Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Densa (2nd nomination)

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 ~ Anthøny 20:11, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Densa

Densa (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Not notable. A Google search turns up no satisfactory references (most of them are on pages like fakecrap.com). Furthermore, the membership itself is not even notable (by their own admission, this is the nature of the "organization"). Non encyclopedic and non notable. The Parsnip! 20:24, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

• Delete Upon looking at the references, they appear to be fabricated.[1][2] --CA387 20:46, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
  • You might want to think more carefully about that. Google Web doesn't necessarily search newspapers and using The New York Times's own search facility (which of course isn't subject to the paywall as an external web spider is) pulls up the cited articles as the first and seventh results. Uncle G 16:35, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
• Delete This would have been a keep !vote, but those refs certainly appear to be fake and the organisation has no website according to a web search. Who has ever heard of a genuine organisation that lacks a website in this era?! Likely to be fake. Adrian M. H. 21:04, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
  • The formation of Densa, according to the sources (two of which are cited in the article itself), pre-dates the existence of the World Wide Web by roughly a decade. The world did exist before the World Wide Web was invented. Uncle G 16:35, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keappe. Just because the organization may be defunct doesn't mean it's not notable. I've heard of it (see my user page) and it registers a scattering of GHits. Should we get rid of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party just because it's a parody? Or the Knights Templar because they don't *gasp* have a website? Clarityfiend 02:05, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Your userpage and a "scattering" of ghits aren't enough to establish notability. Saying you've heard of it is WP:OR and isn't acceptable for establishing notability. The scattering of ghits all go to trivial notes and unacceptable sources like "fakecrap.com". The Parsnip! 03:25, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. Notability not established. Noisy | Talk 11:52, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Actually, it is, by the sources already cited in the article. Uncle G 16:35, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
• Condense to a brief section in the Mensa article, and redirect. "Densa" is not notable as a real organisation, but it is notable as a common pun with 40,000 Google results (there are 1.6 million results if you don't include "Mensa" in the search, because you end up catching countless pages with densa, which is "dense" in Spanish, Italian, Latin and other languages). — Chameleon 14:33, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
• As pointed out above, the nominator, CA387, and Adrian_M._H. are making the error that Google Web is the be-all-and-end-all of looking for sources. In addition to the NYT articles, which (as pointed out) the NYT's own search tool finds quite happily, there are articles by The Colorado Springs Gazette ("Mensa sound too tough? Densa may be more your style", 1994-09-22), The Miami Herald ("Are you Mensa or a Densa?", Don Shoemaker, 1983-10-12), and The Syracuse Herald-Journal ("Densa: The club for people who dare to be dense", Maryln Schwartz, 1983-09-13).

  Please put more effort into looking for sources, especially when the citations hand their locations to you on a platter. The PNC is satisfied. Keep. Uncle G 16:35, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

  • Comment Point taken, though may I ask how you found the other articles? Upon looking further, (I used LexisNexis), I was able to locate the Sarah Boxer article, as well as one other reference to Densa: by a middle school student in the The Post Register ("Test your wits with these brainteasers", Laura Evans,2000-04-25) where she mentions an internet "Densa Quiz". This goes back to what Chameleon said: Densa is not an organization—it's a pun. As far as the Boxer piece goes, it's a humor piece that mentions Densa only once in the lede (as a common pun), and goes on to make fun of Mensa:

As I see it now, the only place for Densa (if kept at all) is in the Mensa article. Otherwise, Delete as before. --CA387 06:11, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

• • • Google Web is not the only search service that Google provides. If one wants to search newspapers, the Google News service is the far more appropriate one. Uncle G 08:13, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
• Comment So can one verifiable article (Sarah Boxer) with an arbitrary passing mention establish notability? The middle-schooler article isn't really a proper primary source, although it would be fine as a secondary. The Parsnip! 13:51, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
• Comment The William McGowan article does not seem to exist. I used the New York Times own search function on their website, which pruports to have a full catalog back to 1981 and the article does not appear. The Parsnip! 14:05, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep - The Sara Boxer article is real and does mention an organisation - not just a pun. Richard Mitchell also says that there is such an organisation in a speech given in 1986[3]. A search of - Densa card - reveals this interesting page[4] on a Mensa member's site. It includes a mailing address in the UK. I suspect that this organisation is real. There is another mention of the organisation here [5]. Besides, as a card carry member of the AOOB[6] I firmly believe in these weird groups. However, the article needs more work and it looks as though sources are hard to come by. Where's a Densa member when you need one? :) Paxse 18:43, 24 May 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.