Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dubbo Presbyterian Church

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. Per JROBBO (talk)'s request I have moved the article into his userspace. Mackensen (talk) 12:13, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dubbo Presbyterian Church

Dubbo Presbyterian Church (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

non-notable now-defunct church. States "For many years, Dubbo Presbyterian was your average country church" and then notes they've now split up. No notability asserted. wikipediatrix 03:08, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. MER-C 03:32, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, or even speedy A7-don't even see an assertion of notability, let alone anything that would substantiate one if it were there. Seraphimblade 04:41, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Australia-related deletions. -- Longhair\^talk 06:44, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete un-encyclopedic drivel. The Crying Orc 08:59, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep 1. Dubbo Presbyterian Church is not dufunct. In this case the "spilt" referes to dividing for the purposes of growth: "The church has split again, for the purpose of planting other congregations, rather than growing one large church." 2. While not mentioned in the article, Dubbo Presbyterian Church may have a claim of notability. It has been the source of an amount of contemporary worship music, not as well known as Hillsong, but still well known in Evangelical Christianity, particularly in the Presbyterian Church and among Sydney Anglicans. Blarneytherinosaur talk 09:42, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Depending on the notability of the music, that may indeed be a claim to notability. Can you source that statement? Seraphimblade 10:14, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Reply I have added a bit of information to the article along these lines, including sources. That's all I can do tonight. Blarneytherinosaur talk 10:53, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment/suggestion Given new evidence, I continue to remain convinced on the delete here-(source 2 and 3 only drop the church's name, source 4 doesn't mention it at all). However, perhaps a better idea would be to look into an article on the music organization (if it's received a bit more coverage, it could well pass WP:BAND), and merge this one there? Seraphimblade 11:00, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Reply to comment/suggestion. People would be more likely to recognise "Plainsong Music" or "Emu Music" than "Dubbo Presbyterian Church". I assume the fact that it all started with the Dubbo PC would be noted in the proposed article, so I would still like to be able to link here, but I'll leave that up to the community to decide. Blarneytherinosaur talk 11:08, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Delete Clearly nn. Are churches the new high schools on wikipedia? Enough with the non-notable churches, OK? Lurker ^oi! 11:32, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Churches are not the new schools - as dodgy as WP:SCHOOLS might be, churches have no established criteria for deletion or keeping, and so AfDs on churches tend to be arbitrary and inhabited by those who believe no churches are notable. The problem with churches is that they tend not to attract mainstream media attention unless they do something very controversial - so a large church that attracts many people, unless it's a megachurch (and some of them haven't even survived) tends not to be established as notable, but should be, given the large amount of people that they attract - think about it, if other groups of people drew crowds of thousands every week (I'm not saying this church does, but hear me out), they would be notable in many cases - but not churches. Some of Sydney's biggest churches have been deleted, as well as Melbourne's second largest church - if they can't stay, what can? Please enlighten us - I would welcome your input. JROBBO 12:15, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

"so AfDs on churches tend to be arbitrary and inhabited by those who believe no churches are notable" And your evidence for that slur is? There are hundreds of thousands of churches in the world. At least. So a church has a hard job proving notability, just as a website with many visitors would not automatically be considered notable. If you want a set of notability guidelines for churches, why not create a notability guidelines page? Lurker ^oi! 12:35, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I think if you look through the AfD debates on churches in the last six months you'll find that I'm right - I think people who don't attend them don't understand that the church is more important than just its building, and for the reasons above it's often hard to get independent sources in a way that a lot of other organisations don't. The debates are by their own nature arbitrary, since there are no guidelines. To answer your request, I am going to create a notability guidelines page because this has got out of hand - it's about time there were some criteria established, instead of "no churches are notable" which seems to be the norm. JROBBO 21:22, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I look forward to seeing it and to contributing to it. But I don't think there's a "no churches are notable" vibe going on here, quite the opposite. wikipediatrix 21:29, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• Keep - Bryson Smith and the church are very well known in Sydney Christian circles, especially for Plainsong and Emu having started there and the church's involvement in its establishment. If the consensus is not to keep (which appears to be the fait d'accompli nowadays), I would beg that a merge as per WP:LOCAL be done; it's definitely something worth including in the local area article. JROBBO 12:15, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
• Comment I will reserve judgement pending evidence of notability beyond the website mentioning the music. Have there ever been two or more independent newspaper articles about the church which discuss it in more than a passing way (like announcements of service times, or of wedding ceremonies there? That could sway my vote in favor of keeping. Edison 17:25, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
• Comment Even if the CD is notable (and I'm not convinced that it is), it still doesn't necessarily transfer that notability to the Church. If more valid sources about the CD emerge, it could mean that the CD should get its own article in which the Dubbo Church's article's info can be merged to. wikipediatrix 21:34, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

There's more than one CD - EMU Music, and its two predecessors have put out about 15 CDs now or have been the Australian distributor and reseller for them. But then again, Emu already has a WP article. JROBBO 01:24, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. I cannot find any references to this church on Google News Archive [1] or Ebbsco's Australia and New Zealand Reference Centre. While I do not doubt that there is a church of that name in Dubbo, I do doubt that there is enough material available to make a standalone article. It is worthy of mention in the Dubbo article. I do think JROBBO's idea of WP:CHURCH is a good idea. Capitalistroadster 00:04, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, maybe mention in the relevant locality articles, and music group articles. Lankiveil 02:41, 22 November 2006 (UTC).
• Request to closing moderator - can this article be userfied to my userpage if consensus is delete, so I can merge the relevant part of it into the Emu music article, and the Dubbo article? JROBBO 11:40, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete non notable. --Roisterer 06:54, 28 November 2006 (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.