Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tonfa 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 delete. ✗plicit 00:11, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tonfa in popular culture[edit]

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A largely unsourced "in popular culture" list that merely states every time the weapon has appeared in a piece of fiction. There are no sources currently in the article that actually discuss the overall topic of the depiction of tonfa in popular culture, and I was unable to find much in searches, so it fails WP:LISTN. As there is really no sourced information on the overall topic, there really isn't anything that should be merged to the main tonfa article. The Talk page states that the article was initially created to keep this information off the main tonfa article page, but as this is really nothing but rather indiscriminate trivia, the better solution would be to just not keep it on the encyclopedia at all. Rorshacma (talk) 18:08, 10 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Will you be coming back to clean up the main Tonfa article once the entries are inevitably added there again? This page has served to keep it out of there for many years janto (talk) 12:36, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Popular culture-related deletion discussions. Rorshacma (talk) 18:08, 10 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Swords in popular culture, Guns in popular culture, Pencils in popular culture, Cars in popular culture. There is a reason these are all red-linked, even though substantial articles with substantial sources could be created. Simply, we cannot have a list of every item which appears in popular culture. There is an infinite number of articles like this that could be created, with an uncountable number of potential entries. A tonfa is not an obscure enough item where it is only sparsely mentioned (in such a case, mentions could be made at the main tanfa page). Unless it is especially significant to a specific work, there is no merging necessary. ‡ El cid, el campeador ^talk 19:02, 10 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There would not be infinite entries: the current number is well within the countable range. One could argue that the significance of the tonfa relies on its presence in popular culture janto (talk) 12:36, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Page exists now for 10 years with 100+ edits by many people. Original intention was to keep these contributions of popular culture representation out of the main Tonfa article. It has functioned very well in this regard. If we delete this page, these will just again be scattered throughout that article.

What is deletion of this trying to accomplish?

- Janto — Preceding unsigned comment added by Janto (talk • contribs) 21:00, 10 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Per WP:WAF, pop culture trivia not backed by reliable secondary sources should be trimmed into a small prose summary, not dumped across multiple articles in the form of lists. Avilich (talk) 02:05, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

* It is dumped here into a 'single' article, not across multiple. There have been attempts in the past to combine everything into a prose summary, however entries are then just appended to the end making it a monstrosity. Expanding it into a list has been cleaner janto (talk) 12:36, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delete fails WP:LISTN. There is no encyclopedic value nor precedent of their use. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 01:19, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And yet, there are people that keep coming to wikipedia and adding to the list, so obviously its presence is valuable to some. janto (talk) 12:36, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand these kinds of attempts at deletion and what it is trying to accomplish. Is WP running low on disk space again? janto (talk) 12:36, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not a depository for random fan material. I could make a page like Comically large swords in popular culture and people would undoubtedly add their favorite shows and video games to the list. But that does not mean that the list is helpful. When would someone ever need a list of all the shows which feature tonfa? There is no practical application and it imparts no actual information. There is no significance, either. Having a tonfa featured is not a defining trait of these shows. So yes, people add to the list, but that proves nothing. If you are interested in fan material, there are places like wikia/fandom. ‡ El cid, el campeador ^talk 14:12, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't personally have a big problem with removing these entries, per se. However, my main reason for wanting to keep this page is that without it the main Tonfa page will suffer. I don't want to keep cleaning that up each time an excited fan goes there. This page has long served as a catch-all for those events. That said, I think one could argue that the appearance of a tonfa in these shows is supportive of the significance of the tonfa itself and without it, it would be significantly more obscure. janto (talk) 14:42, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Unsourced with little hope of other than primary sources, not an encyclopedic list. Geschichte (talk) 19:40, 16 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as per WP:TRIVIA and WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Suonii180 (talk) 01:30, 17 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Fails WP:NOTCATALOG and WP:WAF. Avilich (talk) 19:05, 17 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Listing every time X appears in fiction (or popular culture, or whatever) is what TV Tropes does, but Wikipedia is WP:NOTTVTROPES. The essay WP:CARGO has it right—fiction is not fact and collecting raw data does not produce analysis. That same essay makes another point which is relevant here: Moving bad content into a separate standalone article does not get rid of the bad content; wanting to keep the main article "clean" is not a valid reason for having an article like this one. If editors add examples to the main Tonfa article based on primary sources (or more likely no sources whatsoever), the proper course of action is to remove those examples per MOS:POPCULT.
I would have no objection to recreating this as a proper, encyclopaedic prose article about the topic—as was done for WP:Articles for deletion/Far future in fiction—in the event that sources that would allow us to do that while abiding by MOS:POPCULT emerge. None of the current content would be of any use for that, however, so there's no point in retaining this version. TompaDompa (talk) 23:52, 17 November 2021 (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.