Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Goat Yoga


 * 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 redirect to Yoga. Almost nobody wants to keep this, but some want to merge a mention of this practice to Yoga or to yet-to-be-created articles. I don't think we have consensus for this, though, given that there seem to be no clear ideas about where in the expansive Yoga article his topic could be mentioned. A redirect is a compromise that allows editors to figure this out later, and to merge this material if we ever do get an article about odd Yoga variants.  Sandstein  12:13, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Goat Yoga

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Much as it pains me I've declined a WP:G11 request on this as the page isn't unsalvageably and exclusively spam. However, I can see no way that this dubiously-sourced article written by an obvious paid editor on a hyper-fringe (and hyper-WP:FRINGE) topic could ever be expanded into a viable Wikipedia article beyond the three sentences currently in the lead. &#8209; Iridescent 18:47, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Animal-related deletion discussions. Lepricavark (talk) 18:57, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Health and fitness-related deletion discussions. Lepricavark (talk) 18:57, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

And yet, while we could bang on the table and say that this kind of "attention from the world at large" (I've just given you links to news articles from six of the largest English-language news sources in the world) is exactly what our notability guidelines accept as the definition of "notable", I'd like to suggest that we take Opabinia regalis's excellent advice, and merge it into a larger article that includes yoga with goats, yoga with dogs, and/or yoga with any other kind of animal. This article in the Washington Post (another national daily newspaper that's covered this subject) on goat yoga links to stories on dog yoga, cat yoga, and bunny yoga, so it might make a great starting point for the new article. Or we could go another direction, and have an article on Marketing gimmicks for yoga classes, which could include Beer yoga. But I think that the "delete" voters need to spend a few minutes looking at the sources and contemplating WP:ARTN (the rule that says that an article's current contents are not the be-all and end-all of notability for the subject). But either way, I'd like to exercise the WP:N escape clause that says, "Editors may use their discretion to merge or group two or more related topics into a single article" and say that even though there are thousands of reliable sources, and even though there are apparently hundreds of businesses or events doing this, let's merge it with related topics into a larger article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:58, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete as per nom Power~enwiki (talk) 19:39, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:N, WP:NOTADVERT and WP:NOTNEWS. The subject does not pass WP:N - the only sources are "infomercials" in a few online magazines, hardly any of which complies with WP:RS, all published around the same time. "Goat Yoga" is in fact a limited-availability commercial product - an exercise programme offered by two local establishments, each individually failing WP:N - and as such falls outside the scope of an encyclopaedia. — kashmiri  TALK  19:47, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete, or at most, merge into Yoga anything that might be salvageable. The media coverage in the references might just scrape through GNG, but our notability guidelines tell us even then that "This is not a guarantee that a topic will necessarily be handled as a separate, stand-alone page. Editors may use their discretion to merge or group two or more related topics into a single article." There really isn't anything to Goat Yoga than yoga in the presence of goats, and there would be plenty of room in the Yoga article to make use of those three brief sentences in the lead of this article. --RexxS (talk) 20:26, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Selective merge to yoga. "Yoga with animals" is a real topic - there are loads of "lifestyle news" type sources on yoga classes held in animal shelters. (I have been to a yoga class in a cat cafe and it is just as twee as you think.) While we're at it, merge Doga (Dog Yoga) too. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:29, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Something of a tangent here, but (assuming I'm reading Doga (Dog Yoga) correctly) it's the dog that does the actual yoga poses, so it isn't directly comparable to this which is just "standard yoga in the presence of a goat". &#8209; Iridescent 20:42, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I think it's both. Opabinia regalis (talk) 22:25, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete Not notable. Or merge a sentence or two. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 04:33, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete per the above. Simply not notable. If anything is salvageable, merge into Yoga. --TheSandDoctor (talk) 05:28, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete a textbook social media fad, perhaps could be mentioned at Yoga but even that is iffy w/o any enduring RS note of the practice. Bri (talk) 14:57, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect A trip to news.google.com for "goat yoga" (in quotation marks) gives me 30,500 ghits, which is Kind Of A Lot to say it's just not notable.  It appears that classes have begun in Virginia, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Idaho, Washington state, Florida, South Carolina – and that's just from the first page of stories – which debunks our earlier belief that it was just two small businesses.  Every news article I've linked here is regular, general news media, including statewide daily newspapers, without a single "infomercial" or "online magazine" in the lot.  there is even coverage in national news, such as USA Today, Wall Street Journal, The Times (i.e., of London), The New York Times, The Times of India, and BBC News.
 * Comments. (1) Re. Google hits count, I never quote the number at the top as it is calculated using OR and not AND. On "goat yoga", Google News (US edition) returns precisely 675 hits (68 pages of 10 results per page), out of which only the first ~190 relate to goat yoga. (2) All or almost all of them are from September 2016 until now, i.e. from the last 8 months. I submit that, be it for a new spiritual direction or for a new practice of physical exercise, it take more than 8 months from the moment they are invented to the time they are eligible for inclusion in an encyclopaedia. (3) I can't see how "yoga with a dog", "yoga with a cat" should be incorporated into yoga any more than "yoga at home", "yoga in a park", "yoga in a pub", "yoga on a plane", etc. — kashmiri  TALK  20:37, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
 * It seems one company was doing "yoga with tigers", but wasn't getting much return business. --RexxS (talk) 21:48, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
 * We already have a separate article on dog yoga. That's why one of the attractive possibilities is to merge all of the Yoga with animals subjects together.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:22, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep The topic is obviously notable, being covered by the BBC; CNN; USA Today; Modern Farmer; The Independent; Metro; CBC; NY Post; The Times and many more. It's obviously a fad but that's what makes it notable; just like fidget spinners, water bottle flipping and many more.  See also moral panic. Andrew D. (talk) 22:47, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Merge as WP:NOTNEWS obvious marketing gimmick which can be covered in Yoga (products like fidget spinner are at least more tangible and lasting than services which may be ephemeral, so no need to rush the 10 year test), unless we want all variants tiger yoga (per RexxS), dog yoga, badger yoga ? Also, WP:NOTPROMO with about 5 WP:SPA accounts and IP crawling over. Widefox ; talk 18:28, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Redirect. Someone makes up a bit of nonsense of this kind every few minutes. Beer yoga is a much better idea, and much more notable too. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:33, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Beer yoga? Love that! — kashmiri  TALK  11:34, 13 May 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.