Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/God hates figs


 * 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 Westboro Baptist Church. Spartaz Humbug! 02:48, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

God hates figs

 * – ( View AfD View log )

While I am certainly not defending Fred Phelps, this particular article is about just one of a myriad of counter-protest signs that have been mentioned in numerous media appearances about Westboro Baptist Church counterprotests. While many of them are humorous, and make good points, individual signs certainly do not meet Wikipedia's threshold of WP:NOTABILITY for having articles about them. This one should be no different. It should also be pointed out that the sign/slogan that "God hates figs" parodies, God hates fags, is also a redirect to the Westboro Baptist Church article. I would think the same redirect for this article would be appropriate as well -- we could even go one step further and redirect directly to the counter protests subsection in the WBC article. WTF? (talk) 04:09, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Merge and Redirect to Westboro Baptist Church I agree with the redirect, but I disagree with a one general statement the nominator has proposed. Individuals signs do have notability if they are covered in-depth by multiple, reliable, third-party sources.  It should not matter if it's an individual sign.  The slogan is covered in-depth by one source on the article from NBC.  There continued mentions of the slogan by Fox News (not in current article), Huffington Post, and ACLU.  However, I acknowledge these are not in-depth, so they may not be sufficient to meet WP:GNG.  I think the counter-protest section of the WBC article could be supplemented with information from the current article. I, Jethrobot drop me a line 04:47, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * And to add to the mainstream sources invoking this, there's the AP feature Voices of Faith, seen here in the Deseret News. --Nat Gertler (talk) 13:23, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, I am not saying that the content of the article should not be included in Wikipedia anywhere. The Deseret News & NBC articles do assert the fig claims in regards to the bible (the rest of the "news stories" are really single sentence mentions of it or talking more about the counter-protests in general with a mention of "god hates figs" amongst other signs. And it should be pointed out that the ACLU "citation" is really a blog post, as well as the Stranger article (below), and as such, do not meet WP:RS. Anyway, what I am suggesting is that this material is much, much better included in strengthening the counter protests section of the WBC article, as opposed to being its own content fork by itself. WTF? (talk) 14:07, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, that is certainly a different song than what you were singing when you were repeatedly deleting all of the content of the article, redirecting it without any attempt to merge, and threatening to have me banned if I restored the material. However, you may wish to review WP:RS; blogs are not barred from being WP:RS. Self-published blogs generally are, but SLOG is published not by its author but by The Stranger (newspaper). (You may also want to take a look at WP:FORK; it doesn't point to what you think it points to.) --Nat Gertler (talk) 14:24, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * What are you talking about? My intention has always been to have this included in the WBC article, hence my intention to redirect. You wanted to revert that, and I took it here prior to violating WP:3RR. As far as my "threat" to have you banned, that was in reference to WP:3RR as well -- if you continued to restore beyond three times, you would be banned, per policy. As for "The Stranger", it's an "alternative weekly" publication, also described as a "tabloid". I read that as being about as reliable as the National Enquirer (not very),. . . WTF? (talk) 14:29, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Had your goal always been to merge the content, you could have, well, tried to merge the content, or better yet proposed a merger. You did not. You deleted the content and when your edits were reverted, you did not continue with the WP:BRD cycle but instead went on with threats and then filed an AfD with no call for merging. You may want to read up on that WP:3RR - no, violating it does not send a user to being WP:BANNED. Not that it would matter, because had you simply blanked the page a third time, you would've found yourself reported (not under the bright line of a 3RR, but under general edit warring.)
 * As for "alternative weekly" and "tabloid", those descriptors fit such respected outlets as the Pulitzer-winning The Village Voice and L.A. Weekly. "Tabloid" describes not the content, but the dimensions of the pages. --Nat Gertler (talk) 16:10, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Interestingly, there's currently a push to get a Pulitzer Prize for the Onion, too. That's probably about as for from Wikipedia's WP:RS guidelines as they come! So just because something got a Pulitzer doesn't make it "reliable" for use in citations.
 * As for my "threats", I only did that mostly because I assumed that you were some silly high school punk/vandal creating stupid vanity articles as some sort of high school game. I tend to have a pretty short fuse with these people, and I use more forceful language with them to try and get them to go away and make them realize that Wiki means business. 99.9% of the time, it works, and the vanity articles go away because the ADD high school kids see a squirrel in the yard or something and move on,. . . ;-) WTF? (talk) 16:20, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Veering from topic, moved further responses to his talk page. --Nat Gertler (talk) 17:12, 29 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Bible-related deletion discussions.  —I, Jethrobot drop me a line 05:04, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions.  —I, Jethrobot drop me a line 05:04, 29 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep: In addition to the sources listed above, the slogan is covered in major non-self-published online sources such as The Stranger and The Atlantic. These brief pieces go beyond coverage of the sign, but displayed or link to coverage of a flyer on the full argument, and thus covered the "God hates figs" argument in more depth. The sign has been sighted at non-WBC events, such as the Rally to Restore Sanity, and thus (while obviously inspired by WBC) not exclusively a WBC-related phenomenon. --Nat Gertler (talk) 16:17, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Tacking on to note that a simple redirect, as nominator has repeatedly and without consensus attempted to do, does not make sense, as the only material currently on the WBC about "God hates figs" is a See Also to this article. --Nat Gertler (talk) 05:31, 29 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Merge and redirect, as the phrase's only notability is in the context of the WBC. TallNapoleon (talk) 06:02, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep It is a minor topic, but covered by reliable sources. A person might want to know what the sign means, and not feel like wading through the other article. Kitfoxxe (talk) 17:19, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * This is a very easy merge and redirect. Those recommending "keep" above fail to account for the "in depth" part of the coverage required by WP:GNG. That type of coverage just isn't out there in this case. LHM 00:23, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect, not notable enough to have its own article. If we started doing this, it sets a precedence to have an article for every 'clever' protest banner. 119.15.97.76 (talk) 13:13, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the logic that we shouldn't cover any item in category X, because then we'll have every item X, is faulty; working under that, Wikipedia would be rather empty, covering no people because we don't cover all people, no bands because we don't cover all bands, and so on. We have ways of differentiating. We're facing the question of notability here, and in this case we have a campaign that's the headline on that NBC piece, which reproduces several paragraphs of the flier photographically, and it's the focus of half of that Associated Press piece. That Wikipedia does not inherently exclude this protest cartoon does not mean that we therefor include all protest cartoons. --Nat Gertler (talk) 16:11, 1 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep - Not "a sign" - a well-covered website, unfortunately down now. Article should be altered to reflect this. 阝工巳几千凹父工氐 (talk) 06:13, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Merge to Westboro Baptist Church unless more significant coverage is found. I found a number of references to God Hates Figs in reliable sources, but they were all passing mentions, none in-depth.  The content currently in the article could easily be condensed to a few sentences in the WBC article, and it is unlikely that there will be more to say in the future.  —Mark Dominus (talk) 16:39, 6 July 2011 (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.