User:Edgarde/Classical music in popular culture

Article formulation

This is not a good start. I think this topic is well worth covering but it's got to be done from the top down, and not just a dumping ground for individual uses of classical music in other music or media. There are lots of things to say about classical music in popular culture: surely we can find some reliable writing about the use of classical music in cartoons for instance. Mangojuice^talk 13:50, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. The pervasiveness of classical music as background, soundtrack, and familiar signifier would make a list of "spottings" (i.e. a primary-sourced list of usages and references, as this article is currently formed) especially unwieldy and unencyclopedic. This article should be rewritten to illustrate the meanings and places of classical music in the larger culture, with examples kept where the are most illustrative. As Mj says above, sources covering the subject of Classical music in popular culture certainly exist.

The currently IPC list can only bog down in contentious, cruft-warring debates of which usages and references are the most notable from thousands of potential examples. It is not the foundation of a good article. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Planets in popular culture for precedent on this.

My opinion: there are less than 10 good "In popular culture" articles on Wikipedia, and classical music deserves a good one. Wikipedia:"In popular culture" articles is a decent guideline, and User:edgarde/IPC (note namespace) an opinionated, unaccepted one that I like. / edg ☺ ☭ 16:26, 21 March 2008 (UTC) (mostly copied from Wikipedia talk:Trivia sections)

As creator of the article, I couldn't agree more. The article was the result of a discussion on the talk page of the Classical compositions project page. I would have liked to begin with an exposition of the subject, but my immediate concern was to preserve research on references and derivative works that had already been done, but had been removed by PC opponents.

I am currently on the other side of the earth from my regular home, but when I get back, I certainly plan to clean up some of the irrelevancies included here, and to write a meaningful exposition of the topic. Of course, I would be delighted if someone of you beat me to it. --Ravpapa (talk) 09:51, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion

User Kleinzach has nominated this article for deletion on the grounds that it is an "Experimental page that should really have been created in userspace". However, this is not an experimental page, and creating it in userspace would defeat the entire purpose of the article's creation.

This article was created in response to a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music/Compositions task force. In that discussion, I contended that while popular culture sections of articles, while often containing much irrelevant content, often contain information which is relevant and should be preserved, and that they should not be deleted, but rewritten. I even volunteered, in that discussion, to take responsibility for the rewrite of these sections such that they would not be "listcruft" (as per fancruft), but make actual substantive contributions to the content of the articles. However, this position was rejected on the grounds that (I quote from a post by Kleinzach) "We are all volunteers. We can't expect editors to spend their time reworking listcruft into paragraphs of coherent information. It can be done, sure, but it takes a lot of effort."

I felt that there was an urgent need to preserve information that a sizable portion of wikipedia editors (not to mention readers) consider relevant and important. I therefore created this page, as a place where this information can be pasted and revised as necessary.

While I agree that some, perhaps most information in popular culture sections is listcruft, and that it is by and large poorly presented, wholesale and unconsidered deletion of information that others, readers and editors, consider important and relevant does not seem an appropriate action, to put it mildly.

Were I, as Kleinzach suggests, to create this article in my own userspace, that would completely defeat the purpose of the article. Editors seeking to preserve popular culture information about classical works would be at a loss as to where to find it.

It is my hope and expectation that editors will add to this article. I am currently far from my home, but I plan immediately on my return to edit the two sections as well as any other sections that might be added. --Ravpapa (talk) 08:58, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Please read comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Classical music in popular culture. I am sorry to say that I agree with Kleinzach. - Jay (talk) 14:39, 27 March 2008 (UTC)