Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/European Sleep Apnea Database


 * 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 no consensus. The 70-word stub that was first brought to AFD has received a great deal of editorial attention, becoming a 927-word c-class article. The article is not a violation of policy, and now informs readers and serves Wikipedia. Looking at some of the article's edit summaries, I do wish to caution those who may wish to remove certain citations, that under WP:SELFSOURCE, non-contentious information that is not unduly self-serving MAY be supplied by the organization itself. Thanks to the attention of many, this article is supported by numerous WP:RS/MC, the organization is widely accepted through academic consensus and wide use by others. There is no reasonable expectation that ESADA would have the same level of mainstream media attention as might Burger King. Being a non-profit scholarly organization and not a for-profit corporation, guideline allows that the GNG is not the final arbiter of what improves the project. There is no need to rehash the discussion, and I will not have one portion of WP:CORP make other portions ignorable, but I am more convinced by WP:CORPDEPTH's instructing on how SIGCOV is not the FINAL and ONLY notability measure, when it says "If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources should be cited to establish notability. Trivial or incidental coverage of a subject is not sufficient to establish notability". Multiple independent sources are now part of this article, and calling them "trivial or incidental" becomes a judgement call. It's a scholarly non-profit organization, after all... not a for-profit enterprise. While I might have tended more toward a solid keep, I think a non-consensus will encourage continued improvements to serve the project and its readers.  Schmidt,  Michael Q. 07:57, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

European Sleep Apnea Database

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

non-notable collaboration. no independent sources provided that show WP:NOTABILITY. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jytdog (talk • contribs) 07:04, 18 October 2014‎
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 * Keep - the ERS article partially satisfies WP:N. I did a quick Google Search and also turned up . Kristen Everetta: The Great Gazoo (talk) 14:06, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
 * that source is scientific article is by the group. we need independent sources showing that the group is notable.  Jytdog (talk) 15:07, 18 October 2014 (UTC)


 * comment as nominator. seems to be a vanity posting.  no sources showing that the group itself is notable. Jytdog (talk) 15:08, 18 October 2014 (UTC)


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 * Keep - cited in 21 scholarly works. --Mais oui! (talk) 15:20, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
 * you'd expect a database to be cited, but that's no indication (in Wikipedia's terms) of the project's notability. Alexbrn talk 06:29, 22 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep - satisfies WP:N.--BabbaQ (talk) 15:58, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
 * for both of you, citing papers produced by the project does not provide notability for the project which is what this article is about. please provide a rationale for the actual project. independent sources discussing the project, not its work thanks. Jytdog (talk) 16:10, 18 October 2014 (UTC) (copyedit to try to express this more clearly Jytdog (talk) 17:00, 18 October 2014 (UTC))
 * You clearly have not had the courtesy to click on the link provided and check which 21 scholarly references were provided. In what way does the American Thoracic Society paper, for example, constitute "papers produced by the project"? --Mais oui! (talk) 16:35, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
 * per WP:TPG, please comment on content, not contributors, and please actually address what I wrote. please respond to this which I will try to say more clearly:  having other scientists citing papers produced by the project, is not the same as independent sources describing the project itself which is what the articleis about. For example, the Human Genome Project itself was widely discussed in the scientific literature and in the media (like [this]) - and of course its work has been cited a zillion times. We need the former kind of thing to show WP:NOTABILITY -- sources discussing the project itself.    Do you see what I mean? (please try to AGF and to give me a thoughtful answer.  thanks)  Jytdog (talk) 17:00, 18 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete&mdash;The WP:PRIMARY sources listed by Mais oui! are effectively contain only passing mentions of the subject; they do not discuss the database itself, and so they're not particularly useful in writing an article or establishing notability. I'm not seeing anything useful in gbooks or gnews.  The article cited by Kristen Everetta: The Great Gazoo above is the kind of work that would establish notability, but it has been cited all of two times per gscholar.  Absent any additional WP:RS that discusses the database proper, I'm not seeing a path to notability.  Lesser Cartographies (talk) 19:40, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
 * in my view that source, being written by the project members itself, fails WP:INDY. We need independent sources to show notability.  Yes? Jytdog (talk) 19:53, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi, Jytdog. I think a sufficiently high citation count cures concerns about independence.  For example, LogP machine relies for its notability on Culler's own publication, but that publication has been cited (as of a few minutes ago) 1762 times.  The point of WP:INDEPENDENT is to make manufactured notability more difficult.  Where notability clearly has not been manufactured, I don't see an advantage to exclude a source on ground of being insufficiently independent.  (Not that it matters here, of course.)  Lesser Cartographies (talk) 20:05, 18 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep, good deal of source coverage among multiple references. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 00:45, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Cirt. You're seeing something I'm not, and I'd like to figure out why I missed it.  Can you point me to a couple of references you found that have good coverage?  Thanks!  Lesser Cartographies (talk) 04:01, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
 * &mdash; there's an additional interesting source. Also I saw lots of fascinating source coverage in a search at Google Scholar. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 04:34, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Cirt. I'm going to have to disagree with you on the "Sleep Apnea" cite; that was published by PRNewsWire here (and so is unlikely to be independent) and the database is mentioned in just a single sentence ("Also, according to The European Sleep Apnea Database (ESADA), by March 2014, enrolled patients reached 15,956 along with 5,313 follow up visits.").  If there's a google scholar cite you've found that has more than a passing reference I'd love to take a look, but most of what I notice there just cited the database without giving any further description.  Lesser Cartographies (talk) 04:57, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
 * As noted already by, above, the academic journals discussing the subject are independent of the organization itself. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 04:58, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
 * , those are publications by the group - they are not independent. Not like, say the NY Times reporting on the Human Genome Project.  This article really seems like an academic vanity piece to me. Jytdog (talk) 13:36, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Some may be by the group, but certainly not all. If it seems like a vanity piece, hopefully that could be improved through editing, research, and article talk page discussion. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 14:11, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Find me a few sources that contain more than a passing reference and I'll be happy to take on the task of improving the article. From what I've been able to find so far, though, researchers in this area consider the database to be important enough to cite but not important enough to discuss.  (By way of illustration, the second peer-reviewed article I wrote in grad school now has 95 cites, but the program it describes is only discussed in my original paper.  You might consider that sufficient to establish notability; if so, we'll need to agree to disagree, despite the fact that I'd love to have an enWP article on that work.)  Lesser Cartographies (talk) 16:06, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I'd be ecstatic if you wanted to take on the task of improving the article!!! As you know, WP:NRVE notes: "The absence of citations in an article (as distinct from the non-existence of sources) does not indicate that the subject is not notable." One must consider source coverage of the topic of the article, not simply lack of citations in the article, itself. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 17:00, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Both Lesser and I have looked - there are no' sources that discuss the database project per se that are independent of the group that is making it. That is why I nominated the article for deletion and why Lesser is supporting deletion. Would you please speak to that Cirt?  Jytdog (talk) 17:22, 19 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment: I'd explain in more detail here at this AFD page but that doesn't always convince everyone &mdash; WP:NRVE is supposed to apply here, but really the best thing to convince others commenting "delete" at an AFD is to simply improve the article, itself. I'd work on the article itself and improve its quality to WP:GA status, but I'm fearful of doing that due to evidence of recent and ongoing disruption in the article's edit history, between multiple users. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 18:42, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't understand. Two editors are telling you that they have looked and there are no independent sources on this.  so you cite WP:NRVE which says " objective evidence that the subject has received significant attention from independent sources to support a claim of notability".  I really don't understand.  Why are you ignoring what we are saying?  How could you possibly make this a GA when there are no independent sources giving it significant attention?  please explain.  Jytdog (talk) 19:08, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, I can't make it a WP:GA right now, as it fails WP:WIAGA for Stability, due to disruption and edit-warring in the recent edit history. So I'm quite hesitant to even try to improve its quality at the moment. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 23:31, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
 * crazy that completely ducks the question. will discuss with you elsewhere. Jytdog (talk) 01:04, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
 * No, it doesn't. I don't want to get into this further at this AFD itself. I'd much rather simply improve the article, itself, in quality, as a quality improvement project. I've found that improving the quality of articles at AFD can sometimes be a fun process. But I can't, and I won't, due to the article's state of instability from edit-warring and disruptive editing as shown in the article history. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 01:12, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

done here. this has gone to a bad place and i am not going there too. Jytdog (talk) 01:15, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Please,, calm down, I don't mean to upset anyone. I mean strictly for purposes of WP:WIAGA good article criteria, the article fails right now due to instability. Please, surely you can understand that. I look at the edit history and I see at least three (3) instances of people reverting each other in the last twenty-four (24) hours alone. Surely you can understand no GA Reviewer would pass that GA candidate with that going on. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 01:21, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
 * "disruptive editing" is a very strong charge. i have no desire to participate in a discussion where people throw that around.  really, outta here. Jytdog (talk) 01:23, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Okay,, I apologize, how about just simply disruption? People undoing each others' edits? Reverts going on during the past 24 hours? Sound better? &mdash; Cirt (talk) 01:25, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
 * thank you for the apology, that is very kind of you. Jytdog (talk) 01:30, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. I really only meant basically that the article is not stable now. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 01:32, 20 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete. Fails WP:GNG. Alexbrn talk 02:23, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: Additional sources under alternate name spelling: European Sleep Apnoea Database. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 13:50, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Note there's an additional 33 (thirty-three) results from Google Scholar under this alternate spelling. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 14:03, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
 * ... but nothing that confers notability on this topic so far as I can tell. Or did you have any source in mind? Alexbrn talk 16:20, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry,, I haven't had time to read all 54 of those articles in Google Scholar yet under those two (2) different spellings mentioned above. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 16:23, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I made a pass of the search snippets and so far as I could see this database was just being mentioned or cited. Let us know if you find any significant coverage (though the AfD may have closed by then!). Alexbrn talk 16:34, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah,, I agree that "making a pass of the search snippets" is simply not the same as ideally having full access to all the journal articles. The problem is that research of this nature takes weeks or months, not the days allotted to one WP:AFD. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 16:35, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I'd hazard that most people familiar with working with academic content should be able to determine the notability of this topic fairly quickly (and I've also used local academic library searches where I'm located, which are -- pretty good). What's an AfD? 28 days? Alexbrn talk 16:43, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
 * No,, AFDs are seven (7) days. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 16:48, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I'd hazard that most people familiar with working with academic content should be able to determine the notability of this topic fairly quickly (and I've also used local academic library searches where I'm located, which are -- pretty good). What's an AfD? 28 days? Alexbrn talk 16:43, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
 * No,, AFDs are seven (7) days. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 16:48, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Delete If I'm assessing this discussion correctly (and please do correct me if I'm wrong), no independent reliable sources have been found that provide significant coverage. Sources written by or clearly connected to the subject certainly do not count as independent -- we cannot assume that because these non-independent sources exist that independent ones do too. But if independent reliable blah blah blah blah are found, please do let me know and I'll happily change my !vote.--Yaksar (let's chat) 06:09, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Additional note: -- Also called European Sleep Apnoea Cohort. Part of the problem in researching this is that they go by so many different alternate spellings and names! &mdash; Cirt (talk) 16:22, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Update:
 * 1) Please note that I've done a great deal of work on this article: Compare (1) prior version at start of deletion discussion with (2) version after my recent work on the article. I'm still in the process of additional ongoing research on the topic, and I've noted, above, that the topic has been cited in sources under multiple different spellings of names, which has not made research easy.
 * 2) Additionally: Per WP:CORPDEPTH: "If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources should be cited to establish notability." &mdash; I believe I've shown that with improvements to the article post AFD nomination.
 * 3) Per WP:ORGIND: "A primary test of notability is whether people independent of the subject itself (or its manufacturer, creator, or vendor) have actually considered the company, corporation, product or service notable enough that they have written and published non-trivial, non-routine works that focus upon it." &mdash; And I've found the recent (2013) book Clinical Genomics: Practical Applications for Adult Patient Care said ESDADA was an example of the kind of initiative which affords an "excellent opportunity" for future collaborative research (their words in quotes).
 * 4) Per WP:NONPROFIT: "The scope of their activities is national or international in scale." = Yes, with sleep centres in multiple countries all over Europe. "Factors that have attracted widespread attention." = Yes, the organization's research has been cited in 21 journals under spelling "European Sleep Apnea Database", and another 33 journals under spelling "European Sleep Apnoea Database"
 * 5) Finally, again as per WP:HEY, the article has undergone substantial improvements since deletion nomination, DIFF.
 * For the above reasons, I respectfully request that this article page be Kept on Wikipedia. Thank you for your consideration and/or your re-consideration, it's most appreciated. :) &mdash; Cirt (talk) 02:33, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Ah, so it seems you didn't find any good sources that discuss this database, but have gone ahead anyway and made an article of coatracks and stretched nothings. Passing mentions and citations of data in the database do not confer notability on the topic of the database itself: you mention WP:CORPDEPTH but it says "incidental coverage of a subject is not sufficient to establish notability"; it appears your best source is the genomics book which mentions the database once in a single sentence, as an example of a useful initiative. A textbook WP:GNG failure it seems. Alexbrn talk 06:35, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
 * No,, a most incorrect assessment of my thought process here. I'm actually still in the process of additional ongoing research, but unfortunately there isn't much time left in this deletion debate and like I said above, good research sometimes takes longer than seven (7) days. I shall continue to research the topic more during the limited time left allotted. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 11:55, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
 * You somehow overlooked WP:CORPDEPTH saying "If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources should be cited to establish notability." While wonderful to have, per policy and guideline SIGCOV is not an "absolute" mandate. We do well to not cherry-pick just those portions of applicable guideline that serve a desire for deletion. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 11:59, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Indeed not, which is why I drew your attention to the following sentence which qualifies the one you picked! It says "incidental coverage of a subject is not sufficient to establish notability". And after a more than exhaustive search, "incidental" coverage (not merely insubstantial) is all we have here. Alexbrn talk 12:11, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
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 * Keep. This AfD is ridiculous. You have dozens of scientists writing about this database in peer-reviewed journals, and people are saying that in the act of writing about it they are participating in the program, therefore the sources are primary. Confusing (A) the database with (B) the program to maintain the database with (C) individual authors. Completely silly. --Sammy1339 (talk) 14:05, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Who's writing about the database or its project? There are some citation of (data in) the database and a few passing mentions but that's it. Alexbrn talk 14:26, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Man, come on. How about, , , . You want to exclude these as "primary" on the grounds that the authors said something non-trivial about the data, and are therefore "connected" to the subject. Well, scientists usually write about the things they study, so I guess academic papers can no longer establish notability. --Sammy1339 (talk) 15:42, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
 * These are primary sources, not independent of the subject, and have made little impact. They don't even have any kind of in-depth coverage of the ESADA initiative itself but focus primarily on aspects of datasets loaded into the database which is just mentioned is passing. Notability generally requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject", and it's not possible to write a decent article without them. Scientists do indeed write about things they study; when other scientists take note and write about that work we have secondary sources and this will appear on Wikipedia's radar, since WP is an encyclopedia which exists to digest accepted knowledge at the tertiary level, not to be kind of secondary source scraping stuff together from weak primaries. Alexbrn talk 15:58, 23 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete. We have primary sources saying they have used the database, not really much more than that. We need independent sources actually describing the database to establish notability, not just that they've used it. Otherwise we don't have anything to generate content from, which is a pretty telling sign that we don't have enough to establish notability from Wikipedia's standards. Best to delete for now, and if we do get information that indicates notability in the future, it wouldn't be hard to create the article again. Kingofaces43 (talk) 16:20, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I neglected to mention (because I don't think I should have to) that the database is also discussed in other sources:, . There are also mentions in e.g. the Huffington Post. I'm not sure if you're looking for a dedicated puff piece (which is not the sort of thing that is written about scientific projects of any but the grandest scale, and anyway ought to carry less weight than actual scientific papers) or a technical report on the project (which you would then decide is primary, because the author, having studied the project, became affiliated with it.) The database in question is a collaborative effort of dozens, perhaps hundreds of people, and it and its contents are the subject of a number of journal articles by different groups. Let's stop acting like somebody cooked this up in his basement and wrote a paper on it. --Sammy1339 (talk) 17:00, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Not "discussed" really; more like mentioned in passing. What do we learn other than it's (a) a database (b) EU-funded and (c) might be useful? This is nowhere near meeting the "significant coverage" bar Wikipedia wants. Alexbrn talk 17:23, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
 * That summarizes my concern exactly. A lot of the keeps are saying we have tons of sources, but when you dig into those sources, there's nothing we can really generate content from for the article. That's looking pretty cut and dry right now. Unless that changes, we're looking at a pretty obvious delete at this point. Kingofaces43 (talk) 18:55, 23 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment: The links noted above by and   shows that research by the group including researchers from sixteen (16) countries was published in the peer-reviewed medical journal American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine by the American Thoracic Society in 2010. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 20:22, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Update: I've done a significant amount more work on the article. With great thanks to above for finding additional sources. The article now documents research by the organization and its clinicians for every single year of its existence. It'd be quite a shame to lose this educational and encyclopedic scientific medical resource from Wikipedia. Thank you. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 21:36, 23 October 2014 (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.