User talk:RicoCorinth/sandbox/Deirdre

community association
I see that you've made this a redirect to homeowners association. I submit that the term community association is much broader than that of homeowners association; I am a participant in just such a civic group, and there is no requirement that members be homeowners; they just have to live within the confines of a certain geographic area. But community associations don't necessarily have to even have a residency requirement, although that's the usual practice. At any rate, I wish you'd discussed this before changing the page to a redirect, willy-nilly. If you'll look at the homeowners association page, you'll see that it is written specifically with regard to those who own homes and are concerned with covenants, preservation of property values, etc. Thus, it's only one, limited type of community association. It shouldn't be the main entry for all types. User:Deirdre|Deirdre 06:58, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Stub
A community association is a nongovernmental association of participating members of a community, such as a neighborhood, village, condominium, cooperative, or group of homeowners or property owners in a delineated geographic area. Participation may be voluntary, or a requirement of residency in, for example, a condominium, or participation in an intentional community. Community associations may serve as social clubs, community promotional groups, service organizations, or quasi-governmental groups.

Types of community associations

 * Homeowners association

I changed the page, "willy-nilly"?
According to official Wikipedia policy, "Any edit lacking a source may be removed." 'Your' entire, three-sentence stub had no references.

The following are also from Wikipedia's policies: >> <<
 * Generally, most of us think we should be bold in updating pages.
 * Virtually no one behaves as though previous authors need to be consulted before making changes; if we thought that, we would make little progress.
 * Quite the contrary: some Wikipedians think you should not beat around the bush at all—simply change a page immediately if you see a problem, rather than waiting to discuss changes that you believe need to be made. Discussion becomes the last resort.

"Sometimes it is better to have no information at all than to have information without a source."

"Wikipedia is not the place for original research."

While Wikipedia policies encourage Wikipedians to edit boldly, they are particularly encouraged to be bold with unsourced text, and none of your three sentences was sourced.

List of "Types of community associations"
'Your' tiny stub -- not an article, a stub, by your own admission -- included a list of the "Types of community associations". There was only one item in your 'list': "homeowners associations". That really doesn't help you make your case.

Minimum
Wikipedia policy states: Important points to remember

1. Links should be kept to a minimum. A lack of external links, or a small number of external links is not a reason to add external links. [emphasis in original]

Since you added as many external links as sentences — three, the external links section was a major portion of 'your' stub. Two of the links were to the Community Associations Institute trade association, and one to another association service vendor website. These websites are "written specifically with regard to those who own homes and are concerned with covenants, preservation of property values, etc."

Meritable
The Community Associations Institute trade association is a disingenuous lobbying organization that lobbies against homeowners while duplicitously claiming to represent them.

Wikipedia policy directs editors to "avoid ... Any site that misleads the reader by use of factually inaccurate material or unverifiable research."

That description fits CAI to a T.

Giving undue weight to minority views
Wikipedia policy states that editors are to "Avoid undue weight on particular points of view." "On articles with multiple points of view, the number of links dedicated to one point of view should not overwhelm the number dedicated to other equal points of view, nor give undue weight to minority views."

The three links — taken as a whole — violated this policy, because all of your links were to association service vendor organizations with the 'point of view' that more profit is preferred to less. The 'point of view' of the association service vendor organizations in your external links section can be summed up with a single equation: revenues - expenses = net income. (Getting more of the homeowners' money, or spending less getting it, is good; getting less of the homeowners' money, or spending more to get it, is bad.)

Two of the links were to CAI, so the sites they point to have identical 'points of view.' Obviously the homeowners have a different point of view — and since there are way more of homeowners than association service vendors, your external links "give undue weight to minority views." 'Your' stub smelled a little like a POV fork.

I assume that you, in good faith, were not trying to do that.

Voluntary associations
The lack of any information in the homeowner association article about voluntary associations or civic clubs is too bad, but it is remediable. Regardless, that doesn't make your case.

Value
Given the lack of any value to Wikipedia of 'your' three unsourced sentences, and the list of one "Type of community association," "homeowners association," it would seem that the only value left in 'your' stub was to the association service vendor websites' PageRank. I assume that you, in good faith, were not simply trying to achieve that.

Deletion?
Official Wikipedia policy states that "speedy deletion is for cases where an article does not contain useful content."

'Yours' contained none.

Wikipedia guidelines state, "When you write a stub article, it is important to bear in mind that its main interest is to be expanded, and that thus it ideally contains enough information to give a basis for other editors to expand upon. ... the extreme case of a very short article with little or no context to allow expansion is a criterion under which articles may be speedily deleted." [emphasis added]

"Wikipedia:Speedy deletion criterion for unsourced articles" states: "The fact is that an unreferenced article is not helpful as we do not have any basis for knowing if it is reliable, accurate, and neutral. Even if the information is those things, since it is unverifiable, we (and our readers) have no more reason for trusting the claim than for trusting any of the other bad unsourced claims out there. Unreferenced articles are inherently bad quality."

However, I didn't delete your "not helpful," "bad quality" stub as you all but state. I changed it into a redirect.