Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Armistice and Dedication Day

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 KEEP. The raw vote totals are 4 Delete, 3 Keep, 4 Merge (two of the Keep voters struck out their bolded "vote", for some reason, but they didn't strike out their Keep arguments, so they still count as Keep comments. So clearly there's no consensus to outright delete the article, and no real consensus at all about what to do. I found the Keep arguments to be pretty well-made and cogent, so by strength of argument we get Keep. Herostratus 04:34, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Armistice and Dedication Day

Armistice and Dedication Day (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Non-notable juvenilia from songwriter Robert B. Sherman. Play written when author was 16, performed at the amateur/high school level, and apparently not since. Nice that it raised money for the war effort during WWII, but the notability of the author as a songwriter does not automatically make every work notable. No sources, reliable or otherwise provided, and the <20 Ghits on title + author's surname primarily refer back to WP or mirrors. Robertissimo 14:21, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. He's famous for writing songs, not plays, so this early work has zero relevance to his future fame. No need to merge anything as the gist of the article is already included in Robert B. Sherman. Demiurge 14:28, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment What is a "special citation from the War Department", and can that be substantiated? —ShadowHalo 05:04, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

• Do Not Delete. Because he's more famous for writing songs than plays/screenplays, does not make his work in this area unremarkable. See the page Robert B. Sherman to see his work in screenplays. The fact that it was written when the author was 16 is not the point of the article either: What is important is that the play and author were recognized for fiscal contribution to the war effort, raising thousands of dollars. This play along with two radio programs produced and written by the same author appear on page 109 of Walt's Time^[1] which was a published, joint autobiography, from 1998. Howard352 18:59, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. What we're dealing with, however, is not the worthiness of the project, one among thousands that helped support the war effort. What we need are reliable sources demonstrating the notability of this work. A mention in the author's bio article may well be appropriate; given that it, from what Howard352 says, gets less than a page's mention in the author's own autobiography seems telling. Robertissimo 20:16, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

• Response to Robertissimo Walt's Time is a joint autobiography of both Sherman Brothers so Armistice and Dedication Day's "less than one page's mention" is understandable. (I don't know how Robertissimo can consider this legitimate criteria for deletion however.) As a side note, I have reason to believe that there is more of a mention in the author's currently unpublished (but recently completed) personal autobiography. I did not site that source here, because, as I'm certain Wikipedia standards would concur, an unpublished source cannot be cited. Nevertheless, Walt's Time was cited, and it is a published source, so that really should be adequete. Regardless, and as I mentioned above, I don't think that "a page mention" is actually considered a Wikipedia dividing line. Further to Robertissmo's argument, I am not aware of the "thousands that helped support the war effort" to whom he is haphazzardly refering. Certainly Robertissmo isn't suggesting that there were thousands of plays written in support of the war effort. Simply put, Armistice and Dedication Day was performed publically, it made a profit at the time, it was covered by Newspapers at the time, it was lauded by the War Department and certified by same, it is a work by a famous person and was unique in that person's career to the point that its inclusion (as its own page) in Wikipedia may be of interest to users. Lastly, it was referenced in a recently published and available book (i.e. "Walt's Time"). For the reasons cited, the Armistice and Dedication Day page should not be deleted or merged. Howard352 14:56, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Cbrown1023 02:14, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep The information should not be lost. I agree with Howard's reasoning, recognition by War Department and famous author makes it notable. Should be kept, especially as a unique example of his work. --Falcorian ^(talk) 04:19, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
• Merge/redirect to Robert B. Sherman. There's about two sentences of unique content in the article -- the rest of it recapitulates Sherman's life story. If it were an article with any depth I might vote differently. --Dhartung | Talk 04:48, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep In response to Dhartung, I have been doing on going research on this article and have to get access to some archives which I plan to do over the next few months. There will be more information, when I am able to access it, but like many articles found in Wikipedia, this is a work in progress. It is being developed. I don't believe that I have been irresponsible or premature in creating the separate page either. However, I must make a personal note on this, I find it very discouraging to find articles deleted before they have a chance to be fully developed and will wait to know the immediate status of the article prior to spending any more time doing research for it. I hope this doesn't come across as bitterness, it's not meant as such. I recognize the balance that must be attained between hard line "deletionism" and a more liberal view. I just have better things to do with my time than to do research in good faith, only to see that work fall into the abyss! Howard352 10:37, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete - Recommend author works on article in userspace (User:Horard352/development) until he can do the above. Right now, Dhartung's right - it's not referenced, and really doesn't say anything besides "he wrote it, here's the plot, here's a short summary of his life story". --Wooty Woot? contribs 01:45, 6 January 2007 (UTC)\

• Keep, Do Not Move To Userspace Wooty is correct that the article was not referenced, but that has now been corrected. Thank you for pointing out my ommision. Let me restate that this article is a work in progress. But that said, there will probably be other contributors to this page as there are a number of people who are interested in the Sherman Brothers, World War II and Disney related media. There are people who know about this play. Nothing in the article has been "guessed at", but it is sparce, admittedly. But I don't think userspace is appropriate because then it won't have the chance of properly expanding and therefore will be defeating one of the purposes of Wikipedia, to build accurate articles about meaningful data by a community of Wikipedians. (This is not a quote, I did not find this anywhere. But it seems to me to capture, in part, the spirit) I will restate, Armistice and Dedication Day was performed publicly, it made a profit at the time, it was covered by Newspapers at the time, it was lauded by the War Department and certified by same, it is a work by a famous person and was unique in that person's career to the point that its inclusion (as its own page) in Wikipedia may prove to be of value to users. Howard352 20:52, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
• Merge with article on the person himself, where this is already covered. Doesn't seem notable enough to have a separate article - has it ever been performed again ? WMMartin 19:08, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
• Merge and redirect. As WMMartin says, it doesn't seem notable enough to have its own article, even if it is verified. However, some of the information could add value to the Robert B. Sherman article. Dekimasu 04:51, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
• Merge to Robert B. Sherman. It's notable, but not quite article-notable.--Wizardman 05:47, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

• Delete, no need for merging. Sufficiently covered in Robert B. Sherman already. Jobjörn (Talk ° contribs) 21:59, 13 January 2007 (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.