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. Majorly _{(o rly?)} 17:16, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fictional portrayals of the Japan Self-Defense Forces[edit]

Fictional portrayals of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Article was originally created as a laundry list for the ever growing amount of pop culture trivia accumulating on the main Japan Self-Defense Force article, which I felt detracted from the main point of the article. Several months later I fail to see how including every tangential reference to the JSDF in any game/anime/manga provides any additional insight into the JSDF or its place in society (there's already a section in the JSDF article for that). The list is fancruft at best and internal linkspamming at worst. Loren 04:53, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete This is eqivalent of mentioning all fictional portrayals of the NYPD or some such. There is no significant association since the JSDF is so large.--Dacium 05:21, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That would be Fictional portrayals of the NYPD. I think I slightly prefer FBI portrayal in the media as a model.

FrozenPurpleCube 06:05, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Which should also be nominated for deletion and moved to a category, which was my points kinda :-)--Dacium 07:03, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I think you missed my point, which was that the articles should be made like the FBI one. Believe it or not, there's quite a bit of good information on the NYPD in the media. For example this article tells quite an interesting story. And there are others. So, I would say this is information that should be on Wikipedia, just presented in a different form. At least for the NYPD. I have no idea about the JSDF, but I'm not Japanese so...I leave it to people who know better than I do. FrozenPurpleCube 07:19, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I totally agree the FBI article is fine. This is what the NYPD and JSDF articles should be. Not merely lists that could be categories.--Dacium 08:07, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I think a navigational list, like List of fictional portrayals of the NYPD (I moved it, since it's really a list) is fine. It's preferable to have lists to categories here, because of the tangential nature of the observation: we don't want to have articles with hundreds of categories, only really relevant ones. Mangojuice^talk 13:52, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - an indiscriminate list and directory seeking to capture any mention of the JSDF with no regard to how prominent or trivial that mention might be to the fiction from which the mention is drawn or the real world. Otto4711 06:20, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - a waste of time. Thanks for the nomination, Loren. John Smith's 09:52, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as trivia. Mangojuice^talk 13:21, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Japan-related deletions. -- Black Falcon 22:30, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep because delete would be worse: this article serves rather well in keeping this stuff out of the main text. If deleted people will start to add the pop-ref links into Japan Self-Defense Forces and the cycle will repeat itself over and over. The only lasting result could be that seriously minded maintainers of the main article will leave WP being annoyed by this. This is problem for all Category:In popular culture articles but currently there is no better solution than this kind of leaf articles. After (if) stable versions will be implemented there will be time to deal with "... in popular culture" texts. Pavel Vozenilek 19:16, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• The better solution is to exercise basic editorial vigilance and, when this kind of crap turns up in a main article, get rid of it instead of throwing up one's hands, sighing that there can't possibly be any way for it not to happen, and sluffing it off into a separate article to make it someone else's problem. Otto4711 22:56, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• keep I used to think this sort of article better deleted, but closer inspection of some topics shows the advisability of keeping in separated to enable more serious editing of the main article. DGG 22:29, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I once held the same opinion expressed by Pavel Vozenilek and DDG, that trivia articles helped by keeping fancruft out of serious articles. However, I now believe that the presence of such trivia lists only serves to encourage the adition of even more trivia, most of it only tangentially related. I believe the solution to this problem is not the creation of fancruft magnents like this one, but through the vigilance of editors watching the main article who can nip these things off at the bud. -Loren 23:08, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • I agree with Loren. Bad stuff is bad stuff: if it doesn't belong, it doesn't belong, and trash heaps like this article tend to collect junk without being monitored. I actually started a Wikipedia essay on the subject with some more detail: Wikipedia:"In popular culture" articles. Mangojuice^talk 04:10, 25 February 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.