Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Centaurs 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 no consensus. Toughpigs and Goldsztajn have provided examples of coverage of the topic in reliable sources, which most of the editors who !voted delete did not seem to consider. The fact that they are not currently in the article or that the writing is lacking is irrelevant to the notability of the topic (WP:NEXIST). Everyone seems to agree that the article needs editing and pruning. Pax:Vobiscum (talk) 17:09, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Centaurs in popular culture

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Totally unsourced and fails WP:POPCULTURE guidelines and WP:LISTN. Entirely a WP:OR example farm and unnecessary fork.

I am also nominating the following related pages for the same reason described in the rationale:

ZXCVBNM (TALK) 09:47, 23 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. ZXCVBNM (TALK) 09:47, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science fiction and fantasy-related deletion discussions. ZXCVBNM (TALK) 09:47, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Popular culture-related deletion discussions.   D r e a m Focus  13:42, 23 January 2020 (UTC)


 * KEEP/close and put in other venue We had ample debates on whether "in popular culture" articles should exist are not years ago and they were all kept. Don't go through nominating them a couple at a time and dragging things out with endless debate.  Just create a RFC somewhere about all of them at once. Search Wikipedia for "in popular culture", in quotation marks, and you get 34,969 results.  Some of these are articles and some are just sections of articles.  But this is a significant part of Wikipedia. Category:Topics_in_popular_culture   D r e a m Focus  14:09, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
 * "Too many exist to delete individually" has never been a valid argument, per WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. I'm not sure an RfC would succeed, because some are actually valid articles and not fancruft collections.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 17:59, 23 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete This seems to be original research of extracting the mentions directly from viewing the source material.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:43, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete This looks like a load of old pony to me.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 19:58, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. Both articles are in need of significant editing, but the centaur article clearly contains several appearances in fairly notable works of literature, which seem significant enough to warrant discussion and inclusion. Many of the other entries may be notable as well.  This nomination misapplies several policies in order to make it appear that the result is obvious: WP:Popculture does not discourage the existence of such articles, but clearly affirms that they can be perfectly valid articles, when properly conceived and maintained.  The fact that an article requires more or better sourcing, or lacks appropriate citations in the first place, is not a justification for deletion; articles for which appropriate sources can readily be located should never be deleted simply because nobody has added them.  WP:LISTN is also concerned with notability, not sourcing.  The nomination also seems to ignore the fact that works of literature (film, television, etc.) are perfectly valid as sources for their own contents, which fact alone calls into doubt whether WP:OR is relevant to this discussion.  WP:OR is mainly concerned with editors developing a synthesis or a novel hypothesis from sources that do not directly support it; not with failing to provide appropriate citations, or explain the significance of the facts cited, which is how it seems to be used by this nomination.
 * What should be added to this list is an explanation of the significance of centaurs in popular culture, or any available secondary sources discussing their appearances in the works cited. It isn't necessary that each individual mention be discussed in secondary sources, but there ought to be some secondary sources cited and discussed in the article, preferably both in the lead and at the beginning of some of the sections, or with particularly significant uses.  The list should also be trimmed to remove passing mentions or trivial references—what constitutes each may be debatable, but presumably some of the inclusions aren't particularly notable, along the lines suggested by WP:Popculture.  I.e. a character on The Simpsons being transformed into a centaur as part of the plot of an episode might be worth including, but a character mentioning a wild party attended by "centaurs, lapiths, and cyclopes" would not.  Such a reference ought to cite the particular episode (book, etc.) when possible, and this would be sufficient to establish that centaurs appear; but the article as a whole should still include secondary sources mentioning the use of centaurs in popular culture.  It is not necessary that each appearance in the list be bolstered by a secondary source.
 * But the bottom line is, this article appears to concern a notable subject, and presumably some secondary sources for that subject exist—pretty sure any book discussing the influence of Greek myth on the subsequent development of arts and literature would cover this topic to some extent. The policies cited affirm that articles of this type can and should exist, even though they have to conform to the same policies as other articles.  Articles should be deleted when they cannot be improved through better sourcing, trimming, organizing, or editing.  They shouldn't be deleted because they need a lot of work.  P Aculeius (talk) 14:08, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
 * They have been unreferenced for an entire decade. Hoping that it will be rewritten is not a reason to keep the article in its current state. I have absolutely no prejudice against rewriting the article later - but the current article must go, per WP:TNT.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 07:58, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
 * As far as I can see, none of the examples of WP:TNT apply here, the problems seem much less severe to me (and the primary sources are implicitly there, though they should be made clear, of course). As you seem to be particularly concerned about the problems, I invite you to spend the time to improve these articles that no author found in past years. Daranios (talk) 14:25, 26 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep per the arguments brought forth by P Aculeius. Daranios (talk) 20:32, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep per above. Agreed the article needs a good amount of sources. But it is not FUBAR IMO and WP:TNT is not a guideline but an essay. - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 09:54, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete - These should not be laundry lists of random appearances added by random users, but instead a discussion on the topic's overall usage in popular culture with major examples cited. The main article's section, while poor, is sufficient to cover the topic until such a time where it is proven that it's possible to actually do that for this topic. TTN (talk) 17:17, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Merge to centaur...there shouldn't be any arbitrary cutoff between ancient and modern popular culture. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 18:35, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters is one source which may help with the missing introductory section. It provides info about the role of centaurs in the olden days, but also has a short section about modern appearances. Similarly with the chimera. And if I have found one source, there are probably more. So again, I think the problems of this article are solvable. Daranios (talk) 20:21, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I'd say that should ultimately be explored in the main article first rather than keep this list for it to never be improved. No deadline applies to the creation of articles as well. We shouldn't be making articles before they're ready to stand on their own. I'm honestly unable to imagine the possible scope of Centaur when raised to a FA, but I feel it could easily handle four to six paragraphs on the topic as it currently stands. TTN (talk) 20:36, 26 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep per WP:NEXIST and WP:ARTN:
 * There are several pages about centaurs in Tracking Classical Monsters in Popular Culture by Liz Gloyn, Bloomsbury Publishing (2019).
 * There are also a couple pages in The Classical Tradition by Anthony Grafton et al, Harvard University Press (2010).
 * Also coverage in Mythical and Fabulous Creatures: A Source Book and Research Guide by Malcolm South, Greenwood Press (1987).
 * Zxcvbnm says "hoping that it will be rewritten is not a reason to keep the article in its current state", an argument which is not supported by WP:ARTN. The policy says: "Notability is a property of a subject and not of a Wikipedia article." As I demonstrated, there are reliable sources with significant coverage on the topic of centaurs in popular culture, and the fact that the article should be rewritten doesn't affect the notability of the subject. I've added the above sources as a "Further reading" section, so that people who want to improve the article have some resources to do so. -- Toughpigs (talk) 22:21, 26 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep per and WP:HEY. While AfD is not for cleanup, this listing has alerted us to an article that needs improving. Bearian (talk) 16:27, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
 * How does WP:HEY apply? That's for articles that have been significantly improved, and this one is still just a list of centaurs with no encyclopedic character. --Slashme (talk) 09:17, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Bobherry  Talk   Edits  20:37, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
 * prune and merge back to centaur What this list says is that centaurs are a common-as-swords trope in fantasy literature. Possibly there are a few cases where they play a central role and appear as significant characters (I'm thinking Harry Potter for one), but for instance in Narnia they are simply stock fabulous beasts; every mention of them is not worthy of note. Mangoe (talk) 21:54, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep: The article certainly needs major clean-up and work, but I am convinced by the sources provided by the keep voters that there is at least some amount of notability here and outright deletion would not be the best way. Aoba47 (talk) 01:52, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete - This is simply a list of trivia and not an analysis of Centaurs in popular culture. -- Whpq (talk) 00:55, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Procedural Note - there is no AFD notice for the Chimera in popular culture article -- Whpq (talk) 00:56, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep and clean up This article has issues, but WP:AFDISNOTCLEANUP, there are enough sources as already mentioned above to pass WP:GNG, also recall the WP:NEXIST guideline section. The biggest issue may be that a lot of those are tertiary like the compendia mentioned above and the specialty niche encyclopedias on literature, mythology, fantasy, and what-not that searches pull up, but those can be worked from. There are some calls for WP:TNT above, which is basically a claim that while the subject itself is notable it would be easier to start from scratch. However, upon a review of the article nothing wrong or hoaxy is jumping out, the existing content can be used as it can with some effort be sourced the key is that content be Verifiable, fixing articles in this case is usually faster compared to having to do the research all over again, and why remove attribution credit from those who've already started this. Merging back to Centaur is a viable option, as the pages are in the discretionary range from a size perspective. I don't see a compelling policy based reason to merge, however admittedly I don't see a compelling policy based reason not to merge either. Mostly it comes down to content organization and presentation. leaving separate is less work, especially given as these should both eventually be sizeable enough to require a separation which would then require a later spin-out, and perhaps a hair friendlier to some of our mobile viewers, so I come down narrowly on Keep instead of merge in this case. 2604:2000:8FC0:4:68BA:3B32:8613:8B6D (talk) 03:07, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete or redirect to centaur: WP:TNT applies. As it stands, it's a laundry list of every kind of popular media that contains a centaur. This kind of thing could possibly be recreated as list of centaurs, but if this is to be created as an encyclopedic article, it should discuss the position of centaurs in popular culture with some selected notable appearances, and should have references to reliable sources that discuss the role of centaurs in popular culture at length. --Slashme (talk) 09:12, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete. Dumping ground for unrelated trivia, largely unsourced. WP:NOTDIR, WP:NOTPLOT apply. No indication of notability of this as a topic. Chimera in popular culture would need a separate nomination as it has not received an AfD tag.  Sandstein   15:07, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Did you consider the four sources previously listed for the topic as a whole when forming the opinion "No indication of notability"? Daranios (talk) 21:15, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

--Goldsztajn (talk) 23:18, 14 February 2020 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Relisting comment: Yes, has sources, but how do they apply to the topic's notability?
 * Keep Content of the article is irrelevant for the purpose here - question is whether the subject is notable and whether the subject constitutes OR. Sources cited above establish that there is body of academic research examining the issue. Simple JSTOR search reveals multiple relevant articles which could be utilised to elaborate.    . I could potentially see some merit in a discussion on the renaming of the article (eg Centaurs in contemporary literature and art)...but that's not the point of AfD.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, ミラP 02:26, 15 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Centaur with a possible light merge. Sources show that there have been discussion regarding the use of centaurs in modern art/literature/etc.  That is a valid topic.  What the sources do not support is a massive, indiscriminate list of trivia, which is what this "article" is.  Without all of the cruft, the topic could easily be incorporated into the main Centaur article without necessitating a WP:SPLIT into a separate article.  Rorshacma (talk) 03:16, 15 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. Centaurs are a well-known mythological creature and have been extensively referenced in literature and movies etc. —МандичкаYO 😜 12:23, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
 * That is more an argument to keep centaur than centaurs in popular culture. If this article contained any serious treatment of the impact and relevance of centaurs in popular culture, that would be a different case, though. --Slashme (talk) 12:45, 16 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment : how do they apply to the topic's notability? - because they are independent RS examinations of the centaur in popular culture. : nobody disputes that the article needs clean up, but AfD is not the place for that.--Goldsztajn (talk) 01:00, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
 * This isn't just about cleanup: the article as it stands has no content except a list of trivia. Compare it for example with Macbeth in popular culture. There, the topic is discussed in detail, including its impact and relevance, beyond just a bare listing. This article, however, has no encyclopedic relevance. It's simply an indiscriminate collection of information, which is expressly something that Wikipedia is not. --Slashme (talk) 08:45, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
 * As I have already said above: The examples mentioned in WP:TNT as reasons for deletion rather than improvement seem much more serious than the fact, the no special criteria for what to list here and what not have been applied. The fact that secondary sources have been found in a few instances shows that the current state of the article already contains information worth retaining. For what reasons should WP:TNT apply here? Daranios (talk) 20:11, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
 * It's not just that there are no clear inclusion criteria, it's that the article at the moment is just a listing of characters in popular media who happen to be centaurs. That makes it an indiscriminate collection of information. There's no discussion of the topic or its cultural relevance. Anyone who wanted to write a proper article about the topic would have to start from 0. --Slashme (talk) 20:16, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
 * WP:NEXIST says "Notability requires only the existence of suitable independent, reliable sources, not their immediate presence or citation in an article." WP:ARTN says "If the source material exists, even very poor writing and referencing within a Wikipedia article will not decrease the subject's notability." This is a badly-written article on a notable subject. If people are concerned about the writing in this article, then they should make edits and improve it, using the sources that have been provided in this discussion. -- Toughpigs (talk) 20:30, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I have to concur with ; conflating content with subject is not the point of AfD. --Goldsztajn (talk) 21:22, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
 * My problem is not with the quality of the writing. It's with the fact that at the moment the article has the following text: "Centaurs appear often in popular culture." and "Centaurs have appeared in many places in modern fiction, and may be regarded as a fantasy trope. In modern literature differing views of centaurs vary with the author." and beyond that consists of a list of media containing centaurs as characters. There's nothing to save in the current article. It needs to be written from scratch. --Slashme (talk) 15:40, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Compare to Macbeth in popular culture, which you have suggested yourself. That article contains sentences like e.g. "A cyberpunk version of Macbeth titled Mac appears in the collection Sound & Fury: Shakespeare Goes Punk." That's just the same as here "Centaurs based on the mythical creatures appear throughout the editions of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game as a monster or a race, with variants in different campaign settings." Instances of appearances in popular culture in my opinion are just as much a part of a good "...in popular culture" article as the (here still missing) analytical introduction. The question can be, if all, or which of the many instances provided here should stay, but some should stay to get a good article. So there are parts to save, and it would be easier to improve that article than to write a good one from scratch. Daranios (talk) 16:27, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, that article lists appearances in pop culture, but as part of a contextualisation of the topic, whereas this article does nothing other than list appearances in pop culture. It's pure trivia, while the Macbeth article is a discussion of the topic with examples. --Slashme (talk) 09:17, 21 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Clear keep -- this is a bad use of AFD to attempt WP:TNT outside a good reason for TNT: clean up the article-- contemporary treatment of centaurs, per the sources brought by this discussion, represent a substantial topic outside of their historical treatment. Sadads (talk) 03:40, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
 * See my response above: the "article" at the moment contains two sentences of prose which say nothing substantive, and a list of media containing centaurs. There's nothing to clean up. It needs to be written from scratch. --Slashme (talk) 15:40, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
 * That's not the definition of "substantive". You mean that they're not substantial, i.e. bulky, not that they don't set forth any facts.  It's true that they're somewhat generic, but they introduce the topic.  You want something meatier?  Then write it—don't just try to dynamite the article because you regard all of the examples as unimportant.  Individually they may be unimportant, but collectively they show just how influential the theme has been.  A bare list still has value to the extent that you can use it to develop the article, find examples, use them to improve it.  Simply deleting it means losing a host of examples that might be useful to readers as-is, and certainly could be made more useful with work.  Your solution would prevent that from happening—if you're not willing to improve the article, I can't imagine you making a new one from scratch.  If there's so little here, surely it would be easier to revise and improve it.  Plenty of experienced editors have said that they see value and potential in this article, so why are you so determined to delete it entirely?  P Aculeius (talk) 14:20, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for telling me what I meant, but you're wrong. I really did mean that the two sentences don't say anything substantive. I wasn't saying that they were too short or not bulky enough, but in fact that they didn't set forth any facts. The lead paragraph of the article says that centaurs appear in pop culture, which is what the title of the article already says, and the second sentence says that they appear in fantasy literature, dubiously claiming that they're a "trope". That is not substantive. --Slashme (talk) 09:14, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, those are by definition facts stated by the article, so it clearly says something "substantive". Whether the word "trope" is correct—or appropriate—is another matter, but the statement that centaurs are a trope of fantasy literature is again, "substantive".  Your entire argument confuses the question of whether the article is notable with whether it's well-written: basically you're just arguing that the article should be deleted because it isn't very good, which as several editors have already pointed out, isn't a valid reason for deleting it.  Your rationale seems to be that it can't be improved, but several editors have pointed out the availability of reliable sources that could be used to improve it, and ways in which individual items could be properly cited.  All we know about your argument is that you don't want to improve it.  So if you don't intend to improve the article, why waste time making an argument for deletion based on policies that don't support deletion?  P Aculeius (talk) 14:11, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
 * At the moment it isn't a badly-written article, it's a collection of trivia. It doesn't absolutely have to be deleted, it's also OK to redirect it to the main article until such time as someone decides to put in the effort to write an article on the topic, and that way this stuff can stay in the history for a later editor to use. Another reasonable option would be to rename the article to list of centaurs and manage it like any other list. --Slashme (talk) 09:12, 24 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete. A list of random mentions of centaurs. One should not keep such an obvious WP:OR. Wikisaurus (talk) 10:38, 25 February 20
 * The primary sources are there implicitely in the text, so for the most part we can be pretty sure this is not original research. They should be made explicity by directly giving the references, and ideally adding secondary sources, but that's a matter of improving formatting rather than WP:OR. To make this even clearer, please Wikisaurus have a look at the Futurama and Dungeons & Dragons entries at the beginning of that AfD. According to your assessment, these should be "obvious WP:OR". If you look at these entries now you see that they have been provided with secondary and/or primary sources references, proving that they were not OR in the first place. Daranios (talk) 14:35, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Agreed, clearly not original research—works of literature, music, film, television, etc. are perfectly valid as sources for their own contents. They just need to be cited appropriately, and the fact that citations aren't specific enough isn't a valid reason for deletion—citations can easily be improved.  P Aculeius (talk) 15:54, 25 February 2020 (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.