Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Grand Lodge of West Virginia


 * 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. Sarahj2107 (talk) 07:59, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Grand Lodge of West Virginia

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NN org, mainly due to no sources available to get a broad-based sense of the organization, and the article as it stands violates WP:UNDUE. The article was started because some news was made over a lawsuit almost ten years ago, and all of the information about the organization has been taken primarily from articles about that lawsuit, c. 2008. The organization has been in existence since 1865, and there is nothing RS to address that other 143 years of history; instead it focuses on about six months, really. It's not encyclopedically appropriate in its present condition, and it's not going to get any better without reliable independent sources, and there are none. MSJapan (talk) 21:05, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of West Virginia-related deletion discussions. Everymorning (talk) 21:30, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. Everymorning (talk) 21:30, 19 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep. Once notable, always notable.  Also there is no need to sanitize what is quite objective or even charitable discussion of the group and its discriminatory policy.  The group to this day persists in its discriminatory policy, I am sure, else that surely would have been publicly noted and this article would have been amended by active Freemasonry-interested editors.  I vaguely recall past dispute about this or a related article, in which I perceived there was a push to sanitize, to remove the fact that this Grand Lodge, at least, was prominently discriminatory, and to help the by-their-nature secretive Masons perhaps to "close ranks" and remove public negative info about their organization.  IIRC, there were impeccable sources including the New York Times. If anything, this organization becomes more notable with time by persisting in its policy. -- do  ncr  am  22:11, 19 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes, the past dispute was about the Frank Joseph Haas, an article no longer existing that was argued unnecessary because it would be covered in this article instead. Haas sought to end discrimination, was ousted from the Lodge, and sued.  IIRC, a nearby lodge in another state (Ohio?) notably invited/accepted his membership, by the way, reflecting disagreement by other Masons about the discrimination (this is no longer covered in Wikipedia).
 * The timeline on the controversy about the controvery includes:
 * "Frank Joseph Haas" article created July 12, 2008, brought to this version
 * July 21 it was PRODed by MSJapan
 * PROD removed by User:DGG with summary "NYT article and AP article is sufficient to justify coverage"
 * Discussion btwn DGG and MSJapan at User_talk:DGG/Archive_18_Jul._2008 about covering Haas and the lawsuit in the Grand Lodge article instead
 * Frank Joseph Haas was eliminated by redirecting it to this Grand Lodge of West Virginia article by editor MSJapan in 2008 in this diff
 * Relatedly, Talk:Grand_Lodge_of_West_Virginia shows it opened by MSJapan, then closed by MSJapan, and it was called "out of order" by another editor
 * A Redirect-For-Discussion was announced (and maybe started then cancelled?) to remove even the redirect, then un-announced (see MSJapan's edits in history
 * The redirect was modified in 2010 by MSJapan to remove pointer to "Lawsuit" section of this article, since that had been removed from this article (in this diff from 2009 by another editor
 * In 2013, lawsuit passage re-inserted into this article by User:JASpencer
 * MSJapan reverted that one day later
 * JASpencer restored it
 * and so on.
 * There were administrative noticeboard discussions about this article (I recall the controversy, and apparently participated in it):
 * Administrators' noticeboard/Archive155
 * Administrators' noticeboard/3RRArchive77
 * Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive450
 * Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive463
 * Note there do exist a number of articles about Grand Lodges (approx 72 members in Category:Grand Lodges and its subcats). This article's deletion (along with others) was also discussed within
 * Articles for deletion/General list of masonic Grand Lodges (2nd nomination) (nom by deletion nominator here), and
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Freemasonry/Archive 3 (including my noting WV article was reduced in its other coverage, making the Haas lawsuit more prominent and hence seeming more undue)
 * This article should not be eliminated, as the controversy is notable and has been expunged from elsewhere. This topic has been found notable and remains notable. Asserted "undue-ness" might be addressed by reasonable expansion of the article to cover other matters, consistent with other Grand Lodge articles. -- do  ncr  am  22:17, 19 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Expansion might include mention (if it is true and about a lodge within this Grand Lodge) something like "The first black AF&AM master mason was "raised" in 2015 in Martinsburg, WV in Equality Lodge #44." This point was added by an I.P. editor on 18 January 2016, then removed without comment in the next edit there, in February. -- do  ncr  am  01:19, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
 * We're not allowed to write wholly negative articles per WP:NPOV and the entire content focusing on the lawsuit is WP:UNDUE; things ran their course, and it's over and done with at this point. There's no indication that sources exist to cover the other 140 years of the history of the organization, so NPOV aside, it's not encyclopedically appropriate to have an article focused on one event in the last ten years when the organization dates back to the 1860s.  Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, for example, has a much wider historical scope, and while it needs work, it is a good example of the sort of coverage we need to write a balanced, encyclopedic article.  In this case, we don't have it, because the sources don't exist.  I even tried to go to the GL's own history page to get some content, and unfortunately, their own history is sparse and unsourced.  We can't base the article solely on primary sources, and in this case, the primary source is poor.  To show notability, we need reliable sources, and without that, this is a case of "yes, the organization exists", but we can't really go any further than that, so we run afoul of existence is not notability.  The organization is not notable simply because someone sued it unsuccessfully, yet that is precisely what the article covers, and that is all the article covers. MSJapan (talk) 06:21, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Being approximately 150 years old, I assume the organization was formed during or just after the split of West Virginia from the rest of Virginia, going "north" vs "south" in the American Civil War. I expect there's interesting history to share about that. I presume Masons formerly of the same grand lodge fought in battles against each other, and that a good number of Masons became officers in both sides, with some made individually notable during the war. One general source would be histories and records of the Virginia grand lodge (or lodges) that extended into what became WV. I hear some lament there is not more readily available on the Internet but "dead tree" sources are fine. Has the Masonic library in NYC been visited/checked? And what libraries, Masonic and not, in Washington DC or Richmond Va or Charleston Wv etc been checked about the grand lodge? And as the grand lodge includes numerous local lodges, the summary history of them is history of the grand lodge. I think expansion is feasible.-- do ncr  am  05:23, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
 * "You expect"? Well, that's great that "you expect",  but the burden of proof is on you to show that.  You're making a lot of baseless assumptions about an organization you know nothing concrete about, and presuming a lot of things without evidence. Masons being on either side of the war is irrelevant to the formation of a Grand Lodge - those are individuals, not organizations, and the GL won't inherit notability because of that.  Checking the NYC Masonic Library?  You want to go over there, be my guest, but you're not going to tell me that I've got to travel all over the US and that if I don't, you're correct that this organization is notable because I didn't go and do something - the burden of proof is on you, so you'd better book your tickets quick.  Lastly, subordinate body histories are just that; histories of the subordinate body.  If you had ever read one, you'd know that.  The extent of the overlap is that they receive a charter from the GL to be legal, and that is it. They're not going to recap the history of the GL, because that's not the point of their history book. MSJapan (talk) 15:46, 21 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes, confirming what I expected, the lodge was founded in 1865, on May 10 (in the month after the end of the American Civil War. It's on their seal.  It's in their webpages.  It's consistent with the year of 150th year activities of the lodge, some of which might be described in this article.  By the way their webpages mention "Work cited from "A Century of Freemasonry" 1865-1965 with addenda 1965-2000, which sounds like a relevant source. -- do  ncr  am  16:07, 24 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep Doncram does this much better than me. The Grand Lodge was a notably conservative Grand Lodge in American terms in ties with Prince Hall freemasonry, an apparent colour bar and also some stuff about not allowing disabled people to become freemasons.  The lawsuit was a part of all this.  Grand Lodges for states have (often) hundreds of lddges and thousands of members and so are worthy of articles by themselves.  But getting rid of interesting and more notable Grand Lodges.  Why? JASpencer (talk) 07:50, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Reply - Your assumptions are showing. The GL is not "more conservative" by any means - the rules they have in place are the rules all GLs had in place until some were changed on their own individual initiatives.  The lawsuit, by the way, was about Haas being illegally suspended, not any actions he took as GM, and if you had read the articles to understand what was going on instead of simply using it to confirm your biases, you'd have known that; that's why he lost the suit.  They're behind on Prince Hall recognition?  Well, that never started until 1990, and there are still several other jurisdictions that do not recognize it, so WV is not unique in its position, nor is it substantially lagging in the grand scheme of things.  In short, all of these assertions you are making about the notability of the organization have no basis in fact.  Most particularly, Grand Lodges are not notable based on size - the GL is independent of its subordinate Lodges; it could charter 76000 if it wanted to, with 3 members apiece. Moreover, Lodges come and go over time.  Therefore, numbers are not a factor. Now, can we stop arguing content minutiae and maybe come up with, gee, a source that maybe has something useful?  Again, the burden of proof is on you to show notability with evidence, not for me to show non-notability by the lack of it. MSJapan (talk) 15:46, 21 May 2016 (UTC)


 * WP:CIVIL, WP:AGF. JASpencer (talk) 18:30, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Perfectly civil, and AGF has nothing to do with it. You are making a claim to notability with no evidence provided to support that claim, the underlying assumptions are factually incorrect, and then you are pushing the burden of proof to disprove your claim off onto me by insinuating that I'm trying to delete "interesting and notable Grand Lodges."  You are making a subjective claim that the GL is "notably conservative" with respect to their rules.  It is subjective because you offer no support for this assertion.  That assertion is factually incorrect.  You then tie that assertion to a lawsuit, and that assertion had no bearing on the lawsuit; A caused B, and B caused C doesn't mean that A caused C.  Then you say that because the Grand Lodge is of a certain (indeterminate) size, they are notable.  That's also not valid per policy. I am neither uncivil, nor assuming bad faith, if there is a factual problem. MSJapan (talk) 21:25, 21 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes it is notably conservative. A map here, published yesterday May 23, shows WV isolated as (like I saw but Kevin Butterfield has already put into words) "one of a handful of states with no formal relationship between the "Prince Hall," or African American, Freemasons and the overwhelmingly white Grand Lodge. (All of the rest are in the former Confederacy.)" (bold emphasis added by me) in his article.  And he commented "a decision to intervene would have been a conservative judicial policy in defense of Haas's "right of membership." And it may ultimately have meant that West Virginia Freemasonry would have moved in a direction that, at least from my perspective, seems to be the right one, ending its exclusionary policies based on race and disability." -- do  ncr  am  01:15, 25 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep - except for the undue weight given to a lawsuit, I don't see any problems. Bearian (talk) 19:42, 23 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment The article's history now shows it has been considerably expanded by edits by User:JASpencer and some by me; it has been reduced by edits by MSJapan (which I have not reviewed).  What is in looks good.  If what was dropped is too sanitizing, perhaps it should be restored.  Besides adding some material, I removed an "undue" tag in this edit because the article is so much expanded.  It seems implicit, based on his 1993 award mentioned here in speech recorded at a West Virginia state Division of Culture and History webpage, that Robert C. Byrd, powerful (and longest-serving) U.S. Senator was a member of the lodge.  If someone feels it is absolutely clear he was a Mason from that source or from elsewhere, please modify the article.  Also mentioned in that source is a Sam Cole, possibly then State treasurer(?) and other officials not yet mentioned.  It's interesting to read in the article now that Haas was later booted from the Ohio lodge, I'm curious what happened.  Could more about that be shared here or at Talk:Grand Lodge of West Virginia, please? -- do  ncr  am  17:04, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Some links about that were shared. The article grew some more to this 23:19, 24 May 2016 version last edited by me.  Discussion about balance is ongoing at Talk page, I think.  This academic article by Kevin Butterfield, "The Right to Be a Freemason: Secret Societies and the Power of the Law in the Early Republic" was just found by me.  It is all about the Haas case vs. the Grand Lodge, set in sweep of history, and is a very excellent source not yet used in the article. -- do  ncr  am  01:05, 25 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep - recent improvements have addressed various deletion issues including WP:UNDUE. VMS Mosaic (talk) 21:56, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment - The article has really only marginally improved, and I do not believe the UNDUE issue has been resolved, but that is likely a content matter to be addressed on the talk page. MSJapan (talk) 05:39, 25 May 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.