Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dartmouth College student groups

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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 was no consensus. W.marsh 14:03, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dartmouth College student groups

Dartmouth College student groups (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Per WP:ORG, none of these groups are notable in their own right. The topic itself also has not established notability, particularly by not including any verifiable references nor any reason for us to believe it is notable. If Dartmouth student groups are notable, then all universities should have similar pages and that seems to be a bad idea. Although the Dartmouth College page and related pages have become featured articles, it is not a good idea to split every single subtopic into its own article. Noetic Sage 06:06, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, Wikipedia is not a directory.—Noetic Sage 06:08, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep/Split having a quick look at the article, it appears that at least several of the groups are notable (they have won awards of something). It does not appear to be a simple list as the groups each have a nice description, enough to be a stub-like article in them selves. So I think it should either be kept, or split into other articles Tiddly-Tom 06:43, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
    • Keep - Wikipedia:Summary style may be of intrest, this content could be part of the main article, but due to lenth, should be kept Tiddly-Tom 18:19, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete or selectively merge into the main article. A couple of these might be notable, but the vast majority are not, and finding non-trivial independent sourcing for the whole thing would be impossible. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 09:46, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: as the original creator of this article, let me explain how it came about. It seems that some professor at Dartmouth encourages (or perhaps assigns) his students, every semester, to contribute a new article to the Wikipedia. As you might expect, many students create articles describing some Dartmouth student group. These inevitably get AfD'd, the result of which, back in the day, was usually a decision to merge into Dartmouth College. This created huge problems for that page's quality: there was too much of this stuff, and it had little sense of coherency or comprehensiveness of coverage. Accordingly, I spun it off; it was all an attempt to make Dartmouth College a better article. Noeticsage says above that keeping this article would suggest that "all universities should have similar pages"; but of course not all universities have, semester after semester, a sudden influx of new Wikipedia editors (thanks to a professor's assignment) whom we want to encourage and whose work we need to integrate as smoothly as possible into the Wikipedia. Doops | talk 14:28, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: I'm not sure why we want to encourage this influx of writers and contributors to continually add content that is not notable. If anything, I would say we should keep a closer watch of Dartmouth-related articles at the beginning of every semester since we know that new students will probably add things that are both unreferenced and not notable. If this professor is encouraging participation in Wikipedia s/he should encourage students to add things in congruence with our policies and methodologies. This is similar to when Stephen Colbert encourages viewers to edit Wikipedia. I laud you for your removal of this information of the Dartmouth article (which has subsequently been promoted to featured status), but I don't think we should encourage this influx of new editors every semester to do this kind of editing.—Noetic Sage 19:51, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
  • I've heard about that class, but just anecdotally. Which professor/class is that, out of interest? Dylan 19:57, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment I have a lot of conflicting ideas on the outcome of this AfD, so I'll reflect on it and give an opinion soon. In the meantime, I recommend that you add Dartmouth College publications to this AfD, as it is substantially the same kind of article and of approximately equal quality. Should probably be both or nothing. Dylan 16:30, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Ah, screw it, delete. It's not a well-written article, and it's not worth covering the not-notable groups. (For the record, a handful are notable -- Dartmouth Outing Club, The Dartmouth, The Dartmouth Review, and the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern.) Most importantly, I think, is that is, as you said, a directory -- this doesn't address Dartmouth groups as a whole, but just summarizes each one. In this respect, it doesn't do anything more than Category:Dartmouth College student groups, other than covering those not notable enough to have their own articles. Dylan 16:38, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Another comment - it might be worth adding the Undergraduate and Secret Societies sections at the end to Dartmouth College Greek organizations (which is an integrated and well-written article). It might require tweaking the title and scope, but they're kind of in the same arena. Dylan 16:42, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Weak keep: Individually, not a single one is notable. As a collection they may be notable, and having an article for them discourages creation of the individual ones. I could go either way, but I'll keep by default. CRGreathouse (t | c) 00:19, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
    • So, by that logic, an article about a class of kindergarten kids would be kept: they're not notable, but keeping an article on all of them discourages individual articles? That makes no sense. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 01:20, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
That's a straw man analogy. the correct one is that individual academic departments are almost never notable, but the college or major division of the university generally is. DGG (talk) 11:38, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
      • Indeed. By Wikipedia's notability guidelines an article is inherently not notable until its reason for inclusion is given.—Noetic Sage 01:26, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep Student activities at a major university are in general collectively notable, though the individual clubs almost never are. It is much better having such an article than trying to cope with deleting and merging articles on the individual groups. A few are probably notable enough for individual articles, but then this can act as a summary for those articles. A commendable way to do it. Very definitely, all major universities & colleges should indeed have just such an article. Smaller schools may better have the material integrated. DGG (talk) 11:36, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep per above. As noted, the wealth of information here is a very useful resource, especially since Dartmouth is a featured article, I think the more appropriate information on this page, the better it will serve those looking to learn more about it. It simply wouldn't be practical (or smart) to try and incorporate everything here into other articles.-DMCer 13:20, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: I'd also like to point out that there is potential conflict of interest with regard to comments made by DMCer and Dylan, as both are current students at Dartmouth and both are active members in WikiProject Dartmouth. I'm not sure if that qualifies as COI or not, but I figured I'd point it out to be safe. As far as my own belief, the article is more of a list than an article. —Noetic Sage 16:26, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
  • I apologize for not disclosing this explicitly. I personally don't consider it a conflict of interest per se (in the WP:COI definition as promoting one's own interest -- we are students, but the list of articles doesn't really promote our own interest, even if we were members of a particular group listed), but I can see how it's a grey enough area to be of some concern. I've found that university articles around Wikipedia are almost universally edited at least in part by their alumni, simply because they're often the ones most familiar and most interested in them, and if such is an instance of a COI, I think it's become an accepted exception. At any rate, if you feel it would be best for the project, I would be willing to recuse myself and strike my recommendation. I don't want to give the impression of impartiality (even though, after all, I recommended this article's deletion, which would be against my "interest" in this case). Tell me what you think; I will leave it up to you and the recommendation of others. Dylan 02:02, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete I'll make the crass assumption that not all of these groups are notable enough. Those that are, it seems, already have forked articles. A special thanks to the editor above who gave some background information, by the way. And as far as the notion that all universities should have a similar article, I strongly disagree, even at major universities! What's next, articles on restrooms for individual colleges? :) --Midnightdreary 16:28, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Of course not all the groups are not notable enough for separate articles-- they dont have to be--WP:N applied to the whole article, not individual pieces of content. Most paragraphs in individual articles arent notable by themselves. Just as we can have an article about an author listing the books, we can have an article listing the student groups. . If anyone writes an article on Restrooms at Dartmouth, I promise to support deletion of it. DGG (talk) 03:40, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete0- per above. All these groups unlikely to be notable, and not satifsied with the cruft here.JJJ999 04:32, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep and whittle it down. There are too many totally non-notable organizations in there (Dartmouth Union of Bogglers, Dartmouth Billiards Club, etc) - and we don't want all 300+ organizations on campus in this article. However, there are too many semi-notable organizations in here to warrant deletion. For example, most of the senior societies are notable in their histories and such, if individual Greek organizations are notable enough then I think Amarna and Panarchy probably are notable enough to be in a summary article at least, Dartmouth Outing Club, Native Americans at Dartmouth, The Dartmouth Aires (which have an individual article up for deletion, which I'd support, but they have published several CDs, won a few awards, and are decently well-known, so they deserve at least a paragraph somewhere). I will note that, as per User:Noeticsage's statement, I am also a current undergrad and a member of Wikiproject Dartmouth, but I agree with Dylan in that I don't think that's a huge conflict of interest. I've done mostly organizational work on the Dartmouth pages (including getting a lot of cruft articles deleted/merged). I don't think this article is cruft, however. --└ Smith120bh/TALK ┐ 03:25, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Whittling down would probably be a good idea. Do you suppose this content might lend itself to list form? Dylan 03:29, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
  • The other thing I was thinking is condensing it so that every group doesn't necessarily have its own section. You could have, for instance, a section for a cappella groups: "Dartmouth has X number a capella groups. The oldest is the Dartmouth Aires, who do this and that. There are also the Rockapellas, who do social justice songs, and the blah blah blah..." It would probably help integrate the content of what right now is a piece-by-piece summary of each individual group. Dylan 03:30, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: Regardless of the notability of each group, the article itself has not established notability. Why is the topic of Dartmouth College student groups notable? Specific groups that are notable are either included on other pages (like the Dartmouth Greek system article) or have their own article. I still don't see why the subject of student groups at Dartmouth is notable. —Noetic Sage 03:42, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep. Sufficiently well referenced. Is appropriate to exist to avoid excessive material in Dartmouth College. --SmokeyJoe 13:42, 25 October 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.