course, best to have them altogether. Most arguments against it seem to be WP:I don't like it. Dream Focus 18:55, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Uh, no. The argument against is that the article topic does not meet WP:GNG. Unlike 9/11 Conspiracy Theories, which taken as a topic is plainly notable, there is no evidence -- at least, none so far -- that the topic of "rumors and urban legends regarding Sesame Street" is notable. Mkat put it best. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 00:06, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Each of the items in this article (save possibly one) are already covered in other articles in Wikipedia. The Bert and Ernie points are discussed on the page for those characters (although the death of Ernie section could be beefed up in that article); the "Veggie Monster" thing is included in the Cookie Monster article; the HIV+ puppet is covered in Sesame Street international co-productions, and almost every word in the text of Takalani Sesame discusses the HIV+ puppet (not to mention three external links and the single reference). The only thing that doesn't seem to be covered elsewhere is the birth-control thing, which is a rather trivial subject, mentioned in a single page of a 226 page book which specifically focuses on Sesame Street. This appears to be an unneeded content fork. The related article Pop culture influenced by Sesame Street could use a lot of help and referencing (and some inbound links to de-orphan it) for those who want to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Sesame Street; perhaps some of the effort being expended here could be directed towards that article. Horologium (talk) 15:04, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I feel like while fairly silly, it does meet the notability standard. I could easily see myself looking for information on some of these here in the right situation.-- Alyas Grey : talk 23:05, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I'd also like to point out that the odd distribution of keep v delete votes reeks of astroturfing or a movement originating from elsewhere to force the deletion of an "unpleasant" article. -- Alyas Grey : talk 23:07, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Actually, it's on top of ANI as the result of a related discussion, so more people are seeing it. MSJapan (talk) 23:14, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Much of this comes off as NOTNEWS silliness if nothing else. There are only three items in the whole article, and as noted by Horologium above, the major ones are covered elsewhere. I would personally expect something "regarding topic A" to actually be in the article "topic A". Frankly, for a show that's been on TV in so many places for so many years and yet has generated all of two rumors of any substance whatsoever to a limited grouping is pretty much non-notable as a separate item. MSJapan (talk) 23:14, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete The article title and topic is WP:SYNTH, so it must be deleted. Unscintillating (talk) 03:56, 17 January 2012 (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.