Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ladies Bible Study

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 - OR concerns trump any lack of clear consensus.Blnguyen | BLabberiNg 07:12, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ladies Bible Study

Doesn't seem notable (no lasting impact even at the school where it happened); request to be kept as a forum for discussion in the context of a class project seems to at least border on original research. Jaeger5432 21:02, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

• Keep: Despite what someone posted in discussion, this article is NOT research (for a class or otherwise). It is the account of an event and does not propose an idea, theory or argument and therefore does not fall into the category of original research. The only basis for deletion seems to be a matter of impact. This event has had a lasting impact at the school where it happened and was experienced by a large percentage of a university population of nearly 39,000 students plus staff. You need only ask any student on campus or look at the tshirts being worn to see it's impact. There are many other Wikipedia articles far more worthy of deletion (and volunteer time) than Ladies Bible Study. UserDeleted092906

I think you need to read the WP:OR page closer. In the discussion page, I quoted part of it, but it apears that you have not read it. I'll quote the second sentence of the WP:OR page: "Citing sources and avoiding original research are inextricably linked: the only way to demonstrate that you are not doing original research is to cite reliable sources which provide information that is directly related to the topic of the article and to adhere to what those sources say."

Now take the very first sentence of the ladies bible study page: " "Ladies Bible Study- tonight!" was a 'mail storm' that was created on September 11, 2006 and has still not abated. ". This sentence is all original research because there are *zero* sources that are considered reliable for the purposes of the wikipedia that I can independently confirm that this event started on Sept 11. There is no way I can verify that, over a week later, this mail storm has yet to abate. Wrs1864 19:11, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I did read your post in the discussion, but I believe it is you that needs to read the WP:OR page more closely. Specifically, get past the intro and read the section called "What is excluded?". It clearly states:

--

"An edit counts as original research if it proposes ideas or arguments. That is, if it does any of the following:

* It introduces a theory or method of solution;

* It introduces original ideas;

* It defines new terms;

* It provides or presumes new definitions of pre-existing terms;

* It introduces an argument, without citing a reputable source for that argument, that purports to refute or support another idea, theory, argument, or position;

* It introduces an analysis or synthesis of established facts, ideas, opinions, or arguments in a way that builds a particular case favored by the editor, without attributing that analysis or synthesis to a reputable source;

* It introduces or uses neologisms, without attributing the neologism to a reputable source."

--

This clearly shows how the WP:OR rule does not apply to Ladies Bible Study since it is not introducing a theory, idea, argument, etc. It is not research; much less original research. UserDeleted092906

*sigh* Please read what you quoted and what I wrote. In particular, pay attention to the places that talk about "reputable sources". Again, not only are there zero reputable sources cited in the article, but from what I can tell, there aren't any in existance. Even if there were one or two, that would still fail the search engine test. Wrs1864 02:54, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

You're missing the point. You can't just take the words "reputable source" out of context. The point of the WP:OR rule is to keep people from publishing their own theories or arguments on Wikipedia. That theme is common among all the bullets that are in the "What is excluded?" section. You can't just research a topic, make your own theory and then tell the world using Wikipedia, effectively bypassing the standard practice of having your discoveries scrutinized through peer review. Read the "Why original research is excluded" and "Policy origin: the opinion of Wikipedia's founder" sections of WP:OR. Sure, you'll find more requirements of "reputable sources", but you can't just take that out of context. Ladies Bible Study doesn't qualify as a theory; it's an event. In general, I understand what you're trying to argue, but it just doesn't apply in this case. UserDeleted092906

Ok, you win. I'm going to stop wasting my time on this. You are very much mistaken about the need for need for Wikipedia:Verifiability from Wikipedia:Reliable sources. It isn't just theories or arguments. It includes the first publication of any sort of data or statements. You say to read the "why original research is excluded", but it says right there that "That is, any facts, opinions, interpretations, definitions, and arguments published by Wikipedia must already have been published by a reliable publication in relation to the topic of the article." The facts and interpretations in this article have not been published elsewhere. You say to read "policy origin" section, and it says "Some who completely understand why Wikipedia ought not create novel theories of physics by citing the results of experiments and so on and synthesizing them into something new, may fail to see how the same thing applies to history." This is an historicial event, and you have failed to see why no-original-research applies. Wrs1864 14:06, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you... we should stop wasting our time debating this. However, I'd like you to read the citation for that last statement you quoted. I think it's clear that they are discussing analysis/interpretations of historical events that have the possibility of inciting debate. For example, the cause of WWII is up for interpretation and debate. Ladies Bible Study is not, because no ideas are expressed in the article. UserDeleted092906

• Delete as per nom. Wrs1864 05:43, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per above. Wryspy 19:24, 19 September 2006 (UTC)—

• Keep: This article should not be deleted as it provides a microanalysis of how a "mail storm" can occur even when the originator of the source e-mail had the most innocent of intentions. With this in mind the wikipedia article is a valid tool for people researching internet and e-mail culture. Also, UM campus has already developed a subculture on "ladies bible study" as shorthand for describing useless clogging e-mails, and as such, the description of the e-mail storm's origination is valid and should stay on wikipedia.

No, this article should be deleted *because* it provides microanalysis and *because* this is the only place where people can reasearch this topic. Wrs1864 14:06, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Delete. Per nomination and all the arguments that back it. This is about a single school -- and if this persists, what's to keep articles from being created about flamewars and mailstorms at every school/organization on the end of this earth? -- and the argument of subculture would mean terms used at any school would be fair game, i.e. "night shifted" (for sleeping during the day and working through the night) for MIT, "that's how I roll" (slang for that's how I go about my life) for any school, and bag used in very derogatory senses. This article is very much OR. It's well written and with cute graphics, to be sure, but what purpose does it serve to educate? Nothing. No one outside the UMich lists that were spammed would possibly care, and note that for the most part, people looking to keep/edit the article are new on WP and may not have read WP policies. Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers but this does cast suspicion on the claims that this article has any prominence or value outside of the school. Janet13 16:47, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Also, the article names people and lists by name and publishes emails (and signatures) without people's consent. No idea the legality of it but the morality of possibly defaming/misrepresenting people when the subject is something so trivial? Janet13 16:49, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not saying save or delete, but you're beasically saying 'only 40,000 people would care'. How about this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._Army_acronyms_and_expressions - only a few hundred thousand people would care, why not delete it?--Eljamoquio 23:36, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. This is a waste of time. 68.42.67.23 22:30, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. After personal references and opinionated sections have been removed. Nonsufficitorbis 17:54, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete -- even though I've tried to keep this from being a storm of biased ranting and insults, it still isn't suitable to an encyclopedia. --FOo 21:17, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. As per UserDeleted092906 and Nonsufficitorbis above. Panchero 16:01, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. I don't believe using the 'its only happening at this school' reason is sufficient for deletion of the article. Many similar events happen around the world and they are not just lumped together. To reference them separately is a critical component of being able to discern the different ways people, groups or 'subcultures' react to similar situations. The fact that UofM has had this reaction with vicious emails, a weak response from the IT department, and Tshirts being made exposes different facets of the life there that make it unique. I personally did not know about the 'night shifting' at MIT, for example. But if I were a prospective student, I would have like to have known about that from a source i could trust. As Wikipedia expands and more people are coming to use it as a source of information, the trust will follow simply because it literally does have everything. Another issue: Wikipedia is used by many people to gain details of the facts whatever they may be as long as they are verifiable. Now the question of verifiability may be in dispute in a case where things are happening at the same time they are placed onto the Wikipedia. However, the only way to have one hundred percent verifiability is for every human being on earth to conclusively believe an even occurred...this never happens. Reasonable verifiability depends on the general public's trust of several independent sources. 'Reputable' is up to debate, i agree. However, if we want to wait on this to publish the information, the Wikipedia has no business publishing news information on current events such as the Thai Coup. SandyB

• Strong Delete -- This is a description of an insignificant event with an attempt to fit it in under the context of encyclopedic recordkeeping. The only topic under which this could justifyably fall under is "e-mail storm", where this event would be given no more than one or two lines as a reference that this happened at the University of Michigan. However, because of its insignificance (i.e. no press coverage at all), even such mention would not be proper. Although some of the quotes and graphics are amusing, there are more appropriate locations on the web to post those than wikipedia. -- Hero27 00:20, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete - I have to say that I found it interesting but, sadly, it has to go as unencyclopaedic. There is, though, scope for a generic Mail storm article. BlueValour 01:55, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

• Keep - I believe the concept of wikipedia which makes it more popular and useful than a traditional encyclopedia such as the Encyclopedia Brittanica is that 1. It is not under the natural constraint of printed paper books that take up space which limit the amount of data that go into it and 2. It allows for users to input the information that they believe is worth documenting within the limits of verifiability. Relevance should be a minor concern...it is not a good idea in the long run to decide whether a subject matter is 'relevant' or not. In the old days, Encyclopedia writers from Diderot onwards would be challenged by the issue of relevance as the physical limits of the size of the encylopedia had to be considered. Today, if the Wikipedia administrators are concerned about the size of the project becoming too large, then by all means this article should be deleted. Other articles worth deleting are:

Old Toronto Board of Trade Building

Zsanett Égerházi

Springfield Model 1863

Darcy Hogan

The Widow Jones

Kim Jung-Joo

Dumped

1956 in country music

These articles include: a year when nothing happened, a bronze medalist in the olympics, a 31 year old playwright who has written one obscure play, a gun being described as slightly different from the model design 2 years prior, a building that was torn down long ago, a hungarian porn star, and an episode of a cartoon show. I got this list by hitting the random page about 30 times. The list of deleted articles could conceivably form another wiki, one could reasonably argue that each of these should be tagged for deletion. The point here, however, is that these should not be deleted because they help to conceive a unified database that people can come to as reference point of our culture, both past, present and future, that should not be cut down by our 'traditional' ideas of what an encyclopedia should be. To rephrase: Wikipedia is not simply an encyclopedia, it is a new medium of information conveyence that people have yet to fully comprehend. It can have tremendous influence in the future as it becomes more detailed and refined, in shaping the way our society learns but only if we let the authors have some leeway to decide what they think is a relevant article. Sure this episode is about an incident at one school that lasted only for a month or so and then kinda died away. A century from now, historians combing through the wikipedia may stumble on the 'email storm' article and find it about as drab as i found the Brittanica entry on Hong Kong I had to go through for a report in the eighth grade. How different would their perspective be by reading this article...a living example written by the people who went through it. Equally importantly, how discouraged would this group of University students taking time to document the incident be? A slap in the face now may keep them from ever contributing in the future. SandyB

I agree... well said. UserDeleted092906

The question of whether other articles are notable or not does not mean that this one is. The other key difference between this article and the ones you list is that they are all based on independent sources, or at least that published sources can be found. (This doesn't mean that the sources are necessarily correct, just that someone else has written something about it in a reasonably permanent medium.) Wikipedia is not (just) "a unified... reference point of our culture", it's an encyclopedia which includes *facts* about culture. And there needs to be some way to verify those facts -- even about seemingly trivial subjects such as Hungarian porn stars and a run-of-the-mill year in country music.

Am I suggesting that this didn't happen? No; I was on one of the lists myself, so I got to experience it in all its glory. Am I suggesting that the interpretation is wrong? Not necessarily. I'm suggesting that, *since* no reliable sources have been found, and *since* the conclusions therefore constitute original research, it does not belong on Wikipedia. If you want to show that it's good, useful information, then find reliable sources for it. If you think this is such a vivid narrative of exactly what it's like to survive an "email storm" that it must be preserved (here instead of some other site), then perhaps you could go on and merge it into email storm or some such.

On the feelings of "the authors" -- one of the things that makes Wikipedia special is that we're *all* "the authors"; it's not just the original writer of the first draft of the article who gets to decide its "final" form. Do the authors (even the brand-new-to-Wikipedia ones) have the freedom to decide what we think is a relevant article? Sure! that's what this process is all about :) Jaeger5432 04:49, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

What "conclusions" are in this article? What are the hypotheses of this "research"? UserDeleted092906

"Research" here refers to "material placed in articles by Wikipedia users that has not been previously published by a reliable source". The whole section "A Socio-scientific classification" is "conclusions", as is the (POV) statement that the IT department was "the real culprit". Take those out and what's left? a story about something interesting that happened at school one day. Hey, we had a fire drill this morning, maybe I should put an article on Wikipedia about that! It certainly affected hundreds of students and I could probably come up with some sort of "socio-scientific classification" of how people reacted. Sarcasm aside, even the bare facts are not currently verifiable. If they are, feel free to improve the article by adding sources. Contribute to the article rather than the argument, and you might yet convince people it's worth keeping. Jaeger5432 15:43, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with your interpretation of WP:OR since the page also says: "An edit counts as original research if it proposes ideas or arguments." and consistantly refers to "ideas" and "arguments" throughout (read my posts above). I wish my advisor would agree with your definition of "research"... it would make the Ph.D. so much easier. :-)

I do, however, agree with you on the issue of those statements about the IT department being the "real culprit". I apologize for not have seen that earlier... it shouldn't be there. I'm glad that you agree with me that this article is just an account of an event. Wikipedia is full of these. And hey... if your fire drill keeps forcing thousands of people out of the building for 10 days and people start selling t-shirts or writing songs about it, I think you have a good case for putting up an article. ;-) UserDeleted092906

The standard for what constitues original research on Wikipedia is in general much less than that of what constitutes original research for academia. JoshuaZ 03:55, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

And UserDeleted092906 and SandyB - no, it's not well said. What this article does is give UMich people a bad idea of what wikipedia is. It makes wikipedia look like a random website. I'm with Jaeger here... although I don't believe this could ever be actually encyclopedia unless something newsworthy happened as a result - like dozens of people throwing their computers out of their rooms in protest, like one of the serial spammers getting assaulted for their participation (hopefully not!). And then, it would belong in Wikinews... and MAYBE Wikipedia. Oh. And my old dorm constantly had firedrills that led to comments about its inhabitants that have entered school lore - does *that* count as encyclopedic? Janet13 06:50, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

• Keep - Keep after ensuring it maintains a NPOV
• Comment - apart from the sweatshirt the whole article is unsourced. It could all be complete bunkum as far as anyone knows. Where is the verifiability of the emails? This was a minor mail storm in a tea cup. As I said above, a generic article on mail storms might be fine but this is a fundamentally unencyclopaedic article. If this article is allowed to remain it will compromise the reputation of Wikipedia as a serious encyclopaedia. BlueValour 23:20, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per nom and BlueValour and per being very WP:OR. JoshuaZ 15:24, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete NN per nom. Arbusto 02:09, 29 September 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.