Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Take Me Out to the Ballgame (SATC episode)


 * 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 keep. (ESkog)(Talk) 17:20, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Take Me Out to the Ballgame (SATC episode)

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

Original prod reason: Not every episode of every show needs an article on Wikipedia. This is one such example; this episode didn't do anything notable for television, for the series, or for the characters in the series.

removed by User:Neier with the comment "remove prod from a single article within a larger series of articles".

Articles can be individually prodded or deleted; that the article is related to other articles is irrelevant. Mikeblas 04:13, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep Episode articles for very notable series are encyclopedic. Neier is right in a way; it seems pointless to AfD a single episode article when there are another 49  for this series.  Eliminator JR   Talk  08:18, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Commment. Neier is absurdly assuming we can edit all the articles at the same time. We can't; it's not a requirement to submit AfDs in a batch (in fact, they group AfDs are rarely successful for anyone involved). There will always exist other articles that should be deleted, so an argument to keep a single article based on the existence of other articles is ill-founded. -- Mikeblas 13:53, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * What I've absurdly assumed is that the deletion of one article from a series is not non-controversial, and should be discussed first. Clearly, from the comments below, it is not a non-controversial deletion.  As for the ability to nominate multiple articles at once, that is also not without precedent; but, it is also irrelevant to whether the deletion of this article is merited or not. Neier 23:41, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment - I have trouble believing that all episodes of any TV program are inherenly notable - I can see that the "Who Shot JR?" episode of Dallas, or the final episode of M*A*S*H* etc. would be, but not run-of -the-mill episodes. However, I accept that I am against the consensus in this. For this one, however, it needs at least a rename from "SATC episode" (I had to look it up) to "Sex and the City episode". And, opening up another can of worms, is "Sex and the City" really THAT notable?- fchd 11:29, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep lots of precedent exists for episodes of notable TV series, and Sex and the City is extremely notable, influential, and high-rated. Deprodding was correct, as deletion would have resulted in a "hole" in an otherwise-complete series of articles. Andrew Lenahan -  St ar bli nd  13:36, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment. This AfD is about this episode, not the series -- I'm not sure why you're making remarks about the series. Assuming that the precedent is correct is fallacy. This article establishes no level of influence for this episode within any circle of influence -- even limited to the characters on the show. What would that "hole" leave? There's really zero information here, and apparently very little to say about this mundane episode. While high-ratings are nice for the producers and advertisers, popularity does not confer notability. -- Mikeblas 13:51, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Yes, this is a highly notable TV series, and this may be a major episode in the series, but most of the information is covered at List of Sex and the City episodes - all except for the quote. --Strangerer (Talk | Contribs) 15:48, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. I think having individual episode pages for every episode of a notable series is appropriate, and is a case where keeping the fact that Wikipedia is not paper in mind is vital.  The simplest way to have reasonable coverage of a show's plot is to have an article for each episode -- an attempt to consolidate all episodes for a series into a single article is likely to result in a large, unwieldy article that makes it difficult to find desired information.  Having a single article also opens the door for all sorts of arguments about what is sufficiently important to include in the article, and only having articles for "important" episodes will lead similarly to constant arguments as to what constitutes an important episode.  Separate articles for every episode ensure that there's a specific place for any information about the plot of the show, allow someone typing in an episode title to go directly to the information they're looking for, and provide a way to navigate through the history of a show.  Yes, this may result in the occasional permanently stub-sized article about an unexciting episode, but not having every article would leave a disconcerting gap for anyone trying to read through the story of a show, and undoubtedly result in repeated re-creation of the missing article.  We're certainly always going to have at least a redirect for any episode, so why not, since space is not a concern, improve the usability and informativeness of Wikipedia by having a short article to host basic episode-specific and navigation information (previous/next episodes, guest stars/writer/director) instead of a redirect that provides nothing? Pinball22 16:06, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Question. How did you arrive at the conclusion that an article per episode is the simplest approach? It sounds to me that it's far more tedious and complicated than having a single article that explains everything you need in one spot, and allows convenient editing without sequence boxes, info boxes, and replicated headers, intros, and references. Meanwhile, let's stipulate you're correct. The problem still remains that this episode hasn't demonstrated any influence on the show's story line. Or are you prepared to explain (specifically and with references!) how Samantha's size queenism influences the outcome of the season finale? -- Mikeblas 02:49, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment. Yes, having all the information in one page would be simpler in the sense that it would eliminate all the duplication of the boxes/headers/intros of having a page per episode.  The reason that I came to the conclusion that separate pages was overall a simpler solution, though, is that  I think the overhead of separate pages is worth it to avoid both the unwieldy size of a combined page and the inevitable edit wars that would occur over such a page.  Separate articles leave plenty of room for each episode to have a reasonable amount of coverage without making it hard to find the information you're looking for or inspiring arguments about which episode is worthy of a longer description in a long, crowded page.  I can see that for some lesser-known/shorter series, where there's not that much information, a single page (or pages by season) could work. For an extremely popular series like this, though, there will invariably be many episodes that people think are worthy of their own pages, and having only some episodes leads to the problems I mentioned before: subjective arguments about which episodes are sufficiently important for pages and a confusing style for readers, who would have to switch back and forth between hunting through a long page and reading individual pages to get all the information about a show.  I'm not actually attempting to provide any rationale for this particular episode being special in any way, and that's part of my point, which is that even if some episodes are less than thrilling, it's to the benefit of both readers and editors to have pages for all episodes.  Pinball22 18:24, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Strongly disagree - each subject of an article should be notable. If one or more episodes of any series don't meet the criteria, it/they should not have their own article. - fchd 18:46, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Notability is not cumulative. A bunch of individually not-notable articles don't pile up into a set of notable articles. -- Mikeblas 02:56, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, you can make a case that the guidelines disagree with that point of view. For example, see the criteria for athletes at Notability (people).  If a notable team has nothing but (otherwise) non-notable players, the players would still be notable according to the guideline.  Nobody would suggest to fill up a team's page with the biographical details of each player; so, I would likewise argue for a consistent approach with TV series and their players (episodes).  This is also consistent with the (currently controversial) idea of having articles for all albums by notable recording artists, as in WP:MUSIC. - Neier 02:18, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. This was the first episode in a season nominated for an Emmy award, which seems notable. Pinball22's comment also makes sense. --Strangerer (Talk | Contribs) 16:18, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep per Strangerer and Pinball22. Ab e g92 contribs 16:55, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong keep SATC had a much bigger audience than Star Trek, and imagine the uproar if we started deleting "Trek" episodes. And Pinball22, that's the best I've ever seen the "keep every episode" argument put. -  Irides centi   (talk to me!)  17:43, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment. The reason the Trekkies would get mad about their articles being deleted is that they've actually done the work to show why the episodes are meaningful. The ST:OS episodes I spot-checked were all articles with good analysis and references. The article that I've nominated has only three sentences, one of which is a quote from the show. For something so notable, it's quite amazing that nobody, over the last 8 years (nearly) has found the time to write up a paragraph or two about it. -- Mikeblas 02:41, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete and merge the content to the appropriate article about SATC. There is no question of SATC's notability; however, this particular episode does not demonstrate any notability on its own.  I would change my mind about this if it could be shown that this particular episode created memes or references that became cultural icons, but I don't see any veriable sources in the article to illustrate this.  Tarinth 18:43, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep per Pinball22, who wrote much of what I would have written in the edit summary when I de-PROD'd the article originally, had the summary space not been so short. Neier 23:41, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep, sound action stations. Consensus is to improve, not delete (WP:EPISODE). Article establishes notability to me, not to mention it was Emmy nominated. Matthew 22:50, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep, as Matthew mentions, we have a consensus to improve, not delete, articles like this. I'll fix it up a bit to show you what I mean. - Peregrine Fisher 22:54, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep, per Strangerer, an TV episode's highest honor is an Emmy or win nomination. --FateClub 19:50, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Farm them all out, if possible--but... While I appreciate the extensive fanwiki pages, I do think that they should, if possible, be moved onto sites & servers elsewhere, where they can find other funding & support, rather than bleed Wikipedia. That said, that may not be strictly possible. People will go to wikipedia.org first, & I doubt there will ever be a SATCpedia dedicated site. But I see no mention on the page that this episode won an Emmy, so I don't think that level of individual notoriety is asserted.
 * Comment However, at this point, we're keeping it for reasons of organization; I expect it, in effect, takes less bandwidth if on its own page than if this information were all merged into a main SATC article or article on the season, since one doesn't have to load this stub to read about another episode in the same season. Ventifax 09:04, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Err.. have you ever read WP:NOT. They're not kept for "organization", they are kept because they are encyclopaedic. Wikipedia is building an encyclopaedia of human knowledge, that includes "pop culture". Matthew 09:19, 1 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.