Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tarring and feathering 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 keep. Tone 06:58, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tarring and feathering in popular culture

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Excessive pop culture trivia, largely uncited. The article doesn't explain how 'tarring and feathering' has impacted pop culture, and this list strikes me as a bit frivolous and non-encyclopedic. Waxworker (talk) 11:41, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 13:07, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Popular culture-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 13:07, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Weak delete per nom. Contains no reliably sourced information about the actual topic: 2 are from or about the works in question, 2 are about tarring and feathering as an idiom. Unless you can prove that it meets WP:LISTN, but there may not be anything worth keeping anyway. –LaundryPizza03 (d c̄) 19:39, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete This amounts to every mention of "tar and feathering" that can be found. Some of these involve old popular songs that have had many, many, many versions. This really amounts to a random collection of trivia and is not really benefitical.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:36, 27 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep because the topic is actually treated in secondary sources. It seems to me that all critizism so far is directe toward the current state of the article, which is not actually decisive for the question of deletion, and that noone has yet done a proper WP:BEFORE search. I ask the nominator and the deletion voters to have a look at e.g. these Google scholar hits. The sources vary widely in scope and length of treatment (and respective use of "popular culture"), but they should be way enough to fullfil the WP:GNG requirement of providing more than "a few sentences" worth of material, and therefore also of WP:LISTN. Here for example is a whole PhD thesis about the topic. Do you need me to provide more examples?

Of course the article currently is not in good shape, but again, that's not a question of deletion, because it is improvable!

As for what we have now "may not be anything worth keeping anyway" I did a random search for secondary sources on three entries that interested me and found for Edgar Allan Poe and "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether", a whole publication dedicated to the topic, Edgar Allan Poe's Tarred and Feathered Bodies: Imagining Race, Questioning Bondage, and Marking Humanity, and for the appearance in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn many and for Monkey Island at least some mentions. Daranios (talk) 16:42, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 08:43, 1 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep It's easy to find a respectable source which demonstrates the potential of the topic – see The Journal of the Historical Society, for example. The topic therefore passes WP:LISTN and WP:ATD, "If editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page." Insofar as the current page reflects the common taste and practice, then this is a consequence of Wikipedia's demotic nature. Andrew🐉(talk) 12:57, 1 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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.