Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Quality issue of The Simpsons


 * 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. Secret account 07:14, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Quality issue of The Simpsons

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Full of original research, cites numerous non-reliable sources (many instances of message board posters and personal blogs), has no chance of ever being reliably sourced. The subject is also of questionable notability and is handled in it's appropriate context with much better sourcing within The Simpsons article. MichiganCharms (talk) 19:43, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete Despite being a member of WikiProject The Simpsons, I have to agree with this. The whole "Simpsons starting to suck after the ninth season"-thing can be adequately summarized in four paragraphs or so. It is already covered here, here, and here. Theleftorium (talk) 00:09, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Television-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:12, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Comics and animation-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:12, 21 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete. I can see that several people have given an article-length treatment of this topic the old college try, and I commend them for the effort. However, (a) this is a hodgepodge of original research, weasel words, and the use of forum posts and blogs as sources, (b) any full-length treatment of this topic is impossible to accomplish in an encyclopedic manner, and (c) the subject matter of the show's alleged decline or non-decline is covered more than adequately in the featured article The Simpsons. Here's the gist of this topic: Some people say The Simpsons has declined. Some say it hasn't. Both sides of the debate have various arguments about what's wrong with the show or what's not wrong with it, and why that is. Some of those viewpoints come from notable published commentators, but most come from fan forums and blogs. One more point: All TV series that run more than one season have some fans who disagree with the show's direction. So you could just as well have an article like "Quality issue of Doctor Who" or "Quality issue of How I Met Your Mother", right? szyslak  ( t ) 01:20, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep I think this is a very well-documented topic, and as I have already said in various forums, one which has dominated the public discourse surrounding The Simpsons for the past 15 years or so. In regard to Syzlak's point, "So you could just as well have an article like "Quality issue of Doctor Who" or "Quality issue of How I Met Your Mother", right?", well... short answer, yes. This seems to be a common thread that runs through many-a-series. Especially the longer-running ones. Maybe quality-issue of ___" was never the right title (I was always hesitant about that). While history articles are more about development and cancellations and promotions and releases etc., this brand of article would go into the history of the show's quality. Not about all the crap that happens around a show. Just the show itself. (But to be fair, at least in my experience, I havent found any issue regarding the quality dip in a show more talked about than this one). Just like there are many different American history articles - demographic, military, woman's, economic etc., these two articles would then show different 'sides' to the history of the shows, one the facade, and the other, the behind the scenes. By the way, I still think the article needs to be restructured to becoming wholly chronological. But I was too busy wrapping my head around the neutrality and notability of it that I haven't gotten around to completely fixing the scope and order of sections just yet. But, yeah, the topic seems sounds, and the notability is definitely there. If worst comes to worst, we can always salvage a lot of this information for a Critical reception of the Simpsons article, which was previously discussed somewhere.


 * MichiganCharms, what do you mean by "has no chance of ever being reliably sourced" (also, all the sources in this section in The Simpsons article were carries over to here so I'm not sure what you mean by that.)? I appreciate you bringing those articles to light. Many of those sources could be used to great affect here. I have to say that while the information is great, it doesn't really provide enough of a well-rounded analysis of the issues surrounding the dip in quality (which didn't just occur at a point in time which everything before being good and everything after being shit). I really see value in such an article as this, despite the idea still not being fully formed. Also, this isn't really a '"Simpsons starting to suck after the ninth season"-thing' thing at all. In fact, in the other articles, I think generalisations and simplifications have been used as the result of limited space. This article (at least should) comment on and analyse the dynamic shifts in the show, and how those have been percieved quality-wise, plus a series of (however dubious) defenses for the quality.--Coin945 (talk) 02:09, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment. Simply put, I don't believe that such an article can ever meet Wikipedia's standards because at it's very core it relies on a.) original research, b.) synthesis and c.) the use of non-reliable sources. Look, I've been a poster on NoHomers... I shudder to think my postings might ever be used as a source on what it supposed to be an encyclopedia. There is only so much ink that has been spilled by reliable, published sources on this topic and the subject, no matter how interesting or important you or I personally find it, only warrants as much coverage here as those sources allow for. Perhaps consider moving the article to user space or reworking it as a blogpost somewhere. -- MichiganCharms (talk) 10:23, 21 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete. This is a hodgepodge of original, non-notable dead-horse beating, which is practically a poster child for "things that don't belong on Wikipedia." As noted above, everything that really needs to be noted on the topic can comfortably fit in a paragraph or so in the main Simpsons article. Commenting on and analysing the dynamic shifts in the show are original work. That may be fine for some other website. It has no place here. — Shmuel (talk) 03:44, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment I'm not sure how this is original research. I have made no conclusions without evidence. I have merely collected all the sources which discuss this topic together in the one place. Instances where I may have written assumptions go back to what I said on the talk page - this is work in progress and so sometimes I will read something that will remind me of something I read in a reliable source, or something that I think is true enough that there will be reliable sources on the notion further into my research (I make judgement calls on those ones) - and then I will temporarily add draft information to later be replaced by reliable source in due course. That doesn't mean that the sources don't exist. I think that on the whole, this is a very well sourced, comprehensive, and relatively neutral (I'll still try to work on that in the near future) article, on a very notable issue in regard to The Simpsons.--Coin945 (talk) 14:17, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment. Your own defenses of the article highlight one of the problems with it. "This article (at least should) comment on and analyse the dynamic shifts in the show, and how those have been percieved quality-wise, plus a series of (however dubious) defenses for the quality." "I have made no conclusions without evidence." Commentary, analysis, and the drawing of conclusions all go outside the boundaries of Wikipedia. One type of original research relevant here is called synthesis. I would suggest you read the guidelines for that. — Shmuel (talk) 18:40, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment Firstly, by 'dubious', I didn't mean in unreliable sources. I meant however flawed the argument itself is (sorry I should have been clearer on that). For example, a lot of the show's staff may argue that the show is much better than it ever was (which I don't think they do, but it is a hypothetical after all), and even if it seems like a dubious argument, if it is widely held, and in many reliable sources, then it deserves a place in the article. Secondly, I never said I would be doing any of the analysing. All I have done is placed a bunch of other poeple's analysing into one place. Thirdly, there is no original research involved in this. I said "I have made no conclusions without evidence", in the context of: if i add 10 sources that say critics said the show was obsolete, in a variety of different ways, I am able to come to the conclusion that "Many critics say the show is now obsolete", or something like that. That's not original research. That's (as i said) drawing conclusions. The only thing I could be accused of is having a few less-than-totally-notable sources here and there, which is only natural for a draft article. It has a few flaws, I'm not denying that, and they are yet to be ironed out. I don't think outright deletion is the solution though.--Coin945 (talk) 06:54, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete, I found this article by searching for letterboxd, a social networking site, and found it was being used as a source for this mess. I defer to User:Gene93k's familiarity with the adequate coverage of this topic in the main article and the History of ... article. I also feel that the title is clumsy and unworthy of redirecting anywhere. Abductive  (reasoning) 06:08, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete - per above. I admire the effect, but this is not the kind of thing that belongs here. Gran2 22:36, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete, essentially agree with, above. Cheers, &mdash; Cirt (talk) 21:53, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete. I have been thinking a lot about the existence of this article and while I admire the effort, I don't think it belongs on Wikipedia. The best analogue I can think of, is that we don't have an article comparing Star Wars's original trilogy to the prequel trilogy - even though it is a wide spread phenomenon on the internet. Basically, the internet is filled with people complaining about everything. These days it is so easy to set up a blog and then your opinion would be there forever. Not surprisingly, people also had opinions in the 1990s, they are just not easy to see anymore. If you go on SNPP.com, you can see plenty of people from the 1990s complaining about the poor writing of episodes, people now call classic. The point is that it is almost impossible to find some sort of "truth", because it is a matter of opinion and all you can do is synthesise several people's opinions. I would much rather read about how The Simpsons shifted in tone and how the characters developed over the years. --Maitch (talk) 12:15, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment Firstly, i wanted to make the point that just because there are no other similar articles, that does not mean that this article shouldn't exist. If you followed that religiously, no new type of article (disambiguation/glossary/critical reception/criticism etc.) could have ever be created because nothing else existed like it at the time. If memory serves, I believe the Wikipedia policy is "Other stuff exists/Other stuff doesn't exist". In fcat, I applaud anyone who creates said article for Star Wars in particular. Well, maybe not just comparing the two, but more similar to what you said at the end of your comment (which I'll get to in a moment) - analysing how the show has "shifted in tone and how the characters developed over the years". I'd like to see that for Doctor Who especially. In fact - side pint - I seriously think there should be two different articles for the original 1963 show and the 2005 reboot - but let's just leave that as an aside for now. I never created this article to find some kind of truth. I knew there was a huge discussion over whether The Simpsons is as good as it once was - or if people overstated the golden era - or when the golden era ended...and all that stuff, and I knew that such a dynamic show as The Simpsons obviously had a whole heap of factors involved. So, in short, my aim was to collect all the information I could find on such a topic and try to present it in a cohesive and comprehensive fashion. It has kinda turned into a "The Simpsons vs. Zombie Simpsons" type article, but in essence, what I was trying to do was create an article that does as you suggest - "how The Simpsons shifted in tone and how the characters developed over the years". An article about how the show has adapted and changed over the years and how that has been perceived by the critics. For example, the zaniness of the show was originally lauded by many (Marge vs. the Monorail is widely considered one of their greatest episodes ever along with Last Exist to Springfield, despite its magical realismness). But when it became coupled with things like weak satire and off characterizations, only then was the whole package seen as bad. So I attempted to document this whole monster of a show, with an extremely complicated history, and for what it's worth, I think I did an okay job. If we could turn the article into something more along the lines of what you have suggested, I'm all for it. And I think this sort of article (if pulled off right) would be a very valuable and important thing across the board for different media. Almost always you read little snippets of opinion on this topic, but rarely, if ever, do you see a full, well written, and neutral examination of how the quality of a show has changed throughout its history, and the various factors behind it. I do think it is a brilliant idea in theory, but perhaps like communism it wasn't pulled off quite right the first time round.--Coin945 (talk) 13:19, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I think there are two things to discuss here. First, does an article like this even belong in an encyclopedia? I don't believe so. It will end up being a synthesis of people opinions and I don't think you can present an objective "truth" by metioning some people's pro and against arguments and line them up against each other. Second, you could choose to write on the writing itself without passing judgement on "quality". Each showrunner changed the tone and characterization of the characters, most likely to try and not repeat what already has been done. However, this is also quite difficult, because you need credible sources. I did some of that when I wrote the History of The Simpsons, but ended up cutting a lot of it out, to keep the balance. --Maitch (talk) 14:10, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, after extending the criticism of declining quality section of the The Simpsons (an edit which I later reverted), I did say that I thoguht as such a prolific show, The Simpsons (probably more than most other TV shows) deserved fork articles for almost every one if that articles' rather slim sections: The Simpsons merchandise (sooo much to talk about there), Writing on The Simpsons (as you say - extremely telling), Voice acting on The Simpsons (I'm personally very intrigued to find out more about this one), Animation of The Simpsons (it has changed dramatically over the years and Klasky Csupo had a big kerfuffle over it in the early days), Themes in The Simpsons (which would then house the media, politics, and religion articles along with others), Influence and legacy of The Simpsons (how this section is summed up in two measly paragraphs I'll never know), Critical reception of The Simpsons (out of any series surely this one has the most to talk about) etc, which would allow us to objectively explore each of these topics in turn, rather than creating the big convoluted mismatch that many have argued this article is (and I wouldn't necessarily disagree with them). As you said, and as I have said in the past, I think a lot of the discussion has been removed from these articles for space reasons, and I think that is a massive shame because there is so much to talk about, and I think all these different topics need their own articles. Perhaps that is the solution. If Shakespeare can have 20,000 [I'm being hyperbolous :D] fork articles, why can't The Simpsons? The basic information for many of those articles is essentially already here. Would you be willing to help me in breaking this article apart and creating many interesting, insightful, and generally awesome subarticles of The Simpsons with the useable information here plus other research?--Coin945 (talk) 16:31, 24 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment There are a couple of discussions on this article scattered around the internet. I just thought I'd provide links to them so anyone who wants to take a peak has the opportunity to. site 1, site 2, site 3, site 4


 * 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.