Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Censorship of music


 * 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. The "delete" side makes the uncontested and strong argument that this is basically an OR essay. In view of that, it isn't enough for the "keep" side to assert that the topic is important and notable - that may well be the case, but it does not address the arguments for the deletion of the content as it currently exists. I must therefore give the "keep" opinions less weight and close this with a deletion, but this does not prevent a sourced, more competent recreation of the article.  Sandstein  07:40, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Censorship of music

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

There are a host of problems here. The article is basically a series of assertions and alleged examples with no sources; it's been tagged as deficient in citations for 8 years, original research for 6 years, irrelevant examples for two years; no effort whatsoever has been made to improve the situation, and the article seems, to me, an unsalvageable essay best suited for someone's personal website. --jpgordon&#x1d122;&#x1d106; &#x1D110;&#x1d107; 14:57, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:NOTESSAY. MereTechnicality   ⚙  15:01, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Weak keep Whatever the problems with the article -- and there are problems to be sure -- it's a valid main article for Category:Censorship of music, even with the flaws. Also the tag bombing of the article, section by section, which seems to have come out of a period of edit warring on this topic, is among the host of problems. Whatever the state of the article, the topic is notable, much of the article may still benefit to readers looking for an overview of the subject, even in the state it's in. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 16:09, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I've removed the redundant WP:TAGBOMBing. Not all sectional tags, just the most obvious case where  had been applied again and again, when the article is clearly tagged already at the top as requiring more sources. The article is still abundantly, even lavishly tagged, even with my edit. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 16:22, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Music-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 16:09, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Weak delete. We need an article about censorship in music. There are a ton of sources out there; googling "censorship in music -wikipedia" provides a start for scholarly and journalistic articles. This, however, is little more than a poorly sourced list of examples of and anecdotes about alleged censorship (including things like corrections of copyright violations being called censorship.) --jpgordon&#x1d122;&#x1d106; &#x1D110;&#x1d107; 16:52, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep - Initially I was for deletion, but I've changed my mind. There is some good content about the motivations / history of music censorship, but on the whole as it stands right now it's just a long list of individual examples. Best to take the good parts and cut out the rest, but we shouldn't get overzealous here. This is almost certainly an encyclopedic topic and so deletion would just be kicking the can down the road for someone else to come make the article later. Pishcal (talk) 17:55, 15 February 2017 (UTC) Original judgment was poor. Refraining from !voting. Pishcal (talk) 19:26, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Weak keep, because I do concur with Pishcal that the article's subject IS important, the article needs to be referenced properly to have value, and if it had not been for all those years then maybe it would be best just to let go of it and start from scratch. --Ouro (blah blah) 19:16, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   18:14, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete - lacks WP:RS - written like an essay.  Dr Strauss   talk  19:15, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Weak Delete - I agree with what several other people have already said - the subject itself is definitely notable, however this particular article on it is terribly written. However, I would argue that its terrible to the point of being un-salvageable.  The vast majority of the information here is completely unsourced, making most of it OR.  On top of that, many of the few sources that are present are not usable, as they are unreliable things such as blog posts and youtube videos.  The entire article would pretty much need to be completely rewritten from scratch, and until that happens, I feel that it would be better just to delete the existing article, rather than having a terrible article sitting here until it is rewritten.  64.183.45.226 (talk) 21:14, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
 * keep Although I agree it lacks sources, a quick glance at some search engines reveals much of it is sourcable. 79.67.72.139 (talk) 23:01, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete As with any article on censorship, it should include cases where music works were banned because they were "considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions". This is not the case with this article. The works described either underwent Bowdlerization for release to a wider audience, their would-be censors targeted a relatively few words of the lyrics and left the rest, or the music artists themselves practiced self-censorship. In some cases the "censored" version does not seem to be less offensive than the original. One of the examples mentioned involves the change of a lyric from "anal sex" to "bestial sex". Dimadick (talk) 12:27, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Weak Delete It's an essay. Unsure if article can be rewritten to fix this. I think the best route is to take usable parts into censorship as needed. South Nashua (talk)
 * Weak Keep. Article topic is likely to be encyclopedic, the issue here is a lot of the content isn't. I support keeping on the basis that a lot of the superfluous content is retrenched and the essay-like tone is taken out. Ajf773 (talk) 19:17, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep – Deletion is definitely not cleanup. Being the main article for a category definitely reinforces my point of view. The subject of the article is encyclopedic, despite the tone similar to an essay. The arguments presented by the advocates for the deletion of this prove unpersuasive. The reason that I marked strong in here is because of the fact that GNG is easily met, a shown by  . I thoroughly encourage keep advocates to strengthen their !votes and for proposers of deletion to reconsider.  J  947  05:22, 3 March 2017 (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.