Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/American Board of Sleep Medicine


 * 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. (non-admin closure) -- Trevj (talk) 10:42, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

American Board of Sleep Medicine

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I can't tell myself this organization is notable. This Google News search produces (non-paywalled) very little about this organization, but quite a number of passing mentions. Unless I'm missing some more significant coverage, I'm not sure this passes WP:GNG. ~ Charmlet -talk- 21:38, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000(talk) 22:11, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Illinois-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000(talk) 22:11, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000(talk) 22:12, 6 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep - This board of one of four entities that is at the center of the practice of sleep medicine. Publications about sleep studies and sleep medicine regularly talk about what this board does. Bill Pollard (talk) 23:03, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Being regularly mentioned is not the same as being talked about. I couldn't find anything more than a few sentences in reliable sources, which is not the significant coverage required for WP:GNG. Also, sadly, being at the "center of the practice" does not mean it's notable. If anything, these deserve sections in the article for sleep medicine. ~ Charmlet -talk- 00:24, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment - I looked at Sleep Review magazine's article search engine, at http://www.sleepreviewmag.com/hidn-search/?searchword=american%20board%20of%20sleep%20medicine&catid[0]=558&catid[1]=113&catid[2]=343&catid[3]=116&catid[4]=119&catid[5]=562&catid[6]=563&catid[7]=174&limitstart=0 , and looked for 'American Board of Sleep Medicine.' This search came up with 385 articles. Granted only a fourth of them had information about the Board or the American Association of Sleep Technologists. Many of these articles covered significant sleep medicine and sleep study topics. I did not even bother to do a similar search in the Advance for Respiratory Care & Sleep Medicine magazine or the AARC Times, which is in the American Association for Respiratory Care website. It just can't be argued these two entities have no significant coverage. Bill Pollard (talk) 13:23, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Covering sleep medicine is not the same as covering the ABSM. ~ Charmlet -talk- 15:14, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep per WP:NGO meets criteria #1 and #2: national scope, and information about the org's activities is found in multiple reliable independent sources. Countless doctors list themselves as being ABSM certified (thus verifying it's claim as being a notable certifying agency of sleep doctors) and there are some sources that seem to confirm their role in International cerification. WP:NGO is not the same as GNG or ORG, it's an alternative method used for cases like this where a NGO has clear impact within a specialized sphere, but maybe doesn't have the sort of general magazine or newspaper profiles we are used to. -- Green Cardamom (talk) 16:00, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I am hung up on the usually notable if part of NGO. I have to say that if we consider every national organization with some reliable sources notable we'd be overflowing with promospam (not that this one is). ~ Charmlet -talk- 16:46, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Three additional comments - First, my link to the Sleep Review website apparently requires the user to type 'American Board of Sleep Medicine' or 'American Association of Sleep Technologists' to pull up the articles on them. These search parameters, I found, cannot be entered as part of the website link. Also, we have to look at the importance and scope of organizations. As you say, not all organizations have notability. For instance, state sleep organizations would usually be too small to mention in Wikipedia. There are a variety of smaller national sleep organizations that just are too obscure to bring into Wikipedia. If the discussions on the Board and Association result in keep, I promise I will create an Additional Resources section at the bottom of both articles and place references to publication articles from the three magazines I noted above. In many cases these articles concern debates about how these organizations have been operating. Many of these topics are just too detailed to enter into the Wikipedia articles themselves. Bill Pollard (talk) 10:52, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, &#124;  Uncle Milty  &#124;  talk  &#124;  17:41, 13 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment Significant coverage is evaluated within a source, not within an article. 100 passing mentions != significant coverage, the same way as 100 non-reliable sources does not equal a reliable source. ~ Charmlet -talk- 22:27, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
 * NGO doesn't require significant coverage within a source. When you have 100s of Dr's listing themselves as certified by this org it's fairly obvious the org is notable within the field. NGO allows for this type of situation, a classic fit case. NGO is an alternative method, you don't have to agree to its application, but I think common sense here is that this is a notable organization, and the alt method of NGO works for it. -- Green Cardamom (talk) 05:46, 15 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I never said anything like 100 passing references equal one significant reference. If anyone does an article search of 'American Board of Sleep Medicine' in Sleep Review, of the numerous articles appearing, about 80 refer to the organization. Of the 80 about 15 have significant coverage of the Board and these can be used to establish notability. Article searches of RT magazine and Advance for Respiratory Care & Sleep Medicine provide similar results. These magazines have websites, so they are accessible. Doing a simple Google, Bing, or whatever browser search does not show most of these articles, so it is necessary to perform article searches. I ask anyone involved in this discussion to please do an article search on at least one of these publications. By the way, User: Green Cardamom, I you just made a good point about having so many doctors being certified by this Board. Certification in a field must be earned; these are not just handed to any doctor. That also establishes notability. Bill Pollard (talk) 11:54, 16 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep It's the accrediting board of a major medical specialty in the US, and therefore notable by common sense, without needing to quibble over what sources are "significant" --which can often be argued either way. I'd be prepared to do it either way in this case, according to what result made sense to me. Organizations of this nature usually have difficulty in sourcing, and in practice, we use :national" as an important and usually a decisive criterion.  DGG ( talk ) 20:33, 21 September 2013 (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.