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. Mark Arsten (talk) 19:32, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nikola Tesla in popular culture (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Huge, INDISCRIMINATE article/list of seemingly every mention of Nikola Tesla in popular culture. The lack of a cohesive topic means that this article is a hoarder's paradise of loosely related trivia and ephemera. The article is inadequately sourced, and was apparently created when the trivia was removed from the Nikola Tesla article.

It seems that the best way to acknowledge Tesla's role in pop culture, would be to mention it in the individual articles for each song, book, comic, video game, podcast, board game, tournament, Youtube video, film, play, radio and television program. Then a category could be used to tie them together.

While I suspect this deletion nomination will go over like a lead balloon, I at least wanted to open it for a broader community discussion, if for no other reason than to get ideas on how to improve the article, perhaps by eliminating the least notable entries. - MrX 21:41, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Popular culture-related deletion discussions. - MrX 22:01, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete Original Research since this type of list is created by WP editors discovering references and adding them to the list, not by secondary sources. Tesla is a a medium-stature figure in the public imagination, but think about the lists that could be generated by Albert Einstein or Charles Darwin, or for that matter Jesus in popular culture. -BigJim707 (talk) 22:59, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• KEEP Tesla is commonly used historical character who has appeared in numerous fictional settings, this list has numerous reliable third party sources. Yes, it has been kept seperate from the HISTORICAL page on Tesla, which is appropriate. It's a good thing to keep history and fiction seperate, but that doens't make an article about a fictional character invalid. Any historical character with numerous fictional appearances would be due equal coverage. Nothing wrong with that.Mathewignash (talk) 23:06, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are sources: 30 for an article that has has 165 list entries. - MrX 23:44, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • The article has 30 sources IN THE REFERENCES SECTION, however, almost every mention of an appearance mentions the source movie, comic or TV show by name... those are additional RELIABLE SOURCES, even if they are not tagged properly. This is a job for cleanup, not deletion.Mathewignash (talk) 02:45, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • To clarify, I never said that lack of footnotes was the reason for the nomination, I was simply mentioning the article is lacking in citations. Each of these entries should have a (preferably, secondary) source. Blue links are not sources per WP:CIRCULAR. Nonetheless, the reason for the nomination is that the article is an indiscriminate collection of information, lacking cohesion. - MrX 03:03, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Obviously a notable topic. There are lots of sources and bluelinks. The task is to improve not destroy. AfD is not cleanup. --Arxiloxos (talk) 00:09, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:16, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Nomination makes a WP:VAGUEWAVE at WP:INDISCRIMINATE, which actually says nothing whatsoever about this topic. In fact, the topic seems a textbook case of what WP:IPC was designed to cover. Jclemens (talk) 03:59, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Concur fully with the OP. These lists are exactly the articles we need less of. Articles that list every time a subject has appeared in any manner of fiction, without regard to how important the appearances are, are not encyclopedic and shouldn't be tolerated, as toleration implies acceptance of this style of "article writing". WP:INDISCRIMINATE as well as WP:TRIVIA are applicable. We can fix this either by deleting the entire article, or by highlighting 95% of it with our mouse pointers and hitting the delete key on our keyboards. I would prefer the former, although the community seems to prefer the latter as "cleanup" as an alternative to "deletion". ThemFromSpace 06:56, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep but clean up. Tesla has appeared as a character in several books, films and television shows and those are worth covering. The 'allusions' and one line mentions should go in most cases as this seems to have become a list of every mention of Tesla (sometimes just the word). --Michig (talk) 08:04, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per Gene93k, Jclemens, and Michig. Well-documented topic, and any OR can be cleaned up. Bearian (talk) 17:05, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Speedy keep. Please don't use AfD as an alternative to cleanup discussions. Perhaps we need an "Articles for review" pipeline for that. – SJ + 02:44, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  I guess I wasn't clear in my nomination. This is not a cleanup discussion, but deletion discussions do frequently include ideas on how to improve articles, so I'm invoking IAR, thank you very much. This is a discussion about deleting this article because "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information". This article is a prototypical indiscriminate collection of information, that does not help the reader gain an understanding of anything because there is no central, cohesive, encyclopedic theme. Please note that I did not use the 'c' word anywhere in these proceedings.- MrX 03:34, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep for reasons stated above. References can be added per cleanup, and I agree that it is a noteworthy topic. Appropriate, as noted above, to be separate from the historical article, but valuable in itself. Relying on the mention in each individual movie/book/etc. would not serve the same purpose as this article, which is to provide a larger picture of his influence on popular culture. Caseylf (talk) 00:53, 22 March 2013 (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.