Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pittsburgh Organizing Group

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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 delete. RΞDVΞRS ✖ ЯΞVΞЯSΞ 21:20, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Administrator's reasoning: The debate below was exactly a tie between well-reasoned debaters. However, the important point is the provision of reliable sources. The sources provided in the article, and quoted below, are absurdly limited if the organisation has the claimed notability. There were, in effect, three sources. One of these was the organisation itself - not reliable in so far as Wikipedia would require for obvious reasons. Another was cparchives.com - this one is good, but is clearly firmly biased towards such organisations - I can't get anything that would suggest a neutral point of view from it. The best source was post-gazette.com, but sadly it managed to rarely refer to the group itself, sticking to talking about "protesters" in general - nothing relaible when it comes to making a decision on the verifiability and notability of the subject of the article.
Therefore, on grounds of Wikipedia policy, I'm going with a delete because my researches agree with the delete people's arguments below. However, nothing in this decision prevents the article being recreated and I would encourage the keep people to do so - but the resulting article needs to have far less to do with the organisation's view of themselves and far more to do with reliable, third-party sources. The decision is, of course, open to review and does not reflect any personal opinion or bias I may or may not have on the subject at hand. RΞDVΞRS ✖ ЯΞVΞЯSΞ 21:20, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pittsburgh Organizing Group

Pittsburgh Organizing Group (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Not notable, probably vanity. Only 316 unique hits on Google for "Pittsburgh Organizing Group"[1]. Halo 22:30, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

This is a well known group in Pittsburgh that gets significant amounts of corporate media coverage and is well known in the peace movement. Please see http://www.organizepittsburgh.org/index.php?page=media for examples of corporate media coverage. I will shorten it if desired. I don't have a lot of experience on Wiki but my expansion of the article was just an attempt to flesh out what was there and include some more info on why the group is considered controversial. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.72.108.167 (talk • contribs).

After reading the entry on notability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability#Notability_is_not_subjective there is no reason why this entry should have been nominated. The group in question has dozens of published sources in mainstream newspapers. Furthermore, as has been stated numerous times in Wiki pages vanity should not included in these pages. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.17.162.248 (talk • contribs).

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached
 Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Mangojuicetalk 16:52, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete. Several sources are given, but none really say anything about the Pittsburgh Organizing Group, although some protests they are involved with have made the news. The group could be mentioned in a larger article, I suppose, but there really aren't sources to back up any of the info in this article. Mangojuicetalk 19:15, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep The only real question (as for other groups without a formal structure) is whether they are actually a named body of people. The city paper thinks they are, and calls them by that name in several article. This is sufficient. DGG 05:15, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, then, I guess we could reduce the entire article to "The Pittsburgh Organizing Group is a group in Pittsburgh that has organized several protests." Virtually all the rest of the info is sourced from the group itself. Mangojuicetalk 18:30, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete - if you look at the City Paper, and college papers many of the articles are written BY a "participant" in POG. Basically, any news they make they report on themselves if the news doesn't cover it and never actually reference any other source. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.3.249.202 (talk • contribs). — 69.3.249.202 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
    • Note: This is this user's first edit. -- Black Falcon 22:22, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

This is getting ridiculous. None of those City Paper articles were written by a participant in POG. Chris Potter is the editor of City Paper and Marty Levine was the news editor when these articles were published. Both are well respected and paid journalists. What in particular needs to be sourced and I will source it. You can see by looking a the media page for this group that there are about 100 corporate news stories that info can be sources from. Should I simply put an attribution to back up each and every line in this article? To do so would make for a fairly ridiculous read but I'll do so if necessary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.17.162.248 (talk • contribs) — 70.17.162.248 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

    • Note: This user has made multiple edits, but all are related to this article and its AFD. -- Black Falcon 22:22, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep clearly passes notability test under WP:ORG. References and sources include two secondary sources which are "reliable, independent of the subject and independent of each other" including a half dozen articles in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. May require cleanup, etc. but this is a notable organization according to WP. Cornell Rockey 03:58, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep per the half-dozen articles in the Post-Gazette, which is certainly independent and reliable. There's nothing wrong with having been covered by one source over a period of time. -- Black Falcon 22:24, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete. A shadowy outfit whose existence isn't attested by reliable sources. All we have is that there is some group of people, who protest in Pittsburgh, that the Post-Gazette is willing to call the 'Pittsburgh Organizing Group.' This group seems to have no named leaders or members (people who, when interviewed, say that they are members). It's not clear why we should call it a 'Group.' The blog posting that is linked from the article (by Jonathan Barnes) implies that the members' anonymity is their choice. If they are too shadowy to have named members, perhaps they are too shadowy for Wikipedia. Seems like the possibility of a hoax. Their contact address is said to be at the Thomas Merton Center. Maybe that Center would be a more logical subject of an article? The Center actually seems to exist. If the article is kept, note that many of the details in the article (as noted above by other commenters in the AfD) are attested only by the group's web site, so they would have to be removed as unsourced. EdJohnston 05:05, 29 March 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.