Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Culture of Akron, Ohio


 * 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. MuZemike 17:26, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Culture of Akron, Ohio

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The article is just a complete list of mostly unsourced trivia. Not necessary and not informative. §hep Talk  09:53, 12 December 2009 (UTC) <--- I think it needs far more than basic improvements, it needs to be completely redone. No one has been able to justify any of the info in this article as encyclopedic. It's one thing to have a poorly written article, it's another to have an article that A) doesn't even cover what the title says, and B) is full of trivia. Should there be an article titled "Culture of Akron, Ohio"? Yes, but that again should be an excuse to allow loads of unsourced trivia to remain on Wikipedia. I would support a redirect or a complete rewrite...it's not delete or no; I just think deleting and starting over is better than having what is currently here since it really doesn't add much to understanding Akron. It's not about deadlines; it's about what is here right now despite numerous tags and Wikipedia policies. --JonRidinger (talk) 23:18, 13 December 2009 (UTC) <---Comment: there's no time limit, of course, but unless the new article has sufficient content (enough to warrant a separate article) and is properly sourced, then we're just back to square one. Doesn't mean it has to be a GA or FA off the bat, but it should at least have some basic parts present. Remember, the main issues here are sourced content and encyclopedic content vs. trivial content (just because something has a source doesn't mean it's encyclopedic). I personally think the culture section in the Akron, Ohio article is sufficient coverage of the topic and a separate article isn't needed *at this point*. --JonRidinger (talk) 17:14, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Ohio-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 13:40, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete: per Stepshep's comments. Most of the info falls under WP:FANCRUFT, even the sourced info.  Vast majority of article lists every appearance or mention of the city of Akron in books, video games, TV shows, and movies and actually explains very little of the culture (which is not notable anyway) of Akron, Ohio.  --JonRidinger (talk) 16:58, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Akron, Ohio — we have plenty of valid "Culture of ___" articles, so this is a likely search target. Nyttend (talk) 18:38, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. The article needs some work. It has references, but no inline citations, and the lead is too long. However, I think it's appropriate to keep this one, as per WP:SPLIT. The Akron, Ohio article is very long right now, so splitting the culture section into its own page is appropriate, according to WP:SPLIT. There are plenty of articles that do this, like Ann Arbor, Michigan (an FA) and Culture in Ann Arbor, Michigan, or San Francisco (another FA) and Culture of San Francisco. The problems Culture of Akron, Ohio has can be improved (the page could be fitted with a  Template:No footnotes  tag and a  Template:Expand  tag to draw attention to this need) but they aren't insurmountable problems, and certainly don't warrant deletion. —  Hunter  Kahn  ( c )  20:08, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: This doesn't need expanded it needs completely rewritten. One of the biggest reasons the Akron, Ohio article is so long is because it too contains an enormous amount of fancruft and other "interesting" but largely irrelevant triva. And this article has had several tags on it for months with little or no action.  --JonRidinger (talk) 07:12, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * If it needs to be rewritten, then it needs to be rewritten. Not deleted. There is no deadline for the improvements. Wikipedia is a work in progress. If your argument is that it's not a well written article, that's one of the very arguments to avoid during deletion debates. —  Hunter  Kahn  ( c )  14:34, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * If it can be rewritten in the style of the San Francisco article I'd be real happy. The trick is now figuring out how to get there.  --Beirne (talk) 17:17, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: My argument is that it's almost completely unsourced, meaning the info shouldn't even be here, not that it's simply a poorly written article (which it is). And as I said, it's largely trivial as opposed to encyclopedic.  --JonRidinger (talk) 18:48, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Rename: The unique part of the article is the list of appearances of Akron in movies and TV and maybe the Literature section. This belongs in an article like "Akron in popular culture".  The rest of the article is just information that is already in the main Akron article or in List of people from Akron, Ohio, so along with the renaming the article everything not in the Literature or "Movie and television series appearances" sections should be deleted.  At that point some editing is due on the remaining lists, but that will be a different topic.  --Beirne (talk) 15:39, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: My only problem with a popular culture article is just that they are touchy because they quickly become, like this, a list of trivia and lack encyclopedic content. Think about all the appearances cities like New York, Paris, London, Los Angeles, etc. appear in different forms of media (books, TV, movies, etc.).  Why should we have an article that describes a largley unknown city's every appearance when we certainly wouldn't do it for a larger and more widely known city?  --JonRidinger (talk) 18:48, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I understand that popular culture articles tend to become junk collections, but they are tolerated in Wikipedia and there are some guidelines for them. Moving the "in popular culture" to its own article, like was done for San Francisco, would let that article be treated on its own terms and clear the general culture article for rebuilding. --Beirne (talk) 22:21, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. I agree with Hunter and disagree with Jon, many inventions like materials, objects, foods, techniques, and etc. that are used in American and also International culture today.--Threeblur0 (talk) 02:18, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: I would hope the article's creator would want to keep it. That argument might hold water if the article in question actually covered some of that.  Instead it focuses on trivia and virtually every appearance of mention of Akron in media, so falls under WP:TRIV.  When I think of culture, I think of things like institutions and traditions unique to a certain area or unique ways of doing something, not a list of media appearances in obscure books, TV shows, movies, and even video games.  --JonRidinger (talk) 07:12, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. It's a city of 200k... stands to reason that there can be subarticles. If the current one is mostly trivia, needs references, etc. that's a reason to edit the article, not to delete it. This isn't Brittanica... we don't delete everything that isn't ready to be published. --Sancho Mandoval (talk) 05:05, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: but at the same time we also need to have sources. This article has been tagged since August for sources as it currently has 5 and even those are sourcing what is mostly trivia over encyclopedic material.  It should never have been created with just 5 sources to begin with, not to mention numerous spelling and grammatical errors.  This isn't Britannica, but it's still an encyclopedia, not a collection of trivia.  I'm not opposed to sub-articles for Akron, even a Culture article, but here I think we need to start over.  If that can be done without completely deleting the article, then go for it.  --JonRidinger (talk) 07:12, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * So it should be deleted because it was created with spelling errors and didn't have 6+ sources? That's just not the way Wikipedia works... Wikipedia is a work in progress. Go through any article that's decent now and chances are it sucked for long periods of its history... and it might still suck if people had spent their time trying to delete it rather than fix it. --Sancho Mandoval (talk) 13:41, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The problem is more than spelling errors and sources. The first part of the article is almost all information that is either in the main article on Akron or in List of people from Akron, Ohio.  The second is really an "in popular culture" list, for which I have added a template.  So really almost none of the article belongs here.  One solution would be to delete everything except for the appearances in movies and TV and rename the article something like "Akron in popular culture".  That article would then need some editing but at least it would be focused.  We wouldn't be losing anything as the rest of the material is in other articles or can be easily added to them.  If someone then wants to write an article about the culture in Akron they can, but I don't see anyone stepping up.  A proper article would discuss museums, the orchestra, the Akron sound, theaters, and the like.  --Beirne (talk) 15:25, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: Beirne pretty much sums up what I'm saying. An article (especially one with this much info in it) should  never be created with so few sources and with such a large amount of trivial information.  On top of that it covers very little of Akron's actual culture.  In other words, a rewrite would essentially be blanking the page and starting over again.  Yes, Wikipedia is a work in progress, but that doesn't excuse additions of unsourced and trivial information.  If it's unsourced it shouldn't be here.  --JonRidinger (talk) 18:48, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * "A proper article would discuss museums, the orchestra, the Akron sound, theaters, and the like." So... write a proper article. Deleting a work in progress is a step backwards... Wikipedia articles grow over time... unless they get deleted by people who are under the mistaken impression that there's a deadline for getting articles right. Wikipedia is about letting articles improve over time, not deleting them because no one has had time to make them good articles or beyond this very moment. --Sancho Mandoval (talk) 22:05, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Read what I said, Sancho, I don't recommend deleting the article. --Beirne (talk) 22:16, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I was mostly replying to the person who really does seem to want to delete this article due to typos and it only having 5 inline citations. I just don't think long deletion debates are what this article needs... yet that's what people are forcing to happen here. --Sancho Mandoval (talk) 22:21, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, but you quoted me from my comment where I suggested an alternative to deletion. --Beirne (talk) 22:23, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Your alternative involves creating an article that would probably be deleted rather quickly... "in popular culture" articles rarely survive, unless I'm completely wrong here. But my point is people are using this AFD to point out the article needs improvement... which is really a waste of everyone's time. --Sancho Mandoval (talk) 22:27, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * If it gets deleted as an "in popular culture" article, then that's the way it goes, as long as Wikipedia process is followed. We shouldn't keep the "in popular culture" in this article just to preserve it.  Once it is moved on its own then the rest of the article is nothing more than trivia, and it can be rebuilt from scratch.  Of course, we could just rebuild it from scratch now.  I wouldn't complain about that either.  --Beirne (talk) 22:53, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep or Redirect The relationship between the "Culture and contemporary life" section at Akron, Ohio and this article is backwards though. The "Culture and contemporary life" section is quite long, there are 11 kb of readable prose while this article has less than one kb. Everything should either be in one section of the main article with Culture of Akron, Ohio a redirect or everything moved there with a WP:Summary at the main article. I prefer the redirect option, the coverage of this topic isn't mature.Synchronism (talk) 22:34, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: I would support this. The coverage is definitely not mature yet.  Doesn't mean it can't be, but also doesn't mean it needs its own article right now.  --JonRidinger (talk) 23:18, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: Just to let it be known, ive been reconstructing the culture article and close to compeleting it, is there a time limit?--Threeblur0 (talk) 23:46, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: The comparison of what is already in the Akron article makes a lot of sense. I would support a redirect too.  --Beirne (talk) 00:08, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: I used of the culture articles as a base on where to start, ive certainly got it up to keepable.--Threeblur0 (talk) 00:25, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: Unfortunately part of the article is trivia that is already in the main article on Akron and the rest of the article is from the controversial "in popular culture" category. Take a look at the Culture of San Francisco to see what a culture article should look like.  Akron culture is already pretty well covered in the main article, which is why this one has so much duplicate information.  It is hard to justify a separate article on the culture of Akron.  --Beirne (talk) 00:34, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: In case there is a time limit I would like the people invloved to know that im trying to work on it until the last minute.--Threeblur0 (talk) 13:41, 16 December 2009 (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.