Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gasthaus Gutenberger


 * 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 delete.  MBisanz  talk 18:12, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Gasthaus Gutenberger

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The fact mentioned in the text that "nothing was announced on the news, the restaurant's website, or anywhere on the internet" should be a clue to the fact that this restaurant lacked notability while it was still functioning, even more so when it is closed. A mere 150 hits in Google, mostly lists and blogs, two book mentions (plain restaurant listings), five news mentions in five years (all in same local newspaper. No way this restaurant meets notability guidelines. T*U (talk) 19:26, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Companies-related deletion discussions. North America1000 09:47, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Food and drink-related deletion discussions. North America1000 09:47, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Manitoba-related deletion discussions. North America1000 09:47, 25 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete uh yeah, nothing of substance here - David Gerard (talk) 10:29, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete as both the information and sources are essentially PR, nothing actually comes close to being genuine for trimming because it's all so unacceptable. SwisterTwister   talk  05:48, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep. Perfectly acceptable article for a restaurant. Being closed means absolutely nothing re notability as we are not a restaurant guide. Here is a very long and in-depth article in the Winnipeg Free Press, which is Winnipeg's main daily paper. That's more than many restaurants get, that have articles here. Here is a full length review, at Caio! Magazine, which appears to be slick and professional outfit. So there's your two in-depth notable reliable sources, so it meets WP:GNG right there and that's not including the briefer mentions at TripAdvisor and so forth. If you want to override WP:GNG you need better arguments than "nothing of substance" or "all so unacceptable" and so on.


 * Also this is not a promotional article and clearly is not the work of a PR flack (the article could stand some improvement though). PR operatives are seldom hired to represent defunct entities, you know. And while Google hits mean nothing, I got more than ten times the 150 claimed... is there anything correct in this nomination and the comments so far, I'm wondering... "local paper" for chrissakes, Winnipeg is sprawling metropolis with 663,617 (and that's just inside the city limits) and the Free Press was founded in 1872. Can we please not characterize it as if it's some small-town weekly?


 * I have now cleaned up the article, which (since this is not a WP:TNT situation), should not have had much bearing on the question of the article's existence, but perhaps it will now be acceptable? Herostratus (talk) 01:11, 27 August 2016 (UTC)


 * With all due respect, I resent the tone in your comments. You sweeping "is there anything correct in this nomination" is completely uncalled for. Please assume good faith.
 * Two points of clarification. First, Google hits: You are obviously not aware of a certain peculiarity in the hit counting in a Google search. When you make a search, you have to ignore the count number coming up on the first page of results, like here with 1890 hits. You have to look at the last page of results, like here with 155 hits.
 * Second, local newspaper: I have never suggested that Winnipeg Free Press is not a quality newspaper of standing. I am sure it is. My point was that the Google News search finds no coverage anywhere else than in this one local (=Winnipeg) paper. No coverage from non-local (=non-Winnipeg) papers, no coverage in any other local (=Winnipeg] paper. (I assume there are other newspapers in Winnipeg.) I could add that it does not even look as if Winnipeg Free Press found the closure of the restaurant worth mentioning, at least it does not turn up on the Google News search.
 * Having said this, I am glad that you have cleaned up the article. If the result should be "Keep", it is surely more acceptable than the original version. Very much so, good job! But my nomination stands. Regards! --T*U (talk) 15:56, 30 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete -- no indications of notability even when the restaurant was open. The coverage is mostly local press which does not meet WP:AUD. A place of local notability, and that's it. Not sufficient to meet GNG. K.e.coffman (talk) 21:23, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Sheesh, just to point out a few facts:
 * It's not a vote. To delete an article, there has to be some some sort of attempt, even if feeble, at policy-based argument. Otherwise policies mean nothing. I call on the closer to consider this.
 * The Winnipeg Free Press is not "local coverage" as meant by WP:AUD. This is not a matter of opinion but of fact. The Winnipeg Free Press is the broadsheet paper of record of Manitoba -- a place larger than Spain or the Ukraine and with a population of 1.2 million -- and its oldest and far and away its highest-circulation daily newspaper. It is a "local paper" if and only if one considers the New York Times to be a local paper for some city in New York State. This is not what is meant by "attention solely from local media, or media of limited interest and circulation". It doesn't matter how hard you squint: WP:AUD was not intended to exclude very large metropolitan daily papers (which would mean excluding all but a small handful of newspapers worldwide, for all subjects), and I have never seen it taken this way, until now. It's completely outside the letter, spirit, and prior application of policy.
 * The article meets WP:GNG (and WP:CORP). This is not my opinion, but a fact. WP:GNG states
 * If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list. "Significant coverage" addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention... [examples are then given] "Reliable" means sources need editorial integrity to allow verifiable evaluation of notability, per the reliable source guideline... "Sources" should be secondary sources...''
 * This is something that editors need to read and get up to speed on. Anyway, the article contains four references that, now matter how you squint or spin it, are "in depth" and "reliable" and "independent of the subject" and also in notable venues, if those English words have any meaning, so by definition it meets WP:GNG
 * I mean I guess you could answer the above by saying "no it doesn't". You could say "don't care, just not notable to me" or "the article is written in Spanish" or "it's just a blank page" or any other wrong thing. This would be only a slight step down from the arguments I have seen so far.


 * Now, we are not required to keep any article, even those that that obviously pass WP:GNG, if we don't want to. But for this article to be deleted we need an argument along the lines of "Yes, easily meets WP:GNG and WP:CORP but should be deleted anyway because _______", and the blank has to contain something beyond argument by assertion or "is defunct" (so is RJR Nabisco and Penn Central Railroad and the Mongol Empire etc.) or flat-out false statements or whatever. Have not seen any to this point. Herostratus (talk) 23:02, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
 * The distribution range of an individual media outlet does not singlehandedly carry a topic over WP:AUD — the location of the publication vis-à-vis the location of the topic is where AUD comes into play. That is, a piece of coverage of a restaurant would pass AUD if it appears in a geographically-removed publication such as the Calgary Herald or the Toronto Star — but a newspaper published in the same town or city that the restaurant is located does in not pass AUD just because that paper also happens to have some secondary readership beyond the city limits. Because so does The New York Times, but that doesn't mean every hipster gourmet chip stand in Williamsburg gets to have a Wikipedia article the moment it's gotten reviewed in the NYT's food section — and so does the Toronto Star, but that doesn't mean I get a Wikipedia article just because I've been in it a couple of times for reasons of no substantively encyclopedic interest. AUD is passed if publications not based in Winnipeg think a restaurant in Winnipeg is of interest to their readership for some reason — it is not passed just because a newspaper which is based in Winnipeg, and is thus covering the topic in a purely local-interest context, happens to also ship some copies to Brandon and Thompson and The Pas. Bearcat (talk) 23:56, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   18:52, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. K.e.coffman (talk) 23:58, 3 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete. This claims nothing that would make it a topic of any substantive or permanent encyclopedic interest, and cites no non-local coverage to pass the WP:AUD test (which, as noted above, is not passed just because a local publication happens to have some extralocal readership.) We could nearly always write an article like this about almost any restaurant that has ever existed in the world at all, if local coverage verifying inconsequential facts of no wider or enduring significance were all it took. A standalone non-chain local restaurant has to be significantly more notable than the norm in some genuinely substantive way to qualify for a Wikipedia article, because there are millions of such things in the world and they can't all be deemed notable just for existing. If this were Winnipeglocalpedia, I'd say keep. But it's not. If it were sourceable that there was anything distinctive or unique about it compared to other German-cuisine restaurants, I'd say keep. But there's no evidence of that being shown here at all. If it were sourceable as having something approaching national renown, I'd say keep. But nothing here demonstrates or sources that. Bearcat (talk) 00:14, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, yes, we do cover quite a lot of subjects here. But we do not have to delete another article to make room for this one, or anything like that, so I'm not sure what you're so exercised about.


 * As to the rest, the Winnipeg Free Press is a regional, not a local paper, and as I said for a region larger than the Spain or Ukraine.


 * According to its article -- I recommend a read! -- it is distributed throughout Manitoba and is seen by ten percent of the population. The percentage of the adult population that reads the paper must be a good deal higher. This is actually quite remarkable. It's widely read throughout this large region!


 * Contrast Portage la Prairie. Although it's the fourth largest city in Manitoba, it's much smaller than Winnipeg. It has two weekly papers, Daily Graphic and the Herald Leader Press. Those are local papers as meant by WP:AUD.


 * The Winnipeg Free Press is a regional paper.


 * Can you see the difference?


 * If you want to lump the Winnipeg Free Press (and the LA Times and Boston Globe and all other large metropolitan dailies) in with the weekly Portage la Prairie Daily Graphic and local supermarket circulars and similar papers of that type and say "Well, all these are merely local papers. There's really no difference between any of them"... that's just silly. Of course they're different, very different.


 * Anyway, the reason it matters is that WP:AUD (which is not long) says "Evidence of significant coverage by international or national, or at least regional, media is a strong indication of notability.


 * See that? "regional media"! Not just an "indication of notability" but a "strong indication of notability"!


 * Anyway... I still can't see the article being deleted unless the closer wants to state "The Winnipeg Free Press is not regional media" and since that's not true I don't consider that likely. Herostratus (talk) 01:59, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
 * You're the one misinterpreting WP:AUD here, not me — AUD does not give some newspapers a pass as automatically more regional, automatically more able to magically GNG a purely local-interest hometown topic, than others are. The size of the geographic area that the newspaper is distributed in is not relevant to AUD at all — what matters to AUD is the geographic distance that the coverage source has from the topic.
 * Sure, there are absolutely contexts where Boston Globe or LA Times or Winnipeg Free Press coverage counts for more than the Portage la Prairie Herald Leader Press does — but getting a local non-chain restaurant of no enduring or encyclopedic significance over GNG just because local coverage exists is not one of those contexts. A restaurant in Winnipeg does not pass AUD just because the Winnipeg Free Press also has readership in Brandon and Thompson; it passes AUD only when newspapers in Saskatoon or Regina or Calgary or Vancouver or Toronto are starting to show that it's getting noted outside of Winnipeg. A restaurant in Boston does not pass AUD on the basis of Boston Globe coverage alone; it passes AUD when newspapers in New York City or Washington or Chicago are starting to show that it's getting famous beyond Boston. A chip stand in Williamsburg does not pass AUD just because it got one restaurant review in The New York Times, but if it starts getting coverage in the Boston Globe then that counts toward AUD.
 * "Local interest" does not automatically correspond to "suitable for inclusion in an encyclopedia". If a topic cannot claim objective passage of a subject-specific notability criterion, but instead its notability relies on "GNG because media coverage exists", then at least some of the coverage does have to be coming from non-local papers. It doesn't matter whether the local paper's distribution area is the size of Ukraine, Spain, Portage la Prairie or the moon — if there isn't also some non-local coverage of the restaurant coming from papers not published in Winnipeg, then the restaurant has still failed AUD regardless of any claim you can make about how widely read the Winnipeg Free Press is or isn't beyond Winnipeg. Bearcat (talk) 07:57, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
 * You are defining "local" arbitrarily and idiosyncratically. You define Manitoba (again: bigger than Spain, as populous as Estonia) as a mere locality. Obviously by this standard we should cut our back our articles on Estonian history, geography, and culture by 90%. Why not "western Canada" as just a locality then. Why not "Canada" as just a locality. Should we have an article on William Henry Harrison? He's really only of local interest in one country out of 200+.


 * You're defining "local" arbitrarily to suit your particular desire to delete this article. Obviously you are not going to get lots of in-depth material on restaurants in Winnipeg in the Singapore papers and vice versa. That is the nature of restaurants. Unlike books, movies, people, and many other things, they are not portable. Therefore unlike books, movies, people, and many other things they are not easily accessible to people far distant from where they are located. Therefore it is not a good business model for the Singapore papers to write in great depth about many restaurants in Winnipeg (and vice versa).


 * So this is different from books written in Manitoba or record albums made in Manitoba. People in Singapore can obtain and use those! So the Singapore papers are more likely to write about them.


 * But so?


 * The culture of a great city and region has many aspects besides those which attract international notice. Sports teams, libraries, parks, schools, buildings, companies, and yes restaurants are part of this. If you wish to engage fully in helping the reader form a sense for the culture of a great city and region than you need to describe these things.


 * Category:Parks in Winnipeg has ten members. A quick reveals that all of these are either much less well referenced than Gasthaus Gutenberger, or also ref'd to so-called "local" sources, or both.


 * Do you want to empty out Category:Parks in Winnipeg? It's a simple yes or no question.


 * Assuming "yes", which I have to assume, shall we also delete all or most of our articles on schools and teams and so forth in Winnipeg -- and all other cities? Do you think we should have not 5,000,000 articles but maybe just 2,000,000? Or you do you have a particular and personal aversion to restaurants in particular? Maybe you had a bad experience in a restaurant or something, and if so I'm sorry, but what really does that have to with building an encyclopedia, which is what we are supposed to be trying to do here? Herostratus (talk) 16:11, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
 * And once again, you spectacularly miss my entire point. No, I am not "defining" all of Manitoba as a "locality" — the newspaper is published in Winnipeg, and the rest of Manitoba is a secondary distribution area. And the fact that restaurants aren't likely to garner a lot of coverage outside of their own local media is precisely the point: virtually every restaurant that has ever existed at all, anywhere on earth, could be sourced to some greater or lesser amount of local coverage, thus meaning that any restaurant in existence could always pass GNG if local coverage alone were enough. But for the same reasons that we don't automatically deem every police department or fire department or public library branch in existence to automatically qualify for its own standalone article, every restaurant in existence can't be automatically notable either — for a restaurant to warrant a Wikipedia article, it needs to be significantly more notable than the norm, for some substantive reason that does make it a topic of "much wider than just Winnipeg alone" interest. No restaurant on the planet would ever fail GNG if purely local coverage in the local media were enough to make it permanently notable — but Wikipedia is an international encyclopedia, not a local one, so things which are of primarily local interest, in classes of topic that are standard and routine features of every locality in existence rather than being distinctive in any substantive way, do require evidence of being more notable than the norm by virtue of gaining coverage beyond the local media.
 * Please also familiarize yourself with WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Parks and restaurants are not necessarily equivalent topics that are subject to the same inclusion criteria — for example, parks can and often do have unique aspects to them, while that's at best rarely true of restaurants, and some of those park articles may very well be deletable as well if they're sourced as poorly as you claim and can't be improved. Bearcat (talk) 16:31, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
 * But it's not just any average restaurant. It's a notable restaurant. There's a thousand-word article in regional media (here). There's a 500-word article in regional media (here). There are two other articles in regional media which I can't see how long they are (paywall) but look to be several hundred words. This is in addition to several other smaller notices, and long reviews but in less important venues. The article meets WP:GNG and that is why we have GNG, so we know what is "presumed notable" and don't have hash it out on a case-by-case basis.


 * "Parks and restaurants are not necessarily equivalent topics that are subject to the same inclusion criteria" is news to me. Another person could make the point "just a patch of grass, they all look alike, delete" for parks. "Just another building, delete" and so forth. I got that last one on one of my articles: "Is this really an article about a single address on a street block? This should be flagged for deletion..." for 2 Rossi Street. For that guy it was buildings, for you it's restaurants, for another guy it's parks or sports teams: "I don't care to read about such things so no one else should be able to". Can you all take a bigger view please?


 * By your criteria, there is quite possibly not one single restaurant in Winnipeg on which we would have an article. By your criteria there are probably only a few hundred restaurants in the entire world on which we would have articles (most of those in very large cities, which of course would introduce that bias into our selection).


 * I get that you think "It's a restaurant. It's a large room where people perform a bodily function. They are all the same". You're not an epicure. But... food is important! There are shows about food. There are books about food -- lots of them! There are chef schools. It's a whole subculture! People talk about food -- they do! "Where shall we go for dinner" is asked a lot more than "do you prefer the Poetic Eddas or the Prose Eddas?". Most people consider the former question more pressing and are more likely to have an opinion on it. Sad (possibly) but true.


 * It might be that that people ought to eat at home more. It might be that people ought to spend their money and time on musical theater or science lectures rather than eating out. But its just a fact that people eat at restaurants a lot. They do! They care a lot about the difference between German and Thai and even among different German or Thai restaurants. Our job is to describe reality as it is found not as we think it should be.


 * Restaurants are important part of the culture of a great city, just as musical theater and science lectures are. I'm sure a lot of people would prefer we don't cover other low-brow popular-culture stuff comic books and rap music and ball teams. What can I say? We do. It's part of our mission.


 * Another person might say "OMG not another article about a pop album. They are all the same, just noise, so regardless of how much notice it got: delete". "Another article about a play? In other words some geeks yakking on a stage, same as every play. Delete". "Another so-called 'famous' general? All generals are interchangeable: they boss soldiers around. So? Delete." And so on.


 * Well we all don't like the same things. That's what makes a great encyclopedia. Herostratus (talk) 20:19, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm not fundamentally opposed to the concept of restaurants as a phenomenon, but that sure is a cute strawman. But every restaurant that exists at all cannot be inherently notable just because it and some local media coverage of it exist. What makes a restaurant notable enough to have an encyclopedia article is not "people in the city the restaurant was located in might care", or "the local newspaper covered it" — all local newspapers always cover local restaurants, so the existence of local coverage does not demonstrate that a restaurant is special somehow. We're not Restaurantpedia or foundlocally.com, and we can't confer an automatic notability pass on every restaurant that exists — there probably are only a few hundred restaurants in the world that actually warrant encyclopedia articles, whether you or I like that fact or not, because "restaurants whose existence is actually noteworthy for some genuinely encyclopedic reason" is a vastly smaller set than "all restaurants that exist". Bearcat (talk) 23:09, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Well sure, most restaurants don't merit articles. We agree that "restaurants whose existence is actually noteworthy for some genuinely encyclopedic reason" is a vastly smaller set than "all restaurants that exist". Most restaurants are either franchises (where there isn't enough variation to write about each one) or just grills or fast-food places or holes-in-the-wall (again, not enough culinary distinction) And these restaurants aren't usually going to have multiple major in-depth articles. Many other more gastronomically accomplished restaurants simply don't meet WP:GNG.


 * But a restaurant where there's a master chef preparing unique dishes from scratch including butchering his own cattle and what have you... that's a different matter provided there's enough unique about the place (only German restaurant in town!) or its long-lived enough, or whatever it has such that enough notice is attracted to pass the WP:GNG.


 * OK... you continue to use the phrase "local paper" and I guess you always will and you are simply unable to differentiate between a paper with a circulation of 140,000 (on Saturdays) and The Quoddy Tides with a circulation of 5,000 (every two weeks) and I suppose also the Los Angeles Times (Sunday circulation 950,000) -- they are just "local papers" to you, and WP:AUD is designed to nix them all re establishing notability of coverage of restaurants in Winnipeg or Los Angeles or Washington County, Maine (home of the Quoddy Tides).


 * Anyway... you think there are only a few hundred restaurants in the world that should have articles. Maybe there are only a few hundred poets in history that should have articles. Few hundred kings, few hundred actors, few hundred athletes, few hundred politicians. We can fit the whole deal in a couple dozen volumes and go head-to-head with Britannica. We'll need to tighten up WP:GNG quite a bit.


 * BTW the article could be expanded quite a bit. In the same way an article about a pianist might describe her technique, or about an athlete his statistics, or about a playwright his go-to character types and plots and so forth -- so could this article describe the cusine in more detail. We have the refs for it. I haven't done it because there's a paywall. I'll just leave you with the thought that there is such a thing as Culinary art. It's shot all through human history and culture. It's important and subtle. There's more to encyclopedic exposition of food and food-related entities than bangers and mash. Herostratus (talk) 02:01, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yet again: an individual paper's overall circulation numbers, or the geographic range of its distribution, are irrelevant to whether the coverage passes WP:AUD for the purposes of getting a topic that's subject to AUD restrictions over WP:GNG. What matters is the paper's location vis-à-vis the location of the topic, and nothing else. If a newspaper not published in Winnipeg is conferring coverage on a restaurant in Winnipeg, or if the Winnipeg Free Press is conferring coverage on a restaurant in Calgary or Saskatoon or Boston, then that counts toward AUD — but a newspaper published in Winnipeg covering a restaurant in Winnipeg does not satisfy AUD just because that newspaper is also distributed to Brandon and Portage la Prairie and Thompson.
 * If local coverage were all it took to satisfy AUD, we would have to keep an article about every individual parent teacher association, every local taxpayer activism committee, every church bake sale committee, every neighbourhood watch committee, every independent furniture store, every fire department, every police department, every social planning council, every local retail or service business that ever existed at all. But that's not sustainable, or encyclopedic — which is exactly why CORPs and ORGs are subject to the special burden of having to meet AUD over and above claiming GNG just because local sourcing exists.
 * And again with the illogical and invalid comparisons? Poets and musicians, for example, are also not topics where every one that exists at all automatically gets a Wikipedia article just because they got covered about in the local paper for local-interest distinctions like winning a high-school poetry contest — but they are topics where there are objective notability standards to determine when a poet or a musician crosses the line into notability. A poet, for example, can win or be nominated for a notable national literary award, or a musician can win or be nominated for a Grammy or a Juno — and as national-level awards that do generate nationalized media coverage, those are distinctions that do make a poet or a musician eligible for a Wikipedia article.
 * By comparison, "only German restaurant in its own city" is not in and of itself a reason why a restaurant gets an encyclopedia article — if it were the first or only German restaurant in all of Canada, then that might potentially count toward making it more notable than the norm, but we can't feasibly keep an article about everything that could ever claim to be the first or only exemplar of its class in one particular city. If it were owned and operated by a chef who was independently notable enough to have his or her own standalone BLP, then that would count as a valid notability claim. If it were recognized or famous enough that sources outside of Winnipeg were writing and publishing content about it, then that would count as a valid notability claim. But purely local sourcing which fails to demonstrate that the topic is of any wider interest beyond Winnipeg for any substantive reason is not enough to make a restaurant wikinotable by itself. Bearcat (talk) 18:07, 7 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete Concur with all the above Deletes. This is just a local restaurant, with no indication of notability.  There must be hundreds of thousands of such places worldwide, there needs to be more significance than 'it exists'. MB 22:50, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete Boy, what a lot of sound and fury. Yes, the Winnipeg Free Press is a great paper but the coverage is from Winnipeg only. For WP:AUD to be met we'd need to see articles from other provinces or countries--which we do see for many nationally or internationally notable restos. We just don't see it here. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 17:27, 7 September 2016 (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.