Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gary Birdsong


 * 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. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  14:29, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Gary Birdsong

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This biography of a traveling fundamentalist Christian preacher seems to exist only to mock him. One of the sources is a dead link to a USA Today article which may have mentioned him in the context of campus preachers. Outside of that dead link, the coverage is all local and campus news. Gary Birdsong may be a fixture on North Carolina campuses, but that doesn't make him notable. World&#39;s Lamest Critic (talk) 20:33, 15 September 2017 (UTC) World&#39;s Lamest Critic (talk) 20:33, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep -- Based upon the cited sources, he certainly seems notable per WP:N.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢) 21:22, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:58, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:58, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of North Carolina-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:58, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Keep -- Meets the GNG. See also this source not already used in the article.  The USA Today story makes the coverage sufficiently non-local, but even without it the depth of local coverage is enough. The fact that the USA Today link is dead is irrelevant, and anyway it's archived.  It does more than mention him, it's mostly about him.  If the article exists mostly to mock him, well, if that's a deletion criterion WP is going to lose huge numbers of biographical articles, isn't it? Central and Adams (talk) 21:05, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 06:27, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete The whole point of USA today is to aggregate lots of local coverage, not so much to provide substantial, reasoned, and well-thought out national coverage. Wikipedia is not news, and just because people have been covered in a few news sources does not default make them notable. We need to take the broad, long, historical view, not the passing news view, and in that view, Birdsong is not notable.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:59, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep the Daily Tar Heel is a student paper (arguably the best in the United States because of the journalism faculty at Chapel Hill, but it is still a student paper, which means we don't count it towards notability). WRAL is exceedingly local, but the issue of free speech is one that is significant in the history of that institution (see the North Carolina Speaker Ban for the background here). That means the Birdsong ban has likely been discussed in more recent histories of the university that would count as RS, but are unlikely to be available online. USA Today is eh, but its national so when combined with the local coverage, is enough to get it over the bar for me. There is also likely print coverage of Mr. Birdsong in the North Carolina Collection, given the outsized personality he has on many North Carolina campuses, and considering that it is also on Chapel Hill's campus. We have enough here to scrape past the GNG when considering WP:NPOSSIBLE. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:27, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Note, I did a search of the UNC library system (publicly available, but its behind a paywall for online content, so I was unable to get links to each of the sources), and its turning up an Associated Press article from 2002 about the Quran that got extensive reprinting. Several mentions ranging from 1997-2010 from the The News & Observer (regional press, which is better than local, but not by much). Several local stories, and one mention in the Chronicle of Higher Education. This is just their online journalism search. Special Collections (which the NCC is) are notoriously difficult to search because so much of it is paper text that hasn't been digitized either on Google Books, or where the library itself doesn't know if there would be coverage. Given the coverage in the AP as well as the Chronicle of Higher Ed, combined with the USA Today above, and considering the existence of local sources and likely print sources, I'm upgrading to a full keep here. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:43, 27 September 2017 (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.