Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/War 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 delete. ✗ plicit  12:17, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

War in popular culture

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Arguably, a very interesting topic. Possibly notable (ex. the existence of works like ), but not in this WP:TNTable form of a completely unreferenced TVtropic listcruft aka List of all media that mention the topic of war (the lead even admits the goal: "The following is a list of pop culture references to war."). Like all similar articles (ex. Articles for deletion/United States Navy SEALs in popular culture), it fails numerous policies, guidelines and like: as an 'in popular culture' article, WP:IPC and MOS:POPCULT/TRIVIA, as a list, WP:NLIST and WP:SALAT, as a potential topic, WP:GNG and  WP:INDISCRIMINATE, due to lack of references, WP:OR and WP:V. That's what TV Tropes is for, folks. Or https://military-history.fandom.com PS. The "quality" of this page is further confirmed by the template at the bottom that states "Wikiquote has quotations related to Ernest Hemingway." :> PPS. We also have a fork of this at List of wars in fiction which likely needs a discussion here as well. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:25, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Fictional elements, Military, Popular culture,  and Lists. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  09:25, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Convert to disambiguation We have several articles like World War I in popular culture, Winter War in popular culture, and Cultural impact of the Falklands War that I think are appropriate examples of IPC articles describing how wars have been portrayed in literature and film. American_Civil_War is also good. Putting every war in a single article is not good, and contents here should be moved to other lists and sections and then linked as appropriate. Reywas92Talk 14:16, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm more inclined to think such an index of articles should be at the title Wars in popular culture (wars, plural). TompaDompa (talk) 17:03, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete - No sources, no prose text, just a list of pieces of media that we have to assume have "references to war" in them. With that kind of inclusion criteria, this is far too broad (and probably WP:INDISCRIMINATE) for a list, and there is no content that is actually worth preserving. I have no problem if the name is later repurposed for other uses as suggested above, but the current content of this trivia list should not be retained. Rorshacma (talk) 15:02, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep, and improve and convert to a List of war-themed works (or similar), like the Lists of dystopian works or List of Christmas-themed literature, thus making way for a War in popular culture prose article, which ist probably a valid article topic, as already mentioned in the nomination. This, on the other hand, is a list with a navigational purpose in parallel to Category:War in popular culture, in keeping with Categories, lists, and navigation templates. The topic is very likely notable, so it does not fail WP:NLIST. Limiting it to notable works solves the problem of the list becoming indiscriminate. The List of wars in fiction seems to be somewhat misnamed, as it is actually a List of fictional wars. As our list here focusses exclusively on works treating actual wars, there is currently no overlap and therefore no fork problem (aside, possibly, from the titles). If these two lists should be treated together or separately is an editorial decision that should not be made in an AfD discussion. Daranios (talk) 15:36, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Category:War in popular culture and its various subcategories (and sub-subcategories and so on) such as Category:American Civil War in popular culture, Category:Novels set during World War I, Category:World War II films, and Category:Vietnam War fiction collectively include thousands of works (if anybody knows how to find out the total number of unique pages within a category and its subcategories and so on, please do tell) . Surely that is too broad for a corresponding stand-alone list per WP:SALAT? TompaDompa (talk) 17:03, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
 * WP:SALAT nowhere suggests deletion. In contrast, in case of too long topics, it suggests a "split into sections". Which is already the case. And if content gets longer (which is not yet the case here), subtopics should be split off until it becomes a "List of lists". That's then the disambiguate solution suggested by and, with which I would also be fine. Now I did not realize just how numerous the content of Category:War in popular culture was. So it would presumably be very long way of successive improvements. But that's why it's already designated a dynamic list. Kind of like Wikipedia itself, isn't it? Daranios (talk) 10:48, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete Wikipedia is not emant to be an indesicrminate list of everything, and that is exactly what this list is trying to be.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:12, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete yet another WP:NOTTVTROPES violating "list of everything that mentions this subject". Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 16:19, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete - per WP:INDISCRIMINATE and incomplete/subjective trivia. Kierzek (talk) 18:01, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Disambiguate per Reywas92. I'll note that WP:INDISCRIMINATE does not mean remotely what anyone above says, per WP:DISCRIMINATE, and all !votes based solely on that argument should be amended to fix the problem or discarded as non-policy-based by the closing administrator. Jclemens (talk) 18:54, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
 * For the record, I'd always support disambiguation over hard deletion, and this is also the case here. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:15, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete Per WP:TNT, and a disambiguation does not seem to be needed; as there is no real confusion. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 15:34, 14 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:TNT. A lot better article could be created but here we are seeing only listing of mostly notable subjects. Azuredivay (talk) 03:10, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete Another rather massive, unsourced list with no use. I don't oppose disambiguation. Intothatdarkness 15:08, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete Will get too long and trivial if expanded properly. Georgethedragonslayer (talk) 19:00, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete as entirely based on WP:OR, without a single reliable independent source in sight, thus also failing WP:V and WP:N. I suspect you could write a notable topic about war in fiction, but the article War novel already exists. There is nothing from this malformed article to WP:PRESERVE. Shooterwalker (talk) 23:20, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Uh... you don't think anyone has ever written anything about depictions of war in popular culture? Jclemens (talk) 03:14, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Respectfully, that's the opposite of what I said. War novel represents just one way to summarize depictions of war in fiction, in a way that fits with Wikipedia policy and uses proper sources. It could even be expanded, but there would be nothing to WP:PRESERVE from this article. Shooterwalker (talk) 13:25, 16 May 2022 (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.