Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Butterfly effect 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, I would've basically offered a vote here, but the overall consensus shows No Consensus for any particular conclusion whether Delete or Keep thus closing until and whenever someone wants to reconsider (NAC). SwisterTwister  talk  18:11, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Butterfly effect in popular culture

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Article exists as an example farm in prose for about eight years. Very poorly referenced - none of the references are actually valid with regard to the significance or cultural impact of the work they're citing - they merely affirm the work exists. Filled with original research. Removing all uncited and poorly-cited material will result in an empty article. The only decent information in the article is the external link to the Boston Globe, which can be easily incorporated into butterfly effect. BrightRoundCircle (talk) 13:05, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Arts-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:17, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science fiction-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:17, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Popular culture-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:17, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:17, 1 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete. This example farm belongs on TV Tropes or Wikia.  It's difficult to research this topic because any searches return huge amounts of hits for The Butterfly Effect (2004).  Restricting the searches, it's possible to find citations for individual media properties (e.g.,, ).  However, I don't really see coverage of the concept itself such that it would satisfy WP:LISTN.  It's possible I gave up a bit too early, though.  The one good source can be moved to the appropriate article, as above. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 19:53, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep Meets all the appropriate criteria for a spin-out article per WP:IPC, and the alternative to deletion would be to merge the content back into the main article (!). Nothing against cleanup, sourcing, and citation (which every Wikipedia article needs), but the nominator doesn't appear to understand WP:IPC and why this article is better than the alternative, and AFD is not cleanup. Jclemens (talk) 20:01, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
 * WP:IPC is an essay. WP:LISTN is a guideline.  It doesn't really matter what essays this article satisfies. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 20:05, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
 * As mentioned above, this is not an article cleanup request; cleanup will result in an empty article, redirecting back to butterfly effect, effectively deleting the article. Deletion is proposed because the article has maintained poor citation and original research from its inception, going on eight years now. Sometimes no article is better than a bad article. BrightRoundCircle (talk) 00:09, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, but you appear to be under the impression that simply arguing with everyone who disagrees with you is helpful in an AfD. Your arguments are not compelling arguments for deletion, in that you don't cite insurmountable problems that cannot be fixed through regular editing. Jclemens (talk) 06:56, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
 * An article without sources showing notability is pretty much the most important test for deleting an article. Everything else is hand-waving. I'm sorry that me being involved in this discussion is "not helpful", but as the proposer I feel like I need to discuss why this proposal is correct. For example, when you claim that this proposal is meant to fix the article when in fact this proposal is because there are no sources showing notability, bar one, which isn't a compelling reason for an entire article filled with original research. BrightRoundCircle (talk) 17:06, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
 * WP:DEL8: "Reasons for deletion include, but are not limited to, the following: 8. Articles whose subjects fail to meet the relevant notability guideline."
 * WP:GNG: "'Significant coverage' addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content."
 * In case this wasn't clear from the proposal and my comment above. BrightRoundCircle (talk) 17:12, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
 * For the sake of argument I have cleaned up the article of all original research. This has no effect on notability; with the exception of one source, none of the sources discuss butterfly effect in popular culture. They may mention it to the effect of "the butterfly effect is part of popular culture" but that's it. That's a trivial mention. BrightRoundCircle (talk) 17:40, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Your version can be seen here. I've reverted your blanking of much of the article, which isn't good form for an article you want deleted while the AFD is still pending. postdlf (talk) 18:04, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
 * This is not blanking, it's removing original research. Good form or not, AfD does not preclude editing the article, and no-original-research is a cornerstone policy of Wikipedia. BrightRoundCircle (talk) 18:14, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
 * And the extent to which this article is OR in whole or in part is much of what is being discussed here. OR is not what you say it is; it's what a consensus of editors says it is. You have one view; other editors have a different view. The AFD is still open so the consensus has not been determined. postdlf (talk) 18:17, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Frankly it looks like other contributors are free to remove uncited material from the article but I'm not. One way or the other the amount of OR in the article is independent of its notability, and removing OR from the article should not influence this deletion discussion in any way. BrightRoundCircle (talk) 18:38, 10 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep - it's too long to be merged into Butterfly effect and is a topic notable enough for Wikipedia. Instead tag it with "improve references". --Fixuture (talk) 19:41, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 13:08, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
 * If it's notable, why is there only one good citation after eight years? Notability should be established, not assumed. BrightRoundCircle (talk) 14:50, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Volunteers had other things to do. I've got the number of refs up to 23 already, and there are plenty more for anyone who needs some healthy exercise. Sources include the British Film Institute and the mathematician Ian Stewart, by the way. Notability depends on the existence of sources, not what may happen to be in the article already. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:47, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
 * British Film Institute citation. Zero discussion of the significance of the butterfly effect in popular culture, worthless citation that merely says "this movie exists". Ian Stewart citation. Slightly better! Discusses the butterfly effect! Doesn't discuss its significance in popular culture. Sadly, the overwhelming majority of the references you added are like the first one - merely state a work of fiction exists. A few of them - two by my count - actually discuss the butterfly effect but don't actually refer to its significance in popular culture. One citation, which I highlighted in my proposal, is actually good. I didn't want to edit-war over the citations you added, but I have tried to show you that they are against Wikipedia policy. The references have to show that the work (and in this article, specifically the "butterfly effect" plot device) has significance over culture, other works, and so on. BrightRoundCircle (talk) 16:55, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete. Entirely original research. None of the citations are valid. Nothing here is encyclopedic so nothing here needs to be merged anywhere. —Prhartcom ♥ 04:14, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, st170e talk 01:25, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep - to my own surprise, as I'm no lover of pop listcruft. However, the fact that TV episodes and pop groups, not to mention the film Le Battement d'ailes du papillon, have actually been named Butterfly Effect is undoubtedly relevant, and could certainly be reliably cited. I've taken the trouble to read the Boston Globe article, and have used it to update Butterfly effect; I agree it's the most reliable source in the current article, but that means that the rest of the text needs better sourcing, not wholesale deletion. The topic is clearly notable, as popular culture was for a time fascinated by the butterfly effect, and this was sufficiently documented in a wide range of sources. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:14, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
 * You'd do good by finding these sources instead of merely assuming they exist. That would make the article notable and make it far easier to remove the listcruft without appearing to delete the entire article. BrightRoundCircle (talk) 13:09, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Should have said, I have already added some; and I've cleaned up a substantial portion of the cruft, too. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:11, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
 * A bit off-topic to the deletion process: please don't add references that merely show that a work exists (for example this edit among many others). That's not helping; it adds more trivial mentions that are not significant. BrightRoundCircle (talk) 14:06, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
 * No, it's directly relevant. When the pop culture point in question is "Musician ABC composed a song named 'Butterfly Effect'" then a proof that ABC did indeed publish just such a song is exactly what is required. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:11, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
 * MOS:POPCULT: "Unfortunately, these sections are frequently just lists of appearances and mentions, many of them unencyclopedically trivial." An article is not a list of trivial references. Sticking a bunch of references that say "this work exists" is not encyclopedic. BrightRoundCircle (talk) 14:31, 8 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep The article meets the appropriate guidelines for a split article. And as sourcing is concerned, films and other types of media can be used as sources about themselves. That is clearly the case here. JOJ  Hutton  14:07, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
 * MOS:POPCULT: "Unfortunately, these sections are frequently just lists of appearances and mentions, many of them unencyclopedically trivial." An article is not a list of trivial references. Sticking a bunch of references that say "this work exists" is not encyclopedic. The article is exactly non-encyclopedic because it's a collection of references that say "hey, here's a work that's called/references Butterfly Effect". BrightRoundCircle (talk) 14:31, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
 * But it doesn't any more. It combines mention of a few such works and pop groups with analysis, now starting to be properly cited, of the manner in which such works make use of the concept. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:33, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
 * "combines with analysis" is original research. This is why the references have to show significance, and not merely that the work/person/object exists. BrightRoundCircle (talk) 14:37, 8 June 2016 (UTC)


 * FYI, the nominator is proposing to change the guideline to support his interpretation at Village pump (policy). postdlf (talk) 18:08, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
 * The deletion proposal is about the notability of one article. The policy is about the content of thousands. MOS:POPCULT is not about notability, it's about the content of articles. BrightRoundCircle (talk) 18:17, 10 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep Reasonable subject for an article, covered well. Artw (talk) 04:48, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete or very selective merge. The article should be a discussion on the topic of the subject in popular culture. It's currently just a laundry list of every trivial mention people can find. Properly sourced and devoid of original research, you could probably get a nice three paragraph section in the main article highlighting the most prolific examples. I think purging and starting from scratch would be the best option. TTN (talk) 17:22, 14 June 2016 (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.