Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cultural references to the novel The Catcher in the Rye


 * 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 TO DELETE. The raw total is 5-4 Delete over Keep, not counting RJH's comment as either. A virtual tie, so on to the arguments. The Delete commentors mainly make the points (1) it is cruft, and (2) [[WP:BHTT. But WP:BHTT is just an essay, it has limited standing; no more standing than the argument that the article serves as a flakcatcher. I don't know which of these arguments are true, and it is likely that they are both true. I see no real advantage to either side. That leaves this-is-cruft vs. no-it-ain't, again with only a slight advantage to the Delete. The WP:SUMMARY argument is successfully refuted, in my view. There's enough strength in both numbers and argument to the Delete point of view that I don't see this as a straight-out Keep, but not enough to close as Delete either. Herostratus 03:21, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Cultural references to the novel The Catcher in the Rye

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

Delete - indiscriminate list and directory seeking to capture every mention or appearance of the book in any fictional setting with no regard to the importance or triviality of the mention in the source material. Otto4711 17:10, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment &mdash; Deleting this page means that the main The Catcher in the Rye article will once again become a target for these cultural references. Probably not a good-enough reason to save this page though. &mdash; RJH (talk) 17:49, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I could not agree with you more that that is not a good enough reason and I strongly oppose merging any of this article into the main article for the novel. Otto4711 18:10, 10 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete yet another indiscriminate list that is full of information that cannot be verified. This is definitely OR and should be deleted as such. On a side note, what is the point of the article? There is no context given, just the list. --Cy ru s   An dir on   18:35, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree, in fact I've stated that point in popular culture afds before, but some people claim these lists are verifiable because you just need to watch the films/TV series/read the books to verify them. Not really practical though. Saikokira 01:35, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete Most of these examples are non-notable anyway, and the notable ones are already mentioned in the relevant articles (Lennon for example). Saikokira
 * Keep These articles operate as flack-catchers for the main article. Remarks above show misunderstanding of what WP:OR is if they mean the compilation of such a list (by one or many) is OR. It is not, although it would be if a thesis was added with unattributable (ie original)connections made between the items.  Just listing lots of items is not OR if they are individually ok.  So the nominator seems to be complaining that the article is not OR. Equally if material mentioning film/music/books is considered unverifiable because you might actually have to see/hear/read the source to verify it then a huge part of WP material is unverifiable.  Johnbod 04:02, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Flack catcher for the main article is a terrible reason for keeping an article. If the material is garbage in the main article then it's garbage in its own article. Trash should be taken out, not dumped into somebody else's "yard" by splitting it off into a shitty "...in popular culture" article. Otto4711 03:53, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep per WP:SUMMARY, which calls for a more detailed subarticle and a short summary section in the main The Catcher in the Rye article. The "see also" link in the main article is also okay. --Aude (talk) 04:04, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * WP:SUMMARY in no way support the existence of this article. That guideline deals with how to handle splitting off substantive sections from the main article. It does not mandate the keeping of a pile of junk information. Otto4711 03:57, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete, not a single one of these entries is actually important to the subject of Catcher in the Rye. Basically, this is a reverse directory of facts relating to Catcher in the Rye.  Some of the items (like Chasing Amy, for instance) are of importance to other topics and are mentioned in the other articles.  Some are too unimportant to mention even in the other article, like "Stephen Colbert once described a speech having every sentence end in a quote of The Catcher in the Rye."  The title of this article condemns it to permanent medioctrity: this is not even "The Catcher in the Rye in popular culture", no, the title sets up that this is for a list of examples, with no barrier to inclusion.  The Catcher in the Rye is an important and influential book, and describing its level of influence is a good idea, but listing all these examples is not.  Mango juice talk 14:29, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep and fix. Cultural references to a serious piece of literature like this are important enough to be kept (but the main article on the book is too long to stick them there). There are a finite number of such references that can be included in this article. bd2412 T 14:36, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. Delete all of these references and the work put into collating them because the list has some cruft in it?  No way!  If someone wants to clean it up and rename it to be a better list, then the way to do that is to go work with the existing contributors involved.  Afd should not be used as permission to do drive by shootings of articles you cant be bothered fixing. John Vandenberg 04:40, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * "Somebody put a lot of work into it" is not an excuse for an article that does not meet WP policies and guidelines. Articles get deleted every day that people have put work into. Do you have an argument that relates to the objections raised to this article specifically, or just the vague "I don't like it when people AFD stuff" talk? Otto4711 15:07, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete as a classic indiscriminate list lacking any sources. Some of the information is also original research. Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 00:13, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete - I tried to clean up the article by removing "references" that: one, were only mentionings of the book in otherwords; and two, original research. However, I found that I was more or less getting rid of the whole article. Rather than this indiscriminate list, the safest way to go about such cultural references is to keep them to the articles themselves: e.g., if there's an article about a song called "Random Title" that mentions Holden, put it in that one, rather than keeping this  list of such references.  Grace notes T  § 03:12, 17 April 2007 (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.