Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/University of Leicester Students' Union

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 --JForget 01:48, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] University of Leicester Students' Union

University of Leicester Students' Union (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

For a simple reason, this article serves a purpose to promote the student union and nothing else. Also, god knows if individual student unions are notable in its own right, hence not notable at all, therefore fails WP:N, this is why this is nominated. Also I wish people would stop coming to this site come here and write as if they are writing a holiday brochure. Knock-Off Nigel (talk) 13:34, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

• Redirect to University of Leicester TRAVELLINGCARI^{My story}_{Tell me yours} 14:10, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep and source with, perhaps, material from a local newspaper? Sounds possible. —TreasuryTag talkcontribs 17:24, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Comment - better have a look at Category:Students' unions before saying student unions are not WP material. Kevlar67 (talk) 18:50, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Reply, just because other articles exist, I don't see why this is exempt from WP:CORP's Organizations whose activities are local in scope are usually not notable unless verifiable information from reliable independent sources can be found. Or am I misunderstanding your point? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Travellingcari (talk • contribs) 19:29, 3 March 2008
• Delete I'll happily state that individual SUs, by and large, are not WP material, because as Travellingcari points out above, other stuff exists is not a valid argument. Most UK SUs are carbon copies of one another, so although there are definitely a small few that are notable, the vast majority aren't. This is one of them - it fails to assert any notability as far as I can see. _TalkIslander 20:44, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Delete There is a continual supply of undergrads writing articles about their student unions (and their dorms), which loom large in their lives. These articles then are deleted. And so it goes... Paddy Simcox (talk) 20:51, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep This article has a value - as do others about Students' Unions. The relationship that students have with Unions is often both temporary and disparate. Temporary because the average length of an undergraduate degree is only three years - this means that knowledge easily leaks away from both the organisation and the students. Disparate because students will typically only interact with one Union; wikipedia is an almost unique source that allows these organisations to be compared. The article has the opportunity to grow as a store of historic information.Mjs59 (talk) 22:29, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep Articles about students' unions do have value, as the organisations generally have quite rich social and political histories. These could easily be backed up with journalistic sources and university records. Although individually perhaps they are mainly of interest to those associated with the locality or the university, this is the same as with many other WP articles / categories. Prlewis0 (talk) 22:47, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep the major student organisation in a university is a major division of the university, has an important part in the life of the place, and is a good place to merge articles on individual student organisations. DGG (talk) 04:22, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep. Students' Unions are notable in general because they provide a "student life"-based perspective not covered within other student organizations. The local newspaper, Leicester Mercury, has steady coverage of this Students' Union; but I added 2 BBC articles in External Links. The University of Leicester Students' Union is notable in particular because it received the "2005 Students' Union of the Year" award from magazine Club Mirror (I added a citation), and because of the national precedent set by its soft drink VAT legal case (which should be included within the main article, but for now, I added 2 External Links). Coffee4me (talk) 05:12, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

• Comment to all above 4 keep nominations, I'm sorry to say, dosen't all student unions do that - provide a "student life"-based perspective not covered within other student organizations, plus local paper will do what they do, tell local stories and support local causes such as universities, that is the case with my former university. If you want this article to be kept, I recommend you all delete all these spam pieces, otherwise I will continually see this as a AfD candidate until all this is done. Knock-Off Nigel (talk) 23:40, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
• Reply, I'd sorry but I must object to your viewpoint. All students unions may provide a "student life" but the manner is which they do so varies and each student typically identifies with a single union; while others (particularly graduates) will be interested in comparisons between different organisations. Regarding notability; is a students union any less notable than the class of rolling stock that Virgin Trains use on a particular route? I'm not attempting to reference "WP:Other Stuff" merely pointing out that granularity has value. Furthermore I would argue that the union is notable for the following reasons: A membership circa 20,000 with 6,000 new members each year diverse both nationally and internationally, it is a distinct organisation from both the University of Leicester and the NUS, it won Students' Union of the year in 2005 and was nominated in the two following years, it was one of the first unions to have and "International" sabbatical role and since one of the first to not have a "President", the list of musicians that have played at the venue and the media outlets that it supports. I would invite further discussion regarding the tag of "Advertising" and references to "Spam" and invite anybody to reference any issues on the Talk pages of the article to further improve the article.Mjs59 (talk) 01:30, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

• Reply, I'm sure that every SU will have no trouble having this many members considering how many students are there. Knock-Off Nigel (talk) 15:49, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

• Comment Ongoing discussion on notability of student unions/student governments on TF:SA and WP:UNI. This article should not be deleted (along with all the other student union articles on AfD at the moment until clear guidelines on student unions may be reached. WP:NOT#Wikipedia does not have a deadline. Also note possible proposal of WikiProject Students' Unions, which is in the WPCouncil at the moment. The supporters of the project believes that all students unions have inherit notability regardless of sufficient coverage using standard WP:ORG. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 11:21, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
• Merge into University of Leicester. Student unions are rarely, if ever, notable independently of the universities or colleges whose student bodies they serve. Bearcat (talk) 21:39, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

• Keep As creator of the page I was asked to comment, and a deletion is inappropriate in this case. The page should stay albeit with significant modification. The Leicester Students' Union is notable as a gig venue (several gig venues appear on wikipedia on their own), it is notable in legal precedent (as shown in the external links), notable in the etymological field (examine the Ripple article linked) and for its scale. Any proposed merge with the University's page would itself be an error, as the 2 institutions operate independently, have separate philosophies (one is fundamentally charitable (the union) whilst the other is an educational establishment.) To highlight this difference, the 2 organisations came to blows in a court case recently (in Private Eye at some point.) I have modified the section that could be labelled as "advertsing" so this tag is probably no longer needed. MichaelSalter (talk) 19:24, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep, per WP:ORG. Thousands of members for dozens of years. Mostlyharmless (talk) 07:21, 11 March 2008 (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.