Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jeffries Projects

This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was no consensus, so keep. --Conti|✉ 03:17, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Jeffries Projects

No claim to notability. Just some buildings with a history of falling apart and housing drug dealers. — Ливай | Ⓣ 01:02, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

• Delete, what's wrong with drug dealers? Sadly, it has no place here. -mysekurity 01:31, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, not notable. --MPerel ^{( talk | contrib)} 02:31, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. A housing development of 18 14-story buildings is pretty notable. An awful lot of people must have lived in those buildings. I would say with a population that large it would be comparable to one of the many neighborhoods of Chicago we have articles on.--Pharos 03:34, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Major housing projects are notable enough, see Cabrini-Green and Robert Taylor Homes. I wouldn't have a problem with a merge if this is part of a larger neighborhood within Detroit. Christopher Parham (talk) 03:53, 2005 July 11 (UTC)
  • In fact, I think this could reasonably be put in Category:Detroit neighborhoods itself.--Pharos 04:04, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Housing projects this size are notable. Capitalistroadster 04:29, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete non notable buildings. JamesBurns 09:06, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

• Delete: Unlike Cabrini Green or Robert Taylor Homes, there is no indication that this particular project served any role in history, was the locus of any particular action, or is an exemplar of the misguided project mentality. The number of persons passing through it is totally irrelevant, because, by that logic, again, every pizzaria in New York City would be more "notable" than the Battle of Little Big Horn. Rather, it is the effect that a thing has had on the world, and it is that solely because that indicates the likelihood of a need for discussion and explanation and the likelihood of a term being sought by researchers. There is no rule on tenements, projects, height of buildings, etc. To suggest such is to abrogate your voting responsibilities entirely in favor of "rubber stamp" votes. Each article is an individual entity. Geogre 15:12, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
  • This is not some corner pizzeria; it was a community of thousands of people. If the community was sited in nice private homes spread out over some suburban tract, presumably there would not be an objection, because there are thousands of such articles on Wikipedia.--Pharos 18:04, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
  • There would be an objection from me. We do not cover subdivisions, housing estates, etc. We don't do that for the rich or the poor. We only do little subdivisions of perfect homes if they have some interplay with history or the wider culture. The same should be true of tenements. Again, saying "lots of people live there" is ridiculous as a criterion for inclusion or deletion. You don't feel a sudden need to look up 225 Smith Street in Shanghai just because there might be 1,000 people there. You need to look it up if it has some significance other than being a big box of people, if it has some place in history or politics or literature or some other way in which it needs contextualizing. To think otherwise is to think that encyclopedias are about good and bad, that they are passing values by inclusion. Not so. Geogre 23:59, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. It becomes no less notable for being a notable neighborhood belonging to poor people. A. J. Luxton 22:31, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm not saying it's not notable because poor people live in it. Rather, because there is no claim to notability in the article, besides simply housing a lot of people. Like Geogre said, how do these buildings affect society at large? Should I be encouraged to write articles on each dormitory complex at my university? After all, lots of people live there, even if there's virtually nothing to say about them, and certainly nothing that would be of any interest or relevance to the wider culture. We live in a world of six billion people. Allowing articles for anything that holds a couple thousand, regardless of whether anything notable ever happened there, would be like allowing an article for every street in every big city. — Ливай | Ⓣ 00:26, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Notable neighborhood royblumy 00:21, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
• Comment How is this article different then one on public housing high rise projects built in the 1950s? Didn't they all go through the same set of problems? If so, then why is this one so unique that it is encylopedic on its own and not unreasonable to just cover it in a general topic article? Somehow I don't see the number of complaints being filed as encylopedic. Vegaswikian 04:45, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
  • It's not the number of complaints that's encyclopedic. It's the fact that this was a major community of Detroit. Eighteen 14-story buildings is a real residential neighborhood, just as real as the 13 others (Category:Detroit neighborhoods) we have articles on.--Pharos 05:01, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. I'm becoming more of a rabid inclusionist every time I see a needless VfD like this one. This housing project is notable enough and an interesting part of Detroit's history, a neighborhood of sorts in its own right. Why delete it? It's a symbol of, and an important part of, Detroit's particular social culture, especially as it existed in the era of large housing projects. And it's become a cliche but for heaven's sake, repeat after me, Wikipedia is not paper. Edit: I've read a bit about this housing development, and have consequently added some to the article as well as added a link. Actually, this was rather a notable housing development in Detroit (uh, thirteen separate 14-story buildings; don't minimize it), and serves as a symbol of the failures of the high-rise, isolated public-housing model in American cities. There are many articles about the projects (find them on Google) and I encourage everyone to read the article linked in the article now, from the Detroit News. This isn't, as someone keeps comparing these supposedly "non-notable" VfD entries to, a random pizzeria. Moncrief 06:15, July 12, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. These housing projects are a big part of how urban America developed itself. Development like that is a big thing in that it drastically affects how a city grows and shapes itself. They are now a big part of urban America's history. They notable, especially these extreme examples. -maclean25 07:11, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete Nothing in the article established notability. As they've been mostly destroyed, I don't see how something new could happen that would make them notable. Maybe they're still known to people from that area, but I don't see how buildings (even large ones) are automatically notable. Friday 14:42, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Notability is a minor concern for a non-paper Wikipedia. It is not a great article, but it could, with expansion and more verifiability, be valuable to researchers. Such concerns are editorial, and not deletion criteria. Dystopos 15:03, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete as unencylopedic. Nothing her or in the article has shown that this neighborhood is encylopedic. It could be mentioned in a list of failed 1950s projects or maybe, if they are different enough, in a failed detroit neighborhood article. This would not be the place for a researcher to look for information, they would go to the back issues of the local newspapers. This is not the place for everything non encylopedic. For this resource to be useful there needs to be quality. Without quality articles, this wiki will die. Including articles that should not belong does not help this project. Notability is not the criteria for admission, however lack of notability is clearly a reason to not include an article. Noteable articles that are not encylopedic should be deleted. Vegaswikian 19:09, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

• Comment. I disagree. Researchers will look here for information on topics that are encyclopedic, even if well below the bar of notability for paper encyclopediae. It is more helpful (and absolutely NOT harmful) to have such information preserved here. This would, of course, include references to the pertinent back issues of local papers. Where there is a lack of "quality", there is an invitation to improve the article, not to axe it. --- And while I'm on it, even if I were going to give "notability" more credit as a criterion for deletion, having witnessed a consensus to keep a fleeting web-meme, I would have to set the bar WELL below the threshold of a major public housing project in a major American city. Dystopos 19:30, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment so a bad decision can be used to justify more? The issue is encylopedic and I don't see that quality in this article. I do see it for an article about the failed housing projects of the 1950s since they all had similar histories and problems. For a project to be encylopedic on its own it would have to be rather different then a general article. I suspect that you and I would agree that some VfD votes keep moving the bar lower and that may not be a good thing if it gets too low. Vegaswikian 00:48, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
    • We probably would agree on some. In this case, I think a single housing project is likely to have as much verifiable, encyclopedic info as entire classes of Wikipedia entries both notable and not notable. The fact that the article does not yet contain much of it is an editorial weakness. Deletion doesn't help us. Wikipedia is blessed with the potential to become much more than a paper encyclopedia. Articles like this should be left open to encourage the development of that potential. Dystopos 03:03, 14 July 2005 (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 an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.