Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Universism (4th 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 of the debate was KEEP. -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:35, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Universism

This page has been deleted before: see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Universism, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Universism 2, and the speedily-terminated Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Universism (3rd nomination). However, Deletion Review has opted now to undelete this article and send it back for reconsideration. Important information is available to editors of this debate a the follow link to the Deletion Review debate. I abstain. -Splash^talk 03:06, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

• Keep per national media coverage. I just saw a segment on it on CNN today, which means people are probably going to look for information about it here on Wikipedia. Turnstep 03:58, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Two appearances is US News and World Report, the front page of the LA Times, a mention in a New York Times op-ed piece and at least one (perhaps now two) appearances on CNN all add up to notability. I don't know if it's due to this group promoting itself or what, but it seems it has come quite a way since their first (clearly premature) article and its VFD over a year ago. I would dismiss any one of those media mentions on its own, but they've got enough coverage that I'm certain people will search for this. That being said, keep on eye on it for POV and third party verifiability and the like. -R. fiend 04:13, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep and watch per R. fiend -- the existing article needs work already. bikeable (talk) 04:24, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
• Neutral When becomes something new wikipediable? The earlier deletes were justified as far as I am concerned, but this is a growing organisation thatis gaining traction. --KimvdLinde 04:26, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Since the last time this article was deleted as non-notable, the subject has simply accumulated a few more passing mentions in the media. I see no evidence the group/"movement" has become more notable for any intrinsic reason beyond these media mentions. As I said in the deletion review discussion, I don't see the additional information (at least what was provided in DRV) as terribly substantial, or as providing the verifiable and neutral information that we would need to create a neutral article. I concur that this will need close watching for NPOV (and the linkspamming that was common with earlier versions) if kept. -- Rbellin|Talk 05:02, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. The growing amount of verifiable material now gets it over the line for mine. Capitalistroadster 06:20, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per Rbellin. There's a difference between serious news media coverage and some smirky feature pieces; quality vs. quantity, as it were. Universism has gotten a few numbers, but only one can be considered even arguably serious. --Aaron 07:17, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. If something is noteable enough for the front page of the LA Times, it's more than noteable enough for Wikipedia. NoIdeaNick 08:59, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. BBC, NYT, LA Times, CNN feel this is worthy of coverage; that's enough. Suggest improving the references to those particular instances of coverage, however, as a priority to making the article keepable; date, time, perhaps brief excerpts or summary of content. -ikkyu2 (talk) 09:28, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, notable. --Terence Ong 10:31, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. The media references are passing mentions and do not indicate that it is "a worldwide religious movement" with any substantial number of adherents. If we are going to be impressed by a mention in U. S. News, we should note that according to that article, the Universist organization in Birmingham, Alabama—where the group was founded—is small enough to meet in a coffee shop. Their website does not indicate a street address or a telephone number, and I haven't been able to find any indications that they have one. With regard to the claim that there are 7000 "registered" Universists, the website says [1] "a number based upon people who have submitted a statement to Vox’s website agreeing with Universist principles and asserting that he or she is an Universist." It would be interesting to have a count of the number of people who have physically attended a Universist meeting of any kind. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:42, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I think Dpbsmith makes some very good points here. However, I think the remedy for this is not deletion, but to include such critical analysis within the article. -R. fiend 16:19, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

The point of these comments is, I think, that if we cut the article down to verifiable facts and remove the self-promotional language and the media mentions, we're left with not much more than a group of people meeting in a coffee shop. I meet people in coffee shops all the time, but I don't claim these meetings are notable subjects for encyclopedia articles. In all this discussion I've seen no verifiable evidence that the group itself has become notably large or well-established. No such evidence was produced for the prior VfDs. So the debate here reduces to whether the media mentions, in themselves, make the group notable, if it wouldn't be without them. -- Rbellin|Talk 17:07, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, if the group were six guys in a coffee shop then CNN, LA Times, US News, BBC etc wouldn't bother with them at all. While obviously not everything they report is hard-hitting, pulitzer-caliber material, these are well respected news organizations. We're not talking the Weekly World News, or even the Sun. For an encyclopedia that has articles on god knows how many internet memes, it seems that just widespread familiarity is enough to at least deserve mention. Take away the internet mentions of the Star Wars Kid and what do we have but a guy pretending he's weilding a lightsaber? (We all used to do that when we were young, let's face it.) -R. fiend 17:19, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

• • • • The interesting thing to me here is that you suggest cutting the article down to verifiable facts, and removing the media mentions. The media mentions *are* the verifiable facts; they are what we have to go with. Those are the notability criteria we have; those are the notability criteria we're stuck with. That means that, given the community consensus about what merits notability, these are the articles we're going to have: editorial compilation of various media mentions deemed notable. If you don't like that (I don't like it either), debate it at the talk pages of the various inclusion/deletion criteria, not on AfD. -ikkyu2 (talk) 23:42, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I think you've misunderstood me to be asking for the removal of the media mentions from the Universism article, rather than offering an account of why I believe the group isn't notable, based on the available facts, despite the media mentions. I recognize that other editors believe the media mentions in themselves make the group notable, but I disagree. I don't see how mere media mention establishing notability is a matter of settled consensus policy. -- Rbellin|Talk 00:55, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

What I suspect we have is perhaps a dozen groups of twenty or so people in various cities, meeting in coffee shops and each others' living rooms, plus a very fancy website, plus a guy who is very skilled at giving newspaper feature-writers suitable material for them to use. Now, religions have indeed been started on much less. (Indeed, when you think about it, how else could any religion start?) But this isn't a religion yet, and seven thousand people who checked a box on a website saying that the text on the website expresses their views is not quite the same thing as seven thousand people who have travelled to a physical building and taken a year of instruction and gone through a ceremony... It will be interesting to know how many people actually show up at the Sept. 14th Universist session in Montreal. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:40, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I'm sure they don't have 7000 actual practicing Universists, and I made the article reflect that better (I also changed it from "worldwide" to "international", which I think better reflects the scope of the group). I think if we look at this less as a religion and more as an organization it looks a bit better. Certainly a religion with a couple thousand members is miniscule, but an organization with that many is not so bad. Not that I'm saying they even have that many, but it's clear it's not a local group anymore (something that wasn't clear at the first VFD). As I said, any one of its media appearances I'd shrug off, but all of them together I think mean something. I too am curious about how many will appear at the convention. I'd guess less than a coupel hundred anyway. -R. fiend 19:23, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

• Keep and cleanup -- I think they have finally met the bar for notability with the LA Times article. Careful policing may be needed to keep the article true to the facts (as for example, Ford Vox's account of "Why isn't there a Universism article on Wikipedia" [2] isn't) but that should be avoided as a criteria for deletion decisions whenever possible. -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:43, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep and watch. Notability has been sufficiently established, or at least alluded to. Significant enough to have an unauthorized Canadian fork. -- Scott e^iπ 07:07, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Wow, a schism already... Dpbsmith (talk) 10:31, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. Seems remarkable.[3] But possibly deserving of a POV tag. Links/references need some secondary sources. -- Krash (Talk) 15:53, 28 February 2006 (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.