Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Guelph Pride (2nd nomination)


 * 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.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 21:59, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Guelph Pride
AfDs for this article: 
 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Local pride festival lacking notability; no credible claim to importance or significance; all sourcing and attention for this festival is derived from local media, which is not an indication of notability. A search for additional sources only found a bunch of social networking profiles and blogs. Notability in accordance with WP:GNG or WP:EVENT has not been established. Respectfully,  Cindy  ( talk ) 02:27, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia does not have a rule about how geographically distant media coverage has to be from the topic to qualify it as notable under WP:GNG; the only requirement is that they have to count as reliable sources, which every last one that I cited most certainly does. Wikipedia in fact has lots of articles about topics whose notability is primarily "local" in nature and which cite few to no non-local sources — because again, our sole requirement is that the sources be reliable, and not that they have to maintain a minimum physical distance from the topic's location. (And even if there were such a requirement, msn.ca, Xtra! and Chatham This Week would all pass it because they're not local to Guelph.) With eight different citations to six different publications, this article most certainly does contain sufficient sourcing to get it past WP:GNG, and additional sourcing is available, albeit possibly via paid newspaper archives rather than Google News alone — but Wikipedia does not have any further criteria to distinguish "notable" from "non-notable" topics beyond the presence of valid reliable sources in the article. Keep. Bearcat (talk) 02:38, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sexuality and gender-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 03:26, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 03:26, 11 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Weak Delete Contrary to defending comment above, WP:EVENT specifically states that event coverage must normally be national or global to meet notability. There are indeed numerous secondary sources, but the coverage does not seem to rise to the required level. -Ad Orientem (talk) 04:10, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Except that both Xtra! and msn.ca, which between them account for nearly half of the citations present, count as national. Therefore "national or global coverage" is present. And WP:EVENT is about the notability of "events" as in news stories (bridge collapses, fires, murders, accidents, etc.), not "events" as in organized recurring cultural festivals staged annually by non-profit organizations — so WP:EVENT is not the guideline that this article even has to live up to. WP:ORG is, and the sources present in this article are sufficient to meet that guideline — ORG requires just one non-local source, and more than half of this article's eight sources pass that test. Bearcat (talk) 04:15, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry I'm still not convinced. Xtra appears to be a Toronto based gay magazine and would, IMHO, not rise to the level of significant national coverage. The MSN article is only a few paragraphs taken from the local press and seems to be the same sort of thing that pops up on my newsfeed for "local news." As for your characterization of the pride festival as an ORG, that I think would require suspending the common understanding of English. The article clearly refers to it as a festival, not an organization. But I seriously applaud your vigorous defense and am putting this discussion on my watch list. Find some unambiguously national sources and I will switch my vote. -Ad Orientem (talk) 05:00, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * A festival which is organized and staged and managed and run and maintained by an incorporated non-profit organization — which makes it an organization, ergo WP:ORG. And WP:EVENT simply isn't for this kind of thing — it's about the notability of news stories, such as murders and fires and accidents and explosions and the like, and isn't designed to even be applicable to "events" in the sense of recurring cultural festivals.
 * Secondly, msn.ca does not do an unfiltered feed of every single local news story that hits the web in any Canadian newspaper at all; they exercise their own editorial discretion to pick and choose content that actually has the prospect of being of broader interest, so if they actually choose to redistribute a story it does count as having gone national.
 * And thirdly, Xtra! is not one local magazine located in Toronto, but a chain of three magazines, located in Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa, which publish both locally-oriented content in each city and content syndicated across the entire chain — and furthermore, while those three cities are the chain's primary service area they do get distributed to other cities as well. So it does count as national.
 * And finally, the definition of "national" coverage does not only mean that the media outlet itself has national mass distribution — that would render something like 99 per cent of Wikipedia's sources essentially invalid, because there are no more than ten or twelve media outlets in all of North America which actually have that. Rather, if a story is getting picked up by sources which are not local or regional in scope to the specific area where the topic is located, then the story is getting regional or national coverage for our purposes even if those media outlets are still "local" or "regional" to another area.
 * A newspaper in Toronto doesn't have to cover anything that's happening in Guelph, so the fact that it chooses to do so, by definition, confers added notability. msn.ca doesn't have to resyndicate every last article that shows up in the Guelph Mercury, so the fact that they choose to do so, by definition, confers added notability. Bearcat (talk) 05:51, 11 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete and Comment. The notability guidelines for events clearly address notability in light of geographical scope. Even the summary states that "An event is presumed to be notable if it receives significant, non-routine coverage that persists over a period of time. Coverage should be in multiple reliable sources with national or global scope." Reliable sourcing is not the only criteria that we consider when evaluating notability. The guidelines go further, "In evaluating an event, editors should evaluate various aspects of the event and the coverage: the impact, depth, duration, geographical scope, diversity and reliability of the coverage, as well whether the coverage is routine." Note that the msn.ca is the local Guelph news site and a mirror of the local news from http://www.guelphmercury.com, and in this case, is a press release masquerading as an independent source. The first source from Guelph Mercury focuses not on the festival, but on the impact or lack of impact the senior adults have in the LGBT community. The second source is the student newspaper from the University of Guelph, offering a winter event report by committee members of the Guelph Pride organization. The third source is (as previously stated) the msn.ca mirror of the press release from the local newspaper. The May 29, 2009 source from Xtra! is merely a community calendar (address, time, tickets at the door). The second source from Xtra! was also published on May 29, 2003, which was the festivals first year. While I am unable to verify content, I would surmise that the article, entitled, "It takes a village to raise a Pride" is likely a commemorative community calendar of the inaugural event and festivities. I am unable to verify the May 27, 2008 article from the Guelph Mercury entitled "Pride Week takes flight in city; Mayor on hand to fly rainbow flag" is likely akin to the May 7, 2013, kickoff article, "Pride flag hoisted at Guelph city hall to officially launch Pride Week". I'm unable to verify the May 29, 2006, article in The Record, entitled, "Pride picnic revival planned", but it appears to announce a picnic of sorts. I found the Chatham This Week article, but it the focus of the article is on the exhibit at the Thames Art Gallery entitled "A Queer Archive". It doesn't mention the festival, however, it peripherally mentions the Pride committee, as well as "Out On A Shelf" (a project at the Guelph library), acknowledging the committee and library project for donations to the gallery. Honestly, I don't see much here to support or establish notability. Best regards, Cindy  ( talk ) 05:12, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Again: WP:EVENT is not the guideline that a recurring community festival organized by a non-profit organization has to meet, as that guideline is about the notability of news stories. It is about the notability of fires, earthquakes, accidents, and other one-time events, not the notability of regular, organized annual festivals organized by non-profit organizations. A festival needs to meet WP:ORG, not WP:EVENT. Nearly every cultural festival in existence, except a few of the most internationally famous ones, would fail WP:EVENT, because they're not what that guideline is designed to cover in the first place.
 * Furthermore, attempting to separate the committee from the festival so that sources about the committee aren't valid in an article about the festival is an underhanded stunt — the committee and the festival are both aspects of the same topic. And regarding the reference that you claim "focuses not on the festival, but on the impact or lack of impact the senior adults have in the LGBT community", I can't tell whether you were deliberate or merely negligent in eliding the fact that the article's actual primary topic is a panel discussion which was organized by and staged as part of the 2013 Guelph Pride program.
 * And furthermore, Wikipedia does not have a requirement that our sources be web-accessible; print-only sources (books, newspapers, microfilms, etc.) are acceptable, so the fact that you can't specifically find a source on Google does not render it invalid. And finally, the Chatham This Week article does mention Guelph Pride in conjunction with the book donation: "Thanks to a partnership with Guelph Pride and the Guelph Public Library, the local Pride committee has received hundreds of books.... That reference is not being used to cite anything that isn't properly supported by what the article explicitly says, so it is not an invalid reference. Bearcat (talk) 05:51, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I think we are going to have to agree to respectfully disagree. In the meantime I will keep an eye on the thread in case someone posts a pov not covered. -Ad Orientem (talk) 06:30, 11 June 2013 (UTC)05:56, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Bearcat, you seem to be conflating sourcing for verifiability with sourcing for notability. Your description of the Chatham This Week source makes it sound like a passing mention of the committee donating books to a library, which is fine for verifying that fact, but passing mentions do not, in general, establish notability. Also, I'm surprised to find myself reminding an administrator to assume good faith: we don't go around accusing other editors of being "deliberate or merely negligent" and attempting an "underhand stunt". However, I do agree that WP:ORG is the more relevant guideline. WP:EVENT refers to things like "past, current, and breaking news events" (which I understand to mean "past news events, current news events and breaking news events", rather than "past events, current events and breaking news events"), and an "incident that gains media coverage"; it gives examples such as murders and natural disasters, though it does also mention, for example, "Routine events such as sports matches, film premieres, press conferences".  The article here is about a series of festivals run by a particular group and, while each individual festival is, I think, an event in the sense of WP:EVENT, the article is not about the individual festivals.  An analogy would be the difference between a sports match (event) and the league it's part of (organization). Dricherby (talk) 11:33, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually for the record, I'm not really conflating sourcing for verifiability with sourcing for notability; we are allowed to do both in an article. Bearcat (talk) 17:59, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * OK but AfD tends to hinge on notability so it's the sources that establish notability (i.e., the ones with more than passing mentions) that are likely to be most important to this discussion. Dricherby (talk) 19:14, 11 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep Regardless of the range of meanings of "event" and which specific guideline might cover this topic, we end up getting guidance on whether or not any topic is likely to be, or can be presumed to be, notable. Also, we have recourse to the general guidelines (which talk of "a single event" and not of locality) with, probably, somewhat different guidance which again is not prescriptive. All this makes me think that the "notability" demonstrated for this topic is marginal, possibly less that is suggested for normally accepting as a separate article. Although I therefore respect the view that the article should be deleted, I also want to consider whether it has other good or bad features, most importantly whether it is reliably referenced, impartial and well in accordance with our policies. Since it scores rather highly here I think we would do best keep the article. Thincat (talk) 11:22, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Events-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:24, 11 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep, good deal of secondary source coverage among multiple different references. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 19:55, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, L Faraone  03:55, 19 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep - seems to have a sufficiency of national coverage for notability StuartDouglas (talk) 11:20, 19 June 2013 (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.