Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Battle of Thermopylae 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 keep. After a rewrite, the reason for deletion nomination no longer applies.  Sandstein  21:00, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

Battle of Thermopylae in popular culture

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

As written, this is a terrible mess that fails multiple policies and guidelines (WP:IPC, WP:GNG, WP:NLIST, WP:INDISCRIMINATE,WP:TRIVIA, WP:OR, WP:V). It's pretty much a list of mostly random media that mention the battle, with no analysis (the twist this time is that lenghty quotations are provided for many classicsl mentions). What little there is, analysis-wise, is limited to a single poorly referenced sentence in the lead (" The sacrifice of the Spartans and the Thespians has captured the minds of many throughout the ages and has led to the creation of many cultural references as a result.", the ref is a reliable book but the page number is missing). My WP:BEFORE, however, does suggest this topic is potentially notable (sample sources:, , ) but given the state of the article, I think WP:TNT applies - if I was to rewrite this, I don't think I would use a single sentence or reference from the current mess, and as usual, keeping such a mess is likely only going to scare away any potential, serious contributors, who are not going to want to waste their time trying to rewrite this hopeless 95% ORish piece (which, btw, liberally treats its subject and contains unreferenced, of course, trivial claims such as "Asteroid 2782 Leonidas is named for the Spartan king." and "The name "Leonidas" passed into Russian as well as Ukrainian (shortened to "Leonid"), and remains a fairly common male name among the speakers of these languages. Among the prominent persons of that name are Soviet Union general secretary Leonid Brezhnev and Leonid Kuchma, president of the post-Soviet Ukraine."). So yeah, it even mixes its scope with topics such as the cultural reception of the name of the famous king who fought there, and others... Did I say this was a major mess? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 12:07, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Military, Popular culture,  and Greece. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  12:07, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  12:09, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete. This is blasphemy! This is madness!... Madness?    THIS! IS! LISTCRUFT!     Just like all the other "X in popular culture" lists, there's very little verifiable content and a lot of trivia. Wikipedia is not TV Tropes. (That totally needs to be an essay.) Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 14:39, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
 * @TenPoundHammer I may really write one :) Maybe we should collaborate. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:22, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Here you go: User:TenPoundHammer/Wikipedia is not TV Tropes Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 01:18, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
 * @TenPoundHammer What do you think about the rewrite? If you withdraw your vote we can close this. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:51, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete Some popular culture articles, despite failing WP:GNG, have salvageable information, but this one may as well be kicked into a hole because there is nothing pertinent to merge into the parent article. It would need a total rewrite to actually be notable. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 19:11, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Merge to Battle of Thermopylae post rewrite of the article. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 20:34, 24 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep, but prune the trivial mentions. The battle itself (not just random references to it) is the subject of numerous films, books and other works. That can be salvaged. Clarityfiend (talk) 20:32, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Update. I've done some weed whacking. Clarityfiend (talk) 20:59, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
 * @Clarityfiend Thanks, but I think all that remains is still trivial (a level in game x is based on the battle, etc.) and mostly unreferenced. Once we are done pruning the weed we will have just a sentence in the lead or so... (unless someone starts a rewrite using sources I found). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:30, 22 April 2022 (UTC)


 * Keep, but prune the trivial mentions. We all know the tactic: hive the unwanted and largely unsourced "In popular culture" section off into a separate article and then nominate it for deletion. Except that in this case this was done in 2007, and has continued to accumulate cruft for all that time. My fear is that if we delete it, cruft will migrate to the main article. Hawkeye7   (discuss)  20:50, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Is the addition of inappropriate content to the main article really a rationale to keep a seperate article? Surely it would be better just to remove any content that should be removed if and when it is added? AusLondonder (talk) 02:52, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * A separate article is justified when the content becomes so large as to be WP:UNDUE in the main article, or it simply makes the main article too large. Hawkeye7   (discuss)  04:45, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * The solution is to remove it, not split it off. I speak from experience having rewritten several lists of mentions into proper articles (ex. Earth in fiction, now a GA, now working on Venus in fiction, etc.). In many cases, a lot of the content, sometimes 100%, needed to go (TNT). If it can be preserved somewhere, it should not be on Wikipedia. Note that we recently deleted similar mess at Articles for deletion/Waterloo in popular culture, but it has been copied (years ago) to https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Waterloo_in_popular_culture . And it appears they also have a copy of this: https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae_in_popular_culture . So nothing will be lost when we prune this (again, best outcome would be for someone to rewrite this, but IMHO nothing is salvageable anyway, so deletion will only make a rewrite easier, so that anyone attempting to do, using reliable sources, so won't have to deal with this OR mess). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:27, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment: It appears that someone has started a . &#8213; Susmuffin Talk 10:37, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Abstain I endorse the removal of the old content of this article. User:力 (powera, π,  ν ) 21:59, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep conditional on retaining the prose format I have introduced (see this version). 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. I have therefore replaced the list with a proper prose article based on sources about the topic, much as with WP:Articles for deletion/Eco-terrorism in fiction, WP:Articles for deletion/Earth in science fiction (2nd nomination), WP:Articles for deletion/Space stations and habitats in fiction, WP:Articles for deletion/Supernovae in fiction, WP:Articles for deletion/Neptune in fiction, and Articles for deletion/Genies in popular culture (2nd nomination). As predicted, I did not keep any of the existing references or content (apart from the first sentence, which I rewrote so heavily I don't think it counts).On the more general issue, I think that if we delete it, cruft will migrate to the main article is a terrible argument for keeping articles like this (or rather, like the version of this that was nominated for deletion). Quoting again from the essay WP:CARGO: Moving bad content into a separate standalone article does not get rid of the bad content. If editors add cruft to the main Battle of Thermopylae article, the proper course of action is to remove the cruft per MOS:POPCULT. TompaDompa (talk) 14:08, 24 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Excellent job and I am fine withdrawing my nom, given that the article has been completely rewritten and TNT de-facto applied. Thanks! Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 11:32, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep per rewrites. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 15:06, 27 April 2022 (UTC)


 * 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.