Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pulp and Paper Merit Badge

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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 of the debate was no consensus. Mailer Diablo 00:57, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pulp and Paper Merit Badge

Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. This page is a how-to guide to getting to the badge. Wikipedia is also not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files. The article is, for the most part, just a list of links. — Scm83x talk 07:21, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Response. This is where I totally agree. What would be everyone's preference for documenting this type of information, namely: image, history, topic covered, relationship to society and culture, statistics, etc.? I am completely open to this type of discussion. A suggestion (below) is to merge with Merit Badges, but that would make a REALLY big article, perhaps unwieldly. Maybe it makes sense to group them in some other way. Ideas? NThurston 22:37, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete I agree, but someone keep a copy of it for possible use on WikiBooks. --Bduke 07:59, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Keep. I now think this should be kept, after the editor has made significant changes. --Bduke 21:36, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete as Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information and a how-to guide. This is an encyclopedia, for goodness sake. --Terence Ong (恭喜发财) 10:04, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete Go and buy the scouts manual if you want a badge Mike (T C) 14:01, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Keep The article does seem to have more history of the badge, and since scouting is such a huge part of north american culture, it would be wise to keep this. Maybe one day after scouting had evolved and the history lost, we can look back at some scouts uniform, and be able to identify the various badges? Mike (T C) 20:47, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
      • Older Boy Scout Handbooks are perfectly good resources for identifying old badge designs. There are also various lists out there as to when badges were added, revised, or had their names changed. While such things may be interesting, especially for the Eagle-required badges, I don't think that either bits of data are alone sufficient to make a given article notable. That the rest of the article is POV rambling, listing of badge requirements, and a list of weblinks doesn't help. My vote does not change. -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 22:08, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
        • I also think that we should consider merging data into the main Merit badge (Boy Scouts of America) article. Granted, the table is hardly sufficient at this point, but take a look at some of the fleshed out lists at Wikipedia:Featured lists. This article will inevitably remain short, and I'm not a big fan of seeing hundreds of individual and short merit badge articles. I think that we should merge some of the information there, and drop some of the more trivial facts such as the paragraphs dealing with individual topics. — Rebelguys2 talk 22:15, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Speedy Strong Keep NThurston 15:54, 9 February 2006 (UTC) The original AfD was posted in the middle of developing the site, when I had simply started creating a skeleton for a much more meaningful article. As I have continued work, I have incorporated the few positive suggestions listed above. The current page still needs some work (like many an article) but is dramatically different than the article at the time the AfD was posted. Here are some specific responses to the concerns listed above:
    • How-to guide to getting to the badge. This is inaccurate. There is nothing on the site that tells a Scout how to earn the badge, except for a link to the requirements, which are common knowledge. The site (in current form) is a description of the merit badge and what its goals and purposes are. It is clearly information about the merit badge itself.
    • List of links - Many articles start by cataloging what is already known. I was in the process of developing the site and had collected a list of related articles and links. Due to some positive comments, the direction of the article was changed to comply with Wikipedia policy, and the links are now used in a more appropriate fashion.
    • Go and buy the book - Seems counterintuitive that anybody would want to take information off Wikipedia because some of it is already available in a book somewhere.
    • Eventually, one would expect that other information about the merit badge itself - history, changes, impact, etc. would appear on this page. This will be of interest to many users, especially those that are involved in collecting patches, etc.
Before I knew the proper protocol for resolving AfD requests, I removed the AfD tags on the article. They have been restored thanks to a kind note from jergen and I am hopeful that the current article is more consistent with what Scouters would expect to see. By the way, as a newcomer, I was expecting a little more civility and cooperation than I received from the deletionists above. See "what the community is not" and | Please do not bite the newcomers.
  • Comment. This nomination does not fit the criteria for speedy keep; let it run its course. I also don't understand why you are accusing everyone above of being uncooperative deletionists. Please be civil yourself. We're not here to "bite," so I don't understand why you're getting so defensive. Questioning an subject's notability is standard practice on Wikipedia, and you will not get anywhere if your temper flares. — Rebelguys2 talk 21:55, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Comment I think it does/did meet Speedy Keep because the inital AfD was based on an unfinished article (clearly a misunderstanding). Notice that some people have changed their positions now that they have seen the whole article.
Point well taken on the temper. Not everyone is a conspiratory deletionist, just a couple, at most. I have calmed down considerably since yesterday. I was referring to some of the insensitive and and inflammatory (to me) remarks (for example, "After all, how much is there to say about the merit badge? Information about pulp and paper already exists in various articles. Lists of requirements don't belong on Wikipedia. Merit badge pamphlets don't belong on Wikipedia.") that were meant to torpedo the page right off the bat without any regard given to an attempt to improve or fix it. I think those are squarely the types of things that are referred to in the "don't bite" article. I understand the need for people to patrol against random or wacky new stuff, but it seems necessary for the established users to welcome and guide newcomers rather than just jump on an unfinished page and suggest deleting it. Now we've got that cleared up, I am pleased at the level of debate on what this page should look like if it is to stay a part of Wikipedia. I am still thinking about wikibooks, but haven't even figured wikipedia out yet. I think we are now to the point where we can disagree about whether there is enough value in a particular topic to keep it on Wikipedia, but those are the types of disagreements where we can "agree to disagree." NThurston 22:37, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Since this thread is starting to ramble away from the point of this discussion, I've moved the response to his talk page. — Rebelguys2 talk 23:05, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Perhaps reading the Guide to deletion might be helpful for NThurston. -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 22:13, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
    • I've been spending a lot of time there recently, which was required to separate out the useful comments from the inflammatory remarks. NThurston 22:37, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom. --jergen 17:34, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete as per nom.Blnguyen 00:09, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete, limited interest to non-Scouts. Wikipedia is not Scoutopedia.

Stifle 09:59, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

    • Commentthe above delete rationale is nonsense. One could say the same thing about almost any article. Rlevse 02:17, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. I am in favour of all NPOV information. LARS 15:04, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. It's not a how-to guide, and it was somewhat interesting to know there was such a badge. -- Mithent 16:38, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep, but reduce the number of links. The topic is encyclopedic, the problems are editorial problems that need to be fixed. Johntex\talk 17:56, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. Not how-to. Content is encyclopedia worthy, and I found it interesting. Would be OK with more merit badge pages. Mathboy965 02:25, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. I think these mb articles should provide a history of the badge itself, give a general overview of the topic, and provide wiki and web resources the Scouts could use to earn the MB. It should not be a mere collecting point, nor should it replace the MB pamphlet. As it stands at this moment, this article just needs some formatting and fleshing out. Rlevse 02:23, 14 February 2006 (UTC), Scouting Project and Portal coordinator
  • Keep for now. I cleaned up the article quite a bit, and trimmed out a lot of the "how to" and the completely unnececssary list of links from the bottom. It still needs more work, in particular, the "See also" section can probably be removed. For the record, I thought it was a thinly-disguised how-to page. Turnstep 03:54, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. I'm happy with the current state of the article and find it contributes well to Wikipedia. -Tim Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy) 08:59, 14 February 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.
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