Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Southern Women Writer's Conference

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. No arguments for notability. CitiCat ^♫ 03:09, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Southern Women Writer's Conference

Southern Women Writer's Conference (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Probably non notable conference - no assertion of notability; possible SPA. OSborn^arf 04:19, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. Non-notable event. Keb25 04:25, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete - NN. The article was created on the very day the event is supposed to have finished, suggesting someone who had been decided to write an article on it. This is not the place for NN events. Spawn Man 11:55, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. There is now some info on its history, some refs, and mention of recent participants, including Maya Angelou and Vertamae Grosvenor. Novickas 14:21, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete The more information that we have about this subject, the more it is confirmed that it is simply not notable. Maya Angelou is notable, but every writers conference where she has given a speech is not. See WP:NOTINHERITED. There is no evidence that this writers conference has had its own impact anywhere. It's just another similar project among myriads of similar conferences throughout the U.S., Canada, England, etc. It's probably a nice conference, but it does not have any notability of its own. The "sources" mentioned above are nothing but promotional materials, calls for papers and blurbs. OfficeGirl 15:20, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

What would you define as the threshold of notability? Surely if every notable writer in the US showed up at a conference, most of us would consider it notable; but how many is enough? In addition to Angelou and Grosvenor's participation, quite a few academics (from LSU, Dickinson, Ole Miss, College of William and Mary, etc) list their appearances at this conference as part of their curriculum vitae (Google ""southern women writers conference" vitae site:.edu). Calls for papers at major universities are not generally considered blurbs. (Google "southern women writers conference" "call for papers"). I don't have the time to expand the article and work all the notabilities in, and the author is a WP newbie. Just let's not delete it. Novickas 17:01, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

A call for papers is the same as any other announcement or press release by a University. It does nothing to establish notability. There just isn't significant coverage of this Conference. It's no different than any other University sponsored conference. If a whole bunch of notable people got together to have lunch one day, that wouldn't be a reason to have a Wikipedia article on the luncheon. Notability is not inherited. There isn't significant coverage demonstrating that the conference has had any impact other than to line the pocketbooks of the keynote speakers for the hefty honoraria that they always charge. The Conference is not notable-- no matter how famous the speakers might be for other things that they have already done to gain distinction. I am not going to change my vote and allow an article on a clearly non-notable subject just to make a new Wikipedia user feel welcome. Standards are standards.OfficeGirl 05:32, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

• Delete per OfficeGirl. Stifle (talk) 16:46, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. It is the only conference that focuses on Southern women writers. It may be considered non-notable by some because it's not as heard of, but Southern writing has had a profound impact on American literature, and a good percentage of that writing has come from women. This is the only conference that focuses on that, and scholars and writers from all over the world come to it. This year there hundreds of grad students who were required to come with their professors, and there was also a professor and scholar from the university in Copenhagen. In years past more international scholars have come. Not to mention this year Maya Angelou, Kaye Gibbons, Jill McCorkle, Lorraine Lopez and Jo McDougall all came. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cdpuckett (talk • contribs) 18:33, 4 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.