Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sutherland Hall

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. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 05:59, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sutherland Hall

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

Prod removed without comment. It's a residence hall, with no real notability given. Kwsn^(Ni!) 04:06, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

First off, its a stub. Second, your nomination to delete it, literally within the first minute it was posted, would not give enough time to carefully evaluate any article...and it was completely uncool. Third, the significance of the building is that 1) historically for the university there had been an intention to build a hillside campus for at least 50 years that continued to be delayed for finances and engineering problems with building on the hillside (structural support of the hill and an underground coal fire). The building of a residence hall in the upper campus became especially critical because of the switch from private to state-related status of the school in 1966, there had been an doubling of the campus population which caused enormous strain on the university's neighborhood. The fruit of the lack of this building, which I believe was one of only two buildings built in the 1990s (and the first residence hall built in 20-30 years), was increased tension with the university's neighborhood community where students were crowded into. The completion of this building signified, at least to the surrounding community, an increased willingness of the university to listen to their concerns. The other significance of the building is that it is the only structure in the world that is named for the most famous and winningest Pitt football coach in history (and one of the NCAA's all-time great coaches), Jock Sutherland. Sutherland, a revered legend in Pittsburgh, coached in the 20s and 30s and won multiple national championships at Pitt in the former Pitt Stadium which sat right across the street from Sutherland Hall. In addition to this, I would like to add information on the construction and architecture of the building. Of course, because you marked it for deletion so quickly, I didn't have time to research the sources for this information, and I am not going to write it without proper references, and I'm sure not going to do all that work with the chance it may be deleted.cp101p 04:58, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

• Comment You as the article creator should check whether the topic has multiple instances of non-trivial coverage in reliable sources before starting the article, not afterwards. If you can't find any, then the topic is probably not appropriate for inclusion in an encyclopedia. cab 09:12, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Pennsylvania-related deletions. -- John Vandenberg 09:21, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

  how do you think I know what I posted above? Of course there are sources. Albert's 1987 book Pitt: History of the University of Pittsburgh for one. Plenty of University documents and Pittsburgh newspaper articles. I'm just not going to spend hours searching for and filling in information that will end up deleted. Again, stub in the middle of writing the thing and person above tagged it.cp101p 09:27, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

  Those are all sources by the University of Pittsburgh (owner of the building) or people associated with it. For a topic to be considered notable, we generally require that it have at least some coverage from sources which are independent of the topic in question. cab 09:47, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Completely independent sources: the hillside dorm problem and Sutherland Hall are documented and published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy[[1]]. The notability of it being named after Jock Sutherland is noted on the Visit PA website[2]. Pittsburgh Post Gazette Articles[3][4] Unfortunately, the really pertinent articles on Sutherland Hall from the Post-Gazette, Trib, or other local papers predate their free on-line archive retrieval, but among others, include: "Spacious Sutherland Hall is 1st Dorm built at Pitt in 28 Years, Sept. 16, 1992, page A9, 513 words and Pitt's Space Plan Showing Gapping Holes, Setember 26, 1994, page B-11, word count: 522.cp101p 02:10, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

• Comment, from what I can tell the creator of this article goes to U of Pittsburgh, and seems intent on supplementing the very well made main article about that university with a series of poorly sourced and, in some cases, poorly written articles [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]. I'm not saying he is the creator of all theses articles but his contributions to Wikipedia have rarely strayed outside these and related articles, which is not bad in itself, except that he is on the verge of creating a walled garden. I'm sure his intents were good but these pages and this one need to be link to the main U of P pages or deleted as they are not notable by themselves. Darrenhusted 10:13, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
• comment There is no requirement to source articles in one go. It remains permissible to write an article on wiki. But what the author should have done, is left the prod on for a day or two while he sourced the article, that's what the built in 5 days delay in prod is for. DGG 17:03, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, the problem with the 5 day delay prod is that I've seen several adminstrators ignoring the 5 day delay recently (perhaps not this one), and frankly, who is going to put more source work into material that may be deleted. It makes no sense. Tagging something with its first 60 seconds of its existence basically says quit wasting your time. Waiting sometime to see if the content was flushed out, followed by a merge request OR delete discussion would have made a lot more sense in my opinion, nor did it take into account the recent activity in building of U of Pitt content.

BTW, I do not go to the University of Pittsburgh and I haven't lived in Pittsburgh since '99, at which point I began attended the University of Miami, FL. Currently, I actually work at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. If I was in Pittsburgh, I'd be able to fill in these pages much faster and have better image content, instead of being confined to internet research (which obviously comes mostly from U of Pitt digital archives and similar sources). There are plenty of "non-university" sources for these buildings and those include Tokers Pittsburgh: an Urban Portrait (I do not have access to a copy), archives of the Western PA Historical Society and Philadelphia Architectural society, Pittsburgh cultural management resources (which I online referenced where I could), biographies of Carnegie and Mellons (which I do not have) and of course Pittsburgh-Post Gazette and other newspapers.
That said, I started only two of the 6 articles listed above as "poor", and one is because I merged together multiple separate buildings into the CLC complex page. Thus my contributions for five of these six pages, some of which had languished with with even less content for over two years, was to expand the content as much as possible with internet research. Most of the "well-made main article" is due to work by myself and others over the last couple weeks. When I started on it, I don't think you'd find anyone that would disagree that it was severely lacking content and, well, a mess, which was unbelievable to me considering the stature and historic significance of U of Pitt to the city and region. Go back a month or so and look. Now that I and some others have somewhat flushed that out, I'm filling in content that was requested for articles on the main U of Pitt web page or existed as even more skeletal articles prior to my engagement with that project, tagging them as stubs, and hoping some people at Pitt (with access to buildings, better records, and other publications) will help fill out the details. Obviously, an originator of the main Pitt article had in mind a comprehensive review of the campus and its buildings...and many of these buildings are hisoric landmarks that were designed by notable architects Charles Klauder, Benno Janssen, Henry Hornbostel, among others. If nothing else, the growth of the campus as told through the story of its buildings reflects both the story of the univeristy and the Oakland section (cultural district) of Pittsburgh which is designated a National Historic District...a history involving many national figures and full of both achievement and failure. BTW, I would really like someone in Pittsburgh to do a page on the Schenley Farms Naitonal Historic District (where many of these buildings could be linked to). That said, I disagree this is becoming a walled garden because these building pages are obviously forked off of the main U of Pitt site and members of the University of Pittsburgh Building category, which brings me to the link issue mentioned with links above.

To address the linking issue (is there some way to tag or link these building pages more directly to the main U of Pitt article?), I'm not sure where that comment comes from because all of those pages are linked to back and forth from 1)both the University of Pittsburgh main article, 2) they all belong to the University of Pittsburgh buildings category, and 3) where appropriate they are or will be linked from subsiderary Pitt articles...though I haven't yet gotten to fill in all the details yet (school/department locations and Pitt chancellor pages should be linked to them where appropriate). I also foresee a possible campus building timeline with a succession box. Admittedly, some of these building groups will be merged (perhaps like the above mentioned Forbes Hall), and I to this end I have also merged Clapp Hall, Langley Hall, Crawford Hall (previously separate buildings) into the Clapp/Langley/Crawford Complex and I merged Bruce, Amos, Holland, and McCormick Halls into Schenley Quadrangle.

Thanks for everyone's comments above. Obviously, I have a problem with what I still consider premature tagging, but I'd be grateful for suggestions and comments on the direction of the Pitt content as outlined in above my comments.cp101p 00:13, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

• Weak keep. (edit conflict) A lot of the news about the hall is from the student run newspaper "The Pitt News" or other sources close to the university. These should not be discarded entirely, as they are authoratitive and trustworthy sources that are useful for verification purposes. The establishment details were recorded in a local newspaper North Hills News Record. There are a few other halls of this name, complicating searching for evidence of wider notability; a narrow search turns up 150 odd google results, including this. I presume the book referred to above is this: ISBN 0822911507 [11]. John Vandenberg 01:17, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your sources. Yes, that is the book. There was also a academic article on urban university growth that specifically documented the hillside dorm problem and resolution[12] published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. The notability of it being named after Jock Sutherland is noted on the Visit PA website[13].cp101p 01:39, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

• keep for now as the author makes a convincing case that there is something interesting to be written about this building, and is only asking for time to do so. — brighterorange (talk) 01:35, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

• comment Another comment, and sorry for the length of my comments, but Litchfield Towers are a group of residence halls at Pitt that have been rated mid-importance in the Pittsburgh Project and achieved GA status. Obviously, the administrator's notion that Sutherland Hall is not notable because it is "a residence hall" contradicts previous examples. At worst it is low-importance and more than fits this criteria:[14] —Preceding unsigned comment added by crazypaco (talk • contribs)
  • Comment I'm not an admin though. Kwsn^(Ni!) 21:01, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
• Keep - And let it grow. The article got prodded WITHIN ONE MINUTE of it's creation [15]. What's with that? --Oakshade 03:10, 28 June 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.