Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/San Francisco 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 to delete. Discussion has remained stalemated over an extended period of time, and there is no reason to expect any further extension of time to yield a consensus. Editors !voting to keep make a well-reasoned argument that sources discussing the subject city's place in pop culture suffice to meet the WP:GNG. Structural issues that are fixable are beyond the purview of AfD. BD2412 T 03:53, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

San Francisco in popular culture

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Like the recently deleted Maine in popular culture and the currently AfD'd Rhode Island in popular culture, this is an indiscriminate list with no credible claim of significance as a general topic. Fails WP:INPOPULARCULTURE. Even if this topic meets WP:GNG, there is no encyclopedic content worth keeping (cf. Articles for deletion/Far future in fiction, on a similar list that got replaced by an encyclopedic overview), not least because the Category:San Francisco in fiction tree contains hundreds of articles. –LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄ ) 19:06, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 19:21, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Popular culture-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 19:21, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 19:21, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the Article Rescue Squadron's list of content for rescue consideration. Andrew🐉(talk) 10:35, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:34, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
 * There are just huge lists of things with almost no explanation here, and the few explanations are clearly nonsense. For example: Star Trek: Voyager, a television show set in the future and on a space ship inaccessibly far away across the Milky Way does not "highlight the city".  Buried among the useless and misleading lists are a few short paragraphs explaining why television shows are not shot on location there, the only informative content in the whole article.  Uncle G (talk) 06:20, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Despite first appearances, the future San Francisco does feature in episodes of Star Trek: Voyager (five to be exact, as the nice persons from Memory Alpha have counted for us here), with the usual Star Trek time and space shenanigans, and the ship finally getting back to Earth in the end. For example this short review praises "Non Sequitur" with what translates as "especially good is also the San Francisco of the future". Of course ideally this should be spelled out based on secondary sources, but that can be done. Daranios (talk) 16:26, 29 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep This seems to be part of yet another round of cookie-cutter, drive-by nominations without a trace of WP:ATD, WP:BEFORE or WP:CIVIL. The nomination is ostensibly based on WP:IINFO but that's ridiculous because that is itself an indiscriminate ragbag of arbitrary exclusions such as software logs, none of which apply.  The topic here is actually quite specific and not indiscriminate at all.  Then there's WP:INPOPULARCULTURE which is just an essay – some OR prejudice with no official standing.  And then there's some other stuff but Maine is not San Francisco is it?  San Francisco is a cultural centre – a massive influence with corresponding coverage which the nomination fails to address.  Here's some examples:
 * Acid trips, black power and computers: how San Francisco’s hippy explosion shaped the modern world
 * Popular Culture on the Golden Shore
 * The Essential Guide to San Francisco Pop Culture
 * San Francisco: A Cultural and Literary History
 * Top 12 Bay Area cultural milestones of the decade
 * Hollywood in San Francisco
 * Which TV shows would make it into the San Francisco Hall of Fame?
 * 10 Movies Filmed in San Francisco That Defined '90s Pop Culture
 * Consuming Identities: visual culture in nineteenth-century San Francisco
 * How San Francisco broke America’s heart
 * Note that Wikipedia itself is now headquartered in this city. Me, I live in London which is another cultural capital.  When I visited SF, one of the places I went to was the highest point which has some personal signficance as it's called Mount Davidson.  But the most outstanding thing up there is the Easter cross.  I already knew this well because it appears in Dirty Harry.  "It's a question of methods. Everybody wants results, but nobody wants to do what they have to do to get them done." Andrew🐉(talk) 10:20, 28 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete: per nom, per WP:IINFO, fails further WP:GNG CommanderWaterford (talk) 21:40, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete as per nom's rationale, fails WP:INDISCRIMINATE.  Onel 5969  TT me 15:59, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep As shown by the sources found, the topic fulfills WP:GNG. The fact that the article currently is not in good shape is not a reason for deletion. WP:INPOPULARCULTURE gives guidelines how to trim this so that it does not fail WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Some of what is present would remain in this case, and some would be thrown out. Which is what can be decided using secondary sources. Daranios (talk) 16:26, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment - Mixed feelings here; the topic is indisputably notable, but the article is a shitty indiscriminate list of movies and films, etc. The three sources provided are absolutely garbage. It could be deleted on WP:TNT grounds, and hopefully that would encourage someone to recreate it on better footing. If it is kept, it would be worthy of stubbing and getting a substantial rewrite. -Indy beetle (talk) 08:06, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete - A prose article could possibly be written about the topic, though even then I have my doubts - of the multitude of sources presented above, only a couple are actually on the topic, and most of them are not from reliable sources. That possibility does not mean this terrible list of unsourced trivia should remain in the main article space in the meantime.  There is absolutely no content in the current list that should actually be kept in any form.  If someone wants to draftify this in order to work on a complete overhaul, they're welcome to, but the article in its current state should not remain in the meantime.  Rorshacma (talk) 00:05, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep and prune. There are multiple [at least marginally] notable list topics here: films set in San Francisco, books set in San Francisco, TV shows set in San Francisco, etc. This page serves to keep them all together, which isn't necessarily a bad thing unless it sprawls. A clear inclusion criteria can help that. I suspect that the individual episodes and video games should be axed, for example. &mdash; Rhododendrites  talk \\ 00:18, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep- I think this one actually does meet WP:LISTN since the entries on the list are individually notable. Perhaps the article could be renamed to "List of....". Could also be split into pages such as "List of Movies and Television shows that take place in San Francisco" and "List of San Francisco Literature", or something similar.--Rusf10 (talk) 04:26, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete - Think of the readers. Nobody is going to be looking for this. A simpler more scalable solution would be to add the Category:San_Francisco_in_popular_culture to every article on this list. TimTempleton</b> <sup style="color:#800080">(talk)  <sup style="color:#7F007F">(cont)  05:23, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep and split – Rusf10 is correct in applying WP:LISTN ("no present consensus for how to assess the notability..." and "Notability of lists (whether titled as 'List of Xs' or 'Xs') is based on the group."). WP:INPOPULARCULTURE talks about popular culture sections within articles which tend to clutter location related articles – this listing serves to avoid such clutter. Likewise, the listing complies with MOS:POPCULT because it avoids the "section within an article" problem. What should the split articles contain? WP:LISTCRITERIA says "When establishing membership criteria for a list, ask yourself if any the following are true: ... Would I expect to see this person or thing on a list of X?" The spilt titles might say List of films and TV series set in San Francisco, List of films and TV series shot in San Francisco, List of fiction set in San Francisco, and/or Bibliography of San Francisco. Such titles would help avoid the "indiscriminate" problem and allow for editing in terms of referencing. – S. Rich (talk) 18:27, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment: Next to talking about popular culture sections within articles, WP:INPOPULARCULTURE also explicitly refers to splitting out such sections into their own articles when warranted by the amount of information here. Daranios (talk) 07:10, 12 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete - While San Francisco definitely has a rich cultural impact, this list of anything and everything the city has appeared in for even a moment is not constructive. This would be better suited as prose, and the article as it stands is a lot of unsourced original research trivia. I don't think it should stay in the article mainspace, as it's entirely unpresentable, but it could possibly be overhauled in draft form, per the points brought up by Rorshacma. Waxworker (talk) 17:01, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep per the highly reasonable and policy based argument by . WP:INPOPULARCULTURE is an opinion essay with no standing in policy based decisions at AFD. The topic is well defined, and not indiscriminate. Further, it would clearly pass WP:NLIST and WP:GNG. The delete votes are purely WP:IDONTLIKEIT opinions. makes a valuable split argument, but that's really an editorial decision, and not one that should be made here at AFD but at Talk:San Francisco in popular culture where editors can discuss the matter in detail and without the time clock of an AFD.4meter4 (talk) 22:08, 11 May 2021 (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.