Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scene (2010s subculture)

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. The "keep" comments mostly do not address the WP:V / WP:NOR sourcing problem.  Sandstein  06:57, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Scene (2010s subculture)

Scene (2010s subculture) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)

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Procedural nomination. Article was prodded by IllaZilla (talk · contribs) with the rationale "subject is a neologism for which insufficient reliable sources exist to meet Wikipedia's verifiability policy. The acceptability of "scene" as an article topic has been discussed before here and here, and previous "Scene subculture" articles were deleted here and here. The only sources previously cited in this article were thoroughly unreliable." Article history since nomination as well as talk page comments indicate that deletion is not uncontroversial, so I'm re-listing here.

I am neutral. —KuyaBriBri^Talk 16:24, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

• Keep i added reliable sources. AbbaIkea2010 (talk) 16:59, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
• Keep (begrudgingly) At first glance, this seemed like a no-brainer neologism. But with the Sidney Morning Herald article (and a few others that seem to be behind pay barriers), and from many other mentions as a real subculture, I will admit this deserves an entry on WP. However, a lot of work needs to be done to this article in order to bring it up to standards. Angryapathy (talk) 17:26, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
• Delete: The 2 sources added are still insufficient and of questionable reliability. The Sydney Morning Herald article was already discussed in the previous AfD and found to be a very poor source, woefully insufficient to support an encyclopedic article on the topic (one glance at the source shows why...). The second source (VideoJug) appears to be some kind of "how to" blog...a glance at the site's home page indicates to me that it likely doesn't pass WP:RS. AbbaIdea2010's previous "sources" for the article were blogs and last.fm user profiles; also clearly unreliable, and he claimed they were "the best I could find." WP:V requires "reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy", and I've seen no sources in this or any of the past incarnations of "scene" articles that approach this threshold. I would be satisfied with 2 or 3 sources giving substantial coverage to the topic of "scene" in reliable mainstream press (ie. nationally distributed music or style magazines), but none seem to exist at this time. Given the poor quality of the 1 or 2 tenuous sources that have been found, I'm still unconvinced that this is anything more than a neologism, and I would not expect an article on it to be able to reach even a C-level of quality given the lack of available sources. --IllaZilla (talk) 19:55, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
  • Additional comment: The "article history and talk page comments since prodding" consisted of AbbaIkea2010 reverting my removal of the unreliable blog sources, and making this talk page comment. How these amount to "deletion is not uncontroversial" is a bit beyond me, as the author's keep rationale is "ever heard the saying 'scene kids wet the bed'?" I think that speaks for itself about this article's merits, really. --IllaZilla (talk) 20:37, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

  i didn't mean to insult scene, but the fact there is such a saying proves i didn't make the whole thing up. AbbaIkea2010 (talk) 21:55, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

  The issue isn't whether you made "scene" up, it's whether it is notable enough for an encyclopedia article, as demonstrated through significant coverage in reliable secondary sources. Random internet insults towards "scene kids" don't demonstrate that this is a topic worthy of encyclopedic coverage. --IllaZilla (talk) 22:05, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

  The problem is I know for a fact it's notable, it's just unfortunately there is not a lot of things professionally written about it. do a google search and a TON of things come up, but for some reason very little that would be considered encyclopedic. however the term has been used since at least 2006. so it is hardly a neologism. AbbaIkea2010 (talk) 22:11, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

  Therein lies the central issue: "It's notable, I just know it is" is not a sufficient reason to have an encyclopedia article on it. Notability is shown through substantial coverage in reliable secondary sources. If no such coverage exists, then the topic simply isn't notable enough for Wikipedia. Look, I get it: you like "scene", you've read about it on the internet, whatever... that doesn't mean it's a suitable topic for an encyclopedia article. If you're scraping the bottom of the internet blogosphere barrel to find even the most tenuous source around which to base the article, then I'm sorry but it's just not notable. "Scene" is plainly a neologism: a term recently coined, not appearing in dictionaries, but used widely or within certain communities (2006 is still pretty recent, BtW). Unfortunately neologisms are simply not good topics for encyclopedia articles, because reliable sources rarely devote any significant coverage to them, and for that reason we generally do not keep articles about them. --IllaZilla (talk) 22:31, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

• Comment: Per WP:PROD the proposed deletion process is for articles where an article is "uncontestably deletable" (original emphasis). The article creator is quite opposed to the deletion. Whether his/her reasoning behind that is in good faith or within policy is irrelevant; the mere fact that someone has objected to the deletion means this article fails the primary criteria for deletion via prod. —KuyaBriBri^Talk 22:21, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

  It's rather a moot point since we're here at AfD now, but I accept your explanation. --IllaZilla (talk) 22:31, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

• Comment: What about the fact that 1990-2009 in fashion has a picture of "scene kids" in its gallery? AbbaIkea2010 (talk) 22:27, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

  See WP:NOTINHERITED. —KuyaBriBri^Talk 22:30, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

  Also see WP:OTHERCRAP — the 1990-2009 in fashion article is rather poorly referenced anyway (I note references to blogs, retailers, urbandictionary, and many others sources of the random "i findz it on the internetz" variety) and cites no sources in reference to "scene" fashion or culture. A picture of 3 random kids standing on an airstrip does not support the claim that this is an actual subculture, or that sufficient sources about it exist around which to write an encyclopedia article. --IllaZilla (talk) 22:37, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

• Delete Existing sources are in one case not reliable and in the other case do not seem to support contention that it is a significant sub-culture (no explanation of geographical extent or popularity). Incidentally, the article was written in 2008, so is problematic as sole evidence for a 2010s sub-culture. I continue searches for more WP:RS but none found yet.--SabreBD (talk) 23:43, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
• Keep although rename as it was also present in the 2000s. This has alos been around as scene kid Scene (community) Scene (youth subculture) Scene (style) Scene fashion Scene (type of people). I will copy over my references from User:Graeme Bartlett/sandbox3. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:44, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

  I have looked through the references you added and weeded out most as either unuseful, passing mentions, mirrors of the already-used Sydney Morning Herald ref, etc. We are left with this which lumps "scene kids" in with goths, "emos", "moshers", etc. and derives its definition of "scene kid" from urbandictionary.com, which is a thoroughly unreliable wiki. I don't see anything here that would serve to substantially improve this article or raise it above the status of neologism. I think the fact that various forms of "scene", "scene kid", and "scene subculture" articles have been previously deleted over a half dozen times speaks volumes: it doesn't appear that any more reliable sources have appeared since any of those deletions took place. --IllaZilla (talk) 03:10, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

• Comment: Per Graeme Bartlett's comment, I've had a look through past AfDs. Seems we've been deleting variants of "scene subculture/music/fashion" articles every few months for over 4 years:
  • Scene kid – speedied 8 times since Dec. '05
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scene points – Aug. 2006
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scene (subculture) – Nov. 2006
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scene (subculture) (second nomination) – Nov. 2006
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scene kids – Jan. 2007
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scenes (sociology) – Mar. 2007
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scene (fashion trends) – Feb. 2008
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scene (style) – Mar. 2008 (previously speedied Dec. 2007)
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scene (fashion) – May 2008
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scene fashion – Jul. 2008 (re-deleted by PROD Feb. 2009)
  • Scene (type of people) – deleted following deletion of Scene (subculture) in Jul. 2008
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scene (youth subculture) – Oct. 2008
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scene (fashion) (2nd nomination) – Nov. 2008
  • Scene (community) – G4'd in Dec. 2008, G1'd in Jan. 2009
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scene music – Dec. 2009
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scene queen – Feb. 2010

As I stated above, I don't see anything in the current Scene (2010s subculture) article that is an improvement over anything we've deleted before, and the fact that we've deleted articles on the neologism "scene" at least 15 times already speaks volumes to me. Editors who create these articles and insist on keeping them have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for sources, usually turning up only passing mentions, Tiger Beat-type "scene kid" profiles, blogs, and messageboard forums; none or very few of which would pass WP:RS. It seems to me that "scene", whether a neologism or a trend, is simply not notable enough for Wikipdia, as evidenced by the lack of decent sources found over these many AfDs. Given the high number of recrations over the years, it may be time to start applying some salt to some of these variant titles. --IllaZilla (talk) 19:42, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

• This is all the more reason to keep the article and to create redirects so that there will not be a proliferation of things that need to be merged. The fact that it has been created so many times indicates that this is not just an unknown neologism. One of those references that IllaZilla deleted was a book. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:49, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

  You didn't list it as a reference, you listed it as an external link. If it's a link, then it needs a url. If there's no url for it, then you need to actually use it to cite something in the text. Otherwise we have no way of knowing that it covers "scene" in any detail at all. And my opinion is clearly contrary to yours: we don't just decide to keep an article because it's something that keeps getting recreated. I could create and re-create articles on neologisms and non-notable persons ad nauseum if I wanted to...repetition doesn't equal notability or verifiability. Either there exists substantial coverage in reliable secondary sources to establish notability and to verify information about the topic, or there doesn't. In all the iterations of "scene" articles above there clearly weren't, and this case appears to be no different. Sources presented have all been of the bottom-of-the-barrel, random-internet, passing-mention, blog/forum variety. --IllaZilla (talk) 22:07, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

• Delete doomed to OR synthesis. Sourcing for this article will always be a problem. Ridernyc (talk) 07:27, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

• Keep "The fact that it has been created so many times indicates that this is not just an unknown neologism." Why not use the time you've wasted putting this up and processing the entry for deletion for finding reliable sources. They're are many. Try NME/Kerrang/Metro as at least a start. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.23.23.45 (talk) 01:40, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

  If you've got the sources, why don't you present them? A number of editors have searched for sources that meet our reliability standards and come up with very little. My searches of NME and Kerrang turn up...surprise: nothing useful. It does little good to say "sources exist"; you've got to actually show them. --IllaZilla (talk) 03:29, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

• Delete per the many good arguments made above by IllaZilla. ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 04:21, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
• Delete per IllaZilla. It's not necessarily the case that sources will always be a problem, if this is in fact a phenomenon that is at all wide-spread. But at the moment the sources just aren't there, and almost everything in the article is original research. --bonadea contributions talk 15:06, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
• KEEP and RENAME. it is a real thing that someone could plausibly look up and expect an article, but it's older than 2010. badmachine (talk) 16:34, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

  It matters little if it is "a real thing that someone could plausibly look up". There are insufficient reliable sources available to verify contents of an encyclopedia article about it. The standard for inclusion on Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. --IllaZilla (talk) 20:56, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

• Comment The articles creator just tried to close this as no consensus. I have reverted his changes. Ridernyc (talk) 04:03, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

  He also went ahead and created Scene queen, Scene kids, Scene points, and Scene fashion as redirects to Scene (2010s subculture). Note that articles at all of those titles have been previously deleted. Obviously if this article is deleted then these redirects should be too, and IMO all except "scene fashion" should be deleted either way as they are ridiculous and implausible search terms. --IllaZilla (talk) 04:22, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

if the article survives I think that Scene queen, Scene kid would be OK as redirects, but not the plurals. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:29, 5 March 2010 (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.