Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Engage (organisation)


 * 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. Ad Orientem (talk) 00:14, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Engage (organisation)

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Lacks WP:N due to absence of WP:RS Jontel (talk) 18:20, 10 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Judaism-related deletion discussions. Jontel (talk) 18:31, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. Jontel (talk) 18:33, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. Jontel (talk) 18:35, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Israel-related deletion discussions.E.M.Gregory (talk) 19:24, 10 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep This appears to be a failure of WP:BEFORE, presumably because this organization was more active in the 2010's (I used a news archive search,) and possibly because "engage" is such a common word that it's hard to search. I made a start at sourcing it.  This organization has an online journal, which is widely cited in books including Alvin Hirsch Rosenfeld, Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: The Dynamics of Delegitimization, Indiana University Press, 2019; Boycotting Israel is Wrong: The progressive path to peace between Palestinians and Israelis, Nick Dyrenfurth and Philip Mendes,  University of New South Wales Press, 2010; Dave Rich, The Left's Jewish Problem and others.E.M.Gregory (talk) 19:16, 10 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Comment. Hi E.M., Thanks for your comments. I have looked on their website to check. It only lists five issues of their Journal, all in 2006 and 2007. It has a 'What they say about us', which contains a very limited number of third party comments, all undated. The website has only one or two posts a month, and none since October 2018. Finally, the article has been around for over 12 years, and no-one has felt motivated to add reliable sources until you did. So, I think, as an organization, it is effectively dormant, and I doubt that it was ever significant. The founder, David Hirsh, has a page, though that is fairly limited, too, and perhaps Engage can be given a section on that. Jontel (talk) 21:05, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment. WP:HEY. The thing is, a great many old, unsourced topics turn up at AfD, where they get often get sourced, upgraded, and kept. Let's wait a few days and see what other editors find, some may be familiar with this topic.E.M.Gregory (talk) 21:37, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment. Sure, though I see there have been two previous unrewarded prompts: the 'Stub' notice for twelve years and the 'needs updating' notice for six years. This Engage website seems to have been a relatively brief attempt to launch a publication, and I have little sense that it attracted much notice. In the relatively small world of anti-semitism/ pro Israel studies, they seem to quote each other a lot for mutual reinforcement, and you impressively found some examples of that, but I think that is it. Yes, happy to wait till the end of the week as you say. Jontel (talk) 22:29, 11 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep. Seems to have continued coverage.. Icewhiz (talk) 10:08, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment. Two of these are from 2006/7, when the organization had just been founded and was publishing a Journal. The third is current but it is a historical overview, referencing the organizations's 2005 founding. So, I think that WP:SUSTAINED is an issue, as well as WP:RS. I have looked at all of the references mentioned and those already in the article. Almost all seem to fail WP:SIGCOV because they are passing mentions, limited to a sentence. "Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention". Notability The single exception is the JPSR paper which describes a number of organizations in an encyclopaedic manner. Jontel (talk) 10:59, 12 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Comment Your argument that the publication was short-lived, is not supported by policy. We host articles on many short-lived publicaitons (cf. '47 (magazine), African Observer, Atari Age.) Also, brief sources can be WP:SIGCOV, as I judge the passage that you added to the page in a book by Andrew Pessin to be. and WP:HEYMANN, although the page was poorly (virtually un-)sourced wehn brought to AfD, it is now sourced to WP:SIGCOV and more can be added, including material from the several books mentioned above.E.M.Gregory (talk) 01:16, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment Thanks for that. I think this is a useful discussion. On the topic being shortlived, the distinction I would draw is that the publications you mention were hard copy publications which appear to be aimed at a significant readership. By contrast, each of the five issues of the Engage 'Journal' is a handful of quasi academic articles added to a website. It had neither the impact of a popular publication nor the rigour of a peer reviewed journal and I suspect had limited readership. The passage in Pessin, which was just a sentence, does directly state Engage's purpose, personnel, aim and single achievement, but this is really a rare example and is about the 2005 AUT boycott decision, which is covered here Academic_boycott_of_Israel, as are some of the other mentions of Engage. Engage could be mentioned on this page. As you say other books tend to cite articles from the website rather than discuss the organization: if that was all that was necessary to be on Wikipedia, every academic book and paper would deserve its own article. It is a better article than before. I still think Engage had very limited impact, scale, activity or recognition per se and that for a short period. It never got much above being an expression of David Hirsh and I still fell that mentioning it on his page would be sufficient. Jontel (talk) 09:42, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment Jontel, I see that although you began editing in 2012, you made only a handful of edits per year until 2018. It can take time to get used to this place. In particular, it is not unusual for new users to find the standards for notability at AfD confusing, I can see that you  have found them so .  But the sources found and added to the page during this discussion on the page meet our standards for keeping an article on a niche organization and its publication.E.M.Gregory (talk) 14:04, 13 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep I could see the rationale for the challenge. Good work has been done improving this since.  I can see that there are plenty of current references in the UK media on David Hirsh/Engage (best way is to google for David) and the organisation is still appearing in UK major media. Britishfinance (talk) 01:22, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment Hi, Thanks for participating. In the Wikipedia’s article references, the four from UK major media date from 2005 and 2006, when the organization was launched. Hirsh is still active and is quoted occasionally in the major media, but this coverage does not mention Engage. He is being interviewed as an academic and author and this activity is covered in his own article. See Jontel (talk) 09:00, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment. Here is Guardian in 2018 referencing Engage (and more members than just Hirsh). The case is not a slam-dunk in terms of notability (e.g. your nomination is not that unfair), but nor is their case contrived.  There are sufficient references in good RS that continue to recognize this group. Britishfinance (talk) 13:21, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment Well found! I was looking only for combinations of Hirsh with Engage, which are rare themselves, so missed this reference. It only mentions one member, Richard Gold. I cannot find any other mainstream references of him in relation to Engage. The phrase in the source you found is “As Richard Gold, a party member active in the anti-racist Engage campaign, put it in his submission to…” so I do not think that it contributes much to notability, on the Notability grounds that "Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention". Gold, along with Miri Vogel, has been mentioned as a main contributor to Engage, replacing Hirsh in this role at one point, which suggests to me that few others were involved. There is little coverage of her or of Jon Pike, the other founder, in relation to Engage. I doubt that there is much, if any, coverage, in relation to others connected to Engage, if such people exist. I have tried Engage AND antisemitism, but there really isn’t anything recent. In essence, I still feel that this was a genuine but limited and shortlived Hirsh project that never did much or received much notice and should live solely on his article. Jontel (talk) 14:25, 16 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Concern. I notice from your edit history that there is advocacy for Jeremy Corbyn against concerns of anti-Semitism, for example here and here.  You have also been blanking your Talk Page (which is allowed in WP), which removed examples of articles you have been trying to write supporting left-wing groups against concerns of anti-Semitism (Draft:Labour against the Witch-hunt).  This can raise concerns against you (and your proposed nomination of this article, a group dedicated to confronting left-wing anti-Semitism) of WP:COI. You need to be careful here. Britishfinance (talk)
 * Comment I am happy to be able to reassure you on this point. You have partially misread my edit history on Corbyn, incorrectly assigning a passage to me that had simply moved due to an edit I made. Other edits you highlighted, which I did make, simply contextualised reported criticism of Corbyn: they were not advocacy. I did blank a notice on one draft article, not several, on my talk page, to keep it clear: your talk page only goes back a few days. Creating an article on a group is not supporting it: it is what Wikipedia is for. I have perfectly good neutral reasons for nominating the Engage article for deletion, as you yourself volunteered earlier today: “I could see the rationale for the challenge.“ So, for you then to disregard WP:AGF is surprising. I am sorry that I cannot accept the arguments you are putting forward on Engage. I am listening and responding factually, but I find your points often ill founded. For example, you say “the organisation is still appearing in UK major media” when that has not been the case for over ten years, except for one passing mention. You say “and more members than just Hirsh” i.e. the plural, when only one member is mentioned. Finally, WP:COI is hardly relevant here; I expect you mean WP:ADVOCACY. I have no connection with any left wing group, if that helps. Certainly, the other contributors on this page also edit related articles, which is only natural. Jontel (talk) 18:26, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep. The article, as it reads now, is referenced enough to meet WP:GNG. Ifnord (talk) 23:25, 17 February 2019 (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.